RUDIMENTS, pt. 94
Making Cars
I always thought the easiest thing to do
was to be glib, go along. I'd see others
do it, and it became something I was
very earnest about not doing. My point
was not to be different for the sake of
being different, just not to get dragged
into junk. Like the South Street seaport,
for instance. When the plans for that first
started getting bandied about, like any
other of those planned and prescribed
'historic' districts, I knew it would stink
worse than any fish would. Yet, the whole
world thought it was the greatest thing, or
would be. People were beside themselves
in proclaiming what a valuable, authentic
and worthy adjunct to NY's heritage it
would be. Bunk. That place was the worse,
noisiest and most grubby form of a sea-tale,
Disneyfied. The ones who liked it the most
and who proclaimed it most authentic and
real and history-worthy, I found, were the
ones who knew the least about it, and about
what they were talking. They were shilling,
they were boosterizing for commercial
purposes. An entire array of taverns and
even chain-named bars popped up, filled
with nothing but revelers and the too-drunk
to know the difference. Landlubbers from
other places, sea-scamps worth nothing
at all. Soon cars and buses. Arrays of
hamburgers, Swatch Watches, jewelry
and higher-end clothing dumps. It was,
in about a week, borderline hideous. I'll
maybe here try to walk you along some
of this, but at the same time I was totally
gladdened when it was all put to rest anyway
by Hurricane Irene, whenever that was.
I was, frankly, never more glad to see
anything flooded out and blown away.
-
I hate fake history, and yet here are thousands
a day who love it. I've seen them, in their
faraway clothings, and funny shorts and
walking-clothes deals, indecorously trodding
their away along as they peer at this and that
which the little signs direct them too : the
categories of their mind take no cover as
they are exposed, (so it says) to the sailors'
bar where betting was done on the dogfights
in the basement, or the four-story house adjacent
to it which was once the busiest and most rich
of the waterfront whorehouses. Ooh they gasp.
'Here we are, Helen; by George ain't this fun!'
And then they'll have an authentic $28.95 lunch
or two oysters and three clams, and pound a few
drinks with it, to get paddy-whacked some more
by vap-rous history.
-
Once there was even a true Fish Market here,
the famed Fulton Fish Market, yes, but once the
South Street seaport clowns got rolling, after a
while they determined that the odoriferous, and
in working order, fish market was just a bit too
authentic. It was shut down and the fish business
moved away. I don't know how these people
think. Those market guys were tough; I'd be
there sometimes - watching them, literally
throw whole fishes to each other, right from
the catch, off the boat in at the pier. They'd
sling the fish to each other like it was no
task at all, maybe 15 or 20 feet apart, as
they were, from each other. Scales, hoses,
wash-downs, ice, hooks and cleavers. Burlap
sacks, fish pieces everywhere, gutting and
scaling, pounded, and all this done with
cigars and cigarettes everywhere, aprons
splattered with fish stuff, and blood. No one
talked, inasmuch as everyone yelled. There
were these little worker-bars, fish-soup tables,
windows looking out to sea and harbor, or
if not windows then a half-opened wall that
faced out. Between-shift guys, or breaks and
lunches, (not so much lunches, since this
was all done at the overnight, but I mean
'work-lunch,' by time periods), managers and
bosses with their paperwork, etc. They'd be
sitting around, in the paneled places - you
just sensed that everything was old, tilted, had
been used and over-used for years. There wasn't
a teat's worth of glamor to this entire operation.
That's what made it all so cool and so perfect,
but those idiots would never know that. The
seaport people moved in, and took everything
away. The muck and filth of chandler's shops
and rope and twine sellers, the implements of
the trades, hooks, knives, baskets, balings,
all of that was just swept away. Someone was
hired to do a few wall-sized murals of old
ship-days scenes, except those paintings
themselves, portraying the chosen scenes,
really got nothing across at all - the blues
were too blue, the yellows too yellow.
It was all obfuscation, a facsimile rendering
of an already awfully artificially-recalled
scene, like from the history book of a
rag-picker or a madman, sedated, and
re-told slowly so as to be cleansed and
filtered before the re-telling. But people
loved it all, they swarmed. Fancy telescope
shops, pretend sea-salts telling about exploits,
astrolabes for 2,000 dollars, chrome and
wood pedestals with telescopes on them.
Fancy globes, and sea-maps. It was crazy.
It was faker then being good.
-
If a man were to disappear, take anther name,
say, and come back, or be apprehended in
the body of another, I used to think, would
he still be he. Or her, her (OK, OK. Jeez!).
Saying then, if our brain were placed in
another body, wouldn't that body with our
brain - no matter how it looked - still be
us as long as it carried our memories and
thought processes? That' what I used to
think about long at these swanks who'd
taken over and walked the planks of their
mental shipboards with all their fakery and
pretense. No one ever really wants the past,
no matter how loudly they seek and proclaim
it. Drinking at Fraunce's Tavern, even with
your hand up under some sea-wench's skirt,
is all an artificial gruel no matter how it's
presented. Reason being? Because people
are afraid of themselves; nothing more clear
or simple than that. So they just go along.
By the way, none of this is new stuff, and
that makes it more interesting. A long time
back, in his 'Essay Concerning Human
Understanding,' John Locke wrote : "In
this alone consists personal identity, i.e, the
sameness of a rational being; and as far
as this consciousness can be extended
backwards to any past action or thought,
so far reaches the identity of that person."
So, even going it alone, it is, I'd guess
true that 'You are what you remember.'
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