RUDIMENTS, pt. 1209
(a certain grip, pt. two)
'That will be tomorrow, and
this will be today.' Time flies
as memory dims. Yes, I guess.
My 12th street brain, to be
truthful, is still passed out
and drunk on the old corner
of Washington Street, with
Allan Dell and his Michelle
parked out to meet and greet.
Rocking chair time again,
you're gonna' leave me.
-
It was Halloween week, or
some Druid fest I forget, when
once I saw the encampment.
A large trailer-van, with a stage,
and some all-night Moonlight
Ceremony. Music and rituals
to the dark and the light. The
bar as a stones throw away and
the glow from the fire-barrels
at the ceremony illumined in a
rashly-odd way, the entire scene.
Man it was mean.
-
There was a time, before they
killed all that, when the lower
westside stretch was fine : like
an anarchic domain of shooters
and whores and gays and campy
in-betweens (before they were
allowed to pick their names).
Everything moved in its own
time, keeping a pace only it
recognized. Old men and plucky
kids, all mixed. The little corner
stores and totally tacky places
were relics of an older time from
30 years back - truckmen's diners
and coffee shops, loading docks
and freight-wagons and push-carts.
-
Then the hips and the museums
and the trendies slowly moved in,
Their grans 'hotel; facades and the
requisite fashion stores : Stella
McCartney and Dianne Von
Furstenberg too. Strange corners
of glass-lined stores replaced the
old windows and doors of the
cover-up days with their sleaze
and slime. At least I was used to
all that. it was mine.
-
Then it all grew strange and I
began going blind. My tongue
got tied and there were fewer
and fewer places to go. I saw
Daniel Johnson once, down there,
getting off a w14th street bus.
This was years later, probably
like 2012, and there was some
oddball art installation at the
corner into which we were both
heading. It wasn't Peter Beard but
something much like he had done.
I said 'Hey, Daniel.' He said hi
back. I don't think he was sure of
himself at all, nor what he was even
looking it, but none of that mattered
and neither was I. Cave art; primitive
life; microbial projections upon a
changing screen. Everyone stayed
quiet, but I wanted to scream, and
I wondered if he did too!
-
Ah, well. We go through life with
a succession of poses and I suppose
this was but another. The Manhattan
sky was graying as evening churned
in. The cobbled street, out that way,
sang its traffic of other days in other
ways : And I swore I saw the horses
and drays, slowly plodding their
makeshift patterns upon another
chalkboard of feeble time. I heard,
just as well, that echo which is
mentioned when they say 'Down
the corridors of time,' because all
things live on and the material
of life is the very life itself which
we give to things; for we are
nothing but warrants, out
for our own arrests.
-
If only a semblance of the little
grace I maybe once was does yet
survive, that could be enough to
make me happy and keep me wise.
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