RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,212
('Salute' : completely abstract dumbbell)
Sometime back in the darkest light
of a pre-dawn time, when the swollen
Hudson was running fast and the old,
sagging trucks sat cheap and idle along
the wharves and piers - those old,
gathered places of lost reverie -
there gathered that usual clump of
men who come out of the wintry
darkness morning after morning,
seeking shelter again or jobs or at
the least a day's work pulling and
hauling for some 7 dollar measly
mound of beans and coffee, there
arose this scene, both quantified
and derelict : twelve men, not
chosen like disciples yet holied
nonetheless, hunched over and
wearing old jackets stained with
oil and food and the leaky contents
of whatever they'd lastly carried, and
their worn-out, finger-holed gloves
frayed and well-used tried squelching
the cold. The men stood alongside
the building where the wall was
marked with schedules and lists and
they talked endlessly, chattering,
endlessly back and forth between
them, each with a story to tell, a
tale or a mark to relate. They stood
in the early morning New York City
Hudson River waterfront cold - when
that waterfront was real and not as it
is today, a prattle-formed playland
of golfers and loons. They was a day
for a pay, or a ride; something to do
by which to continue existing. It
was an early beginning already to
a Winter long in coming, and the
rounded, black cars went by overhead
on the elevated roadway trestle, the
long, fat, rows of ChevroletFordDodge
careening past post and pillar and
light stanchion in a buzzing silence
of awe and distance combining with
all the energy of travel and space
and time, gathered as on, together.
The meanings and the visuals by
which we then think we recognize
this world and give visual shape
and form to our times and works
and duties. Salute! The passing
world and its wharves and ferries
and the downtown slaughterhouses
and animals braying. Being prepared
as well near there was another day's
worth of clean-up after the glaze of
red-stricken stream of fluid along
the gutter, and the bleats and yells
soon to be over as the carcasses
hung outside on hooks and chains
and the sidewalk conveyors showed
the men with their saws and cleavers
hacking at and cutting apart the parts
and body chunks of fresh-killed
animals - the way cities were once
fed, on-site rendering. Local produce.
And of off them in the cold rose the
wet-sweat of bloodied, dead, meat
which sent a fog of moisture and
mist out and into the chilled air
of morning/mourning, (oh cry the
beloved country!)...The meat trucks,
The open-air markets. The cold-trucks.
The slabs and shanks and sides to
be trimmed and rendered into their
saleable butcher-block portions, and
citywide. Meat, fruit, vegetable boxes
everywhere along the west side lower
market streets, the hounding yells
and yapping of sellers and buyers,
those who walked to rows of goods
and pointed, making lists, placing
orders; with men in dirtied-white
aprons and their odd, white-paper
hats ubiquitous as were the cigarettes
dangling from lips everywhere.
-
The slamming of truck doors and the
starting of engines was mostly what
was heard over the din. Freight-guys,
cargo-haulers, and wagon-men; two
by two trucks teams mounting the
running boards and sliding by while
the truck was already running. Guys
here could enter a moving truck at
will. Out on the river, huge ice chunks
went by, moving sideways and up
and down as they passed, with the
occasional chinks of crashing into
one another. Strange sight. Upstate
water, upstate apples, upstate fruit
and vegetables too. Farm town
after farm town with a signature
strut entering the big city, wild-
eyed metropolis of fame and glory.
For some. For others, the last
path before the grave.
-
I never knew by what lights I
saw. I just saw. Period. Like some
deep and infernal charnel house,
all of this had somehow become
my home, erasing all memory of
my past and place. I could weave
whatever story I told, and make
it real. Lethargic shirts, for me?
No. I found a hundred ways to
walk in drama. The entire universe
was right here, or whatever part of
it I ever cared for anyway, and these
mornings were like porticos to
Paradise: light gliding in, daybreak
perhaps for an hour or so, not much
to do, the occasional patrol car
prowling by, the taxis, the doubled
over man puking his curb brains
out, wearing the same, soiled,
coat he'd ever had. The sounds
around me were all of the same
sounds that every human environment
had ever made before; the grown,
the wheeze, the squeeze of sense
being poured forth ignominiously.
Again. Whatever came out of that
man's guy, I knew - orange, red,
purple, all together. It steamed on
the cold ice as it splashed, while
he stayed straight-down in his own
remission of time and place too.
Staking the posts and the dimensions
of all that was for him. Alone. A
mute and anguished testimony to
his own living and lost talent?
-
The water rolled by, all of it, and
beyond the boats and flags and the
far shore of New Jersey away and
everywhere - this was business and
all was Business too. Truck after
truck seemed to be awakening from
a slumber of the dark, those returning,
growing quieter, and those leaving
now groaning with new weight and
a load of freight. Men with age and
power and pull - and those without -
willing and waiting and ready to give
and to work, heaving and pulling,
delivering and taking, ripping and
sorting, loading and wrapping; the
whole, entire forever day through.
A world alive, with energy and force
and power. Such energy and such
power in the freezing dawn cold!
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