RUDIMENTS, pt. 92
Making Cars
(a vision on Ericsson Place)
I can't pretend to be anything other than
what I am, based on these recollections,
which are to me a form of late-life therapy,
I guess. What I could never figure out was
'what was a Man?' Stupidest question in
the world, yes, but. So, I'd walk around
bemused. Me, a new, stupid kid in New
York City, still clutching my 'get me out
of town' bag from Avenel, New Jersey.
I might as well have been Dmitri from
Outer Slobovia. The entire world was
mysterious to me. All of the things
around me. I sought out everything.
Every so often, I'd find something that
would really floor me. Like the time
I found this information about there
once having been in early NY, a celestial
observatory on the corner of Ericsson
Place and Canal Street, sort of right where
now all the cars dump out of the Holland
Tunnel, onto that spidery web of streets
and curves. The building still stands, too.
Although greatly changed. I called this
little adventure (I'd make notes about things
for later writing, 'Eyes Only Heavenward
Locked.' Pretty fair working title). For a
while, whenever there was a clear, full
moon, I'd walk over there at night, just
to look up. One of the most notable and
most exciting things for me about being
in NYC was the night. I really got an
excitement, that first Fall and Winter
there, about the declining light of day
and the approach of night - everything
got strangely different, the light and the
reflections, and even the sounds, which
would get absorbed differently, would
'surround' a person differently, it seemed.
It was like you were no longer just 'you;'
you were also your shadow, in the night.
Nothing like it ever.
-
Walking like fierce fire from Barrow
and Bedford Streets down Hudson to
No. Moore (the designation 'No.' on that
street address is completely meaningless.
Somehow over the years, and for whatever
reason, it got added, and now everyone
just assumes it means 'North.' There's
nothing north about it), past the old
industrial rail and fire pit of Ericsson
Place where everything old had been
replaced, was the wide-open entrance
of new place after new place calling
for tenant and buyer, the concrete expanse
of 'for lease' square footage; tenants, the
hand-painted target of convenience on
the new blank walls, and the newly
poured concrete whee the watchman
sat biding his time; the target ) someone
had painted it there, I guessed) in black
and red paint on the wall behind his head.
Construction-site security guards, most
especially the all-night ones, are funny.
They are simply 'assigned' to a location
and usually know little about the location
or the area. It's just 'where' they sit, to
waste time and get paid for it. There's
always construction-site pilferage, and
things go missing, supplies are stolen, etc.,
and these guys aren't the ones ever to do
anything about it. So, where this guy sat,
all the time, at that entry desk, whether he
knew it or not, this painted target was just
a bit behind his head. Pretty funny. The
other thing was, quite noticeable, back then
all these security guys were weak, dim-witted
white guys, down on their luck a bit, and
just grabbing at any job to stay afloat. Now
all the security guys like that are Blacks or
Hispanic people. It's changed over time.
-
I'm walking along in the pouring rain as
he's looking out with a nod and a smile,
this security guy, and as I passed the newly
constructed corner scene I could see the
black space within and realized again
how often, over and over, the same things
are done and how and why. I'd never
know. Seen in the daylight, it's one thing.
but seen in the dark there's an entire
other world of activity not known to
us, nor shown. Yes it goes on, and even
as I walked determinedly in the
pouring rain, I alone sought the deference
of others in their outward presence,
at least some sort of human reaction, again
that nod or smile. Memory and image,
no matter - a fool like me, to be a friend
to everyone. I vouch to you that words
are more than sure things to do; so all
I need here write is that I consider
'relying on a lust and a piracy, on a
murder of time and thought, to subsidize
a play for beauty, and in every brick
and mortar. (That was my 1967
working premise). How weird eas
all this then, already all prescribed
and set-up in my mind. The 'platinum
pallor of blood suiting the illusory world,
with all objects drenched in lunar light.'
(Observatory talk, talking). And near
exact to that is a light of day not here
now (but instead in the rainy darkness
as I rush along). I see rows and rows
of heads dining and they are backlit
by the glow of soft yellow light, and
with spots of such candlelight on
each table's glow they are talking
softly back and forth to one another
as I realize I am silent, but only as
alienation and distance are silent.
That would be it - for in what better
warfare than this is there a place to
greet the enemy alone with no voice.
TO WIN BY IGNORING YOUR FOE.
-
-
Walking like fierce fire from Barrow
and Bedford Streets down Hudson to
No. Moore (the designation 'No.' on that
street address is completely meaningless.
Somehow over the years, and for whatever
reason, it got added, and now everyone
just assumes it means 'North.' There's
nothing north about it), past the old
industrial rail and fire pit of Ericsson
Place where everything old had been
replaced, was the wide-open entrance
of new place after new place calling
for tenant and buyer, the concrete expanse
of 'for lease' square footage; tenants, the
hand-painted target of convenience on
the new blank walls, and the newly
poured concrete whee the watchman
sat biding his time; the target ) someone
had painted it there, I guessed) in black
and red paint on the wall behind his head.
Construction-site security guards, most
especially the all-night ones, are funny.
They are simply 'assigned' to a location
and usually know little about the location
or the area. It's just 'where' they sit, to
waste time and get paid for it. There's
always construction-site pilferage, and
things go missing, supplies are stolen, etc.,
and these guys aren't the ones ever to do
anything about it. So, where this guy sat,
all the time, at that entry desk, whether he
knew it or not, this painted target was just
a bit behind his head. Pretty funny. The
other thing was, quite noticeable, back then
all these security guys were weak, dim-witted
white guys, down on their luck a bit, and
just grabbing at any job to stay afloat. Now
all the security guys like that are Blacks or
Hispanic people. It's changed over time.
-
I'm walking along in the pouring rain as
he's looking out with a nod and a smile,
this security guy, and as I passed the newly
constructed corner scene I could see the
black space within and realized again
how often, over and over, the same things
are done and how and why. I'd never
know. Seen in the daylight, it's one thing.
but seen in the dark there's an entire
other world of activity not known to
us, nor shown. Yes it goes on, and even
as I walked determinedly in the
pouring rain, I alone sought the deference
of others in their outward presence,
at least some sort of human reaction, again
that nod or smile. Memory and image,
no matter - a fool like me, to be a friend
to everyone. I vouch to you that words
are more than sure things to do; so all
I need here write is that I consider
'relying on a lust and a piracy, on a
murder of time and thought, to subsidize
a play for beauty, and in every brick
and mortar. (That was my 1967
working premise). How weird eas
all this then, already all prescribed
and set-up in my mind. The 'platinum
pallor of blood suiting the illusory world,
with all objects drenched in lunar light.'
(Observatory talk, talking). And near
exact to that is a light of day not here
now (but instead in the rainy darkness
as I rush along). I see rows and rows
of heads dining and they are backlit
by the glow of soft yellow light, and
with spots of such candlelight on
each table's glow they are talking
softly back and forth to one another
as I realize I am silent, but only as
alienation and distance are silent.
That would be it - for in what better
warfare than this is there a place to
greet the enemy alone with no voice.
TO WIN BY IGNORING YOUR FOE.
-
So as I walk the endless and blazing nights
I am addressed by the storefronts and
windows too of the wild wind off the
nearby river, a 'Spring Street' song of
all hearts and it makes some scoff at
truth while others cringe at the hideous
lapse of sensibility therein [“so I have
heard and do in part believe it”].
In my mental state, still wandering,
aimless in the rain, the water is rolling
off my face and beads of it hang from
my nose with wet head and hair, ears
cold, clothing soaked, everything wet,
shoes and outlook. I was a wreck. And
again I begin: VOICES, the same voices,
hearing tearing into me at once like
mesmerizing old quotes from the
battle-stations and workplaces old
and now long gone: “there’s just one
street and they can shut it off but I’d
have felt safer there than here, and the
worst fantasies I guess of the organizers
would be marchers rolling primitive
devices of fire and terror down the
street as they walked, and I - for one -
have this very relieved sense that
I am not in charge.” Hearing that, being
spoken to, it was all I could do to stay
right with myself. no one wants a madman
in a jungle-city. And with that, I look up
and remember the old Ericsson place,
named for him, (he Ericsson Place on
Ericsson Place), and where the crazed
inventor would look down upon these
oily streets way back when and see only
woods and land and fence and until later,
when the rail yards came and supplanted
all that, he had his EYES ONLY
HEAVENWARD LOCKED, and
peering through the rain to the streets
below I hear him say “glassed in all day
like this I keep toweling the windows
dry. Eamon keeps trying to wipe this
fog away that keeps me blind behind
glass and unable to see the outside
world for what it is, and the way things
become shadows and blunted silhouettes
of themselves, and birds only become
blurs as they shake a branch when
they land or leave or just dash past -
as a flash of cloud snatching at crumbs;
and I know too, Eamon, this will all soon
be gone, and I find myself like those birds,
wet and weathered each time as I get up
to the big window to clear it again and
try to take in what colors are left and
all the shapes out there, all the living
bits of matter that stand in their own
ordinary, uncanny, light until the blurring
begins again, and I see my own breathing
as I breath it, but Eamon, I am not the
man to record all this. Just to watch it,
the distant observer of another sky, for
I am an inventor and here alone I research
the heavens : OBSERVATORY LIMIT
GRAND ASTROLABE : of all my heart,
alone and silent. What can I do, and what
is visible to me, really? Alas, instead I shall
remain here until time for me ends its
own delight, and you know I DO NOT
KNOW THESE PEOPLE I DO NOT.”
-
And with that, the night seemed to lessen
its darkness and I heard the distant low
growl of tugboat and ship; something
rolling by me, and then by Beach Street,
and I’m taken by something - some wild,
wicked feeling of timeless cold age,
taking me up, and the ghosts of the
past wrap around me as it grows totally
silent and still, and only the one light
across the horizon seen becomes the
tear, the great rip in consciousness,
and it all opens to other worlds. And the
time and space of other places, those
which exist concurrent and just beyond
the membrane of this place and this
experience, they were suddenly all
present, and I was viewing all things!
Into that we, I, we, all are pushed slowly,
like thick liquid oozing, and time
bleeds into time, and other things
dissolve, and the clanging howl of
the boisterous bell, ringing, resounds
and echoes down the February quarters
of the night, and around me, I can well
recall, all this, all this city, coalesces
and comes back and returns and I
am silent reading time or silent
smoking water or silent I am just
silent watching it all unfold.
