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One Shoe Baby
I was sitting in the passenger seat of the Jeep parked in front of a fire hydrant at the corner of 10th St. and Second Avenue. I watched belly buttons pass by while Bernadette retrieved chicken soup from Veselka's. Some belly buttons were pierced and some were tattooed. Some were without marking at all but existed so far above the pant line that I had to reconsider the definition of clothing, and in this latter case, where the belly button seemed to be floating so impossibly high, the purpose of clothing was clearly to accentuate nakedness.
As eye catching as public nakedness may be, I was soon distracted from this spectacle of skin by a man with a baby in a backpack. The man was tall. The baby was not small. The man leaned forward against the weight. The baby leaned into the man. As they crossed Second Ave. heading west on 10th I noticed the baby was missing one shoe. I saw the man's future. I heard him getting yelled at because money doesn't grow on trees and neither do shoes. I exited the vehicle with the windows down and the engine running and started out after the man who carried his baby in a backpack. I had no clear intention. Was I going to cobble a shoe while in pursuit, say you dropped this sir, and risk bringing to attention the rare foot disorder which required the baby to only wear one shoe?
On 10th near the corner of 3rd Ave. I passed a vampire sitting on a stoop and he tipped towards me a cup filled with red liquid and said, cheers.
At Washington Square I caught site of the man as he weaved his way around a circle of white men with dreadlocks playing drums, but then I lost him again in the crowd.
The next time I saw him I was exiting the elevator onto the top floor of the Empire State Building, just as the man and baby were entering the down elevator.
Around 42nd St. I had to enter an office building, get a quick photo ID made at the security desk, insert the ID into a turnstile blocking the elevators, go up four floors, make three lefts and two rights, knock on a door, enter and explain myself, apologize for not being Bernadette, explain various lackings that would prevent me from ever being Bernadette, reach a hesitant agreement, pick up her taxes, and exit the way I came in. I offered up my ID but the security man said I could keep it.
At St. Patrick's Cathedral I was close enough to touch the man but when he entered a pew and sat down to pray I stepped back to reconsider my sin of pride which was believing that I could in any way positively affect this man's life.
While the man prayed I crossed the street and entered Sak's Fifth Avenue in search of a bathroom. I had the beginnings of a mild panic attack amidst the eight floors of high end consumer goods as I kept exiting elevators onto floors that only offered women's restrooms.
Back on the street I saw the man loading his baby into a cab and I flagged the next one passing, thinking, is there any way around all this predictable derivation? I mean, I'm going to chase this guy around the landmarks of the city, just narrowly missing him each time, my goals vague, barely even passing muster as narrator, and for what? Just to return with an unlikely timing to a Jeep that has not been towed away or stolen or inhabited by a homeless family who are tapping their toes on the dash while listening to XM 101, the sounds of Jamaica?
I should just go back now. I mean come on, people. The guy is going to circle all the way back to the corner where the Jeep is parked and he's going to find the shoe. Get it? No? Exactly, neither do I.
I did stop first in the bowels of Grand Central for a dozen oysters. Unfortunately though, one of the dozen was apparently grown in the bowels of a dying sea monster and here I just seem to be going down the list of deadly sins because it was gluttony that caused me to eat the damn stinky oyster, even after smelling it I knew I shouldn't. I didn't die though. I just went on living.
I entered the Jeep through the sun roof, installed just seconds earlier for this purpose, so that I could throw you a curve, ha, no, he's not waking from a dream at the end, he's returning from an astral projection, which I guess doesn't really require a sun roof, so I can save on that.
Bernadette returned carrying soup and blintzes. As she pulled away from the curb she pointed and said look at that guy with the baby in a backpack. No thank you, I said.
I was sitting in the passenger seat of the Jeep parked in front of a fire hydrant at the corner of 10th St. and Second Avenue. I watched belly buttons pass by while Bernadette retrieved chicken soup from Veselka's. Some belly buttons were pierced and some were tattooed. Some were without marking at all but existed so far above the pant line that I had to reconsider the definition of clothing, and in this latter case, where the belly button seemed to be floating so impossibly high, the purpose of clothing was clearly to accentuate nakedness.
As eye catching as public nakedness may be, I was soon distracted from this spectacle of skin by a man with a baby in a backpack. The man was tall. The baby was not small. The man leaned forward against the weight. The baby leaned into the man. As they crossed Second Ave. heading west on 10th I noticed the baby was missing one shoe. I saw the man's future. I heard him getting yelled at because money doesn't grow on trees and neither do shoes. I exited the vehicle with the windows down and the engine running and started out after the man who carried his baby in a backpack. I had no clear intention. Was I going to cobble a shoe while in pursuit, say you dropped this sir, and risk bringing to attention the rare foot disorder which required the baby to only wear one shoe?
On 10th near the corner of 3rd Ave. I passed a vampire sitting on a stoop and he tipped towards me a cup filled with red liquid and said, cheers.
At Washington Square I caught site of the man as he weaved his way around a circle of white men with dreadlocks playing drums, but then I lost him again in the crowd.
The next time I saw him I was exiting the elevator onto the top floor of the Empire State Building, just as the man and baby were entering the down elevator.
Around 42nd St. I had to enter an office building, get a quick photo ID made at the security desk, insert the ID into a turnstile blocking the elevators, go up four floors, make three lefts and two rights, knock on a door, enter and explain myself, apologize for not being Bernadette, explain various lackings that would prevent me from ever being Bernadette, reach a hesitant agreement, pick up her taxes, and exit the way I came in. I offered up my ID but the security man said I could keep it.
At St. Patrick's Cathedral I was close enough to touch the man but when he entered a pew and sat down to pray I stepped back to reconsider my sin of pride which was believing that I could in any way positively affect this man's life.
While the man prayed I crossed the street and entered Sak's Fifth Avenue in search of a bathroom. I had the beginnings of a mild panic attack amidst the eight floors of high end consumer goods as I kept exiting elevators onto floors that only offered women's restrooms.
Back on the street I saw the man loading his baby into a cab and I flagged the next one passing, thinking, is there any way around all this predictable derivation? I mean, I'm going to chase this guy around the landmarks of the city, just narrowly missing him each time, my goals vague, barely even passing muster as narrator, and for what? Just to return with an unlikely timing to a Jeep that has not been towed away or stolen or inhabited by a homeless family who are tapping their toes on the dash while listening to XM 101, the sounds of Jamaica?
I should just go back now. I mean come on, people. The guy is going to circle all the way back to the corner where the Jeep is parked and he's going to find the shoe. Get it? No? Exactly, neither do I.
I did stop first in the bowels of Grand Central for a dozen oysters. Unfortunately though, one of the dozen was apparently grown in the bowels of a dying sea monster and here I just seem to be going down the list of deadly sins because it was gluttony that caused me to eat the damn stinky oyster, even after smelling it I knew I shouldn't. I didn't die though. I just went on living.
I entered the Jeep through the sun roof, installed just seconds earlier for this purpose, so that I could throw you a curve, ha, no, he's not waking from a dream at the end, he's returning from an astral projection, which I guess doesn't really require a sun roof, so I can save on that.
Bernadette returned carrying soup and blintzes. As she pulled away from the curb she pointed and said look at that guy with the baby in a backpack. No thank you, I said.
Faulkner Nobel Speech
I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work - a life's work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before. So this award is only mine in trust. It will not be difficult to find a dedication for the money part of it commensurate with the purpose and significance of its origin. But I would like to do the same with the acclaim too, by using this moment as a pinnacle from which I might be listened to by the young men and women already dedicated to the same anguish and travail, among whom is already that one who will some day stand here where I am standing.
Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.
He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed - love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.
Until he relearns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last dingdong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail. William Faulkner, 1949
I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work - a life's work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before. So this award is only mine in trust. It will not be difficult to find a dedication for the money part of it commensurate with the purpose and significance of its origin. But I would like to do the same with the acclaim too, by using this moment as a pinnacle from which I might be listened to by the young men and women already dedicated to the same anguish and travail, among whom is already that one who will some day stand here where I am standing.
Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.
He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed - love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.
Until he relearns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last dingdong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail. William Faulkner, 1949
Chicken Feet Vignette
It's time to move the car. Hit the snooze button once more. I was parked for two days on Stanton under a light pole on top of which was precariously perched a baby elephant with uncertain fecal continence. The windshield was encrusted. I would need to glue razors to my wiper blades to get this crap off. Bernadette was down in Chinatown picking up chicken feet for breakfast. We were going to eat feet in the car while waiting for the street sweepers to pass. I was not hung over but I wasn't far from it. Chicken feet and elephant poop for breakfast. My lust for life was ebbing at this precise moment. I felt the weight of the world crushing down on me. It was as if a large mammal was hovering in the airspace above. If I left this parking space Bernadette might not be able to find me and while looking around could herself be crushed by the tottering Proboscidea Mammalia. I moved anyway, and parked at a meter where I hoped to intercept her before the befalling danger. As engrossed as I'm sure you all are in this taut, ill conceived, poorly delivered and unlikely tale, in the end nothing happened that would warrant you reading any further.
It's time to move the car. Hit the snooze button once more. I was parked for two days on Stanton under a light pole on top of which was precariously perched a baby elephant with uncertain fecal continence. The windshield was encrusted. I would need to glue razors to my wiper blades to get this crap off. Bernadette was down in Chinatown picking up chicken feet for breakfast. We were going to eat feet in the car while waiting for the street sweepers to pass. I was not hung over but I wasn't far from it. Chicken feet and elephant poop for breakfast. My lust for life was ebbing at this precise moment. I felt the weight of the world crushing down on me. It was as if a large mammal was hovering in the airspace above. If I left this parking space Bernadette might not be able to find me and while looking around could herself be crushed by the tottering Proboscidea Mammalia. I moved anyway, and parked at a meter where I hoped to intercept her before the befalling danger. As engrossed as I'm sure you all are in this taut, ill conceived, poorly delivered and unlikely tale, in the end nothing happened that would warrant you reading any further.
Critique Before Pancakes
Bernadette walking down 1st Ave. just above Houston began foot-tapping her niece, Sofia, and me on the other side, in the ass, with an alternating back kick while still moving forward, and in doing so resembled a member of the ministry of funny walks. Bernadette earlier in a lapse of cognitive prowess had asked the cashier at the movie house how old one had be to qualify for a child's ticket. Sofia, a few years shy of being old enough to vote, suffered this patiently. After the third kick in the ass Sofia asked Bernadette--"and how old are you?" Bill Macy walked a few strides ahead, easily pretending he did not know us.
We had seen Persepolis, an animated recent history of Iran over the last 35 years as seen through the eyes of a child progressing towards adulthood.
A central theme in the movie is pride in one's heritage, under adverse conditions.
This morning, after picking up a paper on Clinton I walked a couple of blocks west to a diner on Houston and just as I approached the restaurant, coming from the opposite direction were three mean ass looking, wife-beater wearing, Puerto-Rican restaurant critics. They all looked to be in foul spirit but the middle critic was the most vocal about it. "Don't ever eat here," he said to his buddies while motioning to the door handle I was ten seconds away from grabbing. I am not one to ignore the opinions of others so I paused and waited for more, but hoping they would quickly pass so I would not seem to be a direct threat to this man's contention that the restaurant was unworthy. I did not want him up in my face saying, "you calling me a liar?" and me thinking, hopefully not out loud, "certainly not my good man; puffed up, aggressive, a foul-mouthed belligerent asshole, perhaps, but liar? No, really, I haven't a shred of evidence to support the idea of you as single-parent prevaricator, a lying bastard, if you will."
The apoplectic critic spewed on as I looked for an imaginary something in my coat pocket, then feeling a likely prop, extracted my cell phone and checked for messages which were unlikely to exist nor in any case could I see, as my glasses were hanging around my neck.
I waited for his specific critique of this restaurant, although I already knew the place to be not really all that good. In the end he surprised me by saying, "it's...it's full of fucking white people." Lucky for me I was born with a chameleon-like speckled complexion, but still I hesitated to enter the restaurant, right in front of these guys now, because to be casually inspected I certainly do appear to be white. In the end though I manned up and entered, pretty much a straight up white guy, my dominant Arab blood hidden for better or worse behind a very successful assimilation into the world of white middle class America.
Bernadette walking down 1st Ave. just above Houston began foot-tapping her niece, Sofia, and me on the other side, in the ass, with an alternating back kick while still moving forward, and in doing so resembled a member of the ministry of funny walks. Bernadette earlier in a lapse of cognitive prowess had asked the cashier at the movie house how old one had be to qualify for a child's ticket. Sofia, a few years shy of being old enough to vote, suffered this patiently. After the third kick in the ass Sofia asked Bernadette--"and how old are you?" Bill Macy walked a few strides ahead, easily pretending he did not know us.
We had seen Persepolis, an animated recent history of Iran over the last 35 years as seen through the eyes of a child progressing towards adulthood.
A central theme in the movie is pride in one's heritage, under adverse conditions.
This morning, after picking up a paper on Clinton I walked a couple of blocks west to a diner on Houston and just as I approached the restaurant, coming from the opposite direction were three mean ass looking, wife-beater wearing, Puerto-Rican restaurant critics. They all looked to be in foul spirit but the middle critic was the most vocal about it. "Don't ever eat here," he said to his buddies while motioning to the door handle I was ten seconds away from grabbing. I am not one to ignore the opinions of others so I paused and waited for more, but hoping they would quickly pass so I would not seem to be a direct threat to this man's contention that the restaurant was unworthy. I did not want him up in my face saying, "you calling me a liar?" and me thinking, hopefully not out loud, "certainly not my good man; puffed up, aggressive, a foul-mouthed belligerent asshole, perhaps, but liar? No, really, I haven't a shred of evidence to support the idea of you as single-parent prevaricator, a lying bastard, if you will."
The apoplectic critic spewed on as I looked for an imaginary something in my coat pocket, then feeling a likely prop, extracted my cell phone and checked for messages which were unlikely to exist nor in any case could I see, as my glasses were hanging around my neck.
I waited for his specific critique of this restaurant, although I already knew the place to be not really all that good. In the end he surprised me by saying, "it's...it's full of fucking white people." Lucky for me I was born with a chameleon-like speckled complexion, but still I hesitated to enter the restaurant, right in front of these guys now, because to be casually inspected I certainly do appear to be white. In the end though I manned up and entered, pretty much a straight up white guy, my dominant Arab blood hidden for better or worse behind a very successful assimilation into the world of white middle class America.
Shooting Fish In A Frying Pan
In the mid nineties in New Orleans on the night of New Year's Eve the sound of celebratory gunfire in the ghettos was so astounding it defies description. People in war zones have certainly heard such noise but in an American city not at war (or maybe at war with itself), the range of weapon caliber and the stacatto of automatic machine guns combined with the methodic emptying of 9mm thirteen round clips and .38 caliber 6 shot revolvers, all overlapping each other and then reaching impossible crescendoes, is something I cannot seem to get out of my mind.
Some eighty years previous, the young Louis Armstrong had shot off a gun on New Years Eve, gotten arrested for it, and then was sent off to spend time at the New Orleans Home for Colored Waifs. There, a regularly visiting Professor Peter Davis taught him a few things about the trumpet, and discipline, and the story of one young delinquent's life turns out pretty well.
In the nineties a tourist fell dead in the French Quarter from one of the thousands of rounds flying through the air that night and in subsequent years a crackdown occurred in an effort to curtail the danger of falling bullets. The campaign was called Falling Bullets Kill.
Yesterday, beloved New Orleans chef, Paul Prudhomme, while sitting on a New Orleans golf course blackening fish for PGA golfers, became front man for a new campaign known as Falling Bullets Scratch. While his fish sizzled in a pan under the noonday sun, Prudhomme felt a sting on his arm and when he lifted it to see what had stung him, a piece of .22 caliber lead fell from his shirt. It is not known who fired the gun but investigators surmise that it could have come from as far as a mile away. We are probably to be left in the dark as to whether or not the shooter is a prodigy of music, or just some guy in his backyard shooting at a squirrel in a tree.
In the mid nineties in New Orleans on the night of New Year's Eve the sound of celebratory gunfire in the ghettos was so astounding it defies description. People in war zones have certainly heard such noise but in an American city not at war (or maybe at war with itself), the range of weapon caliber and the stacatto of automatic machine guns combined with the methodic emptying of 9mm thirteen round clips and .38 caliber 6 shot revolvers, all overlapping each other and then reaching impossible crescendoes, is something I cannot seem to get out of my mind.
Some eighty years previous, the young Louis Armstrong had shot off a gun on New Years Eve, gotten arrested for it, and then was sent off to spend time at the New Orleans Home for Colored Waifs. There, a regularly visiting Professor Peter Davis taught him a few things about the trumpet, and discipline, and the story of one young delinquent's life turns out pretty well.
In the nineties a tourist fell dead in the French Quarter from one of the thousands of rounds flying through the air that night and in subsequent years a crackdown occurred in an effort to curtail the danger of falling bullets. The campaign was called Falling Bullets Kill.
Yesterday, beloved New Orleans chef, Paul Prudhomme, while sitting on a New Orleans golf course blackening fish for PGA golfers, became front man for a new campaign known as Falling Bullets Scratch. While his fish sizzled in a pan under the noonday sun, Prudhomme felt a sting on his arm and when he lifted it to see what had stung him, a piece of .22 caliber lead fell from his shirt. It is not known who fired the gun but investigators surmise that it could have come from as far as a mile away. We are probably to be left in the dark as to whether or not the shooter is a prodigy of music, or just some guy in his backyard shooting at a squirrel in a tree.
Poisonous Campaign
I woke up this morning to find a severed horse's head at the foot of my bed. This morning I awoke at dawn and there was a chill in the air. The pine boughs outside my window are weighted heavily with chirping birds. The sky is blue. Winds have shifted from the north to the southwest. Chainsaws churn against heavy lumber in the distance.
Yesterday I received two packages. In one package was a clear plastic bag knotted at the top and containing one dozen mouse traps. Also in the box were three plastic imitation granite boulders, hollow, with hinged lids and two entrance holes and four metal rods for each on which to thread chunks of poison. These I have loaded up and placed around the perimeter of the bighouse, with some of the contents of the other package, four pounds of rat and mouse poison. The other item in the second box was non-odorous deer repellant concentrate, as compliment to the locally purchased odoriferous deer repellant.
I placed poison chunks throughout the inside of the house too. I don't know if this battle is any more winnable than certain Mideast conflicts but the war is on. Told recently that two-thirds of the rodent population are against my methodology I was heard to respond--"So?"
Arrogance is rarely justified.
This morning I awoke with an imitation fur covered plastic mouse resting on my crotch.
Somehow they have gotten to her. I thought she was a trusted ally but clearly she has gone double agent on me. Maybe she is still sore about the ovary removal procedure. This cat won't hunt.
I'm heading out soon, across the DMZ to check my IEDs.
War is hell, for the losers, and the writers, and the photographers, and the families of the dead.
I woke up this morning to find a severed horse's head at the foot of my bed. This morning I awoke at dawn and there was a chill in the air. The pine boughs outside my window are weighted heavily with chirping birds. The sky is blue. Winds have shifted from the north to the southwest. Chainsaws churn against heavy lumber in the distance.
Yesterday I received two packages. In one package was a clear plastic bag knotted at the top and containing one dozen mouse traps. Also in the box were three plastic imitation granite boulders, hollow, with hinged lids and two entrance holes and four metal rods for each on which to thread chunks of poison. These I have loaded up and placed around the perimeter of the bighouse, with some of the contents of the other package, four pounds of rat and mouse poison. The other item in the second box was non-odorous deer repellant concentrate, as compliment to the locally purchased odoriferous deer repellant.
I placed poison chunks throughout the inside of the house too. I don't know if this battle is any more winnable than certain Mideast conflicts but the war is on. Told recently that two-thirds of the rodent population are against my methodology I was heard to respond--"So?"
Arrogance is rarely justified.
This morning I awoke with an imitation fur covered plastic mouse resting on my crotch.
Somehow they have gotten to her. I thought she was a trusted ally but clearly she has gone double agent on me. Maybe she is still sore about the ovary removal procedure. This cat won't hunt.
I'm heading out soon, across the DMZ to check my IEDs.
War is hell, for the losers, and the writers, and the photographers, and the families of the dead.
