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| <nettime> talk of the town digest [z, eyescratch, duncan, meinking, kozaitis] |
z@apiece.net
talk of the town
eyescratch <eyescratch@terminal.cz>
new york, new york
Phil Duncan <PDuncan@AggregateStudio.com>
inheritance
"Steven Meinking" <steven.meinking@verizon.net>
Normal Is Happening
ANASTASIOS KOZAITIS <anastasios.kozaitis@verizon.net>
[no subject]
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From: z@apiece.net
Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2001 20:00:34 -0400
Subject: talk of the town
http://www.newyorker.com/THE_TALK_OF_THE_TOWN/CONTENT/?talk_wtc
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Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2001 22:43:54 -0400
From: eyescratch <eyescratch@terminal.cz>
Subject: new york, new york
<head>
[ this is a letter i sent to friends and loved ones telling them i
was alright. i'm scared of "putting my foot in my mouth" yet once
again. yet yet yet to speak the mind... today i saw a man sitting on
one of those typical new york trash cans made of an orange wire mesh
crying. the candles were out all night, people carrying them to
makeshift memorials. the missing faces hang at the bus stops.
feelings are at a door jam running now public now private, and all
the while the door cringes in it's hinges. ]
<body>
date: Wed, 12 Sep 2001 22:55:34 -0400
subject: New York, New York
ciao ihr lieben
hello + hello + hello
it is silent in the city, and still no one sleeps. we tear ourselves
away from the tv altar to go to the cathedral to fill this quiet
space with our thoughts of dread or even guilt.
one hears more beatles than bob marley, per chance because there is
nothing left to resist. the air is filled with soot that this city
now strangely smells like prague in winter or east berlin. it is
asbestos not brown coal. the wind has changed that is why we smell it
now, before it blew out to sea. i smoke fancy japanese charcoal
filtered cigarettes trying to get a good breath.
yesterday i worked building a set for a fashion show down on 18th
street. physical labor which was rewarding as we lugged heavy flats
up the steps of the roxy here. we had just carried it all in and were
attaching the legs to the flats for the runway when someone came in
bringing the news that a plane had crashed into the world trade
center. we workers ran out to the west side highway watching as
ambulances and fire trucks rumbled past blowing their horns and
sirens. the twin towers were alight and burning, visible even from
where we were three kilometers away. eventually we were herded back
inside, back to work. i listened to the radio on my walkman bringing
the news updates to the crew. they bubbled out of my with a
disbelieving laugh i could not control. others make better faces in
the face of tragedy. i was just attaching a leg to a flat and grabbed
for the bolts to hold it when it slipped and fell. a co-worker said
"timber". simultaneously i heard that the tower two collapsed. that
meant all the fire trucks and ambulances we had watched go by were
now buried.
again we ran outside to look. teams of doctors were running from car
to truck and there was a line of ambulances a mile long. people
latched on to their cell phones to try to re-connect with the ether,
umbilical cords which had stopped pulsing. yes we all realized pretty
quickly that something had changed. that we are being born to a
different place and we don't know how to walk. again we were herded
back inside. we were told that the event was cancelled and we were to
take everything apart again and reload the truck. i almost stayed
outside wondering whether i would watch with my own eyes the the
other tower fall. i guess i needed the money from this job.
eventually that news came over the radio along with the plane that
fell on the pentagon. ave maria.
it is events like these that plunge the media and everyone else into
a spiraling glide where everything seems "aus der luft gegriffen" and
if i hadn't seen those towers burn with my own eyes i might believe
it was a hoax designed to trumpet a bush war. at least it all makes
less sense now. the floodgates are open. yet i saw it and there were
no enemies as of yet, no person or group claiming to have done the
thing. at noon we had finished the job, yet i was told that if i
didn't fill out my tax forms i wouldn't get paid this week. so we
trudged south to the office where one guy was already screaming for
blood. i eventually found myself upstairs in the office where i saw
the first television blaring. i got my forms from a distraught girl,
visibly shaken who was barely able to tell me how many dependents i
had. i walked out of there having made my mark next to the 9/11 date
(the emergency telephone number here!).
i walked uptown since the trains weren't running. along the way i
bought a bright red hat with two dragons circling the chinese
pictogram for dragon. the guy i bought it from finally had the cab
fare to get home to the bronx. along the way i stopped at the public
school i had volunteered at during summer school teaching interactive
design. a girl whose mom works at the world trade center was visibly
shaken, having thought her among the victims, yet then gotten a call
saying that she had been late to work that day. it was chaos on the
phone saying hello as students scrambled to call their parents to get
the ok to go home. radios, tv's and the mulling of students added to
the cacophony. many went home with others.
i made it uptown and mulled about the apartment a bit, yet felt the
urge to go out. an italian place up the street lets you drink
cappuccino and smoke at it's bar so that was were i headed. i got a
seat and ordered a beer. next to me a young woman was glancing up at
the screen of the TV above the bar and between drags on her
parliament cigarettes wrote notes into a little book. it turns out
she is french and was due to fly out of here that day. she had given
a talk at columbia university and is writing a book on piracy telling
me that most of the pirates were protestants revolting against the
catholics on the high sea - at least that was the cover story for the
fight for economic gain. yet these hijackers were not driven by
economic gain. it is perhaps more like the crusades which seems to
ring true in most ears of new yorkers, because i hear that again and
again. we spoke about calvino and we spoke about enzenberger and we
spoke about the situationists. yet nothing seems to describe these
"zwitter-gestalten" between mercenary and pirate. are they simply our
realityTV villans? all i know is that i watched peoples' faces
change. they have become elated as on the tv filmed on the west bank
and outside the church here. the cool modern "mine" has flown with
the ashy wind.
today i popped a tekno tape mixed in sarajevo in my walkman and
cruised on down to alphabet city. i met a man who i knew from the
squatter scene who has since found god and proceeded to preach to me
and gave me a ticket to "eternity", a play being performed on my
birthday. i fell on my face playing soccer and i filmed some tiny
beautiful girls playing with a ball. i made a phone call and suddenly
there were bodies running saying there was a shooting up the street.
police closed in fast. there is little to no traffic there because
everything is closed. the auto-free city we always dreamed of. if it
just weren't for the wheezing in my lungs.
much love
jeremy
<script>
[ saturday to sunday a group of us sat in an apartment sowing little
white flags to place next to american ones that dot the scene and at
the vigil spots by the river. we used silken bed sheets and sticks
found in the street and park. at sun up we headed out to greet the
brooklyn rush hour traffic with the fruits of our labor. these flags,
mean they peace or ceasefire or surrender all carried some different
meaning to the cars and people that stopped us on our trek towards
the east river. these iconoclastic apparitions solicited thought -
before the knee-jerk reaction coming from some of the political
leaders who don't seem to be thinking, pokering with lives lost. we
are used to the bugs bunny version or the westerns where the virgin
glory, if i may call it that, signals the end of the movie. surrender
- who would america surrender too? peace - it has been thoroughly
disturbed, a quiet wind now before the storm. ceasefire - yes, it
would be something to be seen. at ten we were finished and beat,
drinking coffee at the williamsburg passage, reading the sunday
times. kmart sponsored an ad with old glory, printing "this side up"
above the stars. why do they belittle us so? we spoke upon the advent
of war, and a friend from columbia said pointing towards the rubble
on the front page, this is what it looks like in the rest of the
world already, you're going to bomb that? the times had an
interesting phrase from lincoln in the editorial: we must
disenthrawll ourselves. ]
[ to say something perhaps about the buildings. these legs of new
york. limbs for the system of exchange. a lot of talk, "in your face
capitalism", is about rebuilding the same structures again down to
the last detail. (other's say no!) spirited americanism of the copy
like the concrete parthenon in nashville. certainly it would be
better than a memorial. yet to the fallen, this smacks of
forgetfulness. true, i stared at these towers looking, each day and
each minute at a different digital picture. one wondered about a
hidden order between which lights were on and which off at any given
time of an evening marking the array. a year ago i watched a cubano
band play beautifully on puerto rico day at the WTC plaza. this
concert took the edge off of the complexes resonance for me. let us
hope that the drive for something new wins out. ]
[ of course there is also the story of the leprechan who tells the
unsuspecting protagonist to mark the whereabouts of the pot of gold
with a little white piece of cloth. he then goes out in the night and
puts white cloth on every branch making the pot of gold impossible to
find. ]
[ http://www.eyescratch.cz ]
--
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Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2001 01:35:31 +0100
From: Phil Duncan <PDuncan@AggregateStudio.com>
Subject: inheritance
We were visiting London last Friday when the entire country stopped for
three minutes. It is the single most potent silence I have ever
experienced. It was the most sublime moment of my life. In the silence
rested the Erasure of thousands.
Our new friends, and those who are hosting us during our three-month visit
from the US, are still calling to wish us well and offer support. The
sound of sincere compassion in their voices penetrates more deeply in my
soul that I thought existed. The usually banal parting words of, "Take
Care," never held such sincerity nor meaning before.
Being here, watching from Scotland, is a mixed feeling: insulated,
separated, longing, guilt at not being closer, craving information, hurt by
the learning... It was meant to hurt. It can't not hurt. But by halting
our lives we allow the ones who rejoice in our pain more success. I'm
still learning to regulate my pain in all this.
How to reconcile the brash patriotism that has surges to the top at the
sight of those Firefighters raising the US flag amidst the ruins of the
Pentagon, with the shame I felt for being American before this happened,
caused by the bush-league antics of the government?
How to reconcile the guilt at being so far away from home among the most
sincerely compassionate culture I have experienced (London and Glasgow's
Clyde Bank got the shit bombed out of them during WWII), while there is so
much direct suffering going on in the states?
How to reconcile the guilt at feeling helpless - lessened only by the
notion that to honor the dead, dying and suffering I must live fully into
each hour I have left to breath and cherish and cultivate relationships
while there is life left in my body.
How to reconcile the guilt and conflict over despising my government and my
newfound love for the strangers and friends who are my country?
How to reconcile the guilt for suspecting the next "other" I see, and the
knowledge that in my mistrust, hate, anger, rage, and frustration I cheapen
the death and suffering?
My wife and I are fortunate (in more ways that I can count, but mostly) in
that a very close friend here is from Northern Ireland. Having grown up
near Belfast, he understands first hand what living with terrorism
means. Also, I spoke to a guard Friday at the Tower of London who is from
N. Ireland. They counseled that the means of survival are based on
celebrating life, not cowing down to the terror, suspicion, separation,
prejudices, and depression that are among the goals of those who use these
tactics. Their wisdom resides in asking oneself: How am I able to engage
in these events? IF a choice _does_ exist, in which specifics and to what
extent am I able to engage? What types, and to what levels of involvement
do my resources allow me to be involved? Will any of my involvement serve
to cause improvement? If I am able to effect positive influence, at what
cost will it occur?
These are easy words to write or say (especially from this distance), but
living into them is not so easy. Never step away, just step back far
enough to provide the space to keep from allowing your vital essence to
drain away like tears in the rain. The pain and suffering caused by the
erasure of the dead, the dying, and the bereaved, are too big to hold on
to. Too powerful and too damaging.
I was caught up on the CNN message board, and was horrified at the rising
tide of xenophobia being expressed. I was engaged in trying to persuade
the hawks that blanket hatred of all Islamic peoples (they were even going
as far as shouting for interment camps and tattoos!), the blind and
totalitarian hatred is no different than the hate in the hearts of the
extremists who carried out this crime. God was it draining. The negative,
hate mongering hawks are like vampires. They drain the life out of
everything with which they engage. Just like my heart not being big enough
to hold the pain of this magnitude, my intellect and stamina cannot deal
with the ignorance and divisiveness of the human community I see rising to
war, getting sucked into the vampiric maelstrom of hate.
America has been unique in the world since western Europeans destroyed the
indigenous American populations. Aside from the burning of the White House
during the War of 1812, America has not suffered attack on our own soil.
Truly, the Golden Apple of Dyscorde has been tossed into the dinner party
of Western Capitalism.
This event marks the passage for America out of the sheltered existence of
childhood, and into the uneasy adolescence of life on the streets, where
broken noses are a reality. In an act of castration and erasure, America
was severed from Mother Liberty's apron strings.
Birth is a painful process. If this is the birth of authentic community in
America, the cost is the highest ever paid in history. When Tibet was
smashed, the world inherited a new spiritual leader in the Dalai Lama. He
has written a letter to the American President asking for an end to the
cycle of violence. What will the world inherit from the smashing of the
World Trade Center?
When I feel the grief, sadness and depression overwhelming me, I try to
remember that life must continue. The only way to overcome the viscous
deaths and terror of living is to celebrate life and relationships. The
woman at the Tower of London last Friday reaffirmed that we should continue
enjoying our visit and get on with our lives. Don't allow the terrorists
the success of causing us to live in fear of turning the next corner. This
she learned from growing up in Belfast.
I suppose it is selective myopia. I can only hear so much news, only mourn
for so long, only attempt to wrap my heart around the woundedness, only try
to grasp the consequences of my government's pending actions for so long,
only try to understand for a measured time before I must try to move on to
the goals already set. To survive I let go, and in the blindness of faith
give it over to whatever greater spirit may be out there. Who gives a
flying fuck about whose god is true. None of them are. Period. There is
no human construction called god that remains extant.
We can, however, observe that the family of humanity exists among a natural
world full of wonder. Isn't it about time we started acting like it and
celebrate our sameness?
Peace,
Phil
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From: "Steven Meinking" <steven.meinking@verizon.net>
Subject: Normal Is Happening
Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2001 18:40:38 -0700
Normal Is Happening ver.9.17.01
It was only a day after the fateful terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001
that our politicians and our civic leaders began to advocate a return to
normalcy. A return to "normal" was the beckon call of California Governor
Gray Davis, of President George Bush, and a host of other statesman; and
with each request one could also hear the low hum of the war-machine as it
came to life. For it was the day after that Bush also officially began his
war rhetoric; that the attacks were "acts of war" and that they would not
stand. As the reeling public of our Nation was coming to grips with the
shock of what had happened, the war-machine was already gathering
information, setting objectives, and gaining strength.
Normal: One does not have to read Michel Foucault's _Madness And
Civilization_ to immediately identify the problematic nature of this
concept. In a time of crisis, when its meaning was radically shifting and
changing, a return to normal became the political remedy for the
"psychological healing" of our Nation. But there was a split second, a brief
moment in time, before the war-machine had stumbled to its feet, that there
was already a healing of a different sort, a _social healing_ that had
spread throughout our Nation/World.
War-Machine: Nor does one have to read Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's
_Anti-Oedipus_ to immediately identify the problematic nature of this beast.
The war-machine lives and breathes with the American economy so it should
come as no surprise that normal has been aligned with its revival. It also
should come as no surprise that psychological healing begins with our return
to work. As a citizen of this great Nation, we must show the terrorists that
we cannot be shell-shocked into stupefaction, that no matter what happens,
come rain or hellfire, a good citizen can slave away through it all -
undaunted, unphased. Yes, return to work, heal one's mind, and let the
government do its job.
_The war-machine is alive, but it is difficult to maintain. It needs
constant labor, constant transactions, a glut of resources, and massive
flows of energy to keep it from grinding to a halt. Every citizen of our
Nation must do their individual part to prevent this from happening, and we
do so through work: two-hundred and forty million little pistons raging in
the heart of the behemoth._
Normal is happening, and our Nation's leaders would have you believe it is a
revolutionary form of resistance. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill states
that by returning to work "we're going to stick our thumb in the eye of the
murderers." And can't one just imagine the rousing statement we are making
when another sale is made, a package is delivered, and all the customers are
served. All the terrorists in the world must be quaking in their boots to
know the hamburgers are still being flipped, the inventory is being counted,
and that yet another citizen has purchased everything they want and nothing
they need.
But there was that brief moment of time, that short span of transition
between shock and the normal, when we truly were part of something greater
and uniquely human. That fleeting moment of social healing must not be
forgotten. Do not forget that brief period when the Nation/World heart
opened and blossomed. Commit to memory what it was like to donate your
life-blood, to give your time, energy and money to something that really
mattered - the welfare of other human beings. Some have called it altruism,
some have called it compassion. Without being too romantic, let's call it
love, and it was love that made us strong in that most desperate time of
crisis when we were most vulnerable, most human.
Now the war-machine is managing the flows and channeling the energy in order
to perpetuate itself. The popular story, and the narrative that dominates us
now, is that what you really felt in the aftermath of the attacks was not
empathy, and it was not love. Rather, what we all really felt was a
burgeoning angst for retribution. But we remember different. We remember
that it was a sincere compassion, sympathy and love that gripped our being.
The war-machine seeks to erase these emotions and supplant them with the
inflammatory rhetoric of war and retaliation.
The feedback loop has been engaged: Where there was shock, there is anger;
where there was compassion, there is apathy; where there was love, there is
hate.
- Steven Meinking
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Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2001 16:25:32 -0400
From: ANASTASIOS KOZAITIS <anastasios.kozaitis@verizon.net>
Subject:
I rode my bicycle down to lower Manhattan on Saturday afternoon in an
attempt to get to "ground zero." I dopped off some things at the Javits
Center, and the void at the southern tip of the island kept pulling me
closer. I asked myself why I had the need to get there, and all I kept
telling myself was that I prefer an open casket, to see the body in the
coffin. At Canal and the West Side Highway, three kids on bikes told me
that they had just returned from Stuyvesant, that there was a way down
"there." I almost got there, but the cops decided to clear everyone out of
there. I rode east and tried to get there from the southern part of the
island. I got as close as Nassau and Liberty, and as I rode through the
smoke and ash and smell of electrical fires and death, I kept hearing
Ginsberg reading "Kaddish." I kept hearing Ginsberg reading "Kaddish." --Ak
====================
from Kaddish
- for Naomi Ginsberg, 1894-1956
Strange now to think of you, gone without corsets & eyes, while I walk on
the sunny pavement of Greenwich Village.
downtown Manhattan, clear winter noon, and I've been up all night, talking,
talking, reading the Kaddish aloud, listening to Ray Charles blues
shout blind on the phonograph
the rhythm the rhythm--and your memory in my head three years after--
And read Adonais' last triumphant stanzas aloud--wept, realizing
how we suffer--
And how Death is that remedy all singers dream of, sing, remember,
prophesy as in the Hebrew Anthem, or the Buddhist Book of An-
swers--and my own imagination of a withered leaf--at dawn--
Dreaming back thru life, Your time--and mine accelerating toward Apoca-
lypse,
the final moment--the flower burning in the Day--and what comes after,
looking back on the mind itself that saw an American city
a flash away, and the great dream of Me or China, or you and a phantom
Russia, or a crumpled bed that never existed--
like a poem in the dark--escaped back to Oblivion--
No more to say, and nothing to weep for but the Beings in the Dream,
trapped in its disappearance,
sighing, screaming with it, buying and selling pieces of phantom, worship-
ping each other,
worshipping the God included in it all--longing or inevitability?--while it
lasts, a Vision--anything more?
It leaps about me, as I go out and walk the street, look back over my shoulder,
Seventh Avenue, the battlements of window office buildings shoul-
dering each other high, under a cloud, tall as the sky an
instant--and
the sky above--an old blue place.
or down the Avenue to the south, to--as I walk toward the Lower East Side
--where you walked 50 years ago, little girl--from Russia,
eating the
first poisonous tomatoes of America frightened on the dock
then struggling in the crowds of Orchard Street toward what?--toward
Newark--
toward candy store, first home-made sodas of the century, hand-churned ice
cream in backroom on musty brownfloor boards--
Toward education marriage nervous breakdown, operation, teaching school,
and learning to be mad, in a dream--what is this life?
Toward the Key in the window--and the great Key lays its head of light
on top of Manhattan, and over the floor, and lays down on the
sidewalk--in a single vast beam, moving, as I walk down First toward
the Yiddish Theater--and the place of poverty
you knew, and I know, but without caring now--Strange to have moved
thru Paterson, and the West, and Europe and here again,
with the cries of Spaniards now in the doorstops doors and dark boys on
the street, fire escapes old as you
--Tho you're not old now, that's left here with me--
Myself, anyhow, maybe as old as the universe--and I guess that dies with
us--enough to cancel all that comes--What came is gone forever
every time--
That's good! That leaves it open for no regret--no fear radiators, lacklove,
torture even toothache in the end--
Though while it comes it is a lion that eats the soul--and the lamb, the soul,
in us, alas, offering itself in sacrifice to change's fierce
hunger--hair
and teeth--and the roar of bonepain, skull bare, break rib,
rot-skin,
braintricked Implacability.
Ai! ai! we do worse! We are in a fix! And you're out, Death let you out,
Death had the Mercy, you're done with your century, done with
God, done with the path thru it--Done with yourself at last--Pure
--Back to the Babe dark before your Father, before us
all--before the
world--
There, rest. No more suffering for you. I know where you've gone, it's good.
No more flowers in the summer fields of New York, no joy now, no more
fear of Louis,
and no more of his sweetness and glasses, his high school decades, debts,
loves, frightened telephone calls, conception beds, relatives,
hands--
No more of sister Elanor,--she gone before you--we kept it secret you
killed her--or she killed herself to bear with you--an arthritic
heart
--But Death's killed you both--No matter--
Nor your memory of your mother, 1915 tears in silent movies weeks and
weeks--forgetting, agrieve watching Marie Dressler address human-
ity, Chaplin dance in youth,
or Boris Godunov, Chaliapin's at the Met, halling his voice of a weeping Czar
--by standing room with Elanor & Max--watching also the Capital-
ists take seats in Orchestra, white furs, diamonds,
with the YPSL's hitch-hiking thru Pennsylvania, in black baggy gym skirts
pants, photograph of 4 girls holding each other round the waste, and
laughing eye, too coy, virginal solitude of 1920
all girls grown old, or dead now, and that long hair in the grave--lucky to
have husbands later--
You made it--I came too--Eugene my brother before (still grieving now and
will dream on to his last stiff hand, as he goes thru his
cancer--or kill
--later perhaps--soon he will think--)
And it's the last moment I remember, which I see them all, thru myself, now
--tho not you
I didn't foresee what you felt--what more hideous gape of bad mouth came
first--to you--and were you prepared?
To go where? In that Dark--that--in that God? a radiance? A Lord in the
Void? Like an eye in the black cloud in a dream? Adonoi at
last, with
you?
Beyond my remembrance! Incapable to guess! Not merely the yellow skull
in the grave, or a box of worm dust, and a stained ribbon--Deaths-
head with Halo? can you believe it?
Is it only the sun that shines once for the mind, only the flash of existence,
than none ever was?
Nothing beyond what we have--what you had--that so pitiful--yet Tri-
umph,
to have been here, and changed, like a tree, broken, or flower--fed to the
ground--but made, with its petals, colored, thinking Great
Universe,
shaken, cut in the head, leaf stript, hid in an egg crate
hospital, cloth
wrapped, sore--freaked in the moon brain, Naughtless.
No flower like that flower, which knew itself in the garden, and fought the
knife--lost
Cut down by an idiot Snowman's icy--even in the Spring--strange ghost
thought some--Death--Sharp icicle in his hand--crowned with old
roses--a dog for his eyes--cock of a sweatshop--heart of electric
irons.
All the accumulations of life, that wear us out--clocks, bodies, consciousness,
shoes, breasts--begotten sons--your Communism--'Paranoia' into
hospitals.
You once kicked Elanor in the leg, she died of heart failure later. You of
stroke. Asleep? within a year, the two of you, sisters in
death. Is
Elanor happy?
Max grieves alive in an office on Lower Broadway, lone large mustache over
midnight Accountings, not sure. His life passes--as he sees--and
what does he doubt now? Still dream of making money, or that might
have made money, hired nurse, had children, found even your Im-
mortality, Naomi?
I'll see him soon. Now I've got to cut through to talk to you as I didn't
when you had a mouth.
Forever. And we're bound for that, Forever like Emily Dickinson's horses
--headed to the End.
They know the way--These Steeds--run faster than we think--it's our own
life they cross--and take with them.
Magnificent, mourned no more, marred of heart, mind behind, mar-
ried dreamed, mortal changed--Ass and face done with murder.
In the world, given, flower maddened, made no Utopia, shut under
pine, almed in Earth, blamed in Lone, Jehovah, accept.
Nameless, One Faced, Forever beyond me, beginningless, endless,
Father in death. Tho I am not there for this Prophecy, I am unmarried, I'm
hymnless, I'm Heavenless, headless in blisshood I would still adore
Thee, Heaven, after Death, only One blessed in Nothingness, not
light or darkness, Dayless Eternity--
Take this, this Psalm, from me, burst from my hand in a day, some
of my Time, now given to Nothing--to praise Thee--But Death
This is the end, the redemption from Wilderness, way for the Won-
derer, House sought for All, black handkerchief washed clean by weeping
--page beyond Psalm--Last change of mine and Naomi--to God's perfect
Darkness--Death, stay thy phantoms!
II
Over and over--refrain--of the Hospitals--still haven't
written your
history--leave it abstract--a few images
run thru the mind--like the saxophone chorus of houses
and years--
remembrance of electrical shocks.
By long nites as a child in Paterson apartment, watching
over your
nervousness--you were fat--your next move--
By that afternoon I stayed home from school to take care
of you--
once and for all--when I vowed forever that once man disagreed with my
opinion of the cosmos, I was lost--
By my later burden--vow to illuminate mankind--this is
release of
particulars--(mad as you)--(sanity a trick of agreement)--
But you stared out the window on the Broadway Church
corner, and
spied a mystical assassin from Newark,
So phoned the Doctor--'OK go way for a rest'--so I put on
my coat
and walked you downstreet--On the way a grammarschool boy screamed,
unaccountably--'Where you goin Lady to Death'? I shuddered--
and you covered your nose with motheaten fur collar, gas mask
against poison sneaked into downtown atmosphere, sprayed by Grandma--
And was the driver of the cheesebox Public Service bus a
member of
the gang? You shuddered at his face, I could hardly get you on--to New
York, very Times Square, to grab another Greyhound--
Paris, December 1957 - New York, 1959
--Allen Ginsberg
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