Established Marvel : a Monk by Abbreviation

18. REMNANTS OF LIVES WHICH ONCE WERE:

I stopped for coffee today in some half-presentable coffee shop in Easton, PA, on the main drag, (Northumberland Street, I think), and as we were sitting there I realized how many of the people passing by the window, and those within the place, (3 or 4), were truly leftover, marginal characters. Now, I don't mean this as a value-judgement or in the sense of their personal value but rather with the meaning that in such places as, say, Easton - what remains of the world is nothing but leftover remnants of lives which once were. There is nothing along Easton's streets which brings pleasure to the eye, perhaps outside of old original architecture - no fast-food franchise kinds of joints, no glamour stores, no trendy hide-aways, but just derelict and rundown stores and shops with about third or fourth uses going on - if something was a 'bank' in the 1920's era, it can be judged so from the original markings in the granite and stuff, then it was a bridal shop or dept. store, then a liqour store and now, perhaps, a dollar store. Something like that has hit the people too. Everyone there was old, poor, half-crippled, indigent black or indigent minority, and apparently everyone was dependant upon some form of asisstance - judging from conversations I overheard. There is no panache, in fact no anything. I saw one cop all day; I was at an overdue parking meter for hours - without even a thought of ticketing. There's just nothing successful there. (Up the hill, at Lafayette College, that's another story. There were people of some means there, an active street life, young people and business/busyness). The downtown area, however, is a mad jumble of the broken down and sad. In the coffee-shop were two fat welfare types loudly speaking of the free lunch they'd just gotten at what they called 'the Mental Health' (I guess a clinic or something). The loudest of the two proclaimed how she'd gotten a free cake 'with icing too' to take home. Everyone looked a bit genetically deficient, pre-occupied or lost, or something. I don't want to press. I am, however, relating impressions as I saw them, 'politically correct' or not. Apparently here, as everywhere else, what has drained a place such as this of all current vitality is the fact that all 'real' businesses (in today's sense) have rolled up their carpets and gone out to any of the countless and disgusting highway malls and shopping strips which dominate the highway landscapes around these old places. Unfortunate, for this is the sort of place where AMERICA once lived - where the real and essential character of what once was our nation (of farmers, shop-keepers, suppliers and workers) did their business, achieved their learning and prospered or failed - on their own. Not so nowadays, when socialized and disgruntled masses must, by contrast, pace their foolish paths to and fro in some demon's idea of what one 'MUST' have to live - coddled and bibbed with advertising, pervasive thought-control, and endless and subversive chimerical entertainments.

I was talking to some girl (in the Easton coffee-shop) who'd 'overheard' me talking about Hoboken. She'd come over to say 'I don't mean to eavesdrop, but if you have any questions about Hoboken or Jersey City maybe I can help, I grew up there'. At least she still 'knew' from where she came - as if some essential metal within her still shone. Not to discount her, I wove her a bit into the conversation I was having with my friend Donald and Kathy there about the postcard he'd bought at the bookstore of the 1880's Hoboken waterfront - we were discussing Hudson river water-traffic. This girl was maybe 25-30, had a nasty-looking kid in tow, and seemed desperate for conversation. I was a little sad for her, but didn't want to exclude her, as much as I didn't want to include her. It only took a few minutes, but she stayed and we talked. I sensed she didn't want it to end. The three of us ended it, and got up to leave - saying goodbye to her and her kid. Then, as we turned around, we realized there were two heads peering intently at us from outside, at the window. Munchkin-like, they were two middle-aged women, very small and awkward-looking, riding their little 'Rascals' (motorized carts for cripples) along the street. They must have seen us thru the window and stopped. It was truly a weird moment - locals gawking at something they didn't know. I kind of can't explain it. Behind the counter, the also awkward-looking coffee-guy had loud rock music playing on the CD player, and he was telling some Spanish guy how he'd gotten over 200 CD's from a friend for Christmas. They were, like, third-tier rock, maybe even local bands or something, being played loud - driving beats, disposable-sounding stuff but all recognizably derivative too, of something. The guy was very proud of them, and the Spanish guy was just staring at a few of the CD cases.

Out on the street, various odd people were passing, a bus rolled up and disgorged some more and picked a few up - all silently and almost with any recognizable meaning - as if it was all being done under water or something. Lots of closed and sealed businesses, failed and broken. Out-dated signs still up, and Christmas decorations too. A town without taxis. The central quad, a Civil War monument covered over for Christmas as a ghastly candle, had about five really nasty looking drunks sitting dazed and broken, waiting for the buzz to go away.

Enough for now, but anyway, have I started painting the little picture to you that I wanted?

Then the next day we went to a place named Quakertown, PA. About 60 miles into Pennsylvania - rural, quiet, yet along the main roads filled with all the same shit - Walmarts, fast-foods, auto parts, etc., ad nauseam. It's a pretty old place, lots of old severe looking stone church stuff. It was fun just driving around on back roads and finding cool old things leftover - crumbly barns, old shacks, etc. Too many new homes dropped into place though. I'd be afraid to move out there, into what you'd think would be a secure few acres of woodland, etc., and then find that some dope-fiend developer has purchased sixty acres around you and is putting up McMansions for idiots. I witnessed it happening just like that today; poor old folks, getting squeezed. Plus, at another location by Bethlehem, some nasty-assed, smokey and quite noisy (like a loud, whiny hum) nuclear reactor plant, with tower and fences and all, right smack dab in the fucking middle of nowhere. I wanted to take photos, but was afraid to stop and do so because of 'TERROR' concerns. Some toe-growth with a telescope or something would have me apprehended for photographing nuclear plants to sell to Arabs.

All around it was regular farmland, and there it sat. I wondered if some jerk actually had 'sold' his back 100 acres to the nuclear-power company, or if eminent domain took it and just gave him some dough as recompense. I'm sure the neighbors we're thrilled at that one.

Then we went to Frenchtown, NJ - an old, now kind of gay/effete, antiques town right on the river. It's known for its 'new' population of gays who've left Chelsea in NYC for these more 'rural' climes; buying sort of cheap old homes and, with big bucks, re-doing them. Lots of multifarious colored homes in real fussy combinations of purples, pinks, pale blues, etc. With planters, urns and some with statuary. Very overwrought, and the gayness factor doesn't surprise me. It's kind of cool, and I'm not even gay. Little old men walking cutsey-poo dogs. Shiny shoes, buff complexions and oh-so-natty attire. Well, I guess you had to be there. Actually, if you can believe this, I ran into someone I know, a guy named George, from when I was running writing and poetry nights at B&N. He was walking along with some woman, busy in talk about their church business (he's a choirmaster at about 4 churches, and taught music for years). Retired now. Haven't seen him in about 4 years, and tried to avoid the contact but couldn't pretend we didn't recognize having seen each other. So, a quick five-minutes of reunion, small-talk, and we all went on our way. He rued my having stopped those writing nights, and wished for more. I told him to 'keep in touch' by email. We'll see if he does. I'll let you know. He's kind of a lively, bookish type, and I always used to make fun of him because, at B&N he'd always come in after ordering a 'double espresso, decaf'. I'd say 'what's the fucking use of that, will you tell me?' He would just laugh. I was surprised to see him, as much as he was, I guess, to see me.

Another interesting thing, about Quakertown, which I've never seen anywhere else. Germanic, sternly traditional town and population - the supermarket we stopped in to get coffee and some water, had literally one entire side of a supermarket aisle dedicated to PRETZELS. All locally made, from places in PA like Reading, Scranton, etc. Monumental array of pretzels, so different from the usual array of maybe ten or twenty choices. An entire shelf length three or four shelves high (I can't remember a proper shelf height). Anyway, it struck me as unique. We bought a bag of some locally grown pretzel. Being the jerk that I am, I asked the girl if they were 'free-range pretzels, since that's the only kind I eat.' She looked at me as if I was from some fucking Mars of the imagination, but did manage to laugh a bit. I was afraid her FACE would break.

Well, lovingly stupid, that was my weekend.