Established Marvel : a Monk by Abbreviation

24. THE DRAMA SUITS THEM:

I was talking to Anne Carter Pinkerton at the edge of the woods where we’d somehow arrived after walking the very long ways diagonal across the park from top to bottom from very top where the Conservatory Gardens comes down from the Lake and then over to the site of McGowan’s (now a disreputable and ragged pile of compost and waste foliage and cuttings) and down across the center past the pool past the Ramble and the caves and the rocks and the bridges past the insanely lyrical deep center of the high park with its cavernous deep trees and respectfully silent bridges and coves and she talked just about nearly the entire way going on and on first this then that in a strangely civilized yet disheveled style of scattershot speaking which somehow almost represented a distorted mind : "Rupert Brooke expressed a wonderful concept of war and war’s dead in a short couplet he wrote about World War I in truly fine words – ‘If I should die think only this of me / that there’s some corner of a foreign field / that is forever England’ – and you know that has always been to me amidst the carnage and sadness of war a quaint evocation of the peacefulness of a soldier’s soul a sort of resignation about death and living and place and worth and the lost value of life that almost saddens me each time sort of like a ‘ours is not to wonder why / ours is but to do or die’ which is another Briticism by Kipling or someone about the Boer War or death in the Indian Service or something it hardly matters it’s nearly all the same but it’s always made me think of that especially weird way the English have always had of identifying with their native land or their country – that’s really something we don’t do here or have never yet done for as fleeting as all this American living is we very seldom or never properly get a foothold on it with the powerful strength and homiletic nostalgia that these others have had but maybe that’s only for reasons of the swiftness of our time and deeds and the accelerated way we’ve accommodated and absorbed everything here – so different as I see it from the time I spent in Britain where I often watched the slow and even presentment of everyday continuity and the scheduled comity of things and I’d really hate to see that go from England or anywhere else for that matter for you know when they say things like ‘America’ is taking over the world or that the United States and all its ways and products is suddenly everywhere it makes me quite sad really to think of all that’s to be lost - much like that British sense of ‘proper’ – that I truly almost wish the failure of purpose which some say now haunts America really does succeed and stop all this nonsense and Sigfried Sassoon also said something like ‘battalions battalions scarred from Hell’ in a piece called ‘Prelude: The Troops’ which he wrote to honor those men – and we can debate the definition of that word ‘honor’ all day can’t we for what really is honor ? is it honorable just to let a country or a cause just churn you up kill you or despoil you for the rest of your days and spit you out like rubbish or isn’t honor really a higher calling to object or refuse - to argue against or defy such silly means and motives as rabid men just yelling off to war ? and yes of course it is but for the many many who do not object then they will almost gleefully march off to their deaths and escaping that fate they will then instead live the remainder of their lives as if they had already died anyway for they become valueless and embroiled only in the bravado and continuation of that ‘war’ within them by a mental means of some same sort of paucity some pale vagueness they never manage to settle into and the real enemy to them becomes the world they must live in and at that point – sadly enough – I say ‘let them die’ for that is truly what they’ve wanted and the more brutal the death the better FOR THE DRAMA SUITS THEM."

23. LIVING ON BORROWED TIME:

Some of us live on borrowed time some of us borrow the time to live and some of us time the borrowing just right - perfect timing is dying broke or so it is said - and I'll never know the difference between wealth and riches anyway (only one has a stench?) so people line up for what they want and say to hell with all the rest ? is that correct ? I think not but whichever verdict comes in that's the one we live with - and just like how the guy farming tomatoes in prison on a 2 by 4 lot the authorities allow him doesn't know the difference between Freedom and Anarchy yet somehow wishes for both so we too turn our backs to what motivates others and say 'it's different for me' but it's not - and they line up for salad and they line up for meat and the constable comes and takes them away for criticizing TASTE and there's no satirizing the State and no cursing to God so let's get that straight and then one day just like that I was taking a ride to Harlem trying to find Striver's Row and see what made it go and the yellow taxi let me out at 125th because I didn't care and it seemed right [I exited and paid he nodded and left while I stayed] and I looked around me and liked what I saw and started walking west towards the river or at least to 8th Avenue and then up to 138th Street to see what was there and what the places looked like and mind you on foot I looked like a killer - unwashed disheveled and probably hungry and lost just as well - but I figured because of that I'd be left alone but you never know what grows in climates not home but nothing ever happened and I was taken in as one of their own and so left unbothered I sort of thrived in the climate and the place - well-being and wild with people all over the streets and music in storefronts and excitement along each street : folks on their brownstone stoops in three and four grouped clumps looking out and talking loudly while they smoked or played cards or threw dominos or whatever it is they do with those things and scarcely looking up they'd always let me pass - the side streets much quieter than the avenues but quainter and more pleasant too and I knew I was somewhere else don't get me wrong but I felt it was a place I could dig just as much and already I felt I prospered and already I felt well enough off to stay and so I stayed and walked around and looked at trees and poplars and azaleas and all the rest and every so often some window sill had sprouted a basket or a porch or something would hold a small planting and oftentimes - in the bleak midst of what as not - the beauty was lyrical and stunning and some men whistled as they worked - I noticed - and the fellow with the broom outside some rooming house was busy cleaning the concrete and another with a hose was whistling while he sprayed and the old windows were dirtied and gray from endless grime and rain but pride itself grew in the shade and just as much or more in light - and the old cool air of subway gratings blew up with noise as trains below me passed and here and there I watched people coming or going - some destination A to destination B - valise and briefcase handbag or bicycle a doctor's appointment or a maid's afternoon work all things I'd never know for no one told me what was so and the nearest I'd come to pleasure in a long time then was browsing at Hotaling's - the vast newsstand on 42nd Street which had newspapers and magazines from literally everywhere - Dubuque to El Paso to China to Maine Italy France and El Alamein - gone now long ago as I write this but still a vivid memory to me and the place teemed with visitors looking for THEIR hometown something in the middle of a 1960's New York City and that's how different the world really is now when NO NEED of any of that is had because the entire world and everything else always is on tap anywhere like some huge vibrant tavern of information where everyone's allowed to drink - but whatever - Harlem had a different odor and ethos all its own and it was still a place where people LIVED and found a domain to stay in and wanted it to be their 'there' and so it was - the dark corridors of hallways and the level street-faces of small shop after small shop with people milling around and the uniform stairs and stoops of the low sorrowful brownstones and the ancient armaments and traditional luster of Striver's Row where one after the other of proud street-face lineages fronted building after building still graceful and strong and Harlem had its Renaissance a long time ago but now it had another - between pauses so to speak - and there I was within it and I could smell the gravies and the cooking and the breads and the donuts and the crackling of the fried-heat and all the crazy foods it made and everywhere too was a certain joy even if mixed with a sadness and it was ALL authentic and that's what made even the sadness joyous and the joyousness too just as sad and it was a funny place sorrowful and slow and happy and jumping and everything in between : ask any bicycle messenger or anyone else for the coolest scene they have seen and you'll find out yourself what I'm saying.

22. OH I ROSE UP EARLY IN THE MORNING:
Well there's a fidget for you and that's me carrying that heavy Bible forward - yes - the same one I was born with the one with the glossy inset pages with little maps of the caves of Qum'ran and the places where those kids had found the Dead Sea Scrolls and whatever any of that was ever all about  - before TV before skateboards before frozen pizza too I took it all in understanding only the most basic precepts of what I'd see and then along came all those Muslims wither their over-layment of story and gracefulness on the same story and  -  you knew really  -  they're a pretty passionate and sensuous people I found out  -  so just let me go on : "I'm sorry Mohammed had a mean left hook and it's all about the fingers as I see it and there's not that much difference between Mohammed and girls - they both lie resplendent in their garments of flesh - one enticing to passion and the other with a passion to entice and the really committed acolyte of Mohammed will use his fingers to kill and defend what he sees as Truth while the female lusts for the passion of her fingers and WELL so do I ! but I can't get anywhere sideways now can I?" I was wishing that what I'd just heard was garbled and I hadn't heard it because it already in an instant sounded like trouble to me and these religious people are crazy from the get-go and sometimes all they have to hear are your intentions and they're off - ready to go to the rafters to make something right but never ready to explain what right is BUT sometimes I myself am a freak of nature so I'm probably no different in that I abhor meeting people like others claim to abhor blasphemy and its evidences - HOWEVER the outside world's a lie too although of a different nature and all reality spins in illusion as NOTHING is ever to be what it seems and if I told you the Pope played poker with virgins would you believe me then ? no probably not ('and down by the old not the new but old mill stream not a river but a stream....') and then I heard again "I met my first love at the library standing by the bust of Cincinnatus and although she hadn't a clue about who that was I knew in an instant that she was the one and I followed her home like a dummy in uncertain fashion - weaving and ducking whenever she looked - and then JUST LIKE THAT our eyes met on the corner and the next thing I knew we were exchanging names and dates and pleasantries and circumnavigations of the whole entire globe and I looked at her one day and just simply said 'did you know that Socrates said only the dead are truly happy?' and she nodded and showed me her palm where she'd already written it down in blue ink so as not to forget and I wondered what that meant for a future with her" and then he said "and the next thing the Sun was rising and it was morning and I thought to myself - 'Early Rising! a Habit of the Ancients! : Abraham rose up early in the morning Abimelech rose up early in the morning Jacob rose up early in the morning and early in the morning Laban arose and the Lord said to Moses 'Rise up early in the morning and stand before Pharoah' and Moses rose...early in the morning Joshua rose up early in the morning Gideon rose up early in the morning Elkanah and Hannah rose up in the morning early and David rose up early in the morning Job rose up early in the morning Darius rose up very early in the morning and 'I taught them - rising up early and teaching them' AND IN THE MORNING a great while before the day He (Christ) ROSE UP and went out.'"