Established Marvel : a Monk by Abbreviation

37. AND I REALIZED I COULD SEE THE FUTURE:

It was just like that - ‘I gotta’ go and I went’ was the feeling - and even though I was as ALIENATED as ever ever again it was all I could do from telling everyone I saw what was going to happen – for good or bad and they all deserved whatever it was – and I could see it all : the vast mistakes the deaths the jumps the betrayals the lusts the scandals and the trusts I REALLY COULD see the future and I knew where every bell that ever was had once rung and would never ring again and what would be gone and what would stay and who would pass on and who would remain and why and (most importantly) HOW and none of this mind you is something that really makes for friendships and alliances - because for sure people regret even seeing you coming - but nonetheless there was nothing I could do and so I just did it – I went into the old Hungarian clothier’s store and I said ‘my sir you’ll be dead within the year and your stupid shop will be shuttered – so give me something cheaply’ and he stared and became angry and threw me right out and I never did buy anything from that Magyar’s store but he was gone within the year and I stepped into the little Polish-Jew camp-survivor man’s diner on the corner of 11th St. and First Ave – he was the one with the numbers on his arm tattoo’d and the eyes which always teared and I said ‘let me have soup sir – and you needn’t memorize those numbers no more because you won’t need them where you’ll be going soon’ but he didn’t understand and he presented me with the soup AND a piece of bread for which I had to pay a 1966 quarter and I ate and left – he was gone not long after that – and I walked right up to the 20-year old girl walking towards me by Rappaport’s Childrens Furniture Store and I said to her ‘hey you – you’ll have two kids within the year but you’ll need no furniture here because they’ll both be twin Devils and Evil as Hell and you’ll suffocate them yourself with a pillow by six months old and the State will get you for double murder and you’ll die in Dannemora’ and I walked along as I heard her scream and wail (to no avail) because I turned the corner and ran…so you see what kind of atmosphere I’d had created around me and it came from strength and fortitude – living each night on the streets of the lower eastside and drinking coffee with Russian émigrés in Pushkin Square or some equivalent of that along Grand Street and even though they seldom talked we understood the issues and the subject and once or twice they’d even lend me their daughter here and there for a squeeze and a fuck - ex-patriot communism was like that you know - and I never regretted a day of my time and took it all in as I could and better than most but best for myself everything counted for everything whenever it could : I’d put ALL my past behind me : the miserable seminary years the horrid days in the suburban ghetto of people and pests the loincloths of guilt and doubt the lines for the ballfield and the swagger of high-school bullshit the crappers the jerks the car-guys the mothers the priests and the janitors too all either alcoholic or horny or gay and I was sick to Hell of it all anyway the teacher with the one black tooth in the front endlessly prattling about the Korean war and all he’d done for nothing there and his African Drums which we’d have to listen too and his two adopted sons who we’d have to meet and the pink Lincoln by Roloff and the fag dentist Chrobot and the underpass and the prison-farm and Murray and Martha to boot - endlessly endlessly yelling and arguing back and forth over their candy-store cherry-Coke newsstand counter and SICK TO HELL was I.