Established Marvel : a Monk by Abbreviation

70. KNOCK ON ANY DOOR:

People are avoiding me like I am radioactive or have the plague and if one is not safe in their own home any more then I don't know what is - that's what people say anyway - as I am coursing the street along the western edge of Central Park once more in the area of where Tony Main kept court : ah Tony ! been a long time old buddy and all that goes with it and you were once there to shelter the scarecrow child but now gone and as I found out long ago once you begin to live on the streets there's really no ending to any of it and whatever comes you have to take and hope for something good or at least more of the same which is pretty much nothing anyway and the most prevalent concerns are the weather and food and warmth and light but it's funny how those things sound when you say them or even how they look right now on paper as typed because they're just everyday meaningless things really and who'd ever care about that but the rest of mankind goes about its business having those things mostly already taken care of - or at least the majority of Americans and Europeans anyway - and no one knows any longer the reach or the generation or the how of electricity and how it gets to them and what it is they use when they use it and the same for their heat and warmth and food and everything else but when you're 'out there' in whatever way all of those things become vital and important and that's why you can occasionally still find bums and streetpeople tapping into city electrical lines or light poles for power so they can shave or charge batteries or even cook and have light and at that level everything else is different and everything becomes singular and special and worth some extra attention and whatever work even tapping into a lighpole is becomes somehow worth doing and all this time later (for the years have passed and though I am still me I am not quite still THAT me who once was) I can still put myself into those old feet and remember distinctly most every little part and parcel of what I lived and now it's all spliced together and modified by the present day and the time in between the then and now which I've put together to erect something new and that's why these words are as they are and go deep and fly all over the place but winsomeness has no place at funerals or wakes either - and here we sit together - and if I am speaking back to you from the dead (which I will be doing surely certainly and clearly once day if not already) than I want you to shut-up and listen sit up straight and be attentive dedicate yourself to this and stay with it ALL of it each of the tens of thousands of words : Tony Main I can only assume is dead by now (adding 40 some years to his then-age would almost guarantee that) and I do miss him even as NOW it's far too late to make recompense for the time THEN when I could have seen him but he was a character and a charmer a person filled with some form of mettle and I've known a few others like him since - little people with that sort of energy - and even Jim Tomberg back then was pretty much just like him and later Fred Fox a guy from Rahway NJ I'd gotten to know in his garage - all time pending and filling up with car parts cars wheels and tires and Chris-Craft boats and a '67 Eldorado which he truly loved - all white with a red interior and a convertible top some crazed-man's dream of vastness sleek and sallow and I never saw it move though I'm sure it did but the huge workplace-business-garage was perfect for all of this with an office and parts room and clutter with a capital 'C' and he ran a respectable business in repairs and sales right out of that little place which I loved - he's gone his father's gone and the building's gone too - Route One now cuts right through the location as overpass and roadway were built as everything else was just made to DISAPPEAR by some mandate or another and he'd somehow collected that antique wooden Chris-Craft beauty of a boat though it too never moved but was perfect in every way polished and kept in tune but it's like that with so many things - ideas and philosophies and points of view - they're often 'well kept-up' but mostly they go nowhere are never taken out for a spin are never brought forth to greet or meet or engage the world and so they all simply remain conceptualized dreams of something else with no real presence - never hitting the pavement so to speak to see how it really is and if they'd be able to keep up and I suppose that's what's meant sometimes by 'rarified' thinking and 'ivory-tower' ideas and all that but it really is true in a way because you can have any and every most beautiful Cadillac Eldorado and Chris-Craft boat but if they never get OUT there and get put to work they're really just good for shit or have to be seen merely as collectibles and objects and nothing more - at that point not even 'objects of derision' which would at least - by contrast - be something : and you see I have outlived all of these things I AM still about here to tell of them but there are no EXPLOITS worth telling and sometimes it's just not worth the bother because a lot of these things went nowhere : failure is a bed-fellow too you know and my friend Joe one day just blew his brains out in some shitty little car in his California backyard for no good reason no exploitable frenzy just a bunch of lazy tired shit that somehow did him in and all his great promise and the rest - leaving behind nothing really except piles of shit and crap to be sorted through and among a crazy unfinished and unsatisfied story and promise and no matter because he did it to himself willingly and THAT was to him HIS way of 'taking' it out on the road (his Cadillac Eldorado his Chris-Craft) so as to see if it worked and you know what IT DIDN'T! and he left a real bloody mess and we got the 'body of evidence' so to speak - unlike Tony Main my erstwhile friend whom I just let 'disappear' without even thinking about it.