Established Marvel : a Monk by Abbreviation

102. THE EVER-PRESENT URGE TO END:

There were a lot of things I had to get over and some of them became quite difficult but it never mattered because in whichever means I advanced my situation so too in the same way I ensured a certain form of privacy and solitary vision - it became difficult for me to share anything with others or sometimes to even understand their language or points of view - and inasmuch as this became prevalent it meant that I would be completely alone : when I spoke others simply thought it funny and at other times whatever I did people thought completely strange or unique or at the least odd – but of course that is one of the best benefits of city living or at least of living in a city such as this one was (self-defining that) because no matter what undertaking I started I could advance my way through it as there are very very few situations which others would object to – short of crime or murder and even then I’m sure exceptions could be had – for this was after all the pre-eminent American city for intrigue and history and a sense of the ‘past’ still being there somewhere and commingling with the present : Horace Greeley boyish of face and with that odd hair was still as present to me and strong as was Abraham Lincoln himself aboard the Brooklyn Ferry or speaking at Cooper Union OR even more amazing sitting at Matthew Brady’s photography studio for that famed portrait and ALL of that was as current to me as electricity through my veins Walt Whitman himself too visited – I walked the same boards I walked the same docks and wharves I smoked the same smokes and salmons and oysters and clams and I drank too IMBUED with the overly-crenulated aroma of past present and NOW rolled together and ‘Phrenology Factor Found True!’ was yet a contemporary headline to me and the ‘lacy gals’ of old Theatre Row haunted my dreams and gave me pleasure between City Hall and the old Post Office and Newspaper Row - everything was joyous and dirty filthy and rich and I – saucy boy – swaggered like a bootblack with a corduroy satchel between night-streets of venom and vile and torture and rape ALL was in the making and everything was ripe - one time four ancient-seeming American indian natives accosted me along Pine Street when it was yet a simple lane of wooden dwellings and I was walking along and they’d found someone to speak to me and ask where Beekman could be and I said ‘north north of here along the river – but why want that ? it’s just tanneries and leather and foul-smokes and putrids and many boats docked too and shipbuilders and roustabouts in filth’ and they replied that there were men they had to kill and harbor shanties they had to burn for those who took their sisters and squaws and did what they did needed to die and not a minute more wait’ and I shuddered just to think but figured to know what they meant and offered for no price to take them where they wished and we walked steadfastly through brush marsh and weed - all along swamp and festered mudlands - until I got them to where they wanted and let them go off figuring to not know what I didn’t have to about whatever and then so quick as a flame they too were gone and I was thrown again to pavement hard and coarse along John Street and near an old negro church and my head – bleeding a bit from the hit – was sore to hurt but I staggered up and KNOWING FULL WELL what ha transpired welcomed my own way back to the present day and re-entered some land of the living or the dead I knew not which – 1966 1967 1970 I wasn’t sure BUT I knew enough to know that whatever I’d just done I could read about it again in some dusty history at the library - and I did and filled my mind anew with incredibly what I MYSELF had just been through and it’s difficult (to this day) living a life like that with sidefields of adventure unspoken and unable to be shared but instead I had to and do listen to the drivel which passes for talk these days and wish myself back or under the wheels of some runaway cart.
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If asked why I make words up I reply ‘I do not!’ and if asked if I make stories up as well I reply ‘Never have!’ and I must leave it at that - my gift has become my burden and my travails are my travel - time is no space between things and dimension to me and I still can meet and know people of 300 years ago – figure that – but everything too is a JOKE and a catcall because that’s the only means I have to suffer these days of the NOW – I AM TRAPPED and must by means of my own make light of the serious dilemma I’m in.