Established Marvel : a Monk by Abbreviation

160. WAITING FOR THE REST (Philadelphia):

And then one day just like that what they say the ‘paradigm’ changed and I found myself again in Philadelphia and later Elmira and then Binghamton and Scranton too - each and every an outlandish way station on the way to some fiery finish a locomotive of intent a rocket-powered incentive of power and destruction a real-estate monkey a bludgeon a tool and with no one to answer to no one to listen for I simply kept everything going as I proudly walked down the Avenue of the Arts or whatever crap the people of Philadelphia say for the strip of downtown thy own that’s infested with 'a-r-t' as it’s called : myopic landlords and girls in small skirts paint-splattered bicycle people tall Russians from Minsk and the old buildings just before they’re traded in for civic destruction for a while they become havens for art activist galleries of change urban spectacle the takeover of the people lofts of demonstrative painters and then the next thing you know : POOF! : murals everywhere squeaking some ethnic urban-pride out of blighted ghetto lanes with sports images and tribal things pestering the eye and tax-payers’ dollars being used for outside junk the mulberry trees lay over the fountain the sculpture garden and the walkway - everything splayed with color and goodness the kind you can’t find in a small magazine - and the contrast with what I’d been used to was startling as I walked the small-scale streets looking about all the time trying to figure the differences of where I was from where I’d been : a certain Philadelphia small-scale Americana was everywhere in a way not found in NYC even though often the historicity of the timescale was much the same as were often the people too but much less broken and blighted by time these little stories and places kept their time and sense about them : old buildings often leaky and shuttered but still there nonetheless and walkways and pathways and old street lanes kept to the selfsame purpose as ever – which purpose was nothing really – just a sort of ‘group-day’ feeling that some idea of ‘nationalism’ tries to coalesce around while being pushed by odd groups of veterans military-types Daughters of the American Revolution maidens politicians with all their acres of bullshit to peddle and the occasional naïve but high-minded historical scholar or period specialist : all in all nothing worthwhile but great for fundraising and picnics of nothing else : of course from my vantage point I wouldn’t see any of this layered far deeper as I was in the dark-wood veneers of evening and Fall – the grays and browns of evening which both I walked through and which followed me everywhere I went - they were a fine cloak put over the grand veneer of time/space and that which it presented to me – old doorways and windows old buildings along the lanes and alleys the old Bourse the old Merchant’s Exchange and the Customs House the old City Tavern building and its corner turn in the grand cobbled road – I walked and I remained silent dark and as brooding as I could be and I came up to the Second Bank of the United States and its fantastic seriousness and granite blocks and stairs and rounded stones for what once had been the horse-wagon lanes VISTAS UNHEARD OF to me before I was IN a different place I was truly somewhere else and yet this was me living and breathing a life given to me given over to unblemished seriousness and things I couldn’t avoid : I was lost in the density of a fabric that carried for me a great onus and responsibility to get through and out across : words lines drawings ideas and everything in between Isaiah and Ezekiel combined (God’s own combine a great machine BROODING in the sky) – I couldn’t touch it and I couldn’t leave it alone and it ALL burned my lips like Ezekiel’s coal had burned his back when and I was certain and I was sure and I was dizzy.

‘God put us in the bodies of animals and tried to make us act like people but there really is no HISTORY in Paradise – ask Adam and then ask Eve’ and some magical man with a centrifuge tractor was trying to tell me something but all I could hear was the kids yelling in the park by the horizon where the water-wheel endlessly turned and the scaffolding had broken the cranes had all fallen the window washers were dead in the street and some Bill Hogan lookalike was spouting bliss from the rooftop raining it all down on the people below : all the little Bob Dylans twisted in their sacks and looking back up at the sky ‘fffrom there I swear – I think from whence it came - and ‘der weren’t a nuttin’ dere just before’ as I watched the little muffin girl break a sweat while reaching a climax as she simply talked about ‘all the wonderful places I’ve been’ – the mermaids in Murmansk the swindlers in Sebastapol and the swineherders in Switzerland too ‘and leiderhosen to you too!’ the swell crowd swelled Lydia Penic Marfenstien Beaman the young lass from Bonn who’d said once to me ‘what do people speak in Bonn you ask ? well CERTAINLY it’s not German for sure ! they speak BONN!’ and I tried to laugh that one off but she was a beauty and she caught me in love and I jumped to her bones and said ‘tell me now are YOU Mae West?’ but she nodding her head a vociferous ‘yes’ and said ‘and besides that I’m the best – so come and get it Mein Pardner! (that’s German for Dutch the way they speak it in Bonn)’ : five black guys playing tiles or dice or something on a table by the railway station and they were as loud as Hell and busy to boot as all that hoopin’ and hollerin’ sure made them thirsty so they just drank some more and that kept making it worse in some great jetty spiral they never even realized but they were short and fat and of no consequence whatsoever – the mailman came over and the policeman too and they both shouldered a holster worth every dime and bet the whole house on their sisters but just then the local came through and sliced down the middle the whole entire redundant bunch (alert ! body parts strewn about legs and arms everywhere) - I’d made the mistake of reading a book about the First World War all that blood and the gore and I knew I was soon to be there for sure – and like the town Moron (one Teddy Lee Rabes) I went down the foxhole looking for babes – but I had another thing coming.
-
And I had to tell her too that I was in love at least fifteen times a day.
-