Established Marvel : a Monk by Abbreviation

167. BOB DYLAN AND THE REFUGEE TRAIN (nyc, 1963):

It wasn't the most God-awful thing to have to be without when it's like that : without food without money without reasons and without prospects or resources and I've written about this a hundred times at least but it is surprising how one can survive both within bounds and within personal precepts of philosophy and limits if you so choose : I took very many long walks through Chelsea and the London Mews area or whatever that was called just to pass long mornings - surviving on a long cup of coffee or a ten cent bowl of oatmeal one or both and the stories I found there were great and legion - the old family sagas of twisted Irish criminals and the wayward mis-steps of little kids growing up into teen-age hoodlums and then career criminals and the dock-hands who stole everything they touched and the others who beat and killed for money - they all had family homes and family rooms to go to and there were regular meals served on table-top at their little apartments whether 10th Street 17th Street or any other named street - it all fell into place better for them in that way only because they really were born somewhere of note - a real 'place' on the local streets to call their own - by contrast I was an inveterate newcomer blown in on some refugee train from the dank swampy wilds of some back-ass New Jersey swamp infested with cheap development bad housing and isolated folk and THAT was what I had to live with - try and avoid it all I might and it ill-served me too to try and sit through any time in Manhattan with such small and parochial suburban attitudes which all that brought in - it just wouldn't work and I knew it and like any of those kids who came into NY to break through onto Broadway or some mighty acting career for stage and hopefully screen it all came down to application and energy - but I had none of that intense stupidity that so many put into the stage-fakery and queer sexuality of the theater and arts crowd - most of it sank to the bottom anyway and then came out through the ass-end of the fledgling porno industry anyway (all those failed and newcoming actors and actresses jerking off for the big money-shot and its payday whenever they could) and for the one percent for whom any of this Great White Way stuff worked for them it was good while for the others it usually ended up with disease disappointment and distemper - no matter for we all turn out to BE something anyway - and if we don't 'telegraph' who we are and where we're from - if we don't BEAR (or bare) the telltale signs - then maybe just maybe we can get away with it all like some cockamamie folksinger pretending he's from the circus or something when all ever was was a cheesy north-country Jewboy from the far side of his own fantasyland and if 'times weren't always a'changin' then I don't know what history was EVER about and none of that's so different after all than what any of us do or would do I suppose in those same situations - but anyway I didn't I stayed straight with myself and quiet with others : led around by dreams and fortitude I stayed alive on the hoof while coming through for each cattle-call no matter and I ran around from any pillar to any post when I had to or when I felt I should - upper east-side sitting rooms in very expensive family situations where jewelry and drugs were equally traded or broken down Grand Street tenements staggering between broken glass and airshafts while kids shot up in the stairwells and mothers and fathers threw knives at each other inside the kitchen-walled pantry : a bizarre world at once sublime and so dismal that even rats and mice weren't sure which way to run and I learned what money was and what it meant to those who HAD it or to those who WANTED it - but mostly to those who had NONE of it - so I ate for free when I could or bought twenty-cent muffins at other times and I certainly didn't grow fat but didn't die a thin-man's death either.