Established Marvel : a Monk by Abbreviation

201. ANOTHER VIEW FROM THE DARK WORLD OF SPACE - no one says one word aloud - (Newark, 1971):

One day I'm out by the Seth Boyden Projects in Newark NJ just walking along after looking at some old vehicles in the warehouse some guy I knew owned there - in which warehouse he kept maybe 15 old cars in restored or nearly-restored shape which were used as lease-vehicles for movies and ads and the like - a good line of work and one in which I'd gotten partially involved in doing work and maintenance for him in - and I see five black guys trailing some white guy in a suit and carrying a briefcase and just in general looking way out of place right there (the Seth Boyden Projects - named after one of Newark's great early industrialist millionaires for some reason - were and are a great dung-heap of the dispossessed and the savage and one look at the places and all its buildings makes one quite simply sad to be alive let alone to have to live there) and these guys are getting dangerously close to this fellow in the suit and tie and for solid-certain (as good as any religion) I sense that he's got money and is probably carrying money and so do they sense that and suddenly I'm watching and they take this guy down they TAKE HIM DOWN and rain on him with kicks and blows and they pound on his twisting and writhing body until he moves no more and then they riddle through his jacket and pockets taking what they wish and - along with the briefcase in hand - I see them run off and flee with all they'd gotten and the man stays down but moaning and just barely moving having just learned some dance of fulfillment some Newark two-step some Seth Boyden Project polka all in the name of 'WHERE NOT TO BE' and at one and the same time the swirling sun swirls the fiery gases probe outward and it really is like Hell - one hundred Earths of figment and time join myth and religion in this fellow's mind as he struggles to get up but bleeds from the face and mouth and head and a cop car comes and an ambulance arrives and the cops and everyone stand around as they scramble to take notes and get their useless information about what occurred and had they asked I could have told them all but no one said a word one way or the other and if survival is the way of all flesh and the means by which we remain in place then the silence was as worthy as the talk and it's the way we contrive to make our endings match our starts and - stupidly so - I hear someone ask 'what would Jesus do?' like it fucking would have mattered at that point and no one says a thing in answer NO ONE SAYS ONE WORD ALOUD until some black man preacher Reverend guy decides to condescend to interdict and he twirls in place and says : 'there is no ending to strife and the grief it brings but we must forgive the hollows that sin digs out in every man's heart and soul and we must fill with glory and hope and light those great gaps we have within us without Jesus - and time is not matter nor matter time but FORGIVENESS like this comes hard and with quite difficult work but a work we must do - to FORGIVE! is that work and the work is Jesus and a work we must all do!' and they answer 'Amen brother' as a unison of mind and matter will do but I look at them and I ask myself in their stead 'what would Jesus eat!?' figuring somebody among them must have hungry and the answer I hear is 'Government cheese and Redemption chili!' as if nothing else mattered BUT I want to say back to them instead that I am stuck - stuck on life stuck on glass stuck on trees stuck in the shiny water of Autumn and Doubt and Sadness and Sorrow too and someone turns to me and angrily asks - WHO told you that?' and I answer flippantly (now wanting out) : ' some girl in the bleachers some form at the end of the second row and she mentioned the Halloween Wedding where your famous Lord turned pumpkins into pudding or carriages or something like that and I remember her distinctly wearing a fragrance of floral petals and not much more and the Egyptian oasis from where she said she'd come she said was hers forever but I didn't really believe her anyway and what's the deal with your reverend here ? how come he acts at times like such a fake?' (I figured I might as well mutter what was really on my mind) and the guy said back to me 'what makes you think it has to be taken seriously or taken as gospel writ? - the guy knows what people need and that's all he gives them and just look just look over there at his Heaven - one white Cadillac after the other parked at the heavily gilded curb lined with people and ladies in white flouncy blouses and extravagant hats and the gentlemen pretending to be doctors and lawyers and judges - DO YOU THINK THAT MATTERS ? NONE OF IT DOES! this man just knows what the people NEED yes yes and that's what he gives them and they take it with delight' and I nodded yes for I already knew that and he added 'it's the measure of Heaven that it's smaller than Man and that's God's most amazing fact' and whatever he meant I took it as fact and wrote what I could on the matter of that!!