All watched over by machines of loving wealth. Those “machines”, to paraphrase Richard Brautigan are the automoton financial accounts and investments which feed money into buildings like this while the residences remain empty most of the year. There are plenty of windows towering over me, climb the stratospheres of wealth once considered conspicuous but less so now with the vulgar rise of 432 Park and its largely unoccupied brethren at One57. 

yesterday I assumed that this space on the 5th floor was empty because the elevator leading up here was not working. The disconcerted look on the faces of some elderly folk gave that assumption some teeth. There also appears to be no public elevator service up here, creating another barrier to entry that would keep this place off most visitors’ radar.

Alas, the escalator works today and still there is no one but me up here save for the occasional tourist passing through.

I am surrounded by empty chairs and unused tables, sitting one of the fixed benches underneath a tree. To my left are 5 flags. Four of them are red white and blue American flags, the other flag bears a Nike logo. Actually there are 6 flags, with Nike flags at either end, anchoring the U.S. flags. There is a Nike “superstore” downstairs. It does not look like the Nike flags have ropes or mechanism with which to raise them every day or place them at half mast. They are just fixed there.

Past those flag is a wash of buildings, a jumble of styles through which hundreds of windows look down on me. 

…

Never deny a houligan her fistful of larceny. She’ll hurry up, slip on you, smear minutes with gravy drawn from gorilla cages, kinging and queening her families and unborn flourishes, blinking frigid points of whispered flesh through silences of shadow orchestras. Jump into her complaint, immersing nutrients in pillowed conversation bounded by noises of car horns and rodeos. Take a swipe at the neutral nonsequitor. She will do the same, lobbing feminist complaints that rooftops are lonely, not forgotten.

… Remembering an incident in high school. There was one typewriter available for student use. It was in the library. I used it more than most but seem to remember being conscientious about not hogging the thing. Folks knew I liked to write and surprisingly no one ever ridiculed me for it or for my majority use of the library typewriter.

One day the door to the typewriter room burst  open, revealing me — ME! — at the typewriter. Two or three students, suddenly in my space, had crestfallen looks on their faces when they saw me there. One of them muttered something like “I guess we won’t finish writing that script…” 

The head librarian appeared, asking if I had signed up to use the typewriter, and what was I doing there. I said I was writing a poem. With her strict but gentile southern accent she metallically and somewhat incredulously repeated the word: “A PO-EM?” I could feel the withering resignation of the others as one of them rolled his eyes, another mumbling “Jesus Christ…” 

What happened next is lost to my foggy memory but I seem to remember asking for 10 more minutes before I relinquished the typewriter.

Today there is a typewriter room at the San Francisco library, a fact reported by the New York Times as if it was shocking news. I know of no such room at a New York public library but it wouldn’t shock me.

I’ve long felt there should be a public telephone room at the library, where anybody with a library card is free to call anywhere in the U.S. for 15 minutes for free.

Speaking of cards this is my first day in the wilds as a proud idNYC card carrier. So far it has not exalted my day but it’s something to explore for its free museum memberships and such.

…

Give it to the miser. Let him drive it to dust, revolutionizing spinster-led dismay moldering in centuries galore. I am hunkering down to feed him, to prime the miser for wisdom of austerity made cruel by deserted megalomania. I am rewinding stopped clocks, letting them race again, putting skyscrapers in pole position where they sway freer than the flag in a godless Manhattan wind. Kick it down to street level, the pecuniary stealth that pushes control to the suburbs of tourists. Hold it to a dismal standard none would take to mouth.

… Hey, it’s actually crowded here. A woman with a bright yellow shirt that says “PACER” walked in, looking somewhat official with the yellow, actually closer to bright green. She is with another woman and they have notebooks of hand-written materials to discuss. I can’t hear them since the headphones calm all noises here, but I couldn’t here them anyway under the monotonous din of exhaust fans blowing monstrous amounts of air.

…

Dry it out, that hoarse and phlegm-choked message you screamed at intolerance’s milky dream. Punctured by laziness your dismal desires amount to miracles, ceaseless but poorly tuned and meekly talked about. No one knows what you are talking about, your greying sentiments bullying your past into bruised, sneering contrition. Lift sanity from drumbeats of exhausted buildings, blinking best when you’ve eaten the rest.

…

OK, it’s another vow to write for a solid hour nearing  an end, 13 minutes to go. 9 OTHR people here now, almost all women. Sun is coming out. It can get hot up here. 

I was going to pick words again from WordSwarm.net and see what I could come up with. Wrote bad poetry instead, just stringing words together hoping for a miracle.

SCHNORKEL. Who knew that SCHNORKEL was an acceptable alternative to SNORKEL? Not I. I used snorkels briefly in Laos and Tampa, when swimming in the Mekong River and in Tampa Bay. They possessed an urgency, a desperation, even. The surface between breathing and not breathing, between  living and not living, was so shallow that the snorkel and its 5 or 6 inches of breathing tube were like a morose pipe of life. One swims to look down through the facemask and they breath through the snorkel, feeling every breath like it is their last. It seems like such a ludicrously limited invention.

Still, it made me feel important, like I had access to something, to a view into a world below that normal humans typically could not access. Waters on the Mekong were filthy, and Tampa Bay was not much clearer, but I remember seeing horseshoe crabs and small fishes in the latter of those two bodies of water. The Mekong was most memorable for the swarm of Laotian women who seemed to think I was the most amazing boy that ever lived. I just remember their smiles, and the good-natured manner in which they submerged me in the water, lifting me back up within just a few seconds. It was fun.

I connect snorkels — and now SCHNORKELS — with submarines and the dangerous world inhabited by those who live in them. I would think it’s more dangerous than living in outer space, statistically speaking. Murky and dark I would feel the wight of the oceans strangle me over time, if not immediately. At least death would be instantaneous should the vessel become compromised and crushed the millions of tons per square foot that somehow does not crush them yet.

“I AM WRITING BLIND.” Why do I always remember that line? Written by a seaman on the Russian submarine Kursk. He knew he was doomed but for some reason he found a pen and paper to write down his thoughts. For whom? For what?