Today’s opulent bouquet of sunshine makes everyone look different, which is maybe strange to say since I have not seen a single face I could call familiar. A team of braggarts greeted my arrival on 34th Avenue several minutes ago. They were ambling westward. Sauntering, even. They were absolutely screaming nonsense words I could not distinguish. I tried not to look their way but could not help give them the attention they seemed to command and demand. I stepped in to the Hour Children. As I reached for my phone to get the picture posted prior to this magnificent squall of text I heard one of these men scream “FABULOSO!” The entourage of 4 men had moved their procession to the middle of the Avenue and to the southern side of the street. 3 of them strolled casually right along the yellow double line that separates the north of 34th Avenue from the south of 34th Avenue. One of them had made his way to the other side of the street, just 4 or 5 feet north of myself. I was inside the Hour Children, feeling a wee sliver of sanctuary from these wayward men who seemed to grow increasingly bellicose in their yawping.
“FABULOOOOOOOSOOOOOOO!!!”
They looked toward me in search of a reaction, a confirmation that their theater was reaching its intended audience of congenial bystanders, all of us (I only saw myself paying them any mind) gratified to reap the fruits of their boundless wit and frivolity.
From the apparent and indeed unquestionable façade of a bottomless canyon of mirth and good cheer I heard a cri de coeur, an almost sorrowful cry for attention. The three men in the street had spread slightly amœba-like, occupying street space to the north and south of the yellow lines. They strode in this space like stars of a parade. Their triumphant gait was unperturbed by seemingly irrelevant incursions of oncoming vehicles. Drivers moved to avoid them. To avoid murdering these men a line of 5 cars stopped in their tracks. No horns were honked. No words of anger came from the drivers. It was a moment of tension mixed with sociopathic hubris. All involved acknowledged that these men would not sacrifice their dignity to allow cars to pass. This was their moment of triumph, their moment of pride.
“FABULOOOOOOOSOOOOOOO!!!”
Two of them stroked the north and south sides of the first car in this standoff, as the middle man on the street walked headlong toward the vehicle’s headlights. Seeming to consider the possibility he appeared to raise his right leg in a way that suggested he might step onto the hood of the car. It was never mentioned during the sales pitch to the present owner of this car that its frontal area was attractive as a stage for the dancing or conspicuous lounging of errant pedestrians. In congress with the roof and rear portion the front part of the car could serve as a conduit for passage. A transient sidewalk, if you will. This feature of the car was conspicuously excluded from the sales pitch.
Showing some sense of savvy, or perhaps in anticipation of hamstring pain, the middle of these men moved to the south, tickling the hood of the car with his right hand and screaming something unintelligible to me, but probably not to the others. The car moved along, its driver’s path to his destination only momentarily occluded.
He (the driver) must have thought “I never considered this car’s added value as a stage, or a lounge for assholes. There is money to be made here. The resale value of this car just increased exponentially.
…
I have no idea what the driver of that car might have actually thought but everything else about that tale is true. It felt like 34th Avenue had suddenly and irreparably become a ghetto. To me one signature element of a questionable neighborhood is when people are seen standing around in the middle of the street, underneath traffic lights or wherever the hell they feel it is their blessing to be. I first encountered that scenario in East Tampa, and I think the last place I would have seen it was in the Two Coves section of AsLIC. I also remember it from Coney Island a bunch of years ago.
…
Speaking of 34th Avenue I noticed something this week that I had never seen before. It’s strange how you can pass a certain way over and over and over (on the way to and from the payphone at 21st Street and 33rd Road) and just not notice something. Through an opening between I don’t know how many buildings comprising Ravenswood I saw the word TRADE in red glowing letters. Thinking I could only be seeing as far as 35th Avenue I tried to picture that stretch of road in my mind. I tried to remember what this TRADE place was, and to figure out why I did not recognize it or know what place of business was at 35th Avenue near 21st Street. I actually went so far as to take a detour on my visit to the 33rd Road payphone, walking south on 21st Street, past the garbage truck depot toward 35th Avenue. In my mind I was thinking “nothing but projects” and this proved to be true.
What to my surprise did I conclude but that one can, from one specific spot on 34th Avenue, see all the way to the Trade Fair Supermarket on 36th Avenue. That is a distance of two rather lengthy blocks.
It was a small and admittedly not very comely moment of joy for this sauntering, sightseeing soul. It made the parcels of sidewalk and street that I habituate and which I only rent feel more like a home that I own. I mean, how many people know that one can see clear to the 36th Avenue Trade Fair from one specific spot by a water meter contraption outside the Queensview houses on 34th Avenue? This is good hyperlocal information.
I also discovered just yesterday that predicting 25 minutes travel time from the Queensboro Bridge to Broadway in AsLIC is a perfectly safe estimate.
…
It is already 4:15. I slept past 1pm, passing 12 solid hours asleep with not one wakeup bathroom or masturbation break. These are the arcs of non-sleep days versus sleep. I was up a bit late, and will probably be sore for scrubbing the kitchen floor. I might have forgotten I did this if not for the scent of Clorox on my hands upon waking.
I listened to a good hour’s worth of Joe Frank yesterday, whilst walking back from midtown. The program was called Philosophy. That was, no doubt, an ace way to pass the hour or so it takes to get from midtown to here. He is sometimes bogged down in ludicrous details, such as the lengthy account of what items he carried in his attaché case. That homily came near the opening of the show.
He said something that sounded like stuff I’ve said. He was saying that technology would one day exist that would allow us to record the words of Julius Caesar or Jesus Christ. This is because the past is always among us. The continuum of time never lets anything slip away, no matter how seemingly irrelevant it may have been in its day.
As he often and sometimes awkwardly does he used this comedic riff to reference the Holocaust. His spin on the eventual arrival of this omniscient recording device was that it allowed us to hear the voices of Jews in the concentration camps, from which we learned that they were treated quite well and that they enjoyed their time there. It was a weird spin.
I think that radios will exist that broadcast speeches from the 12th century.
Now I have to go because it looks like rain is coming?
…
p.s., just read an ace poem by Joyce Carol Oates.
