old haunts...

it was good to get out of the heat. This apartment can consume me like the feeling of a sauna in the afternoon. If you're not careful it can choke you. It was a change in the weather too, with the Hurricane passing on to the right, it sucked the hot air out of the city. A day like this called for a walkabout...

for me, taking the trip into Manhattan is like Heston riding the beach at the end of the Planet of the Apes. 'They've done it, they've really done it!' Anything you need, desire, or revile can be found there at any given time. But you already know that. i've become less inclined to visit Manhattan since i stopped working there, now i see it more as a distraction for the transparent, then the capital of the world—if you can even call it that anymore; maybe a world gone by is more

apt. Progress has stalled here, even regressed. And if its regressing here, then in time it will be here, there and everywhere...

progress is a funny thing. A human being discovers fire. A lightning bolt strikes a bush and sets it aflame, dumb luck. Thousands of years later professional football player shoots himself in the leg, dumb luck. How the fuck did we get from here to there? That's progress.

i got off the E where i usually would and made my way up the staircase in front of St. Pauls; past the placards of biblical quotes and the Africans selling the knock-off handbags. i continued on in front of the throng, jostling for the perfect photos that doesn't exist. i used to tell folk the best place to stand was away from me. They never understood, i doubt they do now. Crossing the street with the help of a pedestrian aid (what they call traffic cops these days downtown), and in fairness, the morning at Church and Washington can be the most convoluted choreography of man and machine on the planet, but this was the afternoon, and they are just in the way. A veritable melting pot of Euro-trash posing for Italian Vogue and senseless shots of granite, yokels who aren't so yokel, but act as if they are walking behind a tour guide, construction workers doing the union thing, transients in transition, and brokers selling your soul to highest bidder, or anyone willing buy, all making their way through the day as i pass. i used to call it the gauntlet; the walk between 61 Broadway and Gate 10. It was and still is a parade of fools and the foolhardy. Gate 10 is long since closed. They are solving the Rubik's cube down there. Progress...

i ducked into the courtyard at Trinity Church, home of Alexander Hamilton's resting place. Its interesting that he is buried in the center of the place that he, more than any other person, helped create. Hamilton is the father of the Federal Reserve, and the New York Post. Thanks for that Al. Its a funny place to have a church, on Broadway a block from Wall Street. Which came first the chicken or the egg? Sure, the church was there first, but the devil has been taking up residence for quite some time. But that's progress...

i took a seat at my regular perch, that is when i was a regular. i think it might be one of the most serene places in this city; the world is ending around it but the dead don't care, and the vegetation, lush as it is this time of year, it looks on in disinterest...

i came here to rustle up some old inspiration i had one dreary, grey morning, before the sidewalks were hosed down and the streets crawled with life. i was struck by the way the spire pierced the sky, even though it was dwarfed by the conglomerates of living, business and education around it, and how at it's peak it looks below at what that living, business and education have wrought. The hole in its soul...

the old inspiration escaped me, some things are meant for the morning, i moved on to other things, and wrote a little piece of another idea i had clunking around. Better than nothing. Progress, nonetheless...

afterwards i took the tourist trail past the firehouse, and over the burgeoning highway for a look. My passport there is long revoked and all that is left of those days is some mud on some shoes and a piece of slag. As i passed i didn't recognize it. The ramp is gone, like they said it would be, and you can't see the sub-basement they took a year putting together. It now looks like a succession of platforms leading to platforms, there is truly nothing to see in this hole in the ground, there hasn't been for almost 8 years. i wish people would get that. But one thing at a time; people will see. Progress...

walked the Hudson later on. Did some work on '...the derelict', a short i've been working on. Then the malaise set in. Dog days, they are almost over. Although those who know me may say that they are just beginning...

progress...