Incident at Rector Street

[tyrannosaurus vex]

There I was, minding my own business, sitting on a subway car waiting for service to start again after some poor bastard got himself smeared all over the Rector Street station a few stops ahead, quietly thumbing through Facebook posts on my phone. As usual, it was an uninterrupted stream of "I ate a salad" and George Takei being funny and "Fuck that Obama guy" and "The Tea Party makes me feel like shitting myself on purpose." Being a self-centered asshole who fancies himself somehow superior to most of the other apes on this rock -- especially now, watching these hilariously petty New Yorkers get all puffed up and indignant about their pointless lives being put on hold for ten minutes so someone can scrape what's left of a fellow human being off the tracks -- I am naturally drawn to political discussions.

But it occurs to me that I've been looking at this whole "Government" thing all wrong. It has been my understanding that people hate politicians they disagree with (or think they disagree with) because they wish to have more like-minded people running things. This, supposedly, would inspire them to vote for people with whom they DO agree, and thus the whole system would have no choice but to -- eventually -- go the way of popular sentiment.

It turns out that is all hogwash. See, the thing about hating politicians is, it's a drug. It gets you high like a drug, you form social groups around the consumption of that drug, you start talking about it in inappropriate situations, and eventually you have nothing left but that hate. And, like any drug, hating politicians leads to hating politicians even more. You start out hating Obama and cheering the day the House is given to the Republicans. But then, it isn't enough just to hate Obama anymore. You have to start hating Boehner and a whole smattering of RINOs. And it doesn't just work for the conservatives. I know a lot of Democrats who started out being super happy about Obama -- an apparently thoughtful, symbolically and substantially powerful force for moderation -- and now they're huddled in the bathroom snorting Marx off the far end of the counter and snarling about Ted Kennedy selling out.

The speaker on the ceiling coughs out a DING! and the doors whoosh shut. Finally, the car lurches forward, and I look up to see 100 sarcastic rolling eyeballs snap out of the "Ug no like to be inconvenienced" position and rotate robotically back down to the natural, no-eye-contact-allowed, glazed and locked at fifteen degrees below the horizon position of the New Yorker in its native habitat. Not the city, but that comfortable and somewhat sickly state of being an island in an ocean so full of other islands that there's no room for any water between them. It's too quiet, given how many people are crowded together here. Everyone just wants to move on. No use for small talk.

I go back to my phone, and review some of the political posts (the wireless signal is gone now, all I have is the cache -- although I only know that because the signal indicator has no bars). Hate hate hate, piss, piss, moan, moan. And it occurs to me that the real purpose of the Government has nothing to do with working together. Gridlock is the point. It exists so that people have something other than each other to lash out at when shit doesn't go their way.

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

This is a thing of beauty.

[Dildo Argentino]

Indeed, it is rather good.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

There's something about the sidewalks in Manhattan, the way they pool at the feet of the megaliths that populate the Financial District like concrete blood drained from the steel skeletons towering overhead and congealed at street level. It piles up in vaguely distinct, ashen gray layers until it has blanketed the whole landscape and hardened. Walking on it steals the rubber from the soles of your shoes faster than hiking across jagged lava rocks, and if you spend more than a couple of days shuffling around here you begin to feel the contours of every imperfect slab on your toes, no matter how many layers you thought were between them and the ground.

So every few blocks I take a break from walking at one of the many tiny outposts of artificial nature that dot the city, sitting on a bench to watch the people go buy. Everyone wears black here, and everyone is overdressed even in Summer. Usually it's just the way it is, and I don't seem to notice. But on days like this one, faintly overcast, everything looks even more gray and the people blur in their frenzy to get wherever it is they're going into a continuous black river of wool and grimaces. It is beautiful, and poignant for no reason at all. Like a massive, spontaneous funeral swirling around me. I give in to fantasy and imagine what they might be mourning, these daily grinders clothed in modern sackcloth and ashes, marching from here to there in the dust and smog.

New York has always been at the cusp of the next age, as the people living here will gladly tell you. The city was built on some ethereal hill from which the future can be seen. As the rest of the country clamors about taxes and war and surveillance, this place has settled into a somewhat subdued resignation, and black is the new black. There's as much hustle as ever here, but there's a little less spring in the step. Even armed robbery is down. Maybe, I wonder, maybe if this place is a funeral, it is for a future that has died.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Haha

[P3nT4gR4m]

 


...MOAR!

[LMNO]

Yeah, man!

[tyrannosaurus vex]

It's only November, but it's already too cold in Midtown to take the workday seriously. I'm standing at Times Square, where once upon a time an unnamed sailor took the liberty of planting his generation's most famous kiss on a girl at the end of some war or other.

The photographs capturing that moment, though they are in black and white, have more color in them than the real place despite its gaudy neon signs and video billboards. The truth is, they are an overt attempt to complement, compensate for and drown out the thick morass of oblivious humans below, and it only works on tourists. Well, I suppose I am a tourist, so it only works on some tourists. The ones for whom Times Square is a destination. For me, it's a maddeningly unnavigable clot of barely mobile Midwesterners who like to camp out in all the places they've seen on postcards and TV, hoping to catch a glimpse of somebody famous. To be snubbed by a star is a sacrament for these people, and I don't understand why.

I'm here because I have another train to catch. I'm going to meet a friend on the other end of Central Park in Washington Heights for some Dominican food. She tells me it'll be awesome, and I believe her because she lives here and she knows more than me. I hope the city can muster something like life in the 130 blocks I have to travel.

The train ride is uneventful, and I exit the station and climb up to 175th Street. Outside, the buildings are only moderately ridiculously tall. I can actually see some color in the sky. There is music playing somewhere, and I look around to see a guy with a guitar standing across the street playing. And smiling. The sidewalks here are full of racks of clothes, boxes of fruit and vegetables. The streets are wider, and the whole place is crowded with people talking and laughing, and I think I must have fallen asleep on the train and got out somewhere in Canada or something.

I walk up a couple more blocks and find my friend, who greets me with a hug and a giggle, and we take off to a tiny restaurant on the ground floor of an apartment building. Inside it smells like food. Real food, not the stuff you find in Midtown that smells like it's been boiled in Lysol and topped with bleach to appease the health inspectors. I recognize none of the food, and the menu on the wall is all in Spanish, but I am suddenly famished and I want to try a little of everything. I settle for some shredded chicken and rice, with fried plantains.

The room is full with the sound of people talking, and it's warm. You don't really ever find a place that's warm, South of Central Park. Here, nobody's head is wraped up in scarves and earmuffs. I don't understand much, partly because it's all in Spanish and partly because there's too much of it to focus on any one conversation, but I can tell by the tone there's a whole spectrum of emotion just not expressed downtown. Excitement. Festivity. Concern for one another.

I may have misjudged New York. Maybe it isn't all drab gray sadness. And maybe I've misjudged the country, too. Maybe what I've seen isn't the end of the world, but the transformation of the world. For every butterfly there is a missing caterpillar and a split cocoon. There's a class of people in America who represent that caterpillar, and there's a way of life that represents that cocoon. Being rich, being powerful, being clean cut and everything you're expected to be by people who only expect you to know your place.

America is on the edge of an age where it is no longer the leader of the free world, and may not even be part of the free world for all I can tell. But people are not their government's politics, and life goes on. Just because we may not walk the earth with the status of demigods, doesn't mean we can't walk upright. Maybe it's better this way. If Washington Heights is any indication, it seems life can be more enjoyable when you're not obsessed with having and being everything.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I'm liking this a great deal.

Is there going to be more?

[tyrannosaurus vex]

I'm liking this a great deal.

Is there going to be more?

thank you!

I plan more, but it depends on inspiration.

[LMNO]

That last one was really great.  Thanks for sharing this, V3X.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

That last one was really great.  Thanks for sharing this, V3X.

I get to travel a bit for work. I'd like to spiel a little for every town I end up in.

Next: Jackson, Mississippi.

[P3nT4gR4m]

it seems life can be more enjoyable when you're not obsessed with having and being everything.

Fucking this! This needs to be chiselled deep into the foreheads of every powermonger and politician and CEO that ever thought there was a single shred of merit in the pursuit of Greatness^tm

[Kai]

That last one, V3x. Oh my god. So good.

I also enjoyed the other two, but the last one stood out because it was hopeful.

Also, this line.

and now they're huddled in the bathroom snorting Marx off the far end of the counter and snarling about Ted Kennedy selling out.

That was genius.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Yep, gooood stuff!