A Hell of a Thing.

"Guys?"

A Rochester Blue and White is parked in the avenue entrance at the closed and darkened Gulf across from Wilmer Street. The Gulf has only a dim blue-white glow within it and the block next door is dark in the way that brick building are at such five in the morning times.

"It's a helluvah thing to ask you, fellas, but..."

And one really does hate to disturb you...

An even dimmer crimson glow is there low within the cruiser's front seat and the officer passenger is shuffling paper work about in the seat between himself and the driver - printed forms, Incident Reports, Tour logs and such one imagines them to be.

"...I just came down from my room and...there is this homeless guy in the lobby, the atrium of the building."

One really does hate to ask it, to have you disturb him but...

A bundle was seen through the window in the locked and heavy stairway door coming down, a bundle of some sort in the lobby, the atrium down below beyond the door. In a hesitant instant it was recognizable as a person's shoulders and back in baggy brown jacket. Some one sitting or crouching was there across from the residents' post boxes in the four or five foot square tiled space between the stair door and the outer street door of the building.

"It really is a hell of a thing to ask..."

To do.

In a further hesitant instant, the bundle of clothing acquired a leathery-brown face beneath an o.d. wool cap, a suddenly aware face that looked in and up the stairs. And, then, there was no going back, no further second thought of going out the building's back door, instead, into the dark and possibly dangerous parking lot. There had been that incident; someone had been robbed back there a month or so back, the building super had said, had warned.

"...an' I hate like hell to ask it..."

It is such a thing to cross the street and not just look the other way, keep about one's one business, live and let live...

"But I know the Super, Gene, would roust the guy if he were awake, up..."

His back was in the corner where the plate glass and lockless street door hinges while his heavy shoes were wedged where the stair door hinges open. His knees up, he was trying to fashion another cigarette from too much stringy tobacco piled on a rolling paper and making a mess of it. Strands were falling off and about him to the tile floor. There was an odor, too, much of it tobacco that had already emanated in to the bottom of the stair well.

"He says he's just waiting for a bus in an hour...."

Finishing the roll and repositioning his thick soled shoes so that the stair door could swing out enough to emit a person were undertaken all together along with explanations of his presence.

He says, too, he's from around the neighborhood. That he is known and all right.

"But I know Gene...well, I know he'd want the guy rousted. It's just...."

Wouldn't have a quiet word to the wise have been better? Is it better to involve them?

"Which is your building, sir?" is all that the officer driver wants to know.

On the angle across the avenue the only light remaining on at this end of the block is there behind the narrow foot deep door stoop surrounded by its rectangle of rough gray stone. There isn't much that can be seen of the postal lobby through the plate glass of the street door. The man within has positioned himself so there is nothing much of him to be seen at any angle from the street.

"640, the doorway next to Oxford's."

The avenue is so dark and silent and dead at this hour. The officer driver only looks over the street in the right direction and doesn't move to get out or to put the car into gear. The officer rider only continues to shuffle paper.

How is it that this happens now? Will this, after all, happen?

"It's such a hell of a thing...!"

An awkward and awful thing...

"And I really do hate asking it."

Perhaps it is necessary to back away, to leave them to do what they need to do without further involvement, without eyes on them doing it.

The Blue and White sits motionless just behind the sidewalk on the pavement of the station lot the time it takes to walk down almost to the corner and it only moves to pull out into the avenue when the street is almost crossed to the newspaper box waiting beside Gitsis' diner door.

How do such things happen?

The cruiser half fades into the shadows of the block, of 642 and 646. It goes up even beyond the alley way to the parking lot behind the block, before turning and, then, disappearing altogether into a space among the parked cars well above 640.

The wide windowed and brightly lit Gitsis', at this hour of a Thursday morning, pictures a quiet and family friendly diner with greenery potted along the inside of the glass and hanging, too, in decorative pots along the aisles. There are gleaming electric light fixtures that reflect in paneled mirrors on load-bearing square columns and on the walls of the dining room. Of the few customer inside, an old man in beige slacks and a sports shirt, wearing a white canvas hat crumpled on his head is standing paying his check at the register up front.

How does such a thing happen?

One officer and, then, the other are out on the street. They move slowly down toward the unseen door.

Lethargically move...unwillingly...laggardly about an unsavory business? Or just routinely about a job?

The paper from the box has a headline, something about CITY CRIME FIGURES...and the old man's face emerging from the diner door looks surprised anyone might be on the street at this hour of the morning, maybe, even a little concerned. His car is in the side lot and he hurries to it.

The two officers are at the doorway and stopping, not walking on beyond it as seemed at first possible. The driver with the light colored hair, the heavy set unresponsive looking face is first and doesn't seem to look within the lobby, doesn't seem to have seen anything of interest. He stands straight ahead, instead, and looks out across the street, hands on his belt.

Gone? Did he go? Did he take the word to the wise unspoken and leave after being seen, noticed?

And, then, it does happen the way it does happen and the officer driver turns and pulls at the door stepping inside while his younger partner following turns, too, in toward the doorway and holds the door open out on the street with a stiff arm.

Mark's Hots, where the breakfasts are cheaper than at Gitsis', is a long block and a half down Monroe and on the other side of the street. It is a small square yellow sign hanging out over the sidewalk. It is an awful, awkward thing to have to do, to have done. The night is still black all the way down the avenue. There is light only in the Bruegger's Bagel Bakery with the baker inside in his baker's service cap behind the counter in a half lit and empty shop. All the stores and businesses and bars and eateries are darkened windows with some neon left on in them in places down to Mark's. It is a calm night and fair for early April. If it were February and crazy cold outside, or, March with a lake effect storm whipping down the street off Ontario, it would be different. The traffic is all still single cars and vans and not even traffic yet. There might be but isn't a truck or two but there are no buses in an hour. In less than a hour there will be buses but there are no buses yet. The night is that dark that, when the light does comes, the sky won't soften to rose or gold far down the side streets to the east or be that dark blue above the block north and west of the intersection of Meigs and Monroe. It will be only a dull and ordinary Rochester lead.

In Mark's the slinky waitress with the tall face and the blonde and boyish cut hair, the one with rings pierced in her lower lip serves breakfast and the customers are all the usual customers of five-thirty in the morning. At six the sky isn't yet as light as it will be and the African lady is opening the little no name convenience along side Averill for business. Back across from Mark's, Nick's Super Store in the east block is open and lit up and single customers are in and out while, on the corner of Meigs, fares are waiting for a bus downtown.

And a Blue and White is backed into the lot along side the Avenue Pub, hidden from south bound traffic by the brick corner of the building.

If it had been February, March or raining it would have been different.

The guys are overseeing the street in this block, now, though it is hard to tell they are looking at anything at all.

The stair door lurched shut and locked - but the next person out might not have been careful to watch for it, to be sure it did....The lady on three who comes down to wait for the early bus mornings might not have wanted to go out through the lobby; might not have dared go out through the rear door....There were spent paper matches and tobacco shreds and ash on the tiles and, too often, in the morning, there are puddles of urine to be stepped over or around and for Gene to have to clean up.

And, still, it's an awful thing.

At Wilmer it is full day light with the cut off corner of the Cornell building that looks somehow gothic at night stands in front of the dull dawn's early light. The room on the second floor at 640, left without a light on, will be half shadowy while its windows overlooking the inner building court yard with the Cornell next door will be bright with day. The room will have that stillness of a room half dark at dawn in a still sleeping building.

The remembered mess is on the floor of the lobby with out any urine and the remembered tobacco and slightly sour scent is lingering there still and at the foot of the stair well, too.

Still, it is a helluvah thing!



April 29, 2009.

Nichts, Nil, Nada.

Ed,

I don't know why I'm starting this. I don't have a thing.
I'm lettered out. I've done nothing but write folks the last two days. Six pages to Jerry in Penn Yan and another five more to your mom in Virginia. The one, too, that I got off to Linda had to be all fresh material as she is down there in the Finger Lakes and shares her letters with her dad.
I'm writing and editing in marathon sessions all weekend.
I had the last letter to the Lakes almost finished the other night, went out at one in the morning for a walk through the zone and came back with that letter for the Old Dominion formed in my mind.
Eight-thirty in the morning, I had them both complete and collapsed in a heap thinking I'd get up around noon and walk them down to the post office.
Actually, I only slept about two hours - the first time. I caught some news (Go Navy! The only pirates who should live are in Pittsburgh or Disneyland) and, then, slept again. I woke up the second time about quarter after two in the afternoon and had eleven pages to edit and something like two hours and fifteen minutes to do the job, stuff, stamp and address those epistles and leave myself a half hour to walk (run) them down.
You can't count on a six pp letter going through with two stamps on it. Maybe a five pp but even that is iffy.
Two solid hours of backspace, spell check and re-composition in the chair and I was ready to go. I grabbed my gear and made for the door with a few minutes more than that half hour to get to Broad Street Post Office.
Pounding down the stairs, I got a deep diesel growl of possibly a city bus bullying into gear coming up with all the discord of avenue traffic. Damn! Steve, wouldn'tcha just know! It is always happening when I've some place to go late afternoons. The schedule is so crowded with buses there is always one practically waiting for you at the stop or just pulling away as you come out on the street. Luck either way.
And it was sort of that way this time.
There was a bus but it was below at Goodman waiting for the light. Far enough out of reach not to count against me as a near thing.
I was going to have to walk - and move it, with no time to loll along taking in life along the way.
Still, that bus was tantalizingly near, held up at Goodman for some reason long seconds after the light was green. It is a long block passed Gitsis' Diner and running to catch up to get at least the driver's attention so he can pull into the next stop and wait was something I did think about even if it wasn't a real possibility.
As that was happening there was this other matter going on.
Even before I caught sight of that bus, as I was still coming off the stoop, I was aware Darren was sprawling alone on the bus bench out front of Oxford's Pub. And he was talking. He was talking to me.
Darren talks to people. That's his thing. He is around bus stops on the avenue various times of day, a spare runty guy in jeans and denim jacket, ear buds under a ball cap with one of those deep arched bills. He has the kind of crudely chiseled mutt face that always needs a shave and he resents the hell out of anybody hurrying by who can't spare the time to chat. Maybe once you gave him a light or, standing in your doorway, exchanged a few words with the guy. Now, for life, he expects you to take an interest. And his conversations have always long since begun with other passing strangers he thinks should appreciate him or just addressed to the street in general while you're expected to chime right in and agree with him.
"...s'all back'n'forth, back'n'forth..." he was disdaining at me down his should.
Sitting mid-bench, his arms were out on its back and his legs were splayed before him.
"...it's all 'bout business, business, nuthin' but..." he went on saying, shouting, as I hurried by behind him.
"Don't stop, y'...." he complained after me.
I had no time for more than a glance in passing at Enright's to see what kind of late afternoon crowd they had in the Thirst Parlor. Oxford's Pub had had less than a crowd at that hour, but Enright's bar, just behind the plate glass, was crowded around with bodies on stools and even standing between them, here and there. I've seen bodies on those thirsty stools at eight in the morning and small numbers linger in the door after closing at two a.m.
Goodman Street was the first test of how luck would favor my hurrying - if you don't count that bus against me.
I got the light; I got all the lights. That seems to be the way. Even at Meigs, where I didn't exactly get the light, there wasn't any traffic to hold me and I rushed right on by a guy obeying the red Don't Walk.
I wouldn't have minded lingering a little to observe Mr. High Fashion poised on the very southwest corner of Goodman though. He had an especially unusual outfit, today. It was a conservative look for him, that was what was unusual about it. Black slacks tapering to the ankles and a short loose blouse of alternating black and white non-geometric shapes looking like the pelt of some unknown savannah creature - something one might wear to an evening in a tropical bar on a cruise. Mr. High Fashion favors brighter colors and non-tradition combinations of gear - a billowing, almost bulky white suede jacket with sky blue sleeves and tight, tight shiny blue bicycle shorts and leg warmers with matching white head scarf bound by a broad blue band over his coal black complexion and willowy form, the whole completed by red high top sneakers. So, today's look was outstanding not only for April in Rochester, New York. That is if you don't count his black hair highlighted with mustard streaks to match the pattern of his blouse and the whole lacquered to a bicycle helmet sheen.
Usually, too, he does his posing on the bus bench on the Boardman corner of the Avenue, the one cat-a-corner from the bench Darren was on. Yet there he was, removed to the corner at Goodman, standing with arm out to a temporary street sign, his eyes and fine cheek bones set in a steady but unstaring glance far out over the intersection. It might have been a palm he was reaching out to and his gaze might have been fixed far off down a white sand beach. No, he hadn't been driven off his bench by Darren shouting at him; he was only down on the corner for the commuter traffic, the ladies and gentlemen freed from the office buildings and parking garages of midtown and caught in their haltering homeward migration at the light with nothing to do.
I really didn't see anything after that except the usual kids out of Monroe High waiting at the bus stops along the avenue. You don't start to see them until you have crossed Meigs and are in sight of the school, itself, set back behind its athletic field. The bunch of them that gathers near MacDonald's isn't there so much for the bus as just hanging out outside Mickey Dee's. The largest number of kids is always at Monroe and Alexander's stop. From there you can look down the avenue over a long easy grade and see where the expressway loop that circles mid-town has its Monroe access, one of its major intersections, an open plain of exits and on ramps. Every stop down from Alexander has another crowd of kids until late, late afternoon, all the way to the last cross street, Union. At Union the Asian convenience store limits the number of young people allowed inside at any one time. The gang at the stop across from the old Sears building, a deco tower, is usually the thickest and hardest to weave through at that hour. The sidewalk is narrow and the building at the stop is right up square with it. The cool crowd waits up at Alexander; it is the geeks and dweebs and the rest that crowd together opposite the old tower none of them are old enough to know was once a department store.
I walked and dodged through Afternoon Gangland and hit the Inner Loop Canyon at a moment when no one was off or on ramping to interfere with my passage. That was the final possible hold up before the long lazy sweep of the street around the Musuem of Play and its Butterfly Building. Since I've learned to cut through the Museum Drive and around Manhattan Square Park on my way through to Broad there wasn't a crossing light between me and the P.O., only a little more diminishing distance. I hadn't looked at my watch since heading for the door and wasn't about to now. I was sure I was on time and only had to keep pushing it.
Coming down the length of the Museum building, I could have gone by the main entrance and followed the drive around but chose, instead, to cut the corner in the park and go through the children's small play area. A pair of mom's was in the park taking snaps of their kids cavorting on the jungle gym. It was one of those scenes with moms and their kids too young for school in a vacant park all by themselves. Kind of sorry looking with the gray day. But the kids seemed to be having fun.
Hurrying through, I veered right to take the gap between the park terrace and the new pool house, a single story block house faceless in the back but plate glass fronting the end of the reflecting pool it was building along with last summer. The pool is between the length of the high terrace wall and the drive out to Broad Street by way of the front of Manhattan Manor, a high rise downtown housing tower.
Coming through the gap I could hear scraping suggestive of a pair of ice skates. I could only see the near corner of the pool. Its surface looked barely skate able with large patches of white frost and ice that looked watery on top and I could see nothing like a skater. Where there was no frost, the pool was bluer in streaks than the afternoon sky. It was a scene wintrier than Mid-April should be.
Once I was pool side I got the scraping.
Up on the drive a couple of young guys in ball caps were practicing their skate board tricks, making runs and trying to flip them up onto a shin high retaining wall. They were lanky kids. One was in short sleeves while his pal wore a more weather appropriate flannel shirt. Both caps were backwards on their heads. Near the far end of their run, standing up out of the way beside one of the slender trees on the grass berm, a tall blonde girl with long straight hair was watching the boy friends scrape, clatter and clap their boards back and forth in that witless way they have that is only exciting or meaningful to boarders.
We are coming into the season of Rattle and Clatter; it is, now, spring training for the knee scrape and shoulder bruise crowd. They'll be taking over every less than half full parking lot soon to try out their meager few tricks. They succeed so infrequently that the occasional wonder performed the way it is meant to be is raggedly cheered with unexpected amazement. It becomes instant legend for all of the few seconds before the failures begin again. Ordinary success is measured in how minor each failed attempt turns out. Utter failure and its agonies are amiably laughed over.
The girl in the blue wind breaker holding on to the tree watched with staid and stoic concentration alone. I never quite got it before, how she isn't just a spectator at their sport or the the devote fan she is imagined. I saw her waiting for the boys to finish their sport so that time could begin on her own. It probably wouldn't have done to explain that their games always go into overtime.
Well, two stamps were enough postage for either of the big letters I was mailing, after all. I'd hurried for nothing. I could have dropped them in any post box along the way.
I could relax and take my time going home to 640.
Only, once I begin rushing - and I had been rushing since some time the evening before in one sense or another, it is hard to stop.
I heard church chimes and knew it was, at last, five o'clock as I was cutting back through the Museum and almost back to Monroe still hurrying at only a slightly less driven pace.
Everything I saw was the same as it had been - only in reverse.
I rushed all the way back to Gitsis' and, passing there, noticed that I hadn't been gone long enough for Darren to have tired of the bus stop at Lola's. I was in for another encounter.
Fortunately, at the moment of my approach, before I was noticed, someone else whom Darren thought he knew and probably didn't was going by across the street, a woman in a black dress walking past the Lucky Lotus tattoo parlor. He began shouting his conversation for her to hear and, when she walked right on by as if she didn't know him from Adam, he sauntered out into Monroe after her. Talking all the way, he followed her inside the new shop on the corner, Rochester Gold and Silver Buyers, the Neverending Garage Sale.
Just before escaping upstairs, I noticed Darren hadn't attempted going any further into the shop than just inside the door. I imagine the owners, no matter how new to this location on Monroe, already know that he is bad for business.
No, I don't have anything - nichts, nil, nada!
Steve.

Let's Not Get Started.

The patrol cars, twirling red and white and blue, sat aligned perfectly pulled up on the avenue all along side the cars parked at the curb before Gitsis' Diner. Bodies were crowding the diner door in the open air and, with the exception of an occasional one working his or her way inside through the rest, all their suddenly silent attention was down the street on the gathering of young officers on the pavement outside one of the blue and white cars. There were some dozen officers and they were standing and milling a car length and a half south of Gitsis' door.

It was nearing three in the morning and a young black man of a tall and slender build was stretched out full-length on his stomach on the pavement. His hands were cuffed behind his back and he was, from time to time, struggling to roll himself over. When his rocking or his trying to twist his legs and shoulders to right himself became too much, some one young man in a blue uniform or other would either kneel between his shoulder blades with cautions or crouch at his feet to hold his angles.

Whether trying to turn or laying as lain, the young man's invective was constant, loud and sputtering.

"BITCH! BITCH! YOU A BITCH! NIGGAHS! YOU'RE NIGGAHS!"

He bitterly protested,

"GODDA SLAVE DOWN ON THE GROUND! THA'S ALL Y'WANT! THA'S WHAT Y'WANT!
GIDDA SLAVE DOWN ON THE GROUND!"

Those lined along the front of the diner, bunched in the diner doorway to see, nearly all of them black, watched in somber silence. The only time any turned away from the scene for a moment was when one or more people came out of the diner and two or more people in the line that was no longer even so much a line for admittance were allowed in the Gitsis' for food.

"NIGGAHS! NIGGAHS! YOU BITCH! I GIDCHEW BITCH!"

The crowd of officers was oddly a seemingly relax gathering standing and talking among themselves apparently of nothing immediate or of importance. For them, it seemed, what ever had happened at Gitsis' was over and they only attended the young man at their feet on his repeated efforts to turn himself to where he could struggle erect which wasn't going to happen. None responded to or, even seemed to be cognizant of his on-going angry and repetitive diatribe. Eventually, a strap retrieved from one of the cars bound his attentuated legs at the ankles. A yellow hood faced about with a fine mesh went over his head when he began to hotly spit his anger out at their feet.

Through the yellow netting of his hood, the young man's violent face could be seen, his sharp chin lifted up off the asphalt from time to time to warn,

"BITCH! I GID YOU BITCH! NIGGAHS!"

The young officers appeared, too, to be unaware of the eyes on them from the diner door.

Leaving their prisoner to yell and trash about on the pavement of Monroe Avenue so long a time seemed cruel and unnecessary, probably even racial to the spectators. Police attentions to the young man on the ground were perfunctory and clinical and their orders unthreatening. Once the mask and strap had been applied, he seemed forgotten entirely. Leaving their prisoner to yell and trash about helplessly on the pavement of Monroe Avenue so long a time seemed cruel and unnecessary and, probably even, racial to the spectators. That it might have been in anticipation that he might exhaust his anger somewhat before transport to the lock-up where more forceful methods would have to be used to restrain him wasn't likely to occur to them.



"'Lo?"

"Did I wake you; you sound as if I woke you?"

"Yeah. Y'did, kinda."

"Sorry."

"S'o.k., I didn't sleep much last night - or, at all!"

"Another late Saturday on Monroe?"

"Yeah, kinda. Had one of those Gitsis' incidents again last night."

"Well...."

"Something of a racial character, or not, y'could say. I didn't see how it began so I can't comment. But I came home and, what I did see, I had to write down. Not enough for a story though."

"Well!...y'know how I feel. I suppose it is fun, exciting living where you do but it's,well, not my thing at all. I wouldn't want it."

"It's not...fun -"

"That was a poor choice."

"...or so much exciting. There is something always to be gleaned, gathered. I just don't know how competent I am to comment on any of that. This matter last night, like Isay, I didn't see how it started so I can't really say anything about that, about the larger issue of it. I'd like to! I wouldn't have written what I did if, what I did see hadn't been so striking and, maybe, complicated enough in its self to do something with. I don't know. I'd like to, but, I don't know...."

"And, then, you were up all night."

"The writing didn't take all that long. It was just that it seemed it might be something I might make something out of. I couldn't stop thinking. Could I do, say more with it. I imagine if I could find a way, I could use it to say some things I've been thinking about. The race card came up and -"

"Imagine!"

"Well, like I say, I can't say for sure if there wasn't something to justify it even a little. I know what I saw -"

"Let's not get started!"

"Yeah, I know. I know how you feel. And, you might be surprised - I mean I know what I saw was, probably, what you'd have seen, too. But there is that other way these things are seen."

"Things are what they are. People get liquored up and -"

"And that's what I saw. Still -"

"...police get called and they have to handle them."

"No question. No question about it. I don't fault those guys for what they did or how they did it! Still...there's that other way of looking at things, that other wayof reacting to them. I saw that out there last night, too. Or, at least, I saw people reacting different from the way I was. That matters, too, and I don't think some things are being said about it, about the situation we're in."

"I think more is said than should be most of the time."

"And I'd agree with that, too - kind of. Some things that do get said that don't help at all. I don't know if it's understood how people like you and I reacted when we hear claims being made we can't see any basis for. And, then, when we're told that even if it doesn't directly apply it should because of second and third hand experiences - that doesn't help any either. That'd be worth writing if I had a way to say it."

"Let's please not get started."

"We just don't all see the same things. And, the people who see things differently, have their reasons and think they're important, too."

"I doesn't do any good to drag race in just because a black person is involved. Crying wolf -"

"I know. Of course, that's what I'm saying....It doesn't do any good. Like I say, it's one of the things I'd like to say...if I had a way to. Everytime that happens it only makes it harder to convince some that race does really matter when and where it does."

"Wolf!"

"Yes. Long as it is understood that there are reasons people make the wrong assumptions, assertions at times and those reason have consequences for us. It matters."

"Well....let's just not get started. I've got to know what we're doing this year about Easter, are you planning...."


There was sullenness and no small resentment in the unvoiced judgmental stare of the crowd outside Gitsis' door. There was evident defiance in the wide-armed gesture of the broad young man in the long white shirt who stopped mid-Monroe well down from the scene and announced to the police that he was only going to his car to leave. Perhaps, too, there was mockery in the walk and carriage of the heavy hipped woman crossing the street with her home-sack of Gitsis' dinner held up above her waist to dangle and sway at her heavy, dainty stepping, something straight out of vaudeville. Maybe nothing was said....

Posted 4/15/09.

OG Says FM!

Ok!

I'm down at 7/Eleven the other day. One of those sweet days we had last week.

It is in the afternoon with all the traffic going by up and down the Avenue and foot traffic, too, is going every which way and doing every other thing.

There are kids out of the school and panhandlers mookin' along the way they do. Some girl is dressed from her white sneakers up to the hood over her head like a fire engine all in red; a barrel with a beard walking along like he's got somewhere to go has the bill of his ball cap turned around behind; a couple of slender gents with pointy faces that are sprouting fine fresh facial hair and wearing plaid shirts and beige caps are out walking their pit bull together like, maybe, they'll chuck it, get their guns and go hunt the hills; a couple with a kid in a car seat that he's luggin' along and a couple that might be them in a matter of months if they keep on the way their going fast -

Like that.

I'm around the corner of the building, around where Yummy Garden and Domino's are there in back. But I'm all the way up at the other corner where there is nothing but brick. You're in the sun and out of any breeze that might be blowing out of the north off Lake Ontario while there.

And I got my soda, Diet Pepsi, on the top of the plastic trash barrel.

The guy that waited on me at the counter inside was the square built dude with the tats on his arms and the handlebar over his upper lip.

"'S that your Falcon parked out front?" I asked.

Forest green and old, old silver chrome it is. I knew the answer but had been meaning to ask for some time.

I explained, or merely made the non-conversation drag out a bit longer, saying,

"Once knew this guy drove one."

They were never that common and Ford didn't make them that many years.

"Now y'known two," was what he said.

A man of few words you might say. Laconic is the word for it.

So, I'm back out around the corner of the building with my soda watching people and things. It is one of those spots, a neighborhood place I'm always visiting. When you are there, the corner of Meigs and Monroe is all laid out below you like it was a stage you were looking down on. There is a slight grade that gives it that affect but, if you go and stand on the northwest corner of the intersection you see just how slight a grade it really is, how short the distance is and how little difference there is in height. It is one of those little lesson in perspective that are there if you look for them.

The building directly across the Avenue and the building across Meigs, diagonal from one another, both have fronts that are recessed straight across, corner to corner. The one across the avenue is a Rent-a-Center and the building is an old three story red brick while the one across Meigs is concrete block and only one lofty story topped off by an enormous bill board set to face the commuter traffic coming up to the light headed south for the Expressway or Brighton. I don't know, but it all, that building across Meigs on the corner, has a fifties feel about it. There is a bus stop there and fares and bums stand in under the recess there when it rains or when the wind blows in January, when the sun's too hot in July. They wait for a bus to pull in and take them away. Cat-a-corner across the intersection from where I'm standing there is an old building of pale brown brick with a rounded and canopied corner. The business in there is called New York Stylee and largely seems to deal in hooker couture. Focus a little further up the street on that side and there is the famous Mark's Hots with its own lopped off corner entrance looking right back at you under that perpetually burning neon promising 'Breakfast All Day.'

So, I'm standing there taking it all in and among the rest there are these kids. There are two clusters of them, maybe, five or six to a bunch on different sides of Monroe, and I know them right away. They are kind of kids out of school, too.

There is a camera class, apparently, that meets in the old Genessee Co-op in the old Fire House across from the parking lot of the old Corpus Christi Parochial School at Oxford Street.

Afternoons, along this time of the year, the classes are sent out on the street with cameras and instructions to take interesting pictures of the urban scene. These two gangs, have come all this way, maybe a quarter mile, and they're still parallel with one another, working their different sides of the street!

Anyhow, over here, this one batch of budding paparazzi, itinerant explorers of the inner city puts their camera bags down just past Meigs. They gaggle together still full of all the eager joy of being loosed from school with a purpose. They're there in front of the embanked bed of corporate evergreen bushes that 7/Eleven has put down to help differentiate their parking lot and its avenue entrance. They are looking around at this and that and plotzing over possibilities, I suppose.

Besides looking somewhat like dead comedian George Carlin, I, apparently, have an interesting face to some. I am, also, it would seem, of a certain derelict and downtown appearance.

At least, experience with student photographers would lead me to suppose that, too.

And wouldn't you know!

Sure enough some trim and fresh faced young one soon comes up the lot, advancing on my building corner with camera held up and out ahead of her. Her darling face is smiling despite her focus on the LCD and her hair is kind of honey blonde and tied in a pony.

She asks, of course,

"Could I take your picture; would you mind?"

And, though her angle seems a bit off, I shoot right back at her a used to it,

"Sure."

And I don't pose. Because I know that's not what any of them want. They always want the unposed shot they thought they saw when they laid eyes on you.

But, then, she says, sweetly and unassumingly,

"Don't smile."

Which is weird as I purposefully wasn't.

And, then, I got it!

She takes the shot and saying as sweetly,

"Thanks!..."

...her and the gang go off down the street in their merry way.

Sure enough, around the corner from me, not more than a foot and half from my stand, sitting on the brick sill of the front window there is this old black dude. With his long legs in front of him and leaning forward on his hands, the guy is perfect. He had, only a minute or three before this, cripped up all slow and painful on a bandaged and slippered foot out of Meigs and passed around the corner just in front of me.

I had assumed that he had gone on into the store. But there he sat a seeming icon of social dejection and damage.

Well!

I don't care.

I am still the very image of Monroe decrepitude!

There are years of student photos on file to prove my point. What does the opinion of one slip of a pony-tailed photo novice prove, any how?

Well, I never...!

4/3/09.

A Personal Note.

I am dreaming more than I used to. I used to sleep more than I do now but, lately, more and more of my snatches of sleep end in near waking dreams and my dreams more often than not are of ones I knew years ago and have not seen or heard from in a long time. I never recall on waking many of the details of my dreams. I only have impressions of them. I dreamed one recent morning of an old friend. She visited me, it would seem, but we weren't here or anywhere together we'd ever been with one another and she took me to meet friends of hers none of whom I knew or liked much. She lives very far from here, if at any anymore, and in places I have never been or am likely to ever visit. So, perhaps, then, that particular part of the dream makes some sense. After waking, of course, my most explicit memory of the dream was of the moments just before it ended with my waking in my chair. It ended with my running away out into a cold but vivid and spectacular dawn in yet another strange-t0-me landscape. A train with lights on was darkly arriving at a station yard before that enormous red and blue day break sky. I needed to get home and was desparate for her to tell me how. I was angry that she wouldn't. This morning I dreamed I was with family. Most of my nearest relations were on hand at the end but I can only recall specifically my step-father, my mother and my grandmother all of whom are gone now. Once, again, I was going off at the end of my dream but ony to smoke in secret a cigar. They were all aware of my purpose but were nice enough to let me keep my secret. In the dream there were conversations I overheard and in some I participated from time to time but I don't recall anything that was said or anything of what was being discussed. I only know, now, that, though, in the dream, I knew what was being said and what it was about, our words had no voices. Perhaps that dream feature, too, is appropriate. All the people who spoke to me and around me I'll never hear speak again and I can not communicate with them now except in dreams. Here, where I'm living now, much of my time is spent observing and contemplating the differences between those of us who are old and those who are young and how we live and are in the world in our different ways. One thing I can say on that subject, I now realize, is that the old have more lost friends and dead than those who are young and we are more haunted.