THE FORCE OF ADHESION THAT KEEPS ME GOING
THE FORCE OF ADHESION THAT KEEPS ME GOING:
One day I was walking down by the financial district near where now so many people have moved to live - so that unlike the old days there are actually people and families and domestic things going on so it's not just a financial 'ghost town' as it once was and I was walking just behind a young mother perhaps 28 or 30 years old and her two daughters - one still in a stroller and the other perhaps 4 years old walking alongside her and I heard that little girl say to her mother: 'So Miami was born a Florida baby and I was born in Phoenix' to which I could only think that the little girl's name was Phoenix based on the little relationship-sector pattern she'd just set up and as I listened they turned left and entered the doorway of their great big new building and I thought 'like Edgar Poe with an 'A' (like the Scarlet Letter too but this one for 'Allen')' - and then I heard another voice right behind that one - 'the world is a wicked and evil place in the Devil's grip' and it wasn't spoken with any irony or swagger rather just steadily and in a slow deliberate and strong voice - leading the listener to understand the urgency and seriousness of the situation being presented - and at that point you don't know how much more down and dirty life could get or how much lower you could go - like some Mister Juba of jive running freely across an unending stage the questions arise and the questions fade : and so something like Melchizedek's mother comes forth to greet the day - a newspaper truck unloading at the curb two guys with briefcases and scarves talking head-to-head close in as they walked in a 'CONTENT PREDICTABLE' manner as some other Lucky Luciano lookalike walks the town abutting the pavement criss-crossing the sides of buildings hugging the walls while I too walked watching sunlit reflections of high broad glass windows undertaking to see ideas in things as they were - what was behind designs the hows and whys of angle and form all on some crazy road to Portman deluged by frogs and pebbles - things falling hard from the rainy sky - and all the cars were stopped as the crest of the hill before them became too treacherous with the slick and sheen of thousands of dead frogs as they'd all somehow awakened from torpor so as to to all take off en masse to cross the wooded country road seemingly at once and without any regard for anything of life limb presence or danger : squished in great numbers the frog-glistening road was now beside being wet as slippery as glass from the mush of dead frogs and this is true as I tell it and the place was right at the crest at Wyalusing Rocks where the old Route Six crossed the area by the sign which states : 'up this road was the site of the 'Camptown Races' made famous in the song of that name by Stephen Foster' and this was on the way to Towanda Pennsylvania where it seemed that Stephen Foster had lived and it was the Wyalusing Rocks where Marie Antoinette was supposed to have been relocated to in exile but she never made it - a place called French Asylum - and right from there is a wonderful view far down below of the Susquehanna River cutting through the landscape and rocks as it meanders along on its way south towards Philadelphia where it gushes forth into the Delaware or somewhere like that - a commingling of great American waters now almost gone in its usefulness or merit and once there was a small coffee-stop souvenir shop there overlooking all the rocks and the valley below them and the old timer and his wife inside this place had been proprietors of it for some 45 years and this was back in 1969 or so when actually the 'golden age' of this sort of automobile travel had already been eclipsed by other things - high-speed expressways and interstates which cut through things instead of meandering around and those roads took other people (a whole other 'sort' of people) to other places with little concern or regard for these small stops of old heritage or curiosity value and it was all a shame really and because of it the small place just mentioned closed up and the two elderly people just stayed there - living simply as they'd always done - with but maybe a coffee pot going and some daily donuts for sale (their choice for not many ever stopped) - no longer anything bigger than that no menu no selections no specials and it became just a place to wither and linger or pass some other time during the day thinking about all that had transpired these many years and they still lived there last I knew (a long time ago that) but are most probably dead themselves now or taken away and buried somewhere else with all their stories and lore and observations too and the entire world has changed around them and by them and no one knows a thing and gets along quite well without it too thank you ma'am but I must always consider the time-frame of how these things occur and why the world (strange as it is) develops in the ways it does and who knows what of the past or of what has transpired and happened and if nothing is 'known' really does it change anything or is it all myth and personal mythmaking by those who were involved in it ? and my personal quest then for a while became the quest of a moving wind upon waters a working God in all things and I became obsessed with the concept of all that holy energy being worked through all things : East River fishmarkets and trucks garages the wisps of a wind along the waterway tugboats and barges police boats and fireboats the ramshackle old yellow ferries lumbering insanely back and forth all day and night as they crashed headlong into piers and took on cars lined up like fat marks on the long blocks of wood and they too were held back by some hand of God keeping all things in check in balance keeping cars from falling into the waters keeping people (faceless the mass moving) from falling down dead - smokes and noises fires and lights - and all things had a part of Him in them like some fiery tempest furnace lit from within by a never-ending force of self-sourced fire and light and warmth and that kept the world spinning and all things on it holding on - a sacred force of gravity also known and seen by the land as ADHESION and a force of something to be reckoned with recognized and worshipped too.
-
If a man could walk sideways along the bottom of the sea - scuttling like a crab perhaps - I'd then believe in something greater than what we experience but it is not to be and like the cistern antics of some runaway prophet and a sister of Abraham too there are just too many things to consider before making a decision of some other kind : where to go when the wind is done how to drink the waters which cannot be drunk and where to place fires which will never go out and WE MUST BE SAFEGUARDED too against something : mythology and all the fabric of lies and deceit : for we are but men with cars and houses and useless for anything else as now we have squandered all nature and ruined all the land and cut all the trees and broken vows to relent and we will never again be passive and holy for we are a terror engulfing the face of the world before us and we perform all the dances of death as needed and 'we arise in the mornings and live through our dreads and finish our destructions and return to our beds' and that is the summation of all our calendars and celebrations and wishes and hopes.
One day I was walking down by the financial district near where now so many people have moved to live - so that unlike the old days there are actually people and families and domestic things going on so it's not just a financial 'ghost town' as it once was and I was walking just behind a young mother perhaps 28 or 30 years old and her two daughters - one still in a stroller and the other perhaps 4 years old walking alongside her and I heard that little girl say to her mother: 'So Miami was born a Florida baby and I was born in Phoenix' to which I could only think that the little girl's name was Phoenix based on the little relationship-sector pattern she'd just set up and as I listened they turned left and entered the doorway of their great big new building and I thought 'like Edgar Poe with an 'A' (like the Scarlet Letter too but this one for 'Allen')' - and then I heard another voice right behind that one - 'the world is a wicked and evil place in the Devil's grip' and it wasn't spoken with any irony or swagger rather just steadily and in a slow deliberate and strong voice - leading the listener to understand the urgency and seriousness of the situation being presented - and at that point you don't know how much more down and dirty life could get or how much lower you could go - like some Mister Juba of jive running freely across an unending stage the questions arise and the questions fade : and so something like Melchizedek's mother comes forth to greet the day - a newspaper truck unloading at the curb two guys with briefcases and scarves talking head-to-head close in as they walked in a 'CONTENT PREDICTABLE' manner as some other Lucky Luciano lookalike walks the town abutting the pavement criss-crossing the sides of buildings hugging the walls while I too walked watching sunlit reflections of high broad glass windows undertaking to see ideas in things as they were - what was behind designs the hows and whys of angle and form all on some crazy road to Portman deluged by frogs and pebbles - things falling hard from the rainy sky - and all the cars were stopped as the crest of the hill before them became too treacherous with the slick and sheen of thousands of dead frogs as they'd all somehow awakened from torpor so as to to all take off en masse to cross the wooded country road seemingly at once and without any regard for anything of life limb presence or danger : squished in great numbers the frog-glistening road was now beside being wet as slippery as glass from the mush of dead frogs and this is true as I tell it and the place was right at the crest at Wyalusing Rocks where the old Route Six crossed the area by the sign which states : 'up this road was the site of the 'Camptown Races' made famous in the song of that name by Stephen Foster' and this was on the way to Towanda Pennsylvania where it seemed that Stephen Foster had lived and it was the Wyalusing Rocks where Marie Antoinette was supposed to have been relocated to in exile but she never made it - a place called French Asylum - and right from there is a wonderful view far down below of the Susquehanna River cutting through the landscape and rocks as it meanders along on its way south towards Philadelphia where it gushes forth into the Delaware or somewhere like that - a commingling of great American waters now almost gone in its usefulness or merit and once there was a small coffee-stop souvenir shop there overlooking all the rocks and the valley below them and the old timer and his wife inside this place had been proprietors of it for some 45 years and this was back in 1969 or so when actually the 'golden age' of this sort of automobile travel had already been eclipsed by other things - high-speed expressways and interstates which cut through things instead of meandering around and those roads took other people (a whole other 'sort' of people) to other places with little concern or regard for these small stops of old heritage or curiosity value and it was all a shame really and because of it the small place just mentioned closed up and the two elderly people just stayed there - living simply as they'd always done - with but maybe a coffee pot going and some daily donuts for sale (their choice for not many ever stopped) - no longer anything bigger than that no menu no selections no specials and it became just a place to wither and linger or pass some other time during the day thinking about all that had transpired these many years and they still lived there last I knew (a long time ago that) but are most probably dead themselves now or taken away and buried somewhere else with all their stories and lore and observations too and the entire world has changed around them and by them and no one knows a thing and gets along quite well without it too thank you ma'am but I must always consider the time-frame of how these things occur and why the world (strange as it is) develops in the ways it does and who knows what of the past or of what has transpired and happened and if nothing is 'known' really does it change anything or is it all myth and personal mythmaking by those who were involved in it ? and my personal quest then for a while became the quest of a moving wind upon waters a working God in all things and I became obsessed with the concept of all that holy energy being worked through all things : East River fishmarkets and trucks garages the wisps of a wind along the waterway tugboats and barges police boats and fireboats the ramshackle old yellow ferries lumbering insanely back and forth all day and night as they crashed headlong into piers and took on cars lined up like fat marks on the long blocks of wood and they too were held back by some hand of God keeping all things in check in balance keeping cars from falling into the waters keeping people (faceless the mass moving) from falling down dead - smokes and noises fires and lights - and all things had a part of Him in them like some fiery tempest furnace lit from within by a never-ending force of self-sourced fire and light and warmth and that kept the world spinning and all things on it holding on - a sacred force of gravity also known and seen by the land as ADHESION and a force of something to be reckoned with recognized and worshipped too.
-
If a man could walk sideways along the bottom of the sea - scuttling like a crab perhaps - I'd then believe in something greater than what we experience but it is not to be and like the cistern antics of some runaway prophet and a sister of Abraham too there are just too many things to consider before making a decision of some other kind : where to go when the wind is done how to drink the waters which cannot be drunk and where to place fires which will never go out and WE MUST BE SAFEGUARDED too against something : mythology and all the fabric of lies and deceit : for we are but men with cars and houses and useless for anything else as now we have squandered all nature and ruined all the land and cut all the trees and broken vows to relent and we will never again be passive and holy for we are a terror engulfing the face of the world before us and we perform all the dances of death as needed and 'we arise in the mornings and live through our dreads and finish our destructions and return to our beds' and that is the summation of all our calendars and celebrations and wishes and hopes.
posted by gary j. introne at 6:53 PM
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