EPIPHANY

32. EPIPHANY:

And it's been like that a million times for me too and it always seems that people pass out of your life as quickly as they enter it but this time it's me doing the entering - as I walked right into St. Francis Xavier Church on 16th Street and 6th Avenue or something - right over by the big corner with the Foundling Hospital on it and the old row of ladies' shopping emporiums called 'Ladies' Mile' from way back when shopping in all-one place was a big thing and they used to erect these massive temple-like edifices all along the street right here and these (for their day) vast shopping stores held department after department of everything one would like to buy and that was back in the day of course when still everything was new and women themselves hadn't a clue about cosmetics and jewelry and carpeting and such and all appointments and all accessories and everything like them was considered vast and exotic and distant and strange and these big stores all of a sudden huddled along Sixth Avenue or wherever would get the ladies all decked out in their big dresses and hats and they'd be carriage'd in from wherever they lived or perhaps they'd walk over from Gramercy or Washington Square or whatever and they'd regale themselves with a thrill of big-deal shopping like it was some world's fair for themselves and the remnants of this whatever they be - at least the strange buildings of worshipful temples of commerce and greed and finery and money which are left behind in a row of granite marble and stone - still somehow sing of the olden days around the old Madison Square and the Flatiron District and all that - but it's a new silence now in a different world but this time I crawl into St. Francis and the sexton is there in the lobby and he's thinking I guess I want something else so he puts all the lights on for me in that lobby - which was otherwise dank and gray - but I pretend then to be reading the little scrolls on the wall and I enter the sanctuary and then the church and as quickly as I make a right turn in I'm face to face with some street person huddled down on the floor in a crouch with his two canvas bags and some possessions and he's staring straight out into the church space vacantly and his white beard and dirty clothes catch me and I wonder for a second if he's a prop or something some feast-day ribaldry to stop the visitor from passing the collection boxes and candle-offering payment slots which are everywhere but I realize he's for real and not knowing what to do I glumly walk right past him and start right away feeling strange about that thinking it was a test or something and what was one supposed to do anyway - he'd come to the church for aid not to me - and the Jesuits who ran this place should have taken it on themselves to carry that burden feed the guy fill his pockets give him room and rent whatever but he doesn't seem to care anyway so I walk on in and sit down towards the front all the while checking out the amazingly rich and ostentatious (though beautiful) surroundings and carvings and stonework and art along the walls where twelve grand paintings of the Stations of the Cross bleakly portray a fate I'd shared I thought a million times too but 'Jesus meets his Mother' and 'Simon Peter greets Jesus' all of that meant little to me right now and I really only wanted to shake that guy's hand and whisper to him something uplifting or a friendly word but I didn't even do that and my head anyway was spinning as I realized that the same ostentation that had brought the Ladies' Mile all that stuff I'd just seen was the same ostentation somehow that had brought the Jesuits to this pass and all their power and possession and might and right really meant little other than this edifice and in today's latter world even the most simple captions atop the Stations of the Cross bore no relevance to anything and any firestorm of any Jesuit when set up against the firestorm of the commerce and might of the entire free city striving to be was over and finished before it started and TODAY by contrast the trash and filth and garbage and crap of the world had taken over and ram-rodded everything wrong and broken down the throats of the entire scene and this church in its way meant nothing but refuge for some broken lost soul staring out blankly and someone like myself in turn a reformed loser in once the same situation working backwards from memory and rewalking every foul step I'd once taken even that bad reflection was a reflection of the world a'borning once a long long time ago and now dead shot certain stillborn for sure but the only epiphany that I'd get on this Feast of the Epiphany in some rugged old proud defiled and tortured church (beset now with crumbled brick broken scaffolding and entire sections of huge granite steps twisted and chipped) the only one I'd get is some message marked 'return to sender' or something because it's one man by himself against every other rotten man right now and ever as it is that prayer is only for the deaf even that doesn't stop nor start what's needed in the world and that's one-by-one singular solitary and winning redemption conversion and repudiation from the Fifth Avenue Library steps to Ladies' Mile to the broken Foundling Home steps of St. Francis Xavier itself - and here I was and here that other fellow was and here we all are and maybe some greater-than-us cosmic Sexton of the stars and the solar system can really help us anew by turning on the lights one more time for us all the lights of the world itself and everything else that ever was and will ever be.