Outage
The city was something else/shadowy bodies in the street/eyes flashing in the dark/finding our way by touch. I felt newly at home and oddly confirmed, explicit/how dark and strange every day is to me/finding my way by touch/eyes flashing in the dark.
My buddy Dan and his Molly made a down-payment on digs in the city (after two chaotic weeks of hard looking) just before the power went out, and dragged themselves over the bridge, and met me and my Molly and Jeremy (who is also Dan's brother). We met some neighbors for the first time on the roof, shared a meal and got drunk and watched the moon rise over the 14th street power station.
Jeremy took pictures too.
the Empire State was stilled
but Tompkins was alight/cops for one night instructed "hands off"
I almost cried with happy and longing for more than like this/which was, after all, no more than can happen any weekend in a college town/or up-and-down the Jersey shore...
but in the darkness beyond the fire-light something else was moving/people touching in new possibility
we met a chick with three new kittens and Jeremy touched them.
By day 2 it wasn't romantic anymore. Food was scarce overnight/restaurants and supermarkets stayed closed friday in the East Village (last to get power back). It was clear all businesses had been instructed "no responsibility if you choose to open" and fuck the hungry. Bloomberg, full of smug lies, falls asleep at the drop of a hat to demonstrate his confidence. We are being governed by a narcoleptic lizard.
Mol and I were pushing the cart up first avenue when the lights came back on, red&green "like christmas" said molly.
In the new light "like coming home after a trip and turning the first light on" Mol said. In the new light we saw a lot of hungry and tired people and we fed them --"first hot food in 36 hours!" One guy had walked to LaGuardia from the east village to meet his mother in case she had arrived, which of course she hadn't. I cooked him a BBQ chicken sandwich.
It was a hard night but it made us happy, and we took Saturday for victorious rest.
Posted by Sam on
03:56 AM
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Comments (2)
A lot better
Today, thanks entirely to the keen eyes, charming demeanor, and sheer persistence of my father in finding and securing it, I have a new a spot to store the cart, a spot which is a hundred dollars a month cheaper and about 15 blocks closer to my vending location. It's so close, in fact, that it is within eyeshot.
The difference this is going to make to the entire pushcart project is incalculable. The cart is pushable, but it is heavy. I have no reliable way of measuring, but if I had to hazard a guess, I would say it weighs about 500 pounds fully loaded (my dad guesses 700). While pushing it through the poorly-paved streets of downtown Manhattan had a certain Sisyphean charm, it was making me anticipate the weekends with dread. Moreover, I was maxing out at about 3 days on the street every 2 weeks, and that just ain't enough.
So here's so long to the push. So long to the toil, the drenching sweat, and the copious vivid yellow pee*; so long to the low energy, dullness of affect, and frequent confusion; so long to the dreams of an ox-like physique; and so long to the Mysterious Mr. Yee, whose story has still not been told and who could turn up again anywhere. Yes, so long to all that. It's been good to know you, but I've got to be rolling along...
*uric acid is produced as a by-product of protien breakdown during muscular exertion, so the morning after I did my pushes I had the most fantasticly colored pee (and so much of it)!
Posted by Sam on
09:11 PM
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