New York is next to Sierra Leone

new york is another country Fellini said NYC was like a huge spacecraft with reps from all social strata, color,creed...then shook up and its denizens released:, dazed and mad.this is New York sayeth Frederico Fellini. Another artiste, this one a Spanish wordsmith , Lorca, says this: New York is something awful,something monstrous.I like to walk the streets, lost, but I recognize that New York is the world's greatest lie.New York is Senegal with machines. It is a different country.Bored and angry, bored with being angry ,angry at being bored...this is the common facial expression, the attitude of all and sundry.If somebody does show emotion, one has to assume their cheese has slipped off their cracker or they're new, like me.New Yorkers are devoid of human qualities. They don't react.They seem "tough" to some naive Americans and Euros but, in reality, it is all fluff. They seem brash, brazen, bulls in a china shop who never quite break anything. Its this action that is stillborn in a facade that is New York. Yet, I love the fact that I could be killed by a car driven by a person who cannot utter an understandable sentence in any form of English---not even a pidgin, a creole a patois a slang riddled syllabic sewer ...no, they speak in Pashtoon, Manx Gaelic, a Siberian neolithic Turkic language spoken by humans with four tongues . They stand on subway platforms and no one, not one person will notice say, a Linda Blair spazzin out, a rape, an alien invasion or a stampede of butterflies with diaphanous wings laced with turqouise veins...but, theyd notice money. growing from the cracked sidewalk...so strange how all the Diasporas here meld into the attitude I've just described.A cab driver from Amman, Jordan, nonchalantly missing a semi by a nano-inch, casually describes Bedouin relations with Circassians; the Galway bartender with eyes lacking life, muttering about his wifes recent heart attack, his eyes looking aquatic, slightly filmy,milky. The barber f. Cote d'Voire who smokes like an ebony Jack Nicholson constantly contemplating suicide in his slow monotone French accent. It's the ones who exhibit life, who smile , who nod, who jump...these are the recent arrivals, the ones not"cool" not New York yet....New York hasnt levelled their zest, their inner Zorba and/or Dionysius...these are the barbarians,still all beating heart and elan..... Brendan Behan said he loved New York because its the place hed least likely get bit by a goat. He loved this joint for what it didnt have.Likewise, I like the fact I will never get poison oak or ivy,leprosy perhaps ,ok, but never attacked by a puma...just a man in Pumas. Some Columbian academians the other day strolled thru the park pointing and causing a brouhaha over what they deemed a peacock(a female turkey).Cute. Funny, that a hundred years ago and theyd probably all know the diff. twixt a cow and sheep, hay bales and a pile of worthless grass.Ah, but then history and industrialization happened with a mechanical thud and they migrated to the urban areas., to the Bostons, the Philadelphias, the one and only New York...abandoning the pastoral, the bucolic, the natural for the manmade, the pandemonium, the thyroidal bee hive called Gotham. Am I bitter?No. Frazzled? A tad. Fate has thrown me into this spaceship and I'm only now beginning to acclimate myself to the frenzy. Give me a week and I'll be bored and angry with it all. Or, more likely buying a ticket to Senegal.

Posted by Chukchi at 1:40 AM 0 comments