From: boutell@isis.cshl.org (Tom Boutell)
Subject: NYC
Organization: Cold Spring Harbor Labs
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 02:20:07 GMT


NYC
---

Someone asked whether you get hit by more raindrops when running,
or when walking. I assume their goal was to get out of the rain.
Mine is somewhat different, but the answer to the question is
still relevant. It all depends on the character of the rain.

When it's raining wet slattery carbon and the taste is uniformly
bitter I'm all for running, not because I'll get less wet (I haven't
done the physics, but I suspect I'll get hit by more rain) but
because I want to get inside, out of the rain, as quickly as possible.
Misery is misery, be it mild or intense. Standing in the rain 
with your tongue out pretending it's pleasant, sort of, will
only get you wet, and fools no one. The best approach to an oncoming 
thunderhead is to struggle through it. You get out on the other side faster, 
with a better story to tell. 

I am ready and willing to live somewhere. Moving for the sake of moving 
has become an excuse and not a pleasure,
and I am now coming to the admission that I should not 
be jealous of birds. They see everything from a great height, but
the message arrives in a miniscule brain, a brain with little capacity
for the interconnection of detail. There are evolutionary explanations
for this. My explanation is that birds see too much too quickly
for any of it to matter.

But I can't live here. This morning, the radio in my boss's car:
"The Inaugurbzzzitttitttittitsang a song forbzzzztttzzzz." Trying to
listen to the voice of the rest of us, tuning it in on a crystal
set in the Galapagos Islands. Rare, obselete birds, protected by natural
obstacles: the sea. The air. New York City, the great singularity
through which all things entering Long Island must be filtered.
All things leaving Long Island do so through that filter also.
The waste of the island cannot be a source of concern because
it vanishes through the portal and is not seen again.
A signal cannot penetrate it, not unchanged. And so I cannot
live here, because it would be a mistake to say that the grass 
is always greener. It would be a mistake to say that it is 
green at all.

I want to live in the telephone switchboard. I want to live in the
center of the network. I want to stand in a roomful of bright children.
I want to see the consequences of their actions and my actions 
as plain as the stroke of a paintbrush. 

In cities everything is obvious, and everything that happens
is the consequence of a human action. 
There is no rain, only the results of what we have purchased,
by our wealth or lack of it, our effort or lack of it. The meat can be 
shipped in, the garbage can be shipped out, but the garbage still
piles up in the streets. Its existence can be ignored, but only
by conscious, daily choice. It cannot be removed by walking 
slowly or running quickly, because it will still be there when we
come back outside. The weather does not change until we change it. 

And the meat piles up in the streets also. The unwanted and
unacknowledged, the homeless and wretched, are not in faraway
places being supported by faraway money checked off on an annual
basis. The unwanted are on the streets, and they cannot or will not
leave, and they must eventually be acknowledged. Their existence
can be ignored, but only by conscious, daily choice. They cannot
be removed by walking slowly past, head to the side or down,
quarter in outstretched palm, or by running, jumping over their feet
on the stoop, quickly closing the door. They are still there when
we come back outside; they cannot or will not blow away or disperse
along a fault line with another passing front. There is a
human temperature inversion hanging over cities, that keeps
the weather steady, keeps the people (and the garbage) where they are. 
Whatever divinity disperses storms elsewhere has said, "you
were cocky enough to build this place; let's see if you can
keep it in order. Expect no help from me." 

It is just such a place that calls me, calls me because however
difficult its existence may be, it exists at its own expense, 
on its own terms, and if I am able to live there, if the 
firm can break even in the heart and in the pocket, then 
anything is possible, any place capable of redemption, any person
capable of the divine.


-T

Uncas Walk

-- 
Tom Boutell, boutell@cshl.org

Clausthaler is the best non - alcoholic beer in the known universe.
Newsgroups: talk.bizarre