minding the gap

Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth ~ Mike Tyson  (1997/1987)

Premiously is not a word.

Betty Shabazz’s wake was june 26 1997; Hong Kong was being turned over to China. Except it turns out that Tyson quote is NOT from the Tyson/Hollyfield fight of 1997, where Mike famously bit off part of an ear, but from the Biggs/Tyson fight of 1987. While little Jessica McClure was down a well.

I was already deeply suspicious of “mindfulness” and it turns out I was right to be so. Now I have “meaning” in my sights and it’s looking more dubious by the day. It may be that “meaning” makes fascists of us all. But can we live without it? Will get back to you on that.

Parts of Convent Avenue are, like nuns, closed to thru traffic. The list of things I’m afraid of is very long. Some of them make sense; many more don’t. Sometimes when people find out I’m afraid of flying they tell me it is more dangerous to drive in a car. Like I’ve never considered. Fully aware of that! And also afraid. I never relax while I’m driving; it’s always mortal combat and a sweet relief to survive. All of my fears ultimately come down to survival. Having struggled into this meat sheath, I’m so (surprisingly?) reluctant to relinquish it. Shuffle off the old MC as it were. Isn’t everyone?

Shuffle off this mortal coil….

Shuffle off to Buffalo…

Life on Planet Earth is like a locked-room mystery; anyone who figures it out dies before they can tell the others. Last Girl Left. Hac Lacrimarum Valle.

Couple walking past me, we meet mid-street, Frederick Douglass Boulevard and 127th. There’s an enormous hole in the street, black against the white line paint of the crosswalk. “Wow, look at that” he says and she answers:

“Oh yes, that old thing”.

A short Latino man dressed in black with red spangles outlining the back pockets of his jeans, sparkling in the noonday sun. We are near to the Soul Savings Station. 

Here on 131st street, lived Jelly Roll Morton. In brief. 

Then here, this knock-off Mr. Softee playing the Yellow Rose of Texas followed by the theme from Romeo and Juliet followed by … not La Cucaracha, what’s the other one the traveling minstrel Mexican bands play on the subway?

Pray instead of pay? play instead of pray?

Everybody has a plan…

It was probably in response to Biggs’ claim: “We have our plan. And remember that fighters do not beat fighters; styles do.”, as quoted in Bill Gallo’s boxing column (NY Daily News 8/18/87): a column which starts out sounding pretty racist nearly 40 years on: “the drums started to pound yesterday from the Grand Hyatt Hotel. The beat of the tom-toms kept repeating: Heavyweight champion Mike Tyson and challenger Tyrell Biggs go at it for 15 rounds in Atlantic City’s Convention Center on Oct. 16.” Tyson was favored 2 to 1.

It was a technical knockout.

Now I’m on the train coming back from the movies. Headphones on because I have to listen to the Banana album. Sunday Morning, just as a small Black (is that important? discuss) girl is wheeled onto the car in her stroller and she holds this exquisite clear balloon which has a smaller balloon inside and the smaller balloon is a Sponge Bob with flashing colored lights and her expression! we are sitting exactly diagonally from one another on the train, how can I see her expression so clearly from that far away? maybe it’s not true that we are at opposite ends, a misremembered detail.

He hands her a crescent moon but it’s really a banana. On an indigo stage.

Disenchantment.

Dis-enchainment.

8 jan 2022