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See this phrase translated! |
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| MENU Subway Surfer In the Eye of the Beholder Court Jester Rare Vintage |
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 KAY...It's
like this. We're sitting in a Rock Garden in front of a coffee
house that's actually in a small house with a front porch, and a bay window,
with a nice piece of stained glass hanging in the window, which you can see
from the outside when you're sitting on that side of the entrance walk. There are
Locust trees for shade and you've seen them grow to maturity. Some afternoons,
in the summer, when the lion's share of the college students are on break, you
may well be surrounded by people behaving like "retired writers in the sun" and
other such famously obscure artist types. Our table company has rambled all over
the country and the world over 20 years time and yet we find ourselves
re-collecting at our beloved Runcible Spoon in Bloomington, the cultural
"mecca" of the Uplands of Southern Indiana. We
share a laugh when some one quotes whomever it was that said, "If you can
remember the sixties, you weren't there!" I chuckle and say,
"yeah...right. What century? Which MILLENIUM?" Decade brackets seem to delete
themselves as we come up with hair-raising adventures, near misses, and coulda
beens from our Collective Past. When they happened appears to not be very
important to us - just the sheer exhilaration of sharing. So here you are. The
scene is set and the bubble-up "machine" is ready to go.What
follows may really only matter very much to your fellow cyber-typist, here, but I
trust that you my gentle readers, may have a few "bubble-ups" of
your own to share with the rest of us. If you are so inspired send me some. I will
get back to you, and for sure we can build a file of them and then publish if
that's what the Spirit of Recollection calls for. I'm looking forward to hearing
from you as I load up some of my own favorite anecdotes, tales, rambles, rants and
whatchamacall'ms - like the time I invented subway surfing on
the Broadway line underneath NY, NY...SUBWAY SURFER Appetizer  HE STORY begins early one
morning in Manhattan's Lower East Side. Fifth floor
walk-up - 3 room flat. Toilets with the tank up on the wall...2 W.C.s for four
apartments...Luke, a trip-master MONKEY, if there ever was/is/will
be one, has awakened me with a gentle tap on the shoulder. Truly intrepid spirit,
this young man Luke - ex-Catholic seminary student. Could have shown the Merry Pranksters a
thing or two. (In fact,
I'm devoting a Page of his own to - let me call him Legendary Luke)Luke
hands
me a glass full of water with some milky emulsion swirling in it. One
look at his face, and I know it's the "magic" elixir
Dr. Osmond gave Henry and Clare Boothe Luce way back in those fabled days before
the controlled
substance listing of Albert Hoffman's Legendary "SOMA"
Discovery. I get
dressed - Luke and a third fellow, Barry, and I head out for what has proven to be
my best outing in NYC. Luke suggests we go to the Episcopal Cathedral of St. John
the Divine (...alleged author of the Book of Revelations). As I recall, we walked
up fifth avenue to Central Park, visited a friend of Luke's near Columbia
University, then the Cathedral. It was Stunning. An awe-inspiring silence pervades
the interior - "sacred" space. Set aside from commerce's hustle-bustle. Or, as a
Qabbalist friend of mine once said - DON'T LET THE MARKET PLACE INVADE YOUR
IMAGINATION...or, as "The KID from Hibbing, MN" has sung since
then, "Your mind is your temple, keep it
beautiful and free, Don't let an egg get laid in it by something you can't see."
(Once I came to Bloomington, I would discover that the
Towers of St. John's are being finished with limestone from...the Uplands of
Southern Indiana!). UKE TELLS US how he would frequent this place
during his seminary days. Takes
Barry and I to one of the side chapels, teaches me to cast the I Ching with 3
coins, so as to divine the situation at hand. As I recall, we got the one of the
64 possible hexagrams called the Wanderer. Indeed. He then says, "Watch
this - everytime I've been here..." as he walks to the apse of the
Cathedral,
the spot behind the cross shape of the building, it's behind the main altar - ya
see nothing there at all! We reach that "spot", and the organist
starts ruminating through Bach. All of a sudden, he's playing Wimoweh,
Wimoweh - the part that goes: "In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the
lion sleeps to" - then he doesn't play the last note of the phrase,
and goes back into Bach. Barry and I - agape - look at Luke. What you would
see, too, is a beatific grin...Main Course  O, THEN LUKE mentions he has a friend he'd like us to meet on Staten
Island. The three of us lads take the Broadway Subway line. Now, the express we
took to get down town to the Ferry slip at the end of Manhattan has some places
where it doesn't stop for dozens of blocks. We move to the front car of the train,
next to the operator's cab. Nobody else in the car! Perfect!! We take turns
watching the light show as the train picks up speed and roars through local stop
only stations.
It's fun but I get bored fairly quickly, so I step back and let Luke and Barry
watch the signal lights. Then the thought strikes like thunder and the lightning
goes off in my head. The floor of the rolling subway car is a surf-board! If you
have to grab for a railing or an overhead hand grip, that's a wipe-out!! I make
this suggestion to the other two. Instant Cognition! They're Game!! So we spend
the rest of the long stretch before the next express stop riding the rocking
rolling waves of the car moving on the tracks as if we were on a board. I can
still see those knee, elbow, shoulder hip shifts we all did. Did anyone wipe
out? If you can remember the sixties, you weren't...(giggle, giggle) By the time
we get to Battery Park, the giddiness of free form space odyssey is gone, so
we "play it straight" on our way to Staten Island. Luke's friend is out, so we
simply ride the ferry back to Manhattan. He takes us to see another friend of
his called Angelique. the day is done. Goodbye for now, more soon. Hope you've
enjoyed your first "meal" here at Jesse's Cyber Cafe.SKATEBOARDING was like? This entreé Updated November 28, 1999 - Astral Tempus |
