Broadway under
the El. In the perpetual half light it's always the grey
New York of 'thirties, 'forties, and 'fifties newsreels
and noir films I see. Collars upturned and faces downcast
against the gloom as a paper boy hawks the Evening
News. Today's inhabitants and places-- men playing
dominoes on upturned boxes, families in their Sunday best
attending storefront churches, cuchifritos joints,
anonymous doorways and holes-in-the-wall where a ten dollar bill
exchanges for a glycerine envelope--
are like ghosts haunting a forgotten landscape.
A spring afternoon several years
ago.
Sunlight plays down through the sleepers of subway tracks above; my
steady pace imparts to the light a rhythmic flickering. At Broadway
and
Flushing, I can feel an attack approaching. The
screeches of subway cars overhead are the sounds of
neurons firing too fast, the brilliant sheen of a metallic
hotdog cart flashes explosions of light in the back of my head. I see
the street scene in fits and starts, as one moment people, cars,
corners
are in the distance; the next, they're upon me. I should shade my
eyes, sit
down and try to calm the electric storm in my brain. Just past the
corner of
Flushing, outside the Burger King and across the street from Woodhull
Hospital, I fall to the sidewalk.
