—–I hadn’t heard of this person who had just come in the living room, as we were all milling about, but someone was saying they were famous, and then I thought I saw people were looking over at this person and gazing at him, rather more intently than you would someone who was just, well, anybody. Well, so I went into the kitchen and I heard someone say, “did you see who just came in?” excitedly to another one of our friends, and I felt this tremendous tiredness suddenly, it was just a totally lethargy seized me. So I went upstairs, though our house was crawling with people, and I was the host–but I just felt I had to think about this way it appeared people were reacting to the presence of this famous person. I didn’t even know him, and when I went upstairs I felt like I was holding this persons fame in the balance, as I was considering it so assidulously, like it was up to me to confirm that, yes, it was alright to fawn over him and make him the center of attention; for I know, fame is attractive, that is unavoidable, and I am all for it as long as we make our own judgments, of course, in each case. But let he who deserves fame receive it, and let him receive it gladly, and pay back his fans by acknowledging them graciously. I was thinking along those lines. And meanwhile, downstairs apparently there were enough people who did know of this person’s accomplishments, just how famous he deservedly was, so that a general acclamation was underway. When I came back down they were already cheering this guy like he had won an award right there, or just given a speech. I thought for a wild moment it was me that was receiving this sudden recognition, as the cheering grew louder just as I descended. But I wasn’t even in the sights of these people, who all had their backs turned to me and were on their tip-toes, craning their necks to get the experience and actually be a part of this famous person’s new moment of . . . approbation!
—–But vicariously I felt it, what it would have been like, and I accepted that feeling with . . . approbation myself. Received and accepted, I said to myself, and approved of the possibility of such a transaction, myself to myself.

—–Cell phone in use! The question is, though, where is this man?  The answer is, he is inside the Broad Street Aqueduct that goes over the Genesse River. He is directly under the street, or maybe the Rundel Memorial Library.  More stunning than that even, he is standing in the bed of the original Erie Canal! The canal was built in 1825, and needed this massive aqueduct to take it over the Genesee River.  Canal barges loaded flour from the mills along the river here, when Rochester was known as “the Young Lion of the West”. The same bed became the Rochester subway, when this downtown section of the canal was abandoned in the 1920’s.  Outside that half-moon window we can one of modern glass buildings of downtown Rochester. Another question is; what is all that . . .  artwork?  Well, some people, notably homeless people and renegade artists, know how to go through the fence two blocks up South Ave, and traverse this tunnel. The aqueduct walls are completely covered with spectacular graffiti. That answers many questions, or begins to.  Now, we should say, the person himself is Thomas Grasso, of the Canal Society of NY, and we’re taking a tour as part of a project for the World Canal Conference next year. And I am thinking, as I snap this flash photo with my digital camera . . . well!  I am not sure what I am thinking! It is something poetic, though. Something complex enough to contain these clashing images.  Some form of thought in which the impossible past is summoned, and can stand side by side, like in a reverie, with the super-real, though highly ambiguous present moment.  The present moment, in which we are equipped with all these devices, to capture and discuss . . .

—–I was headed across the back parking lot at Grana’s Restaurant, in the driving rain about 9:30, taking the back alley to the unmarked rear entrance, and I got there right at the same time as Kurt, a regular patron at the bar.  “Not everybody knows about this door,” I said to him, as we sidestepped the wind and rain, which can really pick up in that alley, and got ourselves standing at the bar.  I was just escaping my office for an hour and the sight of my notebooks spread out like, well, account books, on my desk, so I was pretty wordless, I even neglected to pour the beer in the glass, but I just stood there, hoping nobody would even start a conversation.
—–But Billy Grana, the bartender, came over and leaned his elbows on the bar like to talk with me, and I suddenly remembered the incident earlier in the day at the Lilac Laundromat.  I remembered it like it was a movie I had seen recently, the whole episode and it was like burning to be told. Well, you have to tell stories at the bar with dispatch, they have to be about as short as jokes, or seem like they are going to turn into jokes, and you should use quick short sentences and cast things off, with an air of joviality–though you best be criticizing the crazy world.  Like when you are in the bar you’re not in the world out there, but you report on how crazy it is out there.  Anyway, I gave the shortest possible version of the episode at Lilac Laundromat, more properly the parking lot outside there, to Billy Grana, and it went over so well he was saying like, “wow, that is really incredible!”  So I turned then to Kurt, a bigger challenge,  for he doesn’t talk much at all, or listen to much; and  I told the story of this incident identically to him—although he was fidgety and got distracted just a few sentences in, and I had to do like three stop and restarts to finally get to the pay-off ending.

—–Okay, I said, what happened was I out on an errand, and I parked my car in the lot beside Lilac Laundromat, which was completely empty, I mean so empty I could choose, absurdly, any space at all to occupy, and I went into the hardware store a few doors down the block.  I was in the hardware store only a few minutes when a frantic old man came running in and said, “they’re towing your car away, you better get out there!”  Well I said,  “what? that’s impossible, I just came in here! ” But I could see how concerned the guy was, and I charged out, ran back up the block, and it was true; there was already a tow truck hooked to my car, and these two highly sarcastic, unfriendly goons were grinning at me, triumphantly. And then when I protested, they said, “too late, buddy, you’re illegally parked.”  So I said, “you can’t do this!”  And they said, “yes we can!”  Stubbornly, I said, “I’m standing here, this is theft.”  But they just said, “you parked the car, and went into the wrong store, we’re taking it, stand out of the way.”
—–So, I told Billy–who was leaning close–I said, “no, you’re wrong, I never got out of the car!”  Then, I opened the drivers side door and climbed in behind the wheel.  So, yeah, the bigger guy comes over and he says, “what are you doing?”  And I said, “go ahead, tow it–  I’d like to see you tow a car with the driver in it.”
—–“Pretty funny,” the guy said.  And I retorted, “you’re the one who’s being funny.”  Then, I started the motor.
—–So now the one goon says to the other, who’d come over to see what the delay was, “Ah, he beat us, let’s get out of here.”  And I thought . . . hell, maybe these guys are almost human.  And then I watched them sympathetically, as they unhooked the tow truck; and I drove home. I never finished my errand at the hardware store, I told Billy Grana, and if the truth be told, I arrived home with my knees shaking—for that was a pretty bold maneuver!
—–Of course they are famous at the Lilac Laundromat for towing cars;  they actually watch the place, surely.  It’s a subject for discussion, it’s an example of the crazy world. I would like to say that when I got home, after this episode, I called them and complained, said they were terrorizing the neighborhood.  That I said, “you’re really creating the impression the world has gone to hell”, with these unruly tactics.  Why do you hire these bullies who watch the parking lot, and charge such fees?  Who cares, I would hear the staff assistant mutter on the other end.

—–Okay, though, now I have to say, the really interesting thing is that the episode didn’t happen exactly like I narrated it at Grana’s Restaurant.  Actually, I didn’t pull that stunt of getting back in my car, but just argued with those guys for a while, and ended up giving them an exorbitant sum of cash to unhook the car.  They had me, was the way it looked—it was pay this right then, or twice as much if they took the car–and I had to go get it at their lot, God knows where, with no car to even get there! The truth is I completely caved in to these goons, that is the way it really went.  And after I got rid of them, the spritely man, who was not that old, actually, who had run into the store to fetch me, and who must have watched the whole scene (come to think of it), commiserated with me for some time on the sidewalk. He was highly energized as he called them “bastards” at least five times. I mean, this guy was another story. Eventually I moved my car onto the street, still sort of shaken from the contact with the twp brutish towing fellows, older myself now it seemed than the guy who had come running after me . . .   And I parked the car, the valuable car, there, and I did finish my errand which was, actually, if the truth be told,  not at the hardware store . . .
—–For it wasn’t any kind of hardware store I went into, but A-Plus Sports Cards, to pick up a surprise basketball card for my son’s collection.  But you see that actual errand seemed to be entirely too elaborate, or too interesting in itself, and therefore likely to create a tangent, so I just changed it—at Grana’s, in order to narrate the towing the car story.   The part about getting in the car and saying theatrically, “okay, tow it with me in then!”, well I guess I dreamt that up while driving home, or something. I certainly didn’t think of that on the spot in while talking to Billy Grana, but I must have imagined it, heroically, so to speak, at some point before then.  So it was waiting like as a possible version. Which when used was in fact impressive, and convincing, and I got away with it.
—–I guess the main story here is . . . the story of how I told the story. And continued to secure the reputation I have to this day, as someone who leads a life full of odd adventures that it seems could only happen to him.

—–The argument for God is not via harmony in nature, but meaning in your own life. Nothing proceeds from wondering on the profound, or the strangeness of this scene, and leaving out your own awareness.  I cannot prove the spiritual by an implication, it is instead spectacularly missing, in the very beauty of disarray. But I claim the tension, as if holding things together, and I can claim the miracle in the ordinary yard . . .

—–The argument is in the story and the sequence, both of which are invisible. Meaning is untraceable. But God exists in the arena that includes the person.  Say it again, try to make it absolutely poetic. The splendor taken apart is meaningless, just being awestruck by the silent yard, or afraid of the brittle season, won’t invoke a creator. Though clearly there is a creator, I have to think God backwards, witness it after I suffer it, recover it.  Step out the back door, inhale the rain-soaked air,  and . . . photograph it!

—–It is true that a carefree expenditure of money actually produces more (carefree) income, from unexpected sources, simply because if you are open to the one end of a transaction (giving), you are open to the other (taking). Money being a transaction flowing through you, fundamentally.  If you draw in the reins, pull back on buying a small extravagance, like a Coke in a machine because you think you’ve got that 75 cents planned elsewhere, down the road say in the road trip you planned to the penny like a fanatic, then everybody around you pulls back too. The very adventure drys up in your path.  A mere seventy-five cents is suddenly a burden, a thing not spent, because you saved it for later, so it is psychologically a debt!, a minus  . . . and you don’t even have the Coke in the car to sip on your journey.  What you’ve got is money that came to you (that you got, or took in effect, from someone), which you are holding onto a little longer.  It’s money you are holding!
—–I thought about this long and hard on the New York State Thruway between Albany and Utica, after I stopped for gas and passed up the desire to buy a Coke in a machine there.  I wondered: what is this seventy-five cents I am trying to hold onto, where did I get it and where is it going?  Because money, I’ve always known, does not represent a logical universe, but results from a situation . . .it’s part of the complicated situation of living in a universe we don’t understand.
—–Psychologically, it is like this:  there is money coming in, and there is money going out.  I even think I put money I get into my right pocket, and transfer it to my left when it is about to be spent–dishing it out with my left hand like casually, stuffing it into my right pocket like it was being put there forever.  Psychologically, it’s like you figure money coming in is deserved, and money going out is . . . being taken from you.
—–But in reality, of course, money coming in is money you took, from somewhere or someone else–they gave it to you, or the world gave it to you, for whatever reason. It is received.  And money going out is the giving, even if you spend it apparently on yourself, someone else still gets it when you spend it. The story isn’t the money you get, but what you buy with it–someone else gets the new burden–which then of course they have to contrive to get rid of, because getting money is actually like incurring a debt, you see, and no matter how much money you spend it is like you never cover that debt of the money you ever . . . earned, so to speak.  In fact, you cannot spend money fast enough, or foolishly enough, to ever cover your tracks! This is what I always end up thinking.
—–The fact that money exists at all shows we are living in a strange and complicated society, in which the most common circumstances are clouded and cursed with impenetrable confusion.  I hate to generalize, but the following categorization will make my reasoning all the more clear.  Divide all the  world into two types of people, those who are on a budget, and those who can’t even afford to have a budget.
—–Immediately you can see that the people who are on a budget are the very ones who, because they in fact have enough money to plan the budget, don’t in fact have to keep track of their money all that closely.  They just like to imagine they are being practical, and logical– because (exactly because) they refuse to acknowledge that the money they have was given to them, they really did not track it coming in. They are unable (poor souls) to see that the money they spend is a . . . donation.  Part of the great exchange, the circus! They are always trying to pull in the reins on the money which keeps flowing to them–by this artificial means, this symbolic means, of actually planning where they spend it.  So what? .  .  .   so they won’t be accused of extravagance?  But they can hardly help being extravagant, they made that decision when they decided to take so much money in the first place.  How they spend it has nothing to do with how they got it!
—–More calmly though, I speak of the people on the other side, people who can always actually count their money, because there is always a pitiful, finite amount of it, they are always forced into the issue of whether they are guilty of extravagance.  Ten times a day they have to say . . . well, maybe not, and then–the hell with it!, and watch the money disappear.  It disappears one way one week and another way the next week. It is all fascination and circumstance. There is never enough of it, because they never figured out how to . . . get that much money in the first place!
—–From my point of view, I only see money going out.  I just keep giving it away;  it’s like it amazes me, fundamentally, that anything costs anything . . . or rather that its cost should be figured in terms of money. I don’t think it’s an arrangement of a practical society, so that people get back what they put in, so to speak.  I think it is a sign of a weird situation, in which we can’t make the simplest transactions without a go-between. Money is a song and dance, and all the fun and humor is in getting rid of it.
—–How and where exactly I ever get money I don’t know. I mean, I do know technically, say on a ledger (if I kept one), but that doesn’t seem to explain it.  The truth is always my purchases are much more real, than my sources by which I get the means to make them.  I concentrate almost entirely on the spending of money–that’s what I remember, that is life.  The collecting of money, which happens  in fits and starts, only sometimes sustained, I never really credit to anything but . . . a run of luck!  And luck is fortune, fortune by definition unearned, and therefore (by my logic) a debt–to something or other.
—–As far as money is concerned, spending money has to be the goal.  As much as you can spend, the farther ahead you are–no doubt about it.  If you think this is not the case, try it!  Be a spendthrift, and see if things don’t flow your way.  Or save your money in your tightened fist . . . portion it out like you earned it by hard work, beggar!

—–There was a period in my life when I was constantly riding elevators.  As you know, every ride in an elevator results in another ride–obviously, elevator rides appearing in pairs, even if the down ride is eight hours after the up ride–though in my case it was during a period when I lived in New York City and was looking for a job, which I never got so I had innumerable job interviews in tall office buildings, up rides in fear and anticipation, down rides in a complex mood half-sorrow and half-relief.
—–During this same period I had a group of friends who were always having dinner parties, and they were all great talkers, but I was the best talker, or anyway they always wanted me to tell stories.  And it was difficult to come up with material, because I wasn’t doing much, except riding elevators.  One night I told the following true story, except I added a few details to make it more exciting.
—–I was riding this elevator, cruising upwards toward the twenty second floor and the elevator stopped about at the tenth floor, the door opened and there was a woman standing there (I remember her vividly to this day).  When the door opened she didn’t move, but she looked right at me.  I was standing dead center in the elevator, staring out, and the woman said: “excuse me, is this elevator going up or down?”
—–Well, I don’t know why I did this, but it was entirely spontaneous;  I sort of paused like to consider her question, and then I actually forgot which direction I had been going.  Then I thought, the elevator door will automatically close in about one second, and I looked her right in the eye and said: “shut up.”  The elevator door closed on her astonished face, and I went sailing upwards, out of reach, giddy with emotions I could hardly suppress.  I was about doubled over with laughter when the door opened on the twentieth floor, and I stumbled out, through a small crowd of entering elevator people.
—–I told that story at the dinner party, and it was a big hit.  I gave the impression that my life was total adventure, and I probably gave a lecture about how it is literally impossible to be bored in this world if you are alert to all the comedy in it.  But someone said they couldn’t believe I had actually done that, and I said, no it actually happened just the way I told it–only I added maybe one, or two, scenical details to make it vivid to the listeners.
—–“Oh yeah, which details?” the guy wanted to know (and he was the host of the party).
—–“Well,” I said, “I am not sure I really forgot which direction the elevator was going, literally.  I mean I did have a sense of panic, but I can’t remember exactly –it might be true I forgot.  The rest of my thoughts were exactly the way I related it,” I continued to assert, “especially the thought of saying ’shut up’, that was the main thing.”
—–“Okay,” my interrogator then said, “what was the other detail?”
—–“Oh yeah, there were two details,” I replied, “at least, that I fixed a little.”  He was looking at me like he found me out, and I had to stare right back at him, like to keep my integrity.  I said, “if you want to know, the other detail I added was . . . well, I didn’t really say ’shut up’.  I just thought of saying it, but the door closed too fast.  I was going to say it.  I did double up with laughter at the thought of it, though, and the woman never did get the answer to her question.”
—–“Thought is real,” I said, with an air of finality.
—–“Well, this is ridiculous,” the host said.  Several others panicked too–and they said, “what are we supposed to believe anyway, when we talk to you?”
—–Then I tried to salvage the elevator story by saying that really, the interesting thing is that when that question was asked I thought it was like a test question, for me–like the woman just wanted to know if I knew the answer.  It never occurred to me that she wanted to know, actually.  I mean I wasn’t trying to be cruel, certainly!  It was just this existential episode, central to my life on elevators.
—–“You are totally unreliable,” someone said.  It got to be known as “The Shut Up Story,” and since then that group of friends have never believed me about anything.  I just went entirely in the direction of adding details to everything, and I became a novelist.  In my first novel, there were many scenes on elevators, of course, for I could discourse on the subject forever.

————————–Part Two

—–It isn’t as if I don’t pay a price for these obsessions–I mean alot of suffering can eventually result from intense speculation and focus on what, to other people, may seem entirely incidental or not worth mentioning.  Obviously, the vast majority of all elevator rides taken by all the people in the world have gone on unrecorded, I mean unheralded, people just are quiet about alot of their experiences.  But once I am on a subject, I can’t leave it, every elevator ride is taken with increasing excitement;  I mean I advance in my substantial appreciation, just because I gave it thought.
—–And, I admit, there were days when I just rode on elevators for no reason at all.  I’d go into a building on Seventh Avenue, walk right up to the bank of elevators and wait, get on with other people and pretend I had a destination.  It was only awkward when, say, I’d arrive to the top floor with someone else, and have to get off–or say: “whoops, I missed my stop!”  Usually,  I’d get off, and it would be awkward if it was the lobby, say, of a Stockbroker’s firm, because anyone could tell from the look on my face I had no business there, unless I could be classified as . . . a suspicious character–so it would be under guard of heavy stares from the secretary that I would retreat, hoping the elevator would come back as soon as possible so I could go down, or rather back inside the relative safety of the elevator itself.
—–Also, I wasn’t married at this time, so I was always thinking I would meet my wife somewhere, accidentally, for I thought she, my wife, pre-existed and just needed to be looked for, like I lost her and couldn’t remember where, because of this strange life of riding elevators I felt like I’d lost a memory of more than that even–of everything somedays, and I’d keep riding like to get my memory back, scared, in a sense, to get off the elevators.  I say, this is a type of suffering.  And I would relate those stories to my friends at dinner parties, and get no sympathy, but just more laughter.  It was turning into a conversational genre, these elevator stories, and other people tried it to–or they tried subway stories, or bus ride stories.
—–I encouraged people to come up with their own stories.  It was as easy as being alert and remembering what had happened, I thought.
—–Of course you aren’t supposed to be super-alert on an elevator, you’re among a group of strangers who are supposed to stare straight ahead, and self-conscious behavior makes everyone feel uncomfortable.  But I would create episodes before I knew I had done anything, and I’d say things to people when there were just two of us.  Like . . . “nice shoes!”, if I was staring at somebody’s shoes senselessly for thirty seconds.
—–Through all this I never suffered totally, though, cataclysmically–that was reserved for the next summer, when I finally found a job, which was not in one of the office buildings as an Editorial Assistant for a publishing company (where I belonged), but, believe it or not, running a service elevator.
—–It was on 47th Street, which is called Diamond Street, where all the jewelry shops are, and I got a job running a service elevator.  I couldn’t believe they hired me, but I was desperate for work.  The trouble here was that I couldn’t operate the thing right.  It was an old-fashioned elevator, with a lever operating its up and down motion, and it didn’t stop automatically at floors, you had to make decisions, and expertly line the moving elevator up with the floor you were . . . approaching.  I was just no good at it.  Also, the doors were actually open and these guys with big boxes on wheel-carts were waiting, so they’d watch me, impatiently.  You could look right up and down the shaft and the elevator had a glass roof so I could see right out of the skylight, and I could see the vibrating wires that held the elevator up, and I was terrified (unreasonably) that the thing would suddenly drop to the basement and crash–or by some other action of its own nature suddenly zip upwards and fly right out of the building.
—–I couldn’t get the floors lined up, but would slowly approach the moving floor–or, obviously,  it was me that was moving, the floor wasn’t . . . so,  I was always disoriented–and then I’d flinch and my hand would move the lever too quickly so I’d drop suddenly, half a floor.  The movers, with boxes full of diamonds, would curse at me.  I had that job two weeks, and I was demoted on the janitorial staff, to cleaning bathrooms.   They put me on the fifteenth floor and told me to clean the bathrooms on every floor, like that was enough to keep me busy for years.  I quit that job on the seventh floor.
—–Some people say they decided to become writers.  I think in my case it was . . . unavoidable.

—–I enter the conversation at the point where something is in dispute, a topic is rolling, being handed around, and now one person has been spurred on, forced to state a position, and into venturing what they believe.  I have been watching them talk, and when I see this eruption, gluing the participants to the issue, such as they see it!, and when I see that someone has decided to defend a point, has their hackles up, is likely unpracticed, but has only been surrounded by an unfortunate assembly, which they must have misjudged–or whatever, when I see this is going on, that’s when I step in, knowing my own skills and authority.  And I always take the side of a person who is defending themselves, precisely because they are always speaking to their own beliefs.  I do this, regardless of what those beliefs are. I say, regardless of what those beliefs are, as first perceived by me or any and all of the others.  Deep sympathy lay within me for anyone who believes, for they have a heroic nature and it has not been spoiled. I reserve the right, and the ability perhaps, to improve the content of this belief, but that is totally relative. Belief is the main thing, and one must have it, or wither away. So I make this initial effort, and defend the believer, I am ready even before they are embarrassed and forced, by unfair charges, to defend themselves. I take the side of undaunted naivete, rather than your up-to-the minute jeering. I extend my hand to the hopeful but factually ill-supplied, to the downright deluded, and make swiftly and brilliantly to rationalise their hardly stated beliefs, such as they exist in any initial stuttering. No matter how it looks to the others, or even how difficult it looks to me, I do this through several exchanges, through several rounds in the debate, maybe several rounds of drinks, as the whole party succumbs to giddy confusion . . .
—–For I need to see how long the one who spoke up from the basis of belief can last. Belief itself being heroic, and the linchpin of thought itself, I argue to myself once again.
—–Lately, it is supposed, the facts of reality do not support these inherited notions. Consecutive thinking does not allow for intrusions of images that conflict with the topic as stated in the curriculum of the brain. Need a diagram? Old fashioned reason did away with the ghost of belief in anything not findable in a ditch, at least . . . a hundred and fifty years ago! Miracles were mirages of ignorant people, count on it, says the scornful opposition to anyone who ventures a belief in something that smacks of, well, a belief in something. Facts are facts.
—–So here I go, I take the side of the believer, and argue that perhaps he has not expressed his belief clearly enough, or to their liking–this crowd of harpies.  And besides, what do facts, which, by the way, rarely are in fact facts, have to do with beliefs, anyway? Belief  is established, or has it’s source in pure emotion, I say. Everybody is ready for that one. They pounce on it. Well, sure! That is all they are, emotions! This is where I am shouted down by the group which has become, I hate to say it, very emotional.
—–“Cool your heels,” I say. Meanwhile the guy who started this seems to have disappeared. He took his belief with him, and went off to sulk in a corner; or maybe he went home to consult the oracle. Oh, no, wait, here he is. And no longer flumoxed. Standing on his beliefs, which are yet to be fully elucidated!, has produced in him a great calm. He is a port in a storm. And I don’t feel he has given me anywhere near the credit I deserve for defending him. So I turn on him. “Look smart,” I tell him, “don’t think you are off the hook.”  He looks hurt, but that doesn’t fool me.
—–“We have not yet examined what you actually think,” I tell him.
—–Of course I know we will never get to that. Every conversation these days is a process of being pushed around, then backing up, and then fighting your way out of the ditch you have fallen into. It is an experience! It becomes abstract! And this is always exactly when, and why, the music turns itself up, and a totally distracted air comes over everyone.  Like so many countable survivors of a shipwreck we are, rocking and lost in some slow dance.

—–A former WKOR news team helicopter pilot, who quit his job a year ago in a feud with his superiors, has now announced the results of a tremendous research project he conducted, aimed at establishing a true statistical account of traffic on Rochester, NY roads–particularly during rush hours.
—–James J. McCarthy, in releasing the results of his traffic survey, said that he knew some people in the mainstream media might accuse him of perpetuating a drawn out, and expensive, act of revenge upon his former employers, and that in fact he had been partly motivated by feelings of vindictiveness, personally, toward those who had mocked his original theorizing on the subject now documented. But his study, anyway, has proved to be so full of revelations, which the whole public will be amazed at, that he feels justified in broadcasting the complete labor–with as much force as necessary.
—–The results of McCarthy’s traffic survey are in fact incredible and historically unique. They probably have an import transcending the particular obsession with roads and traffic, and may be analogously applied to other situations of chaos in the modern world. With total rigor and scientific method, McCarthy has done no less than make good on a claim which, when made in theory only, seemed nothing but strong evidence of his own possible insanity–or desire to be a comedian.
—–What James J. McCarthy has established, now, by painstaking investigation, and with the use of ten helicopters and a whole fleet of probably skeptical assistants is, in a word, that there is an element of illusion actually at work, on the expressway during rush hours. This, as a summary finding, he has actually documented. To whit:
—–Statistically, between four and seven o’clock on weekdays, and also between seven and ten o’clock (though by not as great a number) there are more cars on Rochester roads, all totaled, than exist in the city in reality. This increase stands at nearly fifty-percent above what is possible if every car in Rochester, plus all those cars statistically shown to be passing through Rochester, were all on the roads.
—–Impossible, you say.  Precisely, says McCarthy’s study. The impossible fact is there. And actually, less than half the cars that can be said to exist, totalled in the careful census of existing automobiles the researcher  took, are on the roads during rush hours (many of course being in garages, etc.), which means the number of cars in excess of possible real cars counted is way above a hundred percent–or rather, double what is possible!
—–McCarthy has proven, and with methods no one can say are magical, that more than one half of the cars of Rochester roads during rush hours are an optical illusion of some type. They can be seen, for he and his crew counted them, from helicopters poised week after week above the infamous Can of Worms; but, statistically, we repeat, they couldn’t really be there–all those cars, because, as just said, even if you brought every car in Rochester onto the roads at once, and even those in the car dealers were all drive out, plus you included the typical or even an exaggerated influx of cars passing through from Buffalo and Syracuse, you wouldn’t come to within fifty percent of what can be seen–mostly in traffic jams by the way.
—–This is truly startling, more than thought provoking!
—–And it is what McCarthy himself had proposed while a junior pilot in a helicopter traffic news watch, at WKOR, not proposed publicly, then, but just smartly asserted from his seat above the traffic, to his superiors. He just said he couldn’t believe all the cars were real–was beginning to seriously entertain the idea that some of them weren’t real, actually; his superiors, then, evidently thinking him insane for making such a suggestion, insane or some kind of comedian, maybe, or a creative thinker perhaps who, at the very least, shouldn’t be doing this kind of work.
—–But, from the nevertheless actual survey’s viewing, one half the cars are an optical illusion. Or worse!  Let’s say a spatio-temporal illusion, a warp in reality itself!, because these cars do seem to really be there, honking, with people in them, blocking up the roads. It’s an illusion effecting more than the eyes, in other words, presenting the enormous question of whether we can establish which of the cars are part of the illusion, and which are real, with people going to and coming home from their jobs as office workers, robots, etc. That would require some sort of tracking program, to see if we could document, somehow, the disappearance of the extra cars, cars which, obviously, do not exist except during rush hours.
—–Originally, McCarthy said, he didn’t claim so bluntly that half the cars were unreal. What he said, modestly, was that roads attract cars. Roads themselves attract cars, so cars appears on them.  That is what he said at first; it was his first opinion that the building of more highways was not reducing traffic problems but adding to them, because roads, nice new six-lane highways particularly, actually attract cars. This was not a radical opinion really, but a respectable analysis, meaning that new roads tempt people to drive more, buy more cars, etc.
—–But now, his study shows that roads can go much further than merely attracting existing cars and their human drivers. It can now be said that roads . . . create cars!  Like deserts create mirages–only worse, for, as we said, no one can tell which cars are the imaginary ones. It is a jamming up of what is already an overcrowding, the crowning blow, so to speak, to an excessively overbuilt situation (or environment).
—–The  superhighways are either   jammed with illusory cars (with illusory drivers, no less) or they are half-empty, during the main part of the day and night. At all  times, then, they make no sense, and merely invite . . . hell itself.  Plus, nothing can be done about it!  Because: the perceptual problem is too great for anyone to solve.
—–And, it is shared virtually by all the real drivers in real cars–that’s the colossal problem, making it impossible to eradicate, all together, the false traffic. Fears of traffic jams, the isolated, but universal, feeling in the hearts of all the drivers that they, individually, do not need to be caught in this traffic jam, and the insane overbuilt luxury of big roads and their lure of fast travel, has finally caused a breakdown in the shared mind-set of all the drivers.
—–Just like, also in the Rochester region, the mind-set that expects the sky to be overcast, or the one that accepts the idea, to begin with, that more roads will make traveling around more. . .  efficient.
—–You can see than everyone behaves obediently, even if they are all personally ticked off, not one of them suspecting that many of the cars confronting and annoying them are actually caused by some now practically genetic hallucinatory faculty in driving mankind–a death wish, really, saying: supply the roads with as many cars as they will hold, and keep more cars coming on the entrance ramps!
—–The situation is, of course, truly hopeless.  Someday, James J. is now saying, we’ll have to just face up to the results of this indulgence, and quietly, humbly, take away the extra roads. The Highway Department could be completely reoriented in fact, and, he said,  “people could be employed to just take these damn roads up”.  Which of course will (if cause and effect still mean anything at all in this universe) cut off the supply of the root evil: cars, cars themselves, in all their false splendor.
—–

—–“Sometimes you think, well what is the use of a breakthrough now? And this is because you think you should have had all breakthroughs before, if you have been such a truth seeker, that by this age, so venerable are you!, that you should be just sitting on the porch or something, with your feet up, looking at the flowers, basking in the summer.  Well!  This is all wrong, on two accounts: first, you were busy with other breakthroughs before, since every day you have had a sense of urgency, to be as aware as possible, your whole life.  And, even more importantly, despite your vigilance, the incoming of truth happens on its schedule, not yours. It happens whenever, and in whatever order,  and the thing is to be there at the time; it is not playing a game with you, rewarding or punishing you, but you are adjusting to it. Truth is like events, like history (I theorize), and the weather. Is that the phone ringing? I’ll get it!”

—–I saw a young man, or maybe a man no longer young, sitting on a rock pile; he was busily throwing rocks of all sizes around, gleefully and despondently, causing rock-slides and chain-reactions beyond the hill where he presided, in the sweltering heat, always keeping the activity going, as if he were required to make noise. He’s wearing shorts and no shirt and picking up rocks and throwing them down, tossing one over his shoulder sometimes, listening to the sounds of the impact and reacting in accord to some deep internal rhythm, intent on keeping sounds in the air at all times. He’s a drummer, I thought–a rock n’roll drummer stripped down in his natural setting and dealing with the elements of his most rudimentary profession.

—–I saw a man, a hungry, sloppily dressed man, all by himself and working fast, not looking at anyone as he went taking generous and varied helpings from a salad bar; which he walks back and forth like he only had one chance at this, apprising and choosing, teasing with the forks and spoons and scooping now tentatively, now defiantly, needing both hands sometimes, or three hands in a blur and a balancing act just barely within his power, to put together the plate with tasty, harmonious, chordal combinations of fruits and vegetables, with toppings and drippings. I thought: he’s playing the scales, and plucking just the . . . olives. Here’s the man with the piano, if you strip it down like in some Theater of Dissemblance.

—–I saw a tall, willowy man, with large hands and a way of standing as if he were bending back, while rooted to the spot; he was getting rhythms from the earth. He was steadily sawing down a big tree, right in front of him, sawing until the job’s done, was the impression; but maybe his saw is too weak, so he picks up another saw, an electric saw, a chain-saw. Now he’s fundamental–for they have to get this tree down, just so, in sing-song fashion. I thought: the bass player! He always tends to rule, and must underlay this riff and then; another tree in the progression must come down. I thought, this is all on the stage. Where these musicians are lasting until they have to go back to prison. Let out like some chain-gang for brief liberation. The band is almost realized . . . Whenever I see a rock n’roll band setting up on stage I think it looks like the guys are hired help; but of course this is the band, doing forced labour. And when they start tuning up I always think, these guys are prisoners brought in from the county jail, and forced to play together.

—–Then I saw a man putting away the dishes in the kitchen. An indelible man in his own time, comfortable at home, putting away big stacks of plates, plates of all sizes, taking them from a steaming dish-dryer and holdings some plates up for admiration, then hurrying them onto the cupboard. He’s working fast but in syncopation, with occasional plucking of cups and saucers, and beautiful trills made by squeaky clean glasses being lined up in regiments or four and five deep. With of course the threat of a huge crash bringing the performance to a dramatic end.

—–While some older guy is snoozing in a rocking chair. On a front porch, or by a window where a parade is going by. Or isn’t going by. Is he holding a baby? He’s listening to some music in his head, which has been suggested and supported by the steady rocking. Well, no, he is not snoozing but wide awake! He might leap to his feet and start rocking on his heels, swaying back and pitching forward again. Turns out that wasn’t a baby, but a saxophone! And if we add the sixth man, the trumpet player, who we will find as a schoolboy raising the flag on the flagpole, pulling it higher and higher into the blue sky until it unfurls and the wind catches it–then we have the full metaphorical rock n/roll band. I have found their origins, each scene of origin from which they are recruited, or have magically stepped–to form the final dissemblance, in the theater being created.

—–Each of these people has been arrested, or let’s recruited,  for their enthusiasm, and sentenced, or let’s say been doomed, to a life of creative action. One while making a sandwich, one while throwing rocks, another while rocking a baby. In this life in prison, or let’s say exile, they are ordered or rather they are inspired to devise some form of entertainment, because the authorities–I mean the world, must need a travelling show, to go out and amuse the public in taverns and bars and nightclubs. Instinctively, and together,  they create a rock n’ roll band, in which each member finds his old self again, I mean his real self forever, in the dissembling form of a musician. That’s the way it is–you beggars in the audience.