Over/Under

I had an opportunity of time in my travels, for lunch of Slim Jims and 
distilled water, to stop at the very far East end of 125th Street (the main 
business corridor of Harlem, the street in upper Manhattan where BIll Clinton 
recently took up habitation), close to the East river, beneath the complex of 
elevated roadways, where the scene of my latest story project, Tin Prick, is 
staged. I took my digital camera on a fact-finding mission. I wanted to get a 
sense of realistic details for the location. I made sure to photograph broken 
glass, an empty Corona beer bottle (I think it was empty but did question the 
yellow-orange dregs), a dead condom (I'm thinking of how best to describe 
this image as an inanimate object of our environment without direct 
reference), a dead butt of a cigar, headless rotting eel carcasses rolled in 
sand, and an upside down and flattened car that looked as if it had been 
dipped in mud then hauled out of the river. 

I also got some nice pictures of the DOT road salt pile, mind you, not 
exactly pure white but having texture of shape and black lines and signs of 
water erosion as well as tire tread marks along the base, with blue sky, the 
tree-trunk tinted iron of the Willis Ave. Bridge reminding me of Hickory, and 
white clouds behind. I looked at the green-yellow-mud color of the river, 
which was smooth surfaced and unembroiled here. Billboards, the History 
channel, truck sales, a movie “Big Trouble”, and traffic, cars and heavy 
trucks vibrating the steel decking of the overhead roadways, and an 
occasional bicyclist passing around me on the dirt.

Then I saw a small space of order in the confusion of the greenery and on 
approaching found that the greenery was from the branches of an artificial 
Christmas tree woven into the spaces of a storm fence. There was a walkway 
made, obviously, of discarded octagonal asphalt blocks, as are used in city 
parks, and brick, and cobble stones in a crazy quilt sort of manner… and I 
went in and found a small dry garden, a courtyard of sorts, with a cheap 
picture of the Virgin Mary nailed to a tree, and stumps with small masonry 
houses set on them as if they are lost yard elves, a small silver Christmas 
tree, a brown towel draped over a wire line, and then I saw a door. 

A rusty low metal door with a hasp and lock. Then I realized that what I was 
looking at, the pile of branches and green material piled against the 
retaining wall of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive was a squatter’s house. So, 
much to my imagination for having visioned a community of two guys living in 
a hammock and a cardboard box on the edge of the urban reality, on the edge 
of our world, and selling cut bait and telling fortunes… there I found it. A 
rustic hermitage that I imagined that I could be contented to rest, or at 
least, spend time while commuting on the LI Expressway to daydream about. I 
was quite pleased with myself, though somewhat nervous that I would be spied 
out for taking photographs in a private space. Wondering in part why this 
public space seemed to me claimed and private, as if sacred by occupation. I 
did not stay long and quickly retreated. 

From the outside the home looks much like a pile of rubbish and an overgrown 
shrubbery.  Across the river, about four hundred feet, there is what appears 
a police and correctional department facility for docking and repair of 
boats. Above is a lift bridge that goes from Manhattan and 125th Street to 
Randall’s Island and from there to the Triboro Bridge. This is a massive 
Robert Moses' inspired lift bridge several lanes wide. I have driven over 
this bridge hundreds of times and have never before thought of the life 
below. We go over and we go under.
 
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