Shadows

One

These streets are hard.

Sons of Mary Magdalene prowl the neon drenched night in search of nocturnal companions. Homeless prophets huddled in dank doorways. Night Train teddy bears nestled against filthy rags. Mr. Jones patiently waiting in his Lexus for streetwise choir boys, a nightcap before returning to the wife and kids. Streetwalker angels shiver in the cold, halos dimmed beneath the glare of the lonely man's eyes. Bohemian Nazarene wanderers soak up the scene, eager to return home to write about it in their journals and record the legend of their own minds. 

Julio is a shadow. A back alley prophet on a mission.

Two

It has been said that only the dead know Brooklyn. He finds this to be true but in a different sense. In Brooklyn there is a new breed of man who recently planted his roots. A new breed dedicated to self destruction. A new bohemian chronicle to be written with a bottle of ink and a dirty hypodermic needle. On the streets of Williamsburg, a new lost generation. Another life span of hopelessness, decadence and shattered dreams. In the shadow of the Williamsburg Bridge, an army of youth set out to capture their dreams, tainted by the bottle and the needle. An age where ‘artist’ means waking up dope sick, hungry and desperate.

Julio is the shadow man, a disembodied form, drifting through the cusp of two generations. Not much younger than his hippie elders and a bit older than the Millennial foot soldiers marching en masse toward a new age of desperation and nihilism. A specter drunk on wine, sick in the shadow of a new generation of Brooklyn waste.

Rain mists. Cold.

A chill in the bones. A runny nose and an ache for sleep. Angels slap their soiled wings, a rhythmic hum of decadence. Cold, tired, shivering.

Hacks blazed through wet, oily streets.

Neon flashing on the dead souls of America.

Broadway bustles with traffic, night merchants and urban angels. Holy foot soldiers in the battle against complacency and banality. Only this Broadway is not the Broadway of theatre and glittering night life. This Broadway is on the edge of Brooklyn. The neon not the high tech flash of Times Square but that of flickering and dimming liquor store signs and third rate video rentals. The ugly stand beneath them, catching the dimming, flickering neon on worn, weathered faces. The ugly and the wasted, shivering in the rain, rattling beneath the J and M trains as it whisks it's way into the bowels of the Lower East Side.

Destination: Desolation

Twelve thirty, drunk, tired and alone, Julio climbs the stairs of the El to wait for the next train carrying the cargo into the urban wasteland. The wind whips the rain into his face. His hand cups his cigarette, a shield from both the rain and the cops. But cops never come around here unless they have a reason to. The liquor store merchants behind bullet proof glass are a testament to that.

Marcy Avenue. Down below the ugly continue to hang on the corners. Behind them, the loft buildings where the young are hoping to create and contribute to the ever growing nihilism that flows in their souls, their spirit. He waits for his angel but she doesn’t arrive, leaves him standing cold and drunk, tired and alone. The mind paints pictures of how he would like things to be rather than how they truly are. An angel with soiled wings, waiting for the vultures and deliverance.

Three

BMT carries souls through Brooklyn, a sea of faces avoiding eye contact. No one makes eye contact in New York. It's a city of nearly ten million people and yet each one of them is alone, each one of them a private satellite in their own distinctive orbit. It is a place where one feels alone on a crowded subway train, lost in his own thoughts and concerns, oblivious to the lives, hopes and dreams to the one standing on top of him. That's the way society is. It always makes him wonder. Who is that woman sitting in front of me? How is she feeling? Is her life good? Bad? And what about that guy? What's it like for him when he gets home at night? Is he alone? Is he living a life he envisioned? Curiosity. He’s sure none of them even think or care about his life. Why should they?

As the BMT screeches to a halt at Essex Street, he carries his thoughts onto the platform. Behind him a few others do the same. Onward to their own private concerns.

Onward urban angels in the war of life.

Four

Through the iron bars, beneath the paint stuck windows, along the littered dirty street, amongst the rat infested playgrounds, there is a voice crying out, a voice being heard but not listened to. A voice of pain, an incantation lost in the howling winds of apathy and indifference. Verbal regurgitations bathed in the streetlight and cloaked in maniacal laughter. There are eyes looking through those grimy windows, looking down at the wasteland of human endeavor. In the back alleys of Jerusalem a prophet lies naked, drunk and covered in sick, pissing against a brick wall, gazing at the stars which seem dim over the skies of New York City, but bright in the hearts of every man, woman and child who still have hope. A cheap dime store dream washed down with a glass of water scooped out of the East River. The prophet snores through the immolation of desires, immolation of lives, immolation of dreams where pint sized Al Capones draw their guns, deal their dope and crush the dreams of children who sit on sandstone stoops and rusted fire escapes, counting the stars as blotches on their future. Whores fuck and pimps are paid. Whores dance amongst the orgasms and suck off the lonely men who wander the asphalt desert in search of meaning. In the dark alley, an ash can burns at the feet of Christ and his shadow shimmers on a the wall amongst the graffiti and scriptures of the urban prophets too hungry or dope sick to give a shit about the clouded jewel on his crown of thorns.

Julio hears her voice in the night, a whisper, faint and sweet. He feels her presence in his heart and sees her eyes in the dark, feels her pumping heart and loving hands opening the window to his soul; and despite the scenery outside the window, she are the shining light which illuminates the world.

Five

Cold and misty. A bottle of wine in his hand and ragged shoes on his feet. The night is quiet and a few Nazarene stalk the streets in search of inspiration. He walks, stops to look through restaurant windows. There are too many people here as of late and he wonders how many of them will pack up and go home after the hammer falls.

There’s a guy he knows, came all the way out from the farms to live in New York to pursue his art. Lives in a loft in Red Hook, got mugged five times. He soon packed his bags and went back to the farm. Too bad. The guy had real talent, unlike the pretenders sitting in these Thai food joints with paint splattered combat boots and t-shirts, decorated just so, the illusion complete. Twenty years old and ready to take on the world. It had always been funny to him. He grew up here. He lived in New York all his life. He comes from a place where no one cares about the ‘pressures’ of the art gallery owners or small literary magazine publishers. They care about making a living, earning enough money to feed their family. Plumbers, electricians, office and construction workers. Honest people. People who will tell you like it is. It used to be Manhattan that housed all the pretenders. Now they're in Brooklyn. It's cheap, and it's close proximity to the Lower East Side and East Village makes it easy for the Nazarene to go back and forth without much trouble. Still, they all aspire to Oz across the river. They're here now, biding their time until the magic wand of acceptance taps them on their paint splattered shoulders. He is sickened by this.

A staggering Christ among the multitudes.

They seek deliverance and soon their messiah will come for them. When he does there will be nothing but disillusion.

He sees her in the shadows. An angel hovering above the fray, a talent and a mind quickly wasting away. She will sit alone, crying, regretting she ever sent him out the door, remembering all the times they shared and all the love they had given each other. Remembering all the support he’d given her, holding her in the dark when she felt her life was going nowhere. He encouraged her and helped her on the path to success. A pain dance under toxic clouds. A ballroom under the dimming stars.

He loved her and she accepted that love and appreciated what he had to offer but her new found lifestyle ripped her away from the reality. One reality. A reality a bum like him knows all to well. A reality the Nazarene refuse to recognize. Hopscotch on a broken sidewalk, a broken swing in the playground of their dreams. Child-like symphonies lost in the laughter. More spiritual carrion for the vultures to gnaw on.

Six

Some people say he’s like sandpaper — a bit too abrasive for them. He doesn’t care what they think. He comes from a different place. They come from another galaxy, a place where their souls are soft and their feelings float endlessly in a sea of compliments. They don’t like it when he talks to them because he’s not of their world and it frightens them. He speaks the truth. He means what he says and has no problem saying it. The nightmarish commentator on their world. They’re used to having everything handed to them on a silver platter and are dumbfounded as to why they can't get what they want whenever they want it. They spend their entire lives creating the legend in their own minds, a lifetime of floored genius, a lifetime of gazing at their own reflections in the mirror. What they see staring back at them is the phantom of their dreams; spoiled brats look into the glass and a phony stares back at them. They try to cover it well when they come here. They don’t realize that there are literally thousands of others just like them.

They look into his eyes and see a brute — a menacing specter hovering over their created reality. They dismiss him as ‘unhip’ but it is only their fear of being discovered that fuels their fire. They know he knows and they know he has no problem calling them out. To them, he is a ‘bridge and tunnel’ interloper wandering into Hipsville, invading their exclusive little club. To them, he’s a ghost of their roots, the angel of death, waiting to use his scythe on their invented legend. To them, he is a product of ‘middle class values’, a ‘bourgeois’ soldier ready to jail them for desertion. Nothing can be further from the truth.

The fact is they are inverted. He comes from a place that they know nothing about and that is why he frightens them, makes them uncomfortable, makes them squirm in mixed company. A sandpaper beast. A ghost with a tongue of thorns. He comes from a New York City that doesn't exist for them; a New York City where people tell you like it is and not how you want it to be. They don’t like that one bit. It destroys the illusion.

A burning flag above the fortress of solitude.

The marching boots trampling on their comfortable dreams.

He don’t fall for any of that bullshit, though. He sees himself as himself.