The Real King of Staten Island - Scott Matthew Davidson - 1968-2001

A Vision

...

What an artist thinks…No…What an artist feels is what I perhaps now feel. I am connected with all the chaos below. I am floating. No I am standing in the midst of screaming, of blood dripping, of detached limbs and heads and emptied torsos, crushed oozing bodies, flames, of sirens sounding, of a thousand screams, no, ten thousand prayers to a living GOD. Where is God today in all this confusion? No answer. Perhaps an answer later. Perhaps.

Valley of tears is a phrase from a childhood prayer comes into focus to label this instant. Life on Earth can indeed become a trek through a great valley of tears. Lord have mercy. Amen.

An artist inspires. An artist touches the souls or is it the spirits of others when they look at his creation, his painting, his music, reads his book. At this moment I want to look away. I have no choice. I am part of this moment. The moment sculpts reality into eternal pictures.. Thoughts and photographic images, real in the human sense, real in the spiritual sense are being formed.

The living and the dead will no doubt in their own time stand back and admire or not understand or may even despise the art of this present moment. Where is the museum? It is here. Time stands still on this planet or at least slows down. Time pauses from second to second. A hundred lives passed in one second. Then two hundred lives passed on not the next second but the second after that. And so on an so forth. Statistics amass.

Amidst the screams and sighs and puzzled thoughts of the unexpected dead, a silence comes. I slip from this macro of life and fade into some micro aspect of my former existence.

I come to a bright sun filled prairie. A simple wood clapboarded, white washed house stands in stark contrast to clear blue sky and rich green vegetation textures. A woman with her back to me is hanging wet laundry on clothes lines a short distance from the house. A small barn is also in view. On a short stone wall sits an old woman in a plain white robe. She is watching a small child, a girl in a gingham dress walking about the yard area. The old woman looks in my direction. I recognize her. She is Myrtle. I had been her elder in a church I belonged to. The last church I had belonged to. Haven’t been to church for a long time.

She smiles a faint smile at me. I never made it to her funeral. She never had a funeral when she died at 94. Her body had been willed to science.

The thought occurs to me that she is perhaps dreaming about some scene from her own childhood in early twentieth century rural Illinois. Myrtle gives me non-verbal nods to my questions to her. She had made it to the other side. I would not consider donating my mortal coil to be entrusted to the likes of some smirking first year medical students…

The smell of charred meat. How I always hated that smell. Leaving the roast in the oven too long to dry up and then to burn.

More like a barbecue smell. The teacher in eighth grade wrote in chalk on the slate blackboard common American words that originated in other languages. Barbecue had Spanish origins I think. I remember this as the pungent smell of burning meat rolls off the olfactory senses of a wandering creature all bent over as if in pain. Clothed in a thick dark outfit, he climbs stairs, step after step after step after bloody, dusty step.

The fireman’s breathing is labored. He occasionally reaches for assistance in breathing from the tank hanging off his back. Crackling noise of walkie-talkie sounds mix with breathing, and hisses and the smell of burned meat dance around senses in a misty fog of smoke coming and going. The smell of burning petrol and plastic add to this undefinable barbecue sauce.

Why do I smell human smells if I am truly dead? Why am I suddenly connecting in consciousness to the senses of one living man, this fireman? Why am I connected back to the world of the living?

People push by on the dark stairs.

The fireman’s flashlight wavers back and forth to give momentary assistance to the descending surviving refugees of terror. The fireman’s goal is upward, ever upward. A ladder to heaven is not possible but in this behemoth structure heaven might in fact be at the top of this arduous climb.

Let the River Run - Carly Simon - Working Girl - 1988

I miss the old Car Ferry Boats. No car boats with use of the car space since 911. And the Bottom Deck the Smoking Deck until about 1990. What a blow. All the dregs came up to the saloon deck wit snob me lol. They were steel of course, with lots of varnished wood church pew like seats and black marbleized battleship linoleum. Painted inside with government issue battleship gray paint and white. The new Boats suck. All shiny and steel seats and store bought exit signs. 

My 3 seconds of fame or my doppelganger 0:19-0:22. Not me I think, I don't remember shaving on the boat or that my glasses were that thick. But I was that ruggedly handsome. lol 

And let's not forget Kevin Spacey's breakout sexual predator scene on music video 1:05-1:08. 

The script was a rip of fake junk-bond era, non-reality. But all the background NYC stuff a nostalgic historic slice of the old Apple. And a historic record so to speak.

The scenes in the #7 WTC with the polished elevator doors a tragic reminder of 911. Of things gone wrong with America. And tragedy etc. "Come the New Jerusalem"? RIP etc. 

Whatever. :-)

.

Statement on Political Murder by Saudi Dictatorship

"Preliminary investigations carried out by the Public Prosecution into the disappearance case of the citizen Jamal bin Ahmad Khashoggi revealed that the discussions that took place between him and the persons who met him during his attendance in the Kingdom's consulate in Istanbul led to a quarrel and a brawl with the citizen /Jamal Khashoggi, resulted in his death.

"The Public Prosecutor confirms that its investigations into this case are continuing with the (18) individuals who are all Saudi nationals in preparation for reaching all the facts and declaring them and to hold all those involved in this case accountable and bringing them to justice."

Rudy Giuliani - "The Truth is Not the Truth" - America's Hometown Racist Mayor

Sir Rudolph Giuliani, America's hometown mayor and hometown racist who probably colluded with the Bin Laden family to build the NYC command center at 7 World Trade Center with Bin Laden Mob Concrete, says that Truth is not the Truth.

And Amadou Diallo committed Suicide. The first bullet was his (person of color ass) and the next 40 that were fired at him standing outside his apartment building, 18 of which plus his own hit him, were from concerned non-racist Giuliani Blue Shirts who saw only a person of color in their cross hairs. Win-Win for the cops and Rudy!

And acquittal of the white cops in an out of town trial in White Town Albany NY.

Ain't America Great Rudy. This from a man who did not know he was married to his wife who was also his second cousin 1968 - 1982 (Annulled) = we had no marriage, we never fuked?

Marriage is not a Marriage - Trump Era Reality (truth) Management - good old fashioned Republican Family Values.

Puke!

Day of Rage in Tucson Arizona 2011 - Revisited

(February 7, 2011)

I lived and worked in Tucson Arizona for close to eight years back in the 1990s. I worked for a short time, 100 yards down the road from the recent mass murders there that involved the shooting of U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords of the U.S. Congress.

As stated I worked down the road from the Safeway and its parking lot, the scene of this recent American-style tragedy. I even ate lunch a few times in a food court setting in the front of the supermarket way back when. 

I researched this matter of the shootings that took the life of a nine year old girl among others. The date is January 8, 2011. Seems like two months ago instead of one month to me. Time seems to be compressed sometimes concerning memory. 

I had written an account of the attack on Rep. Giffords Tucson office at the end of the debate and vote on Health Care Reform last year. The attack in the middle of the night and broken glass brought to mind the terrible tragedy of Kristallnacht in Nazi controlled Germany in November 1938 against Jews in the population. I made reference to that event because Ms. Giffords is Jewish.

Kristallnacht – Tucson - USA 

The apparently troubled young man who did the shootings and these murders seems to have bought into a uniquely American style of settling arguments or supplementing mental disorders with guns. 

Because I had been in this place in Tucson and knew its layout I did not write anything or comment until now. I felt the tragedy in a personal sense having a shared experience of the geography with the victims. I should also note that it took me five years to finally write down my experiences of the 911 tragedy here in NYC. 

No Guarantee of Tomorrow

I also wanted to turn a corner in this blog whereby I did not want to poll parrot the party line coming out of the media. The media turns on cable and cable turns on the middle class who can afford it. The media rightly or wrongly from left or from right seems to feed on the energy of rage both in content and filler. I need to and we all need to as well step back from the edge of that rage that permeates our complex modern society. 

Rage is not only a middle class thing but perhaps a middle aged thing. It comes from the disappointment from expectations not fulfilled. It comes from recognizing the disappointment from the perspective of age and or wisdom from life experience. 

I do not want to merely echo the media and its sounds of fury. 

Now a month later I can look and see how death by random acts of violence is fed by rage and guns. 

I do not object to hunters having rifles in their homes with or without permits. I do object to weapons of war with high capacity discharge being sold in America. They are not necessary in a civilized society. 

I think that licensing handguns within the confines of city limits is the right of the well being of the population of that densely populated city to assure protection from violence and violent mental illness spilling into the streets and onto the parking lots of America. 

I am not advocating repeal of the second amendment’s right to bear arms. I am trying to find common grounds with all parties to seek a solution to too much gun power in America and to too many guns. 

The days of the wilderness are long gone. The days of conflict with the native Indian population are long gone. In the twenty first century, a fetish for guns and gun power is a bit outdated and obsessive. It speaks of the breakdown of community and loss of civility in our society. 

The gun lobby and the media lobby both seem to be catering to keeping the rage up to sell their products. Whatever. 

I am glad that Representative Giffords survived and may well have a normal life returned to her after much therapy. 

Prayers for the victims and their families in Tucson. Prayers for the perpetrators, both the lobbyists of hate and rage, as well as for the disturbed young man who committed this crime.

http://thisculturalchristian.blogspot.com/2011/02/day-of-rage-in-tucson-arizona.html

.

New GOP Benghazi Algorithm - Courtesy of Jeb Bush

.

World Trade Center - Tower One - 911/2013

Viewed from World Financial Center – Across West Street at Vesey Street – Looking East

http://wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3672&page=918



.

Madison Square Garden to Seek Its Fifth Home – Evicted by NYC City Council – Ten Years to Vacate Important Transportation Hub in Midtown

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/city-council-votes-overwhelmingly-move-madison-square-garden-midtown-site-10-years-article-1.1408251

The City Council voted Wednesday to limit the arena’s permit for its location atop Penn Station to a decade — ignoring pleas from the Garden’s owners and celebrities like Knicks superfan Spike Lee and former Knicks greats like Earl Monroe and Walt Frazier, who lobbied the Council to extend the Garden’s permit indefinitely.

Council members say they would rather see the Garden move to make way for an improved Penn Station and voted, 47 to 1, to offer the more limited permit, although it could be extended in the future.

It was never a great idea to tear down the legendary classic designed Old Penn Station in the mid-sixties. Kind of creative to put a big arena over the subterranean tunnels and rail tracks below street level. But everything else was a hassle and crowded, crowded, crowded when a well-functioning train station got shoved underground to make it convenient for season basketball tickets holders to grab a ten minute subway ride to midtown.

After 911 they did a major redo of the subterranean tunnels, labyrinth station under MSG that served both east coast trains and the Long Island Railroad traffic. Now they are digging a tunnel to connect Grand Central and Metro North with Penn Station. There are plenty of other empty places or underused places in the five boroughs to serve a new arena. Case in point the Barclay Arena across the East River and built over a bunch of rail tracks of the Long Island Railroad.

The flow of the pedestrian tunnels in the post 911 redo was directed toward expanded and increased exits with disasters or acts of terror in mind. The old World Trade Center went through a similar major redo of expanded and increased exit space after the 1993 bombing. Perhaps some lives were saved in the 911 attack in the underground plaza area of the WTC with the redo. It was needed even if the result to fulfill maximum usage in time of emergency was not realized.

The conversion of the Old Classic Central Post Office into a new above ground Penn Station needs a lot of other components in the new connecting tunnel with Grand Central Terminal and the expanding transportation hub of the now old number four Madison Square Garden. 

New York is a forever changing fluid place of building, tearing down and rebuilding the New York Dream.

.

7 WTC - 911 - Tree of Life

Tree of Life Bas Relief  - 7 WTC - 911 - West Broadway and Vesey Sts. NYC

http://ghosts-of-911.blogspot.com/2008/08/tree-of-life-wtc.html

.
.

New York Yankee Fans Sing “Sweet Caroline” to a Wounded Boston with Love From New York City

New York City Loves Boston

Yankee Stadium - NYC

Fenway Park - Boston - Home of the Red Sox

As a writer in a global culture I begin to realize how discounted all words are these days even within our own local cultures.

As such I begin to think that symbols and gestures as in differing cultures trying to communicate is the best way to address some issues.

In the case of the tragic bombing in Boston and Boston losing its cherry regarding the global violence of a global culture’s possible birthing pains, the fans in Yankee Stadium New York sang Boston Fenway Park’s favorite song “Sweet Caroline” in solidarity by way of the Red Sox and paying respects to the people and victims in Boston. 

Well stated New Yorkers and Yankee fans.

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mlb-big-league-stew/york-yankees-honor-boston-playing-sweet-caroline-211539619--mlb.html

The Brooklyn Academy of Music

I never went to any Diamond concert but here I go with my story about Neil Diamond. I used to start work at 7AM in Rockefeller Center. On some days I would get off the express bus and walk over to 48th to a particular deli “Scott’s” that served a very tasty and cheap bacon and egg sandwich to go. This was in I think July 2001. Well anyway Scott’s is just off NBC’s glass front on the street for the Today Show. Well on this day at 6:30 the plaza was packed with 1,000 people and Neil was doing a warmup for the Today show at 7 AM. The crowd was absolutely on top of every music note and lyric, screaming, clapping, jumping. I stood across the street and listened for a bit and then sadly had to get to work three blocks away.

I remember walking along dark streets and hearing echoes of “Cracklin Rosie” bouncing off the walls of skyscrapers and remember it because it happened a couple of weeks before 911. I remember Neil Diamond with not only a fondness for his music but the memory I have of him in NYC before NYC changed on 911. Whatever. 

~~ My Facebook Page, May 21, 2011

.

Snug Harbor - 22 Oct 12 - Staten Island

*     *     *

Shards of 911 - Postscript - One Bankers Trust Plaza - 130 Liberty Street NYC

I saw a reminder on some blog last week about the upcoming eleventh anniversary of the tragedy of September 11, 2001.

It took perhaps longer for me to forget some aspects of that day having worked across the street from the now defunct old World Trade Center for many years back in the eighties or thereabouts on a timeline.

The new World Trade Center is rising quite marvelously, taking its time to change the lower Manhattan skyline.

I call 130 Liberty Street by the title I knew it back when I worked there – One Bankers Trust Plaza.

The building was the back office of the main office of Bankers Trust Company on Wall Street which I think these days has a health spa in the gilded art deco main banking floor of that building and with I think condos now in old office space.  Things change especially in this virtual world.  Back offices in general in America these days are now in India and China courtesy of outsourcing. 

That bank eventually went under IMHO starting with the eighties, having put its old fashioned conservative banking sense, along with all its customer good will and corporate nest eggs into the new computer generated crap shoot game derivatives basket. Some German bank bought out the company in the nineties and what are left of old accounts on digital records are in that bank’s midtown offices and computer memory.

BT plaza had a nickname of the “BlackWidow” for some years.  She had been wounded in the World Trade center collapse and wore a dark fabric mesh covering for several years like a widow's veil.  But with insurances companies fighting and lawyers haggling, the building went to seed or more properly went to mold and the building was condemned, rather than clean her up and recycle its old function. 

No big profit to be had in retrofitting a 1970’s design building.  The bureaucrats made a handsome dime taking nine years and $300 million to tear it down and turn the building into an empty lot, waiting for some future billion dollar design office building or condos to stand one day in her old place.

This empty lot BTW is now being used as a staging area for tourists with tickets, to go across the street to visit the now opened 911 Memorial Fountains. 

Second Floor Lobby - BT Plaza

Skeletal outline of 1WTC (top) and 2WTC (bottom)

Tickets! All visitors to the Memorial must have their tickets out.

Postscript:

Without too much sentiment, looking at some of these photos of 911, I am reminded of a line by W.B. Yeats regarding that tragic day and use that poetic line in paraphrase – “A terrible beauty (was) born (on 911)”.

http://www.amazon.com/ghosts-911-reflections-September-ebook/dp/B005IDO9CO/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1344225131&sr=1-1

.

40 Powerful Photos

http://www.buzzfeed.com/expresident/most-powerful-photographs-ever-taken

.

New York - Where is the Victims Monument at Fresh Kills Staten Island?

Ran into this 1910 picture of a monument to dead Firemen in Philly on Girard Ave. Don't know if it is still there.

Which makes me think that is time we were putting a fitting monument on all the remains of the dead of 911 still out there in the hallowed ground of Fresh Kills garbage dump in Staten Island.

I like the design of the above obelisk.  Say fifty feet high and in white stone or concrete and visible from the nearby highway.

They can spend billions over in Manhattan for show (the tourists).  How about tossing a bone to the forgotten borough regarding the forgotten dead - the unknowns?


.

Peace - Hope for New Beginnings

FDNY survivor and a 911 volunteer are married in New York City, August 16, 2002

World Peace Fountains 4-4-73 = 9-11-11

I had what I think was a prophetic dream in the seventies. Although I never quite understood all the images and voices in that singular vision, I wrote about them and put them away for decades.  I begin to understand some of them now, after parts of the dream seem to unfold before all the rest of us.

While I can’t date that vision, I now date it 4-4-73, April 4, 1973, which is the official dedication date of the old World Trade Center.

I ran into the sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick some few weeks ago for the first time through his fascination and biblical like vision(s) related to all things labeled 3-4-74 which in his case relates to March through April 1974. 

In any case I somehow feel that if the whole world kept meticulous diaries in the past maybe we could see a similar vein of prophecy all over the planet on similar dates everywhere.

Which makes me think that the Internet may in fact be a critical stepping stone in our species' progress into the future, when in a scientific format, we will be able to document John of Patmos type visions and have a wider range of interpretations everywhere in every culture and all belief systems. 

On that day perhaps we will perhaps begin a dialogue with the creator on this plane of existence with the first few true universal words through a man-made universal translator.

In my own case, the vision of a great destruction was right in front of me but did not recognize it until it happened.  Which leads me to repeat my distrust of all things in the Book of Revelation. One interpretation for seven billions of people's perceptions is wholly inadequate if in fact it was a true vision.

We won’t see any of it coming until it hits us four-square between the eyes in our third eye/chakra. Period.

The above image of a father Robert Peraza paying loving homage to his dead son sparks into focus some of the last lines of my small personal vision of the future.

When “the beginning and the end are equal…”, “when the more is the less.”, when “the water of life flows to all nations from one source…”...

Albeit to say that the black stone surrounding the present Memorial Fountains at the WTC represents markers and gravestone remembrances of those who died there, and have no other official grave sites.

With that said and without revealing all of my own treasured wordings or images of my particular vision of the World Trade Center 4-4-73, I can say this.

While you can say that these two fountains represent a perception of a deceased north tower and deceased south tower, if you look on the map, you can see and perceive the present a little bit differently – you might see two fountains – one orientated east and one orientated west with a common north south axis.

Perhaps the Memorial Fountains will in time be renamed in another age, the future, and be called the World Peace Fountains.

“…Here marks the beginning of a new human race which God did see fit to begin here in this place.”

Father Mychal Judge O.F.M. – Patron Saint of 911

(September 11th Memorial window – St Francis of Assisi Church NYC - -Father Judge depicted, lower right quadrant – click on above image to enlarge)

Memories Of Sept. 11's First Recorded Casualty Endure

“…Another retired fireman, Jimmy Boyle, agrees that Father Mychal was one of the boys — but not when he was performing religious ceremonies.

"He could go into the firehouse, have a cup of coffee, have a meal, listen to all the talk, watch the ballgame, hear your problems, talk about anything you want," Boyle says. "But when he said Mass in the firehouse, I always felt when he got to the Eucharist, he just transformed himself. He became like Christ. He was just so pious."

Boyle says in any kind of emergency, Mychal Judge was a first responder. He rushed to the crash site of TWA Flight 800; to countless buildings on fire; and to hospital burn units — which is where Vina Drennan met him, in March 1994.

Drennan's husband had been severely burned the night before. Judge sat with her virtually every day, sometimes for hours, while her husband lingered.

"In 40 days he was always there," she recalls. "And when he prayed over John's burned body, you felt you had a chance that God would listen, anyway. You felt that the words were just flying right up."

For years after her husband died, Judge called just about every day. Drennan wasn't alone. Each night, the priest would have maybe 30 messages on his phone, which he'd return before going to sleep.

"Everybody called him!" Drennan says, laughing. "You know, 'Can you baptize my baby, can you do this,' and I'd say to him, 'Mychal, Jesus didn't have an answering machine! Just disconnect it!'"…--“

(Father Mychal Judge, front, FDNY Chaplain, 1933-2001, killed in the line of duty to his fellow man.)

“--"His mother always reminded him, 'You can't go wrong with a song. When you don't know what to do, sing,'" Fay says.

Judge was famous for his rendition of the murder ballad, "Frankie and Johnny," which he sang at birthday parties. He once sang "God Bless America" at the funeral of a gay man in the middle of the AIDS epidemic.--“