| DEADARTIST Tales of Lembrook |
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DeadArtist: Comments 2007: March |
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MARCH 2007 PURIM 5767 (4 March 2007) (PHOTO OF TRAIN STATION METRO NORTH) This is where I spent the night that I should have been enjoying and celebrating Purim. I’d gone to the Riverdale Temple to “help” decorate the social hall… but by the time the decorating was almost completed, I was long-ago the only one doing the work! So I continued and got as much done as I could. I needed to shower and change for the festivities but when I got to 3671 Hudson Manor Terrace 5G, the doors were locked and the lights were off and I had no way of getting in! So, on that cold night, I took a walk… and walked… and walked… and here is where I spent the cold night of 3 March 2007: At the Spuyten Duyvil Metro North train station… alone and hoping not to get into trouble. I’d arrived there about 20h or so and was still there until 21h45. At that point, I walked back up the hill to 3671 Hudson Manor Terrace to wait for the return of Margot Baldinger… with the key. She KNEW I was invited to attend the Purim festivities. She KNEW I was decorating the social hall for them. SHE got to participate and enjoy. I got tossed out, locked out, and I got a cold evening, sitting on a metal bench, beside the Harlem River, alone. March 2007 Notes: 15 March 2007It was, as it should have been, a rainy morning. Why should this day, the day of my departure from this horrid, tormenting, torturous existence be anything but rainy? Why should it be a bright, clear, comfortably warm day? What days have ever been good for me? I was conceived in torture. The news of my conception was received in anger. The stage was set and the script was written. So today, the end was the same as every other day. I had to rush about this morning. MB decided that she wanted to talk. I decided that I had to get the hell out! As I write this, I don’t recall what excuse I gave to her to leave, but, I do know that I did leave. The ticket? Round trip. How silly of me… to buy a round-trip ticket for a journey I had no intention of returning from. But, true to the kind and nature of me, I planned for possibilities and eventualities. Just in case something (else) might go wrong today, I could, at the very least, make my way back to the shelter and out of the cold. The fare? Of course I didn’t actually pay for it. It was paid with money that I’d managed to “acquire” along the way. All that can be said about this is that I was and remain convinced that I worked very long hours, very diligently and with all my heart and soul around that miserable flat. I fetched and watched and stayed half awake all night for the period of time I was there, making certain that all things went well and that I was available at any given moment in time. But, others who did similar things and similar work wer remunerated. I was not. So, I “aqcuired” what I needed. Yes, even the ticket was a torment. I walked down through Raoul Wallenberg Forest to Pallisade Avenue and stopped to look for the abandoned cats there. I had a lot in common with them: they were tossed out the door when people deemed them useless and unwanted. I too was that way, having been tossed about because I too was deemed useless and unwanted. But oddly enough, as I walked down the steps, past the old felled tree, I was calm. I was completely aware of where I was heading and why. I was at peace. I got to the SD station in plenty of time. The wait was cold, damp, but completely free of anxiety. Once again, it was no different from any other time I’d been at a train station, waiting to go somewhere. The wind picked-up and came in off the Hudson. It was bitter cold and very damp. At moments, it brought slight rain with it. But I sat, calmly and quietly, waiting for the train to take me… “up”. Finally, the train arrived. I boarded, as I’d done so many times before over the course of years. I found a place by the river-side window, put my head-phones on and listened to the melody of “Calling My Children Home” by Chanticleer. The song always brought a tear to my eye and a pain in my heart, thinking of how I’d worked to maintain my siblings when father abandoned us all and mother had to take several jobs to keep a roof over our heads. It hurt me to think how much I’d given FOR them and how much torture they enjoyed returning to me. Strange… today there was no pain, no tears. The music filled my head but never made it to my heart. I’d died already and was aware of it. As the train made its way up the Hudson, the skies grew more grey and the rains came regular. I pondered: I wonder what these people would do or say if they only knew that I sit here, silently, heading for a mountain-side retreat from whence I won’t return. I wonder what they’d think or do if they knew that I was on my way to my own death. Aren’t they all so silly, stupid and shallow? Worried about all sorts of things that, in the final course of life, mean just nothing at all. How ridiculous. I watched the Hudson Valley roll by. I sat in silence. The rain hit the windows. The day became more inclement. No sunshine for me. No warm temperatures. And there would be no one at the station to meet or greet me. I was SO ALONE! But I preferred it that way. We arrived at the station just about to the moment on-time and I had just enough time to have a cigarette before boarding the bus that would take me across the Hudson, out to the next leg of my adventure. The bus to Newburgh was as good as could be expected for the area. As clean and comfortable as one might expect from the other-wise rural aspects of this state. Not to mention, I knew where I was and I knew what resided there. I couldn’t expect luxury or complete comfort from this area. So the bus was just fine. The driver gave me information on my connection which I was to make at the Shortline Terminal in the Town. That was something I was looking most forward to… the bus to take me back to Ulster. Even in this nasty weather, I looked forward to getting back to Ulster and if I had to battle the elements to do so, it was fine with me. I was determined. |