BABYLON RED
Since my Hungarian immigrant ancestors first arrived in America via Ellis Island, I’ve known the New York City-New Jersey area since childhood. My parents were among the first to fly from the ethnic nest, but we went down again and again for visits and reunions.
So I can remember when only the Greater New York City glowed red at night. Even before sodium vapor lights put similar caps of ruddy illumination over almost any municipality of any size, the concentration of warning lights, neon lights and billboard reflections was enough to make driving into The City a Dante-esque journey. When I first heard the Rastafarian reggae singers using the name “Babylon” to refer to the unnatural life of big commercial cities and cultures (in the 1970’s, when WTBS MIT-College had a Jamaican show; “That guy Marley is a damn good songwriter!”) this was the image that came to mind.
This past week, I drove into New York City to see my brother Joe’s one-man show on how seeing Sputnik before there was any announcement of its existence changed his life. (For Brandonites: this took place while he was lying on the Brandon High School lawn. Later, he was able to confirm that the orbital path went over Brandon. There is a lot more to his show, which is very witty and funny, and which I hope he’ll get a chance to do around here some day.)
Here are a few observations from the 698 miles I put on my rented Toyota Corolla:
--I had to drive at least 70 miles an hour to avoid getting rear ended on the Thruway and other Interstate-type highways. Coming back, I hoped this would relax north of Albany, but no such luck. There is a kind of convoy psychology at work: all the drivers know they’re speeding (the limit is usually 65), but if no one goes too much faster than that, the cop cars will remain at the No U-Turn strips between the one-way lanes, hoping someone will get heavy-footed enough to be worth pursuing amidst all the vehicular clutter. Bringing the rental car back from Middlebury to Rutland, I had to be very, very careful not to zoom up to 65 on Route 7. The cars these days are made for such speed, and backing off on the accelerator puts your foot under such strain that you are in danger of cramping. Everything—airbags, car body armor, sound insulation, stereo systems, the power available at the touch of a foot, the power of the braking systems—conspires to lock this country into a culture of speeding. Like the pattern of suburban housing development (aka sprawl), this complex of mutual reinforcements has painted us into a corner.
Like the spirits who are blown endlessly around and around their circles in Dante’s Inferno, we are trapped, and don’t know how to get off.
--As an experienced cloud-watcher, who has posted 91 pictures so far this year on Weather Underground (see previous entry; site is at www.wunderground.com; look at ERLBarna), I can report that the clouds over urban New Jersey are STRANGE. Sometimes there is a peculiar haze in the air which, at a certain altitude, turns into white puffs—a phenomenon I’ve seen taking place (via Weather Underground) during some Western wildfires. There is a phenomenal amount of gunk at high altitudes, probably from air travel. Clouds often take on forms never seen hereabouts, and I saw nothing like the crisp “fair weather cumulus” clouds we get here on cool summer days. Yiddish, a language which some say “has more vitamins” than many others, has a great word for clouds this crazy: “farpotchket.”
--New York City has been fighting for years the same battle over creeping gentrification that is now showing up in Vermont as unaffordable housing, unbearable property taxes, and so on. The Medicine Show Theatre, where my brother performed, has been in existence for 37 years, in 13 locations, their director said. They’re trying to acquire their present 10-story building on 52nd Street West, but only have the first three floors so far due to political complications. Meanwhile, the block, which was terribly run-down when they arrived, has seen a total transformation since the artists arrived, with big money buying structures and tearing them down to put up bigger moneymakers. Like Soho, she said: the artists found low-budget lofts, created a vibrant art scene, were catalysts for the development of galleries and restaurants, then the area SOuth of HOuston Street became so desirable that the artists were priced out.
(Steven Spielberg’s movie “batteries not included” is, among other things, a fierce satire on this sort of commercialization and destruction on New York’s Lower East Side).
--Driving with Joe to his New Brunswick home after the show, I got to see a zone that made me ache for the time and resources to photograph it. Hyper-industrial, it includes huge power plant towers pouring out steam (just steam, we hope), Erector-set factories, squat but looming oil terminal tanks, and arrays of electrical transmission lines that made the VELCO upgrade look like child’s play. Shrouded in mist and lit by the almost-danger-orange sodium lights, this concentration of power was, in its way, awe-inspiring and even magical. Like it or not, this zone is a major organ of the body politic of our “civilization.” Flying along an Interstate trajectory through it is just as dizzying as looking down from the Empire State Building, and relying on this Gut for our sustenance is every bit as risky as ripping through the air along strips of paint-splotched asphalt at 75 miles per hour.
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