Thursday, October 24, 2002

I always loved the freight

I always loved the freight elevators built into the sidewalks.  On my way to work I see the city waking up, some poor souls already stressed and clenched, walking like they missed a meeting, weaving through the gridlocked traffic, and other souls just waking up, from wino dreams in doorways or as fully dressed automatons approaching offices they can’t describe, and all the others filling in the spectrum that connects these two extremes; the trucks unloading every form of dream and nightmare onto pallets dollys straining migrant backs, the sidewalks filling up with coffee smells and coffee breath and accidental meetings, cell phone talkers, random dog shit, men in hardhats breaking concrete, an ever-changing pagent, entertainments for the eyes and all the senses… and then amidst it all the steel doors fly open from the earth itself, and from the chasm rises first a metal framework, delicately curved and deeply rusted, dented, tired, solid, creeping up above the ground, and then you see his head, his shoulders, overalls, he’s standing on the platform as it rises in the steamy fog, and yes I think he knows how cool it looks, despite the fact he’s tired, underpaid, and probably malnourished, creeping up into the sunlight from an underworld of hidden commerce, till the elevator stops and his emergence is complete, the mystery revealed, Adam Cadmon, and he who moments earlier had been an enigmatic lazerus is now another man on crowded sidewalks, waiting for the truck to be unloaded so he can descend again and hoist a latent weight.  The bus moves on and all of it is lost behind me.  But I always loved those elevators, and I think the men who ride them get off on them too.  Someday I’ll ask for and get a joyride and the thrill will be destroyed.  Until then I watch for sidewalk business elevators, and those ramps down which one slides more sturdy goods.  They also look like fun to someone who has never had to use them.