Epilogue




from the beginning

From the Diary

So to finish that story. With the cops pretty close, we duck back through the door, which Gem Spa guy jams with a broom handle. In the back is a store room. In the floor, a trap door. Under the trap door, wooden stairs. Like a ladder almost, or a ship’s stairs. At the bottom of the stairs, a corridor. With a door at its end. He opens it for me with a key and I’m on the Astor Place subway platform, a train just pulling in. Here you are, sir. And godspeed, he says.


from the beginning

From the Diary

Time to go. I remember now what L said that day at her place. About time. Winding down. Energy leaking from the system. Chaos growing. Of course you can’t buy it. It’s not for sale.


from the beginning/next

From the Diary

One last thing, he says. Get rid of that book. I understand, of course. I’ve already destroyed most of it. But not all. Because I can’t. But I have a plan. Two years ago, not long after we came here, I was walking into E’s one day when a guy I once knew walks out. He kind of nodded, but that was it. When I asked the bartender, he said sure, I know him, his name’s G. Lives down in Cardiff.


from the beginning/next

From the Diary

New York was just too hard, D said last night. Too much envy. Too much anger. That’s what we do now. Reminisce about the old days. But she’s right. I don’t know what the last straw was, but for a long time after we left I remembered a scene on East 72nd. Two limos. One had cut the other off. From the back windows, two well-dressed guys screaming fuck you at each other. On one of the few balmy evenings of that year.


from the beginning/next

From the Diary

Can’t stay here, R says. You’re 50 miles from San Onofre. Trust me. We worked on that project. Even a slight shake will bring it down now. You’ll have about two hours before the plume gets here. That’s not enough. It’s time to go.


from the beginning/next

From the Diary

Walked all the way home last night from L’s place in Chelsea. Grinning. The city was luminous and beautiful. Even the people didn’t look so bad.


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Mare Island

From the Diary

At the beach yesterday I watched a fat man fishing. He was reeling them in. After a while he sat down and ate his lunch, but you could tell he was still hungry. Suddenly, down by the water, a candy bar. Still in its wrapper. He tears into it. Then staggers a little as the hook rips through his cheek. A strangled sound, and he’s gone. I look around, but no one else seemed to notice.


from the beginning/next

From the Diary

Thirty-year concrete. Another innovation from those Columbia cadres. Something about the atomic structure of the silica. Stronger than any regular concrete. At least for a while. But then both brittle and tending to crumble. Of all the supposedly peer-reviewed articles in engineering journals advocating its use, only two suggested that possibility. Maybe it was just the Seventies. I mean, everyone was high. Or maybe they just weren’t paying attention. After all, 30 years is a long time. Until it's gone.


from the beginning/next

From the Diary

The flower workers are good neighbors. Illegal to a man. And hence watchful. Like us.


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From the Diary

Still, this compartmentalization is a little wearisome. We never see the old faces, never hear from them either. I’d love to know what happened with air traffic control. And monetary policy. It’s okay, though. We don’t need to know. We just stay away from airplanes and banks.


from the beginning/next

Mare Island

From the Diary

New Orleans. The new paradigm. In which government, the last bulwark against an entropic sea, ignominiously sinks. Ashes to ashes, all fall down.


from the beginning/next

From the Diary

And so we live here now. In peaceful prosperity. By the greenhouses where the flowers grow. And the tracks. On which every week or so another migrant falls asleep and is cut in half. That’s what the papers say, anyway.


from the beginning/next

From the Diary

One thing about the desert. There aren’t many crows. So when one comes walking up this morning, I pay close attention. Not a word.


from the beginning/next

From the Diary

On the Astor Place platform that day, the Lexington local pulled in and stopped but I didn’t get on. I was still standing there when I heard the explosion. Went up the stairs and out onto the street. Back at Gem Spa the cops were getting into their cars and taking off, fast, lights but no sirens. Heading west. I go east to my place. About two hours later, L pulls up in a borrowed pickup truck. Her friend S riding shotgun. Get in, she says. Gotta go.


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Mare Island

_____________________________

Project Notes

I've been taking pictures in a place called Mare Island. For some reason it reminds me of what John Szarkowski said about the purpose of photography being “the precise and lucid description of significant fact." That’s always seemed right to me, although I’ve never been quite sure what he meant by “significant fact.”

As for Mare Island, in 1844 in the Mexican state of Alta California a horse belonging to General Mariano Vallejo fell from a raft into the waters of the Carquinez Straits. When the horse saved herself by swimming to a nearby island, the General named the island Isla de la Yegua, or Mare Island, in her honor. Soon afterward, the United States declared war on Mexico, and Alta California became the State of California. Isla de la Yegua, in turn, became the Mare Island Naval Shipyard.

Over the next 140 years, more than 500 naval vessels, from nuclear submarines to Swift boats, were launched from Mare Island. At its peak, its 996 buildings sprawled over 4,351 acres with four dry docks, 20 ship berths, two shipbuilding ways, three finger piers, 21 large industrial sites, a school, two day care centers, a medical clinic, three fire stations, a golf course, two athletic fields, three swimming pools, nine tennis courts, riding stables, and 416 housing units.

The shipyard closed in 1996, and Mare Island is a strange and desolate place today. Although toxic waste is widespread, new homes have been constructed and sold in the open space on the west side of the island. To the east, in some of the old shipyard buildings, there is commercial activity, the exact nature of which is unclear. A few of the former administration buildings are occupied by, for example, Touro University, the United States Forest Service, and the Veterans Administration. Most are vacant.

Usually when people speak of a significant fact, they mean, simply, something important. I don't think that's what Szarkowski meant. Instead, I think his reference was to facts with emotional content, facts that signify some aspect of what life feels like. It may be that not every fact, or every thing, has that capacity. But Mare Island is a place the facts of which are significant to me in the sense I think Szarkowski meant.

On the other hand, I know that sometimes the hardest thing is just to show honestly how a thing looks. So I'm not saying I think I'll succeed in photographing these facts lucidly, or with precision. But I'm trying.

(Posted June 19, 2008)

From the Diary

Sitting around on the porch with D yesterday evening. Guy comes walking up the path that passes our gate. Stops, opens it, comes in. It’s R. Looking just like he did that day in the desert 30 years ago. Say hello to your uncle R, I tell D’s kids. They look like I just introduced them to the devil. Don’t know what she’s been telling them.


from the beginning/next

From the Diary

One last picture. Of the powerlines and the flowers. We’ll miss this place.


from the beginning/next

From the Diary

Last night we wandered up Park Avenue South to that cafeteria on the corner of 28th. What’s it called? The Belmont? Where all the cabbies eat. A dozen cabs double parked outside. Half with the keys in. We pick a nice one. Couple blocks later someone actually hails us. We take them up to Grand Central. Forgetting, naturally, to turn on the meter. It’s on us, we say. Why not. If they think anything’s wrong, they don’t show it. We ride that cab all the way to Montreal.


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