Entries Tagged 'curious' ↓

This letter was originally mailed to Paul Auster in about 2000 when he was collecting stories on his NPR radio show Other True Tales.

Some of these stories were made into the book True Tales of American Life (First published under the title I Thought My Father Was God, and Other True Tales from NPR’s National Story Project 2001)

The story was originally accepted and then cut at the last minute from the book due to space.

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Paul Auster,

This is a great Experiment. I heard about it on the radio and decided to get this down and send it out.

This is all absolutely true. The pictures included are part of my story.

A while back when I was going through my things and preparing for a move, I came across a drawing that looked as though it had been done when I was four or five years old. The drawing is not dated.

The drawing illustrates a red three story building at an intersection with sidewalks. The building is surrounded by defunct cars, tires, and machine parts. A fence surrounds the lots around the building. There is a traffic light, and a neighboring building across the street where the angle of the intersection is slightly obtuse.

What has intrigued me endlessly about this particular drawing is that it accurately depicts an apartment in Brooklyn in which I would eventually live nearly 16 years later.

The similar real world location is at 14 Bayard Street in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. It is directly across from McCarren Park on the south side, and has not changed a great deal since I lived there a decade ago. The building is a lonely three story building with red asbestos tile. There is a chimney on the right side of the roof exactly like the drawing. The building is surrounded by junked cars, tires and garbage, just as in the drawing. A fence surrounds the lots like the drawing. There is a traffic light out on the corner with sidewalks like the drawing. The angle of the intersection is very similar, and there is another apartment building placed exactly as it is in the drawing. If you take the elements apart they are almost too accurate to be inconsequential.

The only difference I can find is that the door on the building is in the center, while the real 14 Bayard Street, has its doorway on the left side. Interestingly, if you look at the drawing even closer it seems as though I started to draw a structure on the left side, similar to the stoop overhang and which the real building currently has.

It’s so close however, that when I first came across it I recognized the drawing immediately as where I was living. It was also the first apartment I ever had in Brooklyn and was really my first introduction to an “urban” environment.

Now this could have been only a coincidence of course, and a bizarre stretch of the imagination, only it happened a few years later with another place in which I lived.

This time I clearly made the drawing in the late 1980’s while I was actually living on Bayard Street.

The second drawing depicts a suspension bridge stretching away into the distance over a river. The structure of the bridge looks as though it is built in many latticed levels. The aspect ratio of the drawing is easily 2:1, so it almost looks like it is in Cinemascope.

In 1995 I moved  into a unique sublet on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. One dominant feature of the apartment was its marvelous view of the river and the Willaimsburg Bridge. Again, I again came across this drawing after I lived in the space.

One curious aspect of the bridge drawing is that it seems to depict a huge fire, or plume of smoke, emanating out of Brooklyn. I haven’t been able to identify this smoke with any real occurrence. There was a train crash on the bridge one summer close to the spot in the drawing, and once one of the towers caught on fire, but nothing that large and on the distant horizon. The frame of the window is similarly rectangular, although not 2:1, and the element of the latticework of the bridge, makes it resemble the Williamsburg closely. I’ve often thought that this smoke in the picture might illustrate a calamity to come, but fortunately for everyone, I will be moving from this location in less than a month.

I find it very curious that I seem to consistently be making a record of the places I have lived before I have lived in them.

If anything else it encourages me to keep drawing.

Regards,

X. F. Pine

P.S. On a side note (you should hold onto your hat if you are wearing one), one of the very first exterior shots in the movie Smoke shows the Willamsburg Bridge from the Brooklyn side. If you look closely in the back, beyond the bridge, I believe you can see the apartment window where I am currently writing this letter. The building is definitely visible.

So there!

Best,

- XFP

With all recent oil panic and near nuclear meltdowns I decided to venture out to the mythical site of Wardenclyffe in Shoreham, NY (Long Island). This was the site of Nikola Tesla’s controversial “Magnifying” tower which was first designed to send radio information across the Atlantic in 1901.

In Tesla’s mind it was also capable of transmitting energy without wires. If you are unfamiliar with Tesla you must read this as a premier to get the whole picture. He conceived AC current, radio controlled robotics, cell phones, and a plethora of influential inventions (+700 patents) which set the foundations of the 20th century mad sciences.

Construction on the extensive laboratory and tower began in 1901 to become a part of Tesla’s Global System with J.P. Morgan as a primary backer. Also in 1901 Marconi successfully transmitted a radio signal across the Atlantic by using patents Tesla had invented although Tesla received no credit until after his death.

According to this In 1904 NY Times article, Tesla received the land for free to help develop a wireless radio resort community and had plans of putting similar towers in population areas. He claimed that the magnifying transmitter would be able to emit a wave complex of 10 million horsepower.

By 1903 the tower stood 187 feet high and was visible from New Haven, Connecticut across the sound. There were accounts that year of the tower briefly being turned on and bolts lighting up the night sky from the top of the tower. People noticed electrical sparks from their feet to the ground when they walked nearby. There are tanks in the main building which were reportedly used as massive batteries.

As the ambitious prototype neared completion Morgan backed out of the funding. Historians speculate that this was due to Tesla’s philosophy of giving electricity away for free and there was no way to “put a meter” on what Tesla had planned.

“Homes, farms, offices, factories, villages, libraries, museums, street lights, etc., could all be powered wireless and produce brilliant white light 24 hours a day. Motor energy for any industrial applications, transportation, tractors, trucks, trains, boats, automobiles, air ships or planes could be powered freely-anywhere on the planet from a single Magnifying Transmitter.”

Without Morgan the entire laboratory was in jeopardy. Tesla secretly mortgaged off the property to the owner of the Waldorf-Astoria to cover debts of $20,000 dollars. By 1917 they had the tower blown up for scrap. The site changed hands a few times over the years.

What remains is very perplexing and mysterious. The site was taken over by AGFA in the 1960s and they proceeded to poison the site with photo chemical toxins. It is now posted as restricted Superfund site although it was supposedly cleaned up by 1993. I also discovered it is currently for sale for $1.65 million dollars “as is”. The complex has 14 buildings on 15 acres. The original low brick building with the ornate smokestack which was designed by Stanford White is partially still there. The site of the huge tower is a strange octagon shape which is fabled to have honeycombs of tunnels and dormant spiral staircases beneath. Depressing rusted barbed wire surrounds everything.

As I walked around the lonely perimeter I was struck by the concept that this is where the 20th century branched off in the wrong direction. We’ve built a superstructure on dwindling commodities that we are fatally dependent upon from food distribution to heating our homes. Telsa’s execution may have been premature, but the concept of free energy transmission is profound given our current global circumstances. To think that this lost dream collapsed over a century ago is disturbing. The deeper you look into it the more you realize that Tesla knew things we still cannot comprehend. To go forward you must look back. The greatest scientific achievements are giant leaps of faith.

-XFP

Heard firsthand on the street in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. (Actual Conversation):

Man has a clipboard and confronts an old woman.

MAN: Well, If you don’t want to sign the petition, it’s up to you.

OLD WOMAN: That’s right.

MAN: It’s a…

OLD WOMAN: You can’t make ME!!!

MAN: Fine.

OLD WOMAN: I’m not going to sign it!!!

MAN: You don’t have…

OLD WOMAN: That’s dirty money…

MAN: Mammm…

OLD WOMAN: Regan wipes his ass with my money!!!

MAN: I’m not trying to…

OLD WOMAN: He took it from me and he’s wiping his ass with it.

MAN: I’m sorry.

OLD WOMAN: He took it… You RAT-MEN took it!!!

MAN: I…

OLD WOMAN: You RAT-MEN. You stay away from  me!!!

MAN: Just…

OLD WOMAN: You RAT-MEN.  You took my money… RAT-MEN with your cocks!!!

MAN: Be…

OLD WOMAN: RAT-MEN … I want my money back. You can’t take it. You’ll see.

Man with clipboard leaves defeated.

OLD WOMAN: You RAT-MEN can’t get away…

- X.F. Pine

You are passing through a field of junk with tall dead grass, and you cannot see the vermin underneath it all.

A huge barrel shaped goon with a tiny head hoists a large safe on the arch of his back. The combination has been lost. He puts it down as he tries to organize the derelict lot. You walk past pretending not to notice an old bass violin with no strings leaning against a wall. You are positive there is a rat under the grass at your feet.

You hear another man speaking to the goon while he picks up more junk, “We should have gotten into this business, we’d be rich by now.”

You walk out of the lot.

The express train doors close and the thieves are in the corner of the car. The two drunk men stand in large unkempt suits laughing hysterically. They stumble with the unsteady train as it starts up, and the sound that comes through the broken door is as loud as hell.

The taller one with the mustache violently pulls out a large roll of money. He tries to count it and divide it up. The other small drunker thief in sunglasses waves a dozen thick gold chains in his stubby hand. The lights dim and flash out for a moment as the train hurtles past stations. The thief in the glasses begins laughing again as if he is splitting. The tall thin one loses his grin, as he is mesmerized by the bills.

After a moment of counting, he looks at his friend with alarm. He shoots a paranoid expression over the rest of the train. He becomes serious and begins shouting only it is too loud to hear. It all sounds like nonsense.

You remember a story about a young kid who comes to the big city to be a singer. He sacrifices it all in a number of years and never gets a return. His nights wash into alcoholic angst. His act becomes loud, annoying and disgraceful. He falls into a group of similar people who feed off of fake compliments. They are a party crowd and they keep each other alive until one of them gets in an unmitigated accident, causing the whole group to be offset. The particular young man whose descent we have so wickedly had the honor of tracing finally returns to a trailer home in Florida where he grew up. His only keepsake is a bright red scarf which was worn by one of the ladies of the group.

A young man hands out leaflets about his jewelry business at the foot of an escalator in a busy train station. The fliers have line drawings of the perfect diamonds which he spent days rendering. Everyone thinks collectively of diamonds on their long commute home.

X. F. Pine