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

As I’m on the treadmill at night I notice the moon edging over a building on the horizon. It’s a huge timeless full moon. I am covered in moonbeams through the window as I run. I become witness to an Indian runner from hundreds of years ago who runs across the desert sands under that same moon. The night is cool and travel this way is easier. The young Indian is barefoot and must be careful to step on soft sand. Sharp objects and shrubs are easily visible in the moonlight. He runs towards the flat horizon. He runs some twenty miles in a night. He imagines rhythms and chants and sings them to keep his pace.

Before I can complete the novel locked in a room I must confer with my Soviet counterpart who is near Moscow on an open line dedicated phone. It is not a red hotline, but a black shiny phone. The connection buzzes and cracks but Vasiliy (The King) is at the other end. He is overjoyed and enthusiastic about my recent decisions in the narrative. He urges and inspires me to press on. I look out the window at the sunlit garden below my window, but I cannot go outside.

X.F. Pine

There are many Germans on the train. There are svelte perpetually laughing bleach blond schoolgirls. I do not speak their language. A mechanical toy clown coos a baby to sleep with a haunting melancholy twinkle. The train roars through the murky landscape all night long. The other passengers are weighed down by sighs and breathe heavily to sleep. There is only the twinkle of the music box clown in the front of the car.

I wake as we pull into the numb dawn silence of North Carolina. Voices wander outside the car. The freezing air conditioning flips off to total silence. The toy clown is wound by the tireless mother again and its sound repeated. I think for a moment, we have been in a train wreck in the night. Everyone in the dark car is dead. We were pulling into Heaven just before the earliest light as ghosts.

Later we continue across a causeway from the north out of the bayou and above Lake Pontchartrain which extends to the horizon. The train appears to be floating over a narrow strip of rail that is the causeway. A southern misfit drunk in the lounge car says women generally become very upset at the predicament of the train. “What if we were to break down?” He’d heard them ask. He said the railway pays him two dollars an hour to talk to people in the lounge car.

As we roll into the outskirts of the city, I am struck by the immense Metairie graveyard in the north. Tomb after tomb continue above ground down to the buildings downtown.

The train creeps slowly and then assumes a strange perspective like most things here. They must pull it backwards into the station.

I feel an low balance here the minute I get off the train. It is a slow spiritual permutation that presents itself gradually. There is something primal and basic within each ancient floor, across the streets at night, behind fences, and in trees. The ground is always damp and soft. It is rich in its fertility. There is a distinctive smell outside the quarter that is pungent and swampy. It is a sour food smell, but not at all rotten. It’s loamy and settling. The smell of mildew covers and disrupts it into a wild tangle.

It rains consistently every day at the same time, and it seems to regulate life and action here. The downpours wait for no one. It cools any frantic and defensive mood, and makes everything endlessly sultry.

The quarter lives through its own myth and shadowy traditions more than any current raw risks. It’s just a simulation compared to the past. It is all quite tarnished and trashy in its pursuit of money. It is a strange curio show of the pseudo-past. All the ornaments are big in this town like the people. They are overdone and self-important. Visitors see what they expect. They always want to see more. They always leave slightly dissatisfied because the legend is so large.

The southerners here perpetuate conversations in a bars or trolleys. Outside of the quarter the local bars are stranger. There is a neighborhood hub of activity along the bars on St. Charles. Igor’s was a 24 hour atmospheric restaurant/bar/Laundromat combination. Blacks are seldom seen in these establishments. A boy with long hair continually weeps at the jukebox unnoticed as if this were normal. A woman walks in with a three foot long fish over her shoulder. No one knows where she caught it. No one asks. An old man scrapes the paint off a door at half speed.

A fat old patron blurts out, “We were driving around about to kill a nigger for the stolen bicycle, only to realize suddenly that the bike hadn’t moved.”

“Kill him for when he does steal it.” The owner snaps back.

Everyone orders out from a Mexican restaurant called Koo-Koos for dinner when they could have cooked in the back room on the grill. The owner was too pot-bellied and lazy.  “Are you sure you want that? That place is a dump.” He says.

“Go ahead and tell him what your nickname was.” A husband at the bar says to his wife.

“I’m not.” She says.

“Come on, I bet it’s just great.” A big man with glasses at the end of the bar says with his hands.

“D-“ the husband starts.

“Don’t you dare.” She says.

“D!“ the big man repeats in anticipation.

“Darling!” The husband blurts out.

“I’m so ashamed.” She says.

The big man laughs a big laugh, followed by a big gulp of whisky. “I once knew a girl named that.” He says. No one cares.

Back at the Hummingbird Hotel where I stay, the quirky fag waiters are polite as painted mimes walk in after a day on the streets. In the next room from me is a drunk Voodoo man who trashes his room after a day of drumming and whistling at Jackson Square. He taps on the plywood wall afterward as if he wants me to tap back. His television blares a talk show and a vague sports event. I see him outside his door locking it the next day. He has deep memorizing eyes that track through me. There is a wrapped condom in his straw hat band. He mumbles something. His voice is deep and sullen. He barely opens his mouth. The eyes do everything.

In another one of the rooms at the Hummingbird, I see a pile of magician’s black boxes and trick devices through a closing doorway. There is no space left in the room. It looks like twenty years of tricks. There are magicians arguing about something.

There are bare bulbs and bare walls. A roach with wings flutters down from the ceiling in a spiral. There are awkward footsteps in the hall. Someone surely died in the hall bathroom’s large tub. The mattress is very springy for sexual gyrations. Someone has scrawled biblical half-truths on the wall. The door to the room was once kicked in. The woman at the register calls me “Baby”. The smell of the rooms is consistent with the rest of the city and sticks in your clothing.

At night I look for old invisible traces of Storeyville but there is only a housing project. I wonder around near the Old Absinthe House. I end up on the cobblestone streets in the Pirate Alley where Faulkner first wrote fiction. It rains. It is deserted here. People look at me like I’m mad and alone. I sense they are afraid of me.

I decide to move to a youth hostel a block off St. Charles Avenue near the Lafayette cemetery so I have a better chance of meeting people.  There are different hints of languages and accents. There are many traveling stories where people sit and compete about where they’ve been or how many hours they’ve spent in the air. A few travelers from Australia brag about how they eat all their meals on planes.

A girl named Joe from California is here. She rode alone across a southwest desert on a bicycle with Mexican men taunting her. She grew up on a farm is and is soft-chested and wide-eyed. There is nothing impure about her. She is good at puzzles and wants to be an engineer. She tells me I have all the traits of someone from New York City. She reacts the way she thinks she should, and jokes and references fly over her head. It is all innocent and casual. I miss her when she disappears to find and apartment the next day.

Glenn is a tall awkward guy from Texas. And our paths cross at a strip joint on Bourbon. “Austin is a party town. Check it out.” He says.

Glenn has a wiry fake like mustache that does not fit his face. He tips and talks to the dancers. The young Mexican one with the drastic overbite and dyed red hair, and Joy, the forty-four year old sad hangover of a dancer.

“Give here three years, and her ass will stick way out.” Glenn says of the Mexican girl.

The jaded barmaid with an evil sneer and a scowl, says she hates New Yorkers, and wants to close the place up for the night.

“Where you from?” She asks.

“New York.” I tell her.

“It figures.”

The Mexican girl is done dancing and comes down to get her tips from Glenn and I. “I’m broke. Busted.” I say.

“How about selling you soul?” she asks.

“My what?”

“Your soul.”

“What about school?” I ask.

“Your soul. How about selling it?”

“No my soul is fine.”

There is a cold stare from her and our conversation ends.

Joy, the old party girl is warming up on stage. Glenn says he is leaving before things get too ugly. Joy is bumping now. She is churning spasmodically. A bandage covers her hand where she cut it on the jagged edge of the mirror on the stage. The place is empty and cold to the touch.

Outside, Glenn says his girlfriend works at a burlesque house down the street and he was there before to give her medication. He says it is a better strip bar, but he doesn’t like walking through the door. He feels awkward watching his girlfriend with others around. Glenn aptly describes Bourbon Street as a “Money Vacuum”. I agree with him. It sucks your money right up and it spits you back out drunk and bewildered.

What is worse is most of the bars with strippers have slanted mirrors out the doors to the busy street so the twirling dancing flesh looks closer than it really is. It’s the refractions that always pull a person in.

The influence of Voodoo and its place and purpose here is intriguing to me.

Throughout the city you are always aware of a dark undercurrent of suppression by whites over blacks. A great spirit lies with the oppressed here. Spirits do not lie. It is obvious within their faces. The weight of Voodoo has always been a part of this subjugation. Its three divisions are “God”: the controller of destiny, “Loa”: a mixture of pantheons, Christian and African, including saints, and the third force of the “Ancestors”: who act as a guiding element. American Indian shamanism seems to have its influence as well, with the ancient Blackfeet tribe. The trio of forms have integrated some of their similarities including animal sacrifice, ancestor worship, the totem, and fertility rites. The later is most interesting when considering the mood and sensuality of a place such as this.

I consider the naked dance of a young girl in a strip bar, (Even with a snake on occasion) to be connected with Marie Laveau’s ritual of the young virgin. Both stimulate the male drive for fertility. One difference being that the Voodoo ritual is compounded and realized by real physical sacrifice, which connects its significance with the Earth. The modern equivalence is economic sacrifice. One sacrifices money towards a stripper. Money is abstract enough to sit outside of time. We think we control the concept of time though it, while we separate ourselves from the animal and world’s true cycles that we are infinitely tethered to. We lie our own lives away in the modern world. By abstracting sacrifice, we endanger the workings of the real world.

The return trip back by train is in a Thunderbird Coach car. The drunk misfit on the trip down said that these cars used to operate on a famous line across the plains. It is named and decorated after the Indian symbol and totem spirit. A girl from Paris is here. The funniest man in the world eats in the dinning car. There is a conductor with the outrageous name of Bill Chestnut on his nametag. He has a southern accent.

X.F. Pine

A theory I’ve heard about over years is the correlations between the constellation of Orion’s Belt and the three main Pyramids at Giza. This is also known as the OCT (Orion Correlation Theory). See this amazing site for a more detailed explanation of the theory.

Recently I have been experimenting with composites and layers in Google Earth and had to attempt this by mapping the constellation to the ground.

Google Earth actually has the structures built into the system so you can see the correlation when the layer is installed.

Here is the .kmz layer file to download.

Here is the most recent version of Google Earth.

If you already have Google Earth installed the file should load up into the “Places” panel on the left automatically. If not try to open the .kmz manually via the Google Earth application.

It’s easier to see the star field if you turn OFF the Panoramio photos checkbox in the “Layers’ panel on the left. Photos show up as blue dots.  Turn ON the checkbox for 3D buildings in  the left “Layers” panel to see the structures.

Notice that the map is slightly off kilter and also there are other smaller stars that seem to map to other structures on the ground nearby south of the main Pyramids.  One must also wonder if there has been some drift in the stars and astronomic angles over 4000 years since the pyramids were built.

Another part of the theory mentions that the Nile itself represents the edge of the Milky Way galaxy and the placement of the Sphinx is connected to the constellation Leo. I would need to find a larger more highly detailed map to test this.

X. F. Pine

In the middle of the fourth heat wave this July I needed to seek answers as I turned my AC up a notch.  I came across this fascinating data on weatherperspectives.com gleaned from NOAA and broken down by states in the U.S. over a hundred years or so.

It seems it’s not my imagination or my aging memory over the last  twenty years in the New York region.  There has been something strange going on.

What’s  fascinating  about this perspective is the spike which appears in the mid-1950s? Could this have been a latent result of WWII and huge industrial production or even firebombing in Europe?  Or could it have been due to the peak in  atomic testing that took place in the atmosphere. Or a combination or everything.  The ramp up starts in what looks like early 1942 so there must be a connection there.

In addition, there are other states listed and it’s interesting to see patterns in comparison. For instance it looks like Arizona is getting much hotter than other places.

But then places like Missippippi are getting cooler over decades.

The overall data of all the states looks like this.  I think the only long term solution as far as comfort goes is to move to Maine or Cape Breton to become a Mi’kmaq Indian. One must change and adapt to survive or die in the process.

X.F. Pine

The famous store had been around since the 1920s and specialized in Oriental Philosophy and the Occult.  It was an interesting period of time because it was at the beginning of the commercialization of the New Age movement, but the place had this older eccentric atmosphere. There were people who worked there who were practicing Rosicrucians and others associated with the Golden Dawn. Crystal hunters would come in to sell their finds. A customer would rage about the Planet X and be escorted to the door.

Now that I tend to collect books, I cannot even imagine what amazing obscurities the manager Chip had behind the counter towards the back. I realize that places like this in New York are more obscure than ever now. Places with old magical knowledge you could talk to people about in person. The Store is just online now.

Once I remember I went out for lunch and wondered down 23^rd street. I came across a card table where an old man sold used books. I immediately noticed the Burroughs’ classics Naked Lunch and Junky on the top. The copies were old worn paperbacks. When I picked up the copy of Junky, another man with serious eyes and who looked like a ghoul took notice of my interest and said, “That’s a good book.”

It took me a while to realize that the man was Herbert Huncke himself, one of the characters in Junky. I was spooked. Had he put the book there as bait? I believe I shook his hand and we had a discussion of where Burroughs was now. We talked about the bunker Burroughs’ had on the Bowery. He looked remarkably good for all he had been through. I believe I bought the copy of Naked Lunch to avoid feeling like I was being hustled. The idea of having Huncke sign the copy of Junky passed through my mind, but then I realized he didn’t write the book. He just lived it. I went back looking for him a couple of times, but never saw him again.

I find it disturbing that CORBIS owns the best pictures of Huncke via Allen Ginsburg. I’d like to think they are all somewhere laughing at the fact that their images are held by the one of the richest men in the world.

I encountered Ginsburg a few times. Once on the north side of Union Square. I recognized him and he smiled. He was just standing there. We were across the street from the old Max’s Kansas City which was now a deli. He looked like an old ghost passing through the city. The other time was at a New Year’s Day reading at the St. Mark’s church. He would be sitting there cross legged like a wise Buddha listening, always listening.

Another day when I was working on the floor at Weiser’s, a strange old man with a scrawny beard came in and started asking about books about pyramids and archeology. He had of stack of these books in his frail hands. He had glasses and a loud almost shrieking voice that got your attention instantly. He said he had a film card which gave him a discount. I am positive now that this man was Harry Smith. I believe he lived at the Chelsea Hotel at the time where he died a few years later.  For those who might not know, Smith was a polymath, ethnomusicologist, filmmaker and mystic. CORBIS has Ginsburg’s photos of him too. What would they all think of our strange world now?

X.F. Pine

When I got there I couldn’t help noticing a deafening sound emanating from wind blowing through the observation tower. It sounded like the ghosts of a thousand summers. Click here for the mysterious sound. I guess the road to Dante’s Inferno is paved with good intentions. There is something ultra sad and silent about a defunct amusement park in the winter.

Astroland operated from 1955 to last year. I’ve always found its dirtiness and grunge to define Coney in its way. You’ll notice that they took the carriages off the Wonder Wheel for good. There is something naked about it now. It’s just a wheel. Both the Wonder Wheel and the Cyclone are supposedly going to be preserved with The Shoot the Freak lot I’d imagine. It was disturbing to see a for lease sign on Ruby’s Old Tyme Bar and Grill on the boardwalk. Although I heard it closed on Memorial day weekend when some guy fell ten feet through the bathroom floor into some kind of rat den. Where or where will all those denizens go? All the pictures on the walls? Such good times. Such character you can’t buy.


But of course Coney has always been a place for transformations. Here is a hi rez map of Coney from before WWI. This includes Dreamland, Luna, and Steeplechase Parks. This is when they had live elephants walking down the boardwalk and exhibitions like baby incubators and mini villages inhabited by midgets. Click on Map below.

X. F. Pine

The island is very curious and unique in that it’s divided in two with a more developed Dutch side and a more rural French side. There are casinos and Ocean liners on the Dutch side while there is hardly a bank machine, except in Marigot on the French side.

As I continued to drive it had become dark and I was lost, I came down upon a hairpin turn on Chamba Hill above the French Quarter by the Fish Pond and suddenly realized there was no brake fluid left in the car and no way to stop. At the last moment I managed to turn into a dirt driveway and back up the hill. There was a parking lot there next to an old plantation house with blue shutters which was a small restaurant. The owner of the restaurant came out on the porch and I explained what happened and asked if I could use the phone to call the rental company. The owner was an friendly man named Tony who had a gracious smile which immediately calmed me down. It seemed as though he ran the place and lived in the back of the house. There was one American couple eating on the porch. Tony gave me his phone and explained that there we was a separate country code to call the other side of the island. I called the number on my contract and they told me it would take about ninety minutes to send over a replacement car because of all the nighttime traffic near the airport.

As I hung up the phone I couldn’t help notice the incredible ambience the house had inside. There was something ghosty and comfortable about it. There were old bottles and artifacts like nutcrackers on the old cabinets and ancient pictures. There was a chess set in the other room. Tony was extremely hospitable and I decided to stay and eat out on the porch.

I struck up a conversation with the couple who wondered what had happened to me. They told me that Tony Romney was a famous chef who had once prepared a meal for both President Mitterand and President Bush 41 when he was a head chef in the late 1980s. They said there was a certificate on the wall inside. They had come back for years on end. Just as Tony brought chicken in an amazing homemade Creole sauce to the table, the wind kicked up and suddenly it was raining sideways. We all dashed into the dining room where I had used the phone.

Tony began to tell me about how the house was over a hundred years old and had the roof blown off in the past by a hurricane. The air seemed to pass right through it as it was up on the top of the hill. The couple soon left after the weather died down and Tony and I spoke about all sorts of things including New York and how his driveway had pretty much saved my life. I managed to spill some of my soda and he told me it was good luck.

The replacement car never arrived and after trying to call again with no answer I just gave up. Tony suggested that the car might have cooled down, and I agreed that I would just have to try it again and go back the way I came to find my hotel. I thanked him for his hospitality and the great food and went out to start the car again. I double checked the handbrake and realized it might be on even though the light wasn’t. I tried to just will that the car was not broken, and this seemed to work Tony had been right.

Five days later as I headed back to the airport I stopped by and said good-bye to Tony Romney and took this picture. He remarked about how much more relaxed and how much healthier I looked from the first time I saw him. He was correct. If you get to the east side of the island are near Orleans section look for Poulet d’Orleans – Creole Restuarant above the hairpin turn. You will not be disappointed by the atmosphere the hospitality or the food.

X.F. Pine

Map of St. Martin:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Saint-Martin_map_detailed-en.svg

Some believe there is evidence of man being here 200,000 years ago. No human remains have been found on the site yet, and I was told by the one Park Ranger who was fixing his refrigerator when I showed up, that all they would probably find is teeth anyway, because the ground is so alkaline, that it dissolves bone and anything else that is organic. You get the feeling it is probably a matter of time before something extraordinary is found here which will change history.

Calico Early Man Site:

http://www.calicodig.org/

Map of Ancient Lake Mannix:

http://www.calicodig.org/wpg2?g2_itemId=248

X. F. Pine