It feels like ten years have passed but nothing has really happened.

The only progress has been via bubbles whose excitement was redacted by panic.

Maybe the disruption has begun. Maybe we are fooling ourselves with our castles in the air. I wonder if are at some invisible turning point of some huge cycle.

We’ve misguided wars thinking that we were the good guys, but never claiming any victories because we denied we were conquers. So we pay for all the wars. We are selfless good guys by principal but tempted always to be bad.

Are we better off? We are more mistrustful of nature and our frameworks. We trust technology to a fault. We are emotionally stuck in the 16th century. We are dependent upon the unseen. Everyone’s problems are our own problems.

NYC has turned into the Panopticon I always thought it would be. Privacy is a misnomer. Facebook is big brother. Your peers have sent you an invite. The government knows who your friends are.

I’ve lost my health and the faith in my physical body in the last decade. The older people I loved and trusted have passed on. There is no one in a room praying for me on a daily basis. There are only people who hate each other in their narcissism.

I’ve been through a half dozen relationships in ten years. Some of these I still fantasize about. In the end I wrecked them all because I couldn’t understand love or compromise. I couldn’t communicate. I couldn’t be happy. I became someone else for people until I became exhausted. I fooled myself as much as I fooled others.

I have been distracted by my purposes and technology. I have struggled with worth. I have realized that too much freedom makes you inert. I have realized that everything is faith and the quality and quantity of faith must be reciprocal to the number of obstacles and their intensity. Faith is a scale of coping and adaptation of the unknown. Its levels are infinite as are the boundaries of success.

I’ve realized that everything is an act of improvisation and sensibility is complete collision. Money is an uncomfortable chair you must sit in for hours. It is better than standing, but makes you lazy and makes you feel like you are always missing something accidental that may be more comfortable and lush.

I attempt to listen to the good progressive voices in my head, but they lead me to isolated places where I question if they are random sounds like all the sounds that inject fears into actions I used to love.

I must focus on mentors and surround myself with people I respect. I must cut out all noise from my life.

- X.F. Pine

When I worked at Weiser’s Bookstore on 24^th street I didn’t realize I was witnessing the end of something, but one never does.

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