The Parks Department
The Trouble With Apartment One — Chapter 23
The tenement and the Battery…
The latest chapter, delivered on a Tuesday morning…
Base of a flagpole at the Battery — 1992 — B. Späth.
THE PARKS DEPARTMENT
It was during the diabolical rise of a pale and ponderous Indian Summer moon, as I brooded, morose and meditative, upon the impending demise of The Hot Season, that I took it upon myself to compose a letter to Marina, in hopes of coaxing her back to the tenement—
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Upon your departure, Apartment One was at once besieged by a hollowness so acute that every sound assumed a spectral timbre: the scraping of the chair across the floorboards, the fitful clanking of the pipes, the tea cup rattling faintly on the table—
I wander through the ruins of our ill-advised alliance—I wouldn’t dare indulge in cannabis—I’d be hurled into a bottomless despair.
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I fled The Accusing Tenement and its catalogue of sorrows—past the halls of Cooper Union—down the Bowery—through the echoing city streets and squares, until at last I stood among the solemn monuments that populate the Battery. And there I gave in to a dream-like recollection—as if I had wandered into a lost pocket of childhood, and embraced its maritime attractions and salt-eroded charms.
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My pilgrimages to the Battery soon became an irresistible pursuit—sustained by sunshine, harbor lights, and Cannabis Illumination. As instinct turned to protocol, and cries of woe arranged themselves in metered prayer, at length I wrapped myself in madness and assumed the role of Marihuana Priest.
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I fled the center of the city.
I situated myself beneath the sun.
I wrapped myself in quotation marks and spoke with Verrazzano.
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I marveled at the music of the steel drums.
I sent a letter to The Parks Department.
I indulged in ice-cream bars on the promenade and ran right through my savings!
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However, such exalted states cannot be long maintained—nightly I stole back to the tenement like a chastised dog, while the revels at the Battery seemed but a feverish dream…
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Along the southern end of the Battery—just about the time the sodium lamps were coming on—I took up a solitary position at the harbor’s edge, confounded by melancholia and threatened by The Ordinary Circumstances of Living.
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It is a mistake to linger at the Battery after the sun’s departed, I said. All manner of unsavory elements breed along the darkened passways, amid the monuments, the desiccated fountains and the unattended beds. And the water’s turned an ominous black—while the ships glide by like phantoms—
I fled from that unnatural place!
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Upon reflection, I remind myself that I cast you out with righteous cause: you were the embodiment of carnal mischief and ceaseless provocation. You fancied yourself an empress of the diabolic. Your letters lately bore the signature of a demon. I won’t repeat the appellation—lest its syllables call up a dozen shrieking devils.
But never mind all that—come back!
I’ve obtained an uncommon quantity of The Aromatic Cane…