A Baboon In New York, Part 2.1: A Baboon on Wall Street

“Let Wall Street have a nightmare and the whole country has to help get them back in bed again.” -Will Rogers

"The point is ladies and gentlemen that greed, for lack of a better word, is good." -Gordon Gekko

Big Brother: Police Tower over looking Zuccotti Park.

There's a spot, when you're at the Staten Island Ferry Station, where you can see the Statue of Liberty. It's at a distance, in relief against the western sky and the choppy waves of the Hudson River. I don't know if I'll actually take the ferry out to see it and Ellis Island up close; it's one of Those Things That Tourists Do. I have no interest in being a tourist and I'm entirely too cynical about the condition of our country to get all touchy-feely about it.

But I'm getting ahead of myself here.

When Susan asked me what I wanted to see, I told her one of the things I wanted to see was Zuccotti Park, and that I wanted to go Wall Street, and maybe Time Square. Zuccotti Park was and is the location for the Occupy Wall Street Movement that has spread across the country. When it started in October, I was itchy to be here... but life intervened and I wasn't able to get here. Luckily, my very hospitable friend, Susan, was here to give me a sense of what was really going on -- because I sure as shit wasn't getting it in any of the media coverage.

The first thing I learned... something I don't remember being much discussed... is that the Zuccotti Park, in addition to being close to Wall Street, is located in the shadow of New World Trade Center.

The memorial for the 3000 people who died in the two towers is in the process of being constructed BEHIND two new towers. The construction of One World Trade Center (1 WTC) and another tower were delayed because of disagreements about design, planning, etc.

Sitting in Zuccotti Park, aka Liberty Plaza Park, staring up at the rising skyscraper, it struck me yet again.

We haven't learned a god damn thing.

3000 people die for no good reason, and the absolute best that we can come up with, other than a war in Iraq that made no sense -- in which the official number of American deaths is estimated to be 33,186 (antiwar.com)-- is a symbol that the business of America is and will always be BUSINESS.

(The actual death toll is probably higher. And if you take into account allies and civilian "collateral damage, the number is staggering.)

Since the encampment was destroyed by the city under the pretense of "cleaning it", most of the occupiers are finding ways to wait out the winter. Another interesting tidbit that was left out nearly all the ridiculously ineffective media coverage of the Occupy Wall Street Encampment -- technically, Zuccotti Park is joint Public/Private property.

In order to build a really tall building to house a Brooks Brothers store and a couple thousand anonymous offices no one gives a shit about, Brookfield Office Properties entered into an agreement with the city to make the Park into Public Space. And because it's Public/Private Property, unlike the other parks in New York City, it's open 24 hours. Thus, Liberty Plaza Park -- a place that was considered part of a 9/11 memorial --  was renamed for Brookfield Chairman John Zuccotti.

I guess you know you've arrived and conquered New York when you can put your name on stuff. And whoever has the most stuff wins.

Then again... there's always a bigger hair piece. Sorry Johnny boy.

40 Wall Street. Right down from the New York Stock Exchange

There's never a Magic Marker around when you need one...

This was as close as I could get. The whole area is blockaded and protected like Buckingham Palace.

... no paint filled balloons, either.

My initial impressions of Lower Manhattan were claustrophobic. Especially Wall Street. The labyrinth of skyscrapers and alley width streets block out the sun. The wheezing mechanical money heart of America thumps and bumps in the dark, hidden by long shadows. Light and air are expelled by the very nature of the place -- which probably explains why so many stupid things happen there.

           It's common knowledge that denying your brain oxygen kills you brain.

           It's common knowledge that an absence of sunlight causes sadness.

          It's not commonly known, however, that over time, the absence of air and light

          will strangle your soul. 

         And then, they name a park after you.

Being in Lower Manhattan on Ash Wednesday was an interesting experience. I'm not Catholic, and except for the fact that my name is probably still on a list buried in an ancient file cabinet at the Bethel Church of Christ in Bethel, Ohio, I'm not listed anywhere as a Christian -- Catholic, Protestant, or otherwise. 

I've made up my own label, primarily for reductive and Facebook related reasons: Zen Transcendentalism. All it means, Dear Readers, is that I believe we are more than what we are. I also believe that experience is its own sacred text -- more sacred than any text that's been handed down and re-translated through cultures and generations.

There's a great quote by Lenny Bruce that goes something like this:

"When you live in New York, even if you're Catholic, you're Jewish."

With all respect to Lenny Bruce, this may not necessarily be the case in Lower Manhattan on the first day of Lent. I saw so many men in tailored business suits and women wearing business couture with ash crosses on their foreheads that it seemed almost like part of the uniform.

Then again, it is derived from the ancient Jewish tradition of placing ashes on one's forehead to indicate mourning. So maybe Lenny Bruce had a point, after all.

The thing is, when you consider the mess that the Financial sector has made of this country -- spare me, please, from that tired adage about the business of America being the systematic rape and pillage of people's life savings or that other one about boot straps and S&M masks -- maybe they ought to be asking someone for forgiveness.

I mean, it can't hurt. Right?

(Cont. in Part 2.2)

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Open Letter to the Alumni Association

Dear Sanctimonious Leeches and Intellectual Parasites:

I would very much like to thank you for the glossy quarterly publication in which you highlight the accomplishments of those past, present, and future graduates who you feel distinguish the grand Alma Mater in this age of for-profit degree mills and economic and educational disparity. I have always felt especially grateful to have attended because of the people I met there, student and faculty alike, who encouraged me to grow and to think and have helped me to become the fully realized human being I am in the process of becoming.

Among them, one teacher stands out more than most. And I would mention his name, but since you have never mentioned him in the aforementioned glossy publication you insist on mailing me every three months, I can only conclude that he continues to toil in the shadow of an institution that neither notices nor cares that he has set upon the world more artists and free thinkers than your College of Business has loosed successful entrepreneurs. As a matter of fact, I'm fairly certain that your College of Business – which, allowed by your President and Board of Regents, and in a premeditated and unholy fashion, swallowed whole the English Department from which I managed to graduate … twice … – has done little more for the world than set upon it an army of mediocre middle managers, all of whom were made to retrain their replacements when the companies they worked for sent all the jobs overseas.

Now, this teacher I speak of is a great poet and an amazing human being – and though that statement is a bit repetitive, I feel, nonetheless, obliged to mention both since you may not have yet made the connection. He had done none of the things that merit attention from the College of Business graduates who have risen to offices of institutional power and affluence... the poetry haters who used to pass out ruffies to sorority girls at parties the way priests hand out wafers of bread on Sunday. As a related aside, consider this: people who claim to hate poetry or to not understand it have clearly missed the point. Granted, the Modernists – Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, and the like – sort screwed over those of who came after because they removed poetry from the trust of the people and deposited it in the sorry Savings and Loan otherwise known as the modern college and university system. And because of those dead sorry bastards there's a lot of even sorrier living ones who have never known that poetry is a more potent aphrodisiac than chocolate.

But this does not excuse you, leeches and parasites, from the guilt you share in the whole sale theft of the American Dream. Whole generations have come up believing they need you to succeed, and if they can't afford you that they aren't worthy. And if by success they mean living the half life of a cubicle caught middle manager, techie toiler, tax payer, and amasser of debt, then your Ponzi scheme has succeeded. You rotten sons of bitches.

Along with the glossy magazine you send me every three months with the pictures of the unknowing poster children of the apocalypse, you often send me letters asking for money... a tithe, no doubt from the income you feel like you have helped me to earn. And while I would gladly spend that $25 on beer for the teacher to whom I owe so much, or for any one of the people– poets and artists all – who have graced me with their friendship, there is very little you can do, either in your form letters or in your glossy magazine to convince me that I ought to contribute to your war coffers.

If, after receiving this letter, you still feel the need to send me the glossy magazine every three months, it's your postage, not mine; the same goes for the letters you send that have gone unanswered until now and will again after I finish. But if you have any respect – scratch that – you are at all concerned about the time wasted by the poor dumb kids you put on the phone to call and try and talk me out of the little bit of money I manage to gather up, remove my phone number from your rolls; because not only will I try and convince them they need to drop out and go find themselves, I will also try and talk them into setting the the Administration building on fire before they leave under cover of night.

You are weasels of the lowest order, the spoilers of healthy minds and rapists of good solid souls. You will get no more of me.

Regards,

Mick Parsons

Mount Carroll, IL