The Book of Blown Gaskets

Journal #31
Sunday, July 1, 2007

Wet spoors invade the pre-dawn hours...

Awakened by squabbling birds that have nested underneath the air-conditioner—not altogether unpleasant... rotting fabric of a dream hangs in the chemical mist above my bed... missed chances in a receding night... cacophony of missed connections and blown chances...

The Great Book of Blown Gaskets
At my desk and getting sick* from the fumes already—even on a Sunday, when all the auto-body shops should be closed, right? Who knows where it’s coming from?

Applying online for jobs and posting resumes... but it’s hard to concentrate...

9:53—On a Q heading to Manhattan—
My skin is itching terribly and I’m groggy from toxins!
Walking up University Place last night: I feel the world crashing in on me, but then I see some poor soul with an artificial leg and I start to break down in tears... Empathy? Kundalini manifestation? Sheer horror? Who knows?

11:04—In some kind of weird cafe on the corner of 1st Ave and Houston.
Contaminated thoughts on a mindless page.
Oblivion neatly inscribed between parallel blue lines.

Book of Foregone Conclusions.

12:06—In an obscure and desperate corner of WSQ—

On the everlasting park bench... as phantoms disguised as tourists push through the heavy air...

*MCS: Acute, multiple chemical-sensitivity brought on by exposure to Methyline Chloride and 911 toxins!

The Great Book of Indigestion

Still-frame from "WSQ", 2011
 
JOURNAL #52
March 8, 2010—

4:37—WSQ—
Debt collectors calling, calling, calling...Vultures circling everywhere in the Poison City. Down to a single bar of “charge” on my cell-phone battery.
 
Trying to conjure the Springtime into existence:

Still-frame from "The Conjure Stone", 2009

Eating compulsively—out of pure neurosis.
 
Park cooling off as the sun goes down one more time...

Still-frame from "Orb Descending in Park/Sepulchre", 2011

Phantoms pass by, sit for a while, and then move on into the oblivion of the late afternoon.
I suppose I’ll be heading up to Barnes & Noble pretty soon—it’s too cold and windy out here now. Fear is ascendent! I am afraid all of the time. Maybe I do need some kind of medication—nah, that stuff never worked for me.
Heading to B&N...

Tuesday, March 9, 2010—

8:28—In the C-Muffin—

Connecticut Muffin, Cortelyou Rd., Brooklyn, NY

Fear, fear, and paranoia—too many things conspire against me—I almost choked when I read that article yesterday about how American Grid conspired with Con Ed and Morgan Stanley to rip off customers in an elaborate scheme that netted them millions! I guess I shouldn’t be shocked or surprised, but I was—the lawlessness and corruption are out of control—it filled me with fear and disgust. This country is absolutely doomed—the depravity is beyond belief! I knew that that American Grid was f*cked up when that psychopath started yelling at me over the phone last year—I felt like I was talking to the mafia or something!

Book #52: Tales of Fear and Disgust!

 
Wednesday, March 10, 2010—

11:25—On a Q heading to 14 St.—oh, no—wait a minute! I’m on a B! Christ—where should I get off?

1:21—WSQ—

Still-frame from "Lost Fountain Observances", 2011

Trying to decide if I should call that debt-collector scumbag back. I probably shouldn’t, but maybe I should at least call them once—I don’t know what to do. I’m really in too fragile a state of mind to be bullied and interrogated by some thuggish debt collector. The back is hurting a little bit but not too bad—where is my PT? I ought to hear from them this week—gotta get that ultra-sound going...

... and I’m sitting in WSQ on a chilly day—not really that comfortable. It’s too fucking cold! I gotta duck inside somewhere... I’m tempted to seek refuge in The Temple... or perhaps... the Albatross...
 

The Albatross Cafe off Union Square West

4:13—Clocks stopped at inconvenient hours.
Endlessly repeating fragments of myself in a spectral Union Square

 4:50—B&N on the 4th floor—I’m sitting in the 3rd row all the way on the right side with a view of Union Square West out of the front windows. It’s cloudy— a gray, swirling sky—overcast, spooky, funereal...

 I have a terribly creepy, paranoid sense of doom swirling around me. It must be the debilitating effects of the last poisoning*** coursing through my system.

Still-frame from "The Periodic Table Contaminated in a Dream", 2010

I wanted to take a walk down to Mosco Street*, but it was too cold.
Sinking into junk-food narcosis.
Everything is rapidly coming to a head: the looming implosion of America and the descent into chaos/police-state/breadline anarchy! Lord!

6:02—In the Faux Viêt Huang Trang Restaurant on Baxter Street.

I order #194** from the menu—I always order #194. But that waiter has begun to anticipate my order every time I come in here—"194?" he asks. And do I detect a slight smirk when he says that? I may have to stop ordering #194... that's the only way to break this vicious circle...
 
The Temple has closed! Another one of my old haunts is gone forever!

Dusk down in Chinatown—always a melancholy undertaking. A thousand memories down here—perhaps I should walk over to Mosco Street just to take a look. 

This part of town reminds me of my stay at Fulton Street, since I often used to amble down here since it was fairly close by.

6:18—Just finished eating my #194—it was half rancid! Bastards! I have calculated that I run a 50-50 risk of getting food poisoning every time I order food in here (or anywhere)—but that those odds are favorable enough for me to keep on ordering.  

Just like old times, yes. The decor in here makes no sense to me whatsoever—Liberace on foodstamps...
Now I have the mother of all indigestions! Christ! What a mistake! Horrid filth! This could take all night to die down...

6:32—I am totally pissed off at this f#cking place—I’m ill!

I am really in an angry pissed off mode these days—all I do is walk through the streets cursing to myself like some old beggar-idiot! Lord! The drooling baby family across the aisle is in for the f#cking long haul—they’re making a whole night of it! Of course! 
My stomach is totally rebelling at the filth I just shoveled down it!
The problem with indigestion is that it overpowers everything else!
 
6:45—Should I jump on the Q train and head back to Ditmas Park?

Ancient insults torment me—why did I put up with them? 

The unnatural lifespan of an insult...

* Mosco Street: the last remnant of the old Cross Street which ran through the Five Points.
**  Chicken with Ginger and Scallions w/White Rice
*** Numberless poisons commingle in our innermost dreams. 

The Numeral 5 at Beekman

From Journal #55
Friday, June 25, 2010
 
12:54—On a Q headed to... where?

Anxiety...
Paranoid and wobbly.
Going over the Manhattan Bridge—creditors calling me! F*ckers!

I wonder if I should get off at Canal and then take an R down to my old haunts in the Financial District for some more observational note-taking?

1:30—In the Plaza outside of City Hall.
The approach to the bottom of the city: a few of the old monoliths are still standing;

On Park Row by the Optimo Cigars store; turn left on Beekman Street; past the old barber shop on 8 Beekman; then Nassau...

Theatre Alley tucked away under black scaffolding in the deep gloom and skeletal structures of fire-escapes.

Nassau torn up between Beekman & Ann.
The thresh and clatter of heavy machinery all around me.

My God: the immense red and white facade of the old Temple Court—all closed down along the streets and covered with scaffolding. They couldn’t be tearing it down; could they?

5 Beekman Street! I peer through the small round hole where the lock used to be—and look into an immense, cavernous and ruined interior illuminated by natural light from above... crumbling plaster and chunks of concrete—the remains of an ornamental balustrade with gold buttresses—stripped, raw iron columns stand in the gloom—wires and torn cables sprout from holes in the ceiling and walls.

A piano sits madly in the center of the chamber!

As I pull myself away from this otherworldly sight, a young man stops me and asks if I am working for the Census—"No" I reply, "I am a writer taking notes—notes pertaining to the Great Desecration—which rages all around us and through us!" I start to relate my sad and incredible tale to him—but he's having none of it—he nods his head and smiles and turns to continue on his way—I ask him what he does. “I work in the area.” He makes his way through the throngs, heading west on Beekman towards B’way and melts into the hopeless afternoon.

Turning back for another look, I see that all of the modern facades have been ripped off of the doorways and entrances—exposing ancient brick & mortar and long-covered ornamental masonry.

I notice the brass numeral 5: a piece of metal which has been removed from above the main doorway and placed on the ledge above it. Strange... I pick it up, thinking to abscond with it, but something stays my hand.

Standing across the street and I reconsider my plan to abscond with the numeral 5! Should I loot the ruined temple? Would I be contributing to the destruction of the Old City that I purport to cherish?

Stasis at the Perimeter

I settle for a mere tracing of the numeral—and carefully put it back in its resting place where I found it.

2:57—In the courtyard in back of Zeytuna’s. I've been here before... in that strange dream...

There is a permanent hiss in the air; a rushing sound; a combination of heavy machinery, the gnashing of gears, hydraulics, and perhaps also the wind rushing through desecrated metal canyons down here in this torn & demented city!

I suppose that I should head up to WSQ; but should I? The new benches are exceedingly unpleasant and the Old Park is now gone without a trace anyway! There is nothing left to cling to or ruminate upon...

The Quandary of the Numeral 5...

"Clocks Stopped at a Strange and Savage Hour" reviewed by David Blaine

Clocks Stopped at a Strange and Savage Hour, Fulton Street and Other Stories
Brian Spaeth, 2008 seriousinkpress.com

Reviewed by David Blaine for Artists I Love

When Thomas Paine wrote, “These are the times that try men’s souls,” he probably knew he was penning a classic, because all times try the souls of man and womankind. Each generation discovers anew the stress of aspirations always out of grasp, failure to achieve the expectations of some authority figure, or unrequited love. It’s how they respond to their life’s trauma that sets each person apart. Maybe they follow Hemmingway’s example when he celebrated Independence Day a bit early with a shotgun lobotomy.  Maybe they get into their car and follow Willy Loman’s shortcut to the American dream. Some people respond to their stress through personal growth, the “What doesn‘t kill you makes you stronger,” theory.  Others may survive through coping mechanisms of their own design, self-medication, Eastern religions, ascetic or hedonistic lifestyles.

Brian Spaeth seems to have found his salvation through the pen, an outlet for the pressures that build up when you live your life in the Big Apple’s equivalent of a sharecropper’s tarpaper shack.

A painter, musician and composer, writing came later in Spaeth’s life, after a succession of failures,
disappointments and assorted heavy blows.  His book of poetry, Clocks Stopped At A Strange And Savage Hour, is an artistic endeavor beyond the norm.

Most readers were taught that prose is composed of sentences and paragraphs, and poetry is composed of lines.  True enough, especially if your concept of American poetry springs from memories of Frost or Dickinson. But what about poetry composed entirely of images, photographs or paintings? What about the possibility of poetry composed of prose?  It all springs from the arrangement, much as a visual artist arranges found elements into a collage to make a unique image from several others.

Spaeth’s prose is poetic in places, using the usual devices of imagery, figurative language and quite often, repetition.  But it is the arrangement of the stories in his collection that achieve the overarching effect of the poem.  It is a privileged invitation to peer into the mind of someone who was pushed, or dragged, to the edge, but returned to tell about it.

If you enjoy something that requires a bit of exercise to get your head around, I’d definitely recommend this collection. Spaeth’s book is an original, and, perhaps, a future classic.

~ David Blaine, 2009

Serious Ink Press Announces Relaunch

Clocks Stopped at a Strange and Savage Hour, my book of poems and short stories, is once again available from Serious Ink Press! seriousinkpress.com

From the Serious Ink Press website: 
"Tales of the surreal await you in Brian Spaeth’s new book Clocks Stopped at a Strange and Savage Hour: Fulton Street and Other Stories. Like Ginsberg meets Kafka meets Bruno Schulz, the sagas in this volume of poems and short stories will lead you through a city that has turned against its own, as offered by one of its dispossessed denizens.

Framed by a crumbling and poisoned city on the verge of shedding its marginalized artists, its lost citizens, and those remembering a childhood that led them to their current state of mind, Clocks Stopped at a Strange and Savage Hour will bring you to a remarkable place of nostalgic dreams, vivid nightmares, imagined fears, and frightful realities. "

 "Welcome to the relaunch of the Serious Ink Press. Please browse our collection of talented authors and visit them on their book pages for more information about their activities and works.

Serious Ink Press is an independent press dedicated to the publication of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, photography, art, treatises, and other work of interest and merit."

A Tale of the Old Chess Quadrant

Washington Square Park, NYC, south-west entrance. The ruins of the old chess circle lie beyond the fence during the time of the renovation.

From Journal #52
Thursday, March 18, 2010—

5:31—WSQ—Entering the defunct park by way of an oneiric meridian. Staring in disbelief at the incredible sight of the torn up Old Chess Quadrant, as the sun retreats behind the buildings, pulling all the colors with it, and as the surface cools, the destroyed park, like some barren asteroid, rotates helplessly into evening, and then night.

Under the Orange Glow of the Lamps

The old globe lamps are still in place (precariously!), high in the air, ringing the circle and illuminating this tableaux of destruction and carnage, despite the fact that the quadrant has been torn up and gutted: the old benches gone—all the concrete ripped out—mounds of earth piled haphazardly in the sacred circle. As if by phantom decree, the lamps still miraculously receive a flow of electrons: somber punctuation marks that glow deep orange. Scattered all around are cables, pipes, rotting chunks of foundation, ancient concrete, black earth, and strewn all through this violence, the new sections of pipe and stacks of tile that will be utilized in this great desecration.

Deep into the Lantern Night: I am pulled along a glowing path into the perimeter of the circle, drawn towards the magnetic Load Stone buried deep in the exact center of that charged quadrant. Voices past and present ring out: “Hey, chess player! Chess player! Over here!” Ghosts move through flagstone and turf as re-routed meridians spark and flicker. Crepuscular games of chance are played out under the memorial globes, figures huddled over the filthy squares—drunken threats and boasts echo all through the blasted circle—ancient games played out to their conclusion. Conflagrations flare up spontaneously—ever threatening to escalate into outright violence: boasts, threats, war-whoops, and pure jive, as shadowy figures move around the edge of the ring of lights. “What-choo lookin’ at? Get the fuck outta here! You’re throwing off my game! Get the fuck outta here!”

The oblique diagonal entrance at the southwest corner of WSQ offering a dramatic entrance and exit: a runway for tourists, drug-dealers, crazies, and actual residents of Greenwich Village, as they made their way in and out of the park. Potentates hold court—barkers endlessly repeating and recycling the call: “Hey, chess player! Chess player! Over here!”, trying to assign an identity to passing phantoms disguised as tourists. Menace grows as blackness blossoms like ink-stains under the orange glow—not quite enough light to illuminate the fractious battle plans.

Historical Matches Enter the Chess Books

Certain mad and luminous nights spent in that charged circle swell up in my wavering mind: A celestial vendor of spirits materializes from out of the darkness beyond the low cement retaining wall—with a cache of bottles that are available at very reasonable prices which are eagerly scooped up by thirsty clients as deals are struck under the pulsing orange globes. A shopping bag filled with bottles of wine, whiskey, and beer—clinking and clattering, circles the table—a voice hawking the stolen (?) wares. Deals are struck: $5.00 for the wine, $6.00 for the whiskey. The spirits are uncorked and flow—a paper cup filled with rum is knocked over by a drunken hand and a tidal-wash spreads over the filth-laden squares, mixing with bits of discarded food, crumbs, burnt matches, cigarette butts, perhaps a few stray noodles from a Chinese take-out, and nameless substances coating the pebbled surface—the whole wishing for the cleansing rains to wash the tables and urine-soaked concrete beneath it. “Hey, chess player! Chess player!" Another hand hastily pours beer into a paper cup which fulminates and foams over onto the checkered squares, mixing and commingling with the rum. A thin film of booze coats the board as a Rook is loosened from its moorings and is observed floating diagonally in violation of its strictly prescribed powers of forward or lateral movement! Marijuana joints, smoked down to a nib, fall into the eighth of an inch of booze on the board’s surface, and extinguish themselves with a hiss.

Chess Traps, Pitfalls, and Swindles

Filthy, chipped and broken chess pieces—mismatched queens, scarred bishops, wounded knights, and pawns replaced by pennies, or bottle-caps, are marshaled amid drunken shouts and rasping coughs. And all around us the roiling ocean of crazed hustlers and psychos keep up a steady cacophony of threats, insults, and propositions. "Smoke? smoke?". Grizzled prophets in wild, flowing garb, who look as if they had stepped right out of the Old Testament, pass by our table, preaching at the top of their lungs, to everyone and no one. Sometimes it may have been the influence of a full moon, or perhaps some peculiar planetary configuration—or maybe it was nothing at all that had set them off on their mad tirades and speeches and squabbles—who knew? And no one was at all concerned—it was just another evening in the wild old chess quadrant in Washington Square Park.

Pungent smoke originates from obscure points around the charmed circle as the spirits are ingested—the whole is lifted into a cacophony—a pageant, as costumed actors play their parts—all building to a frenzy. “Hey, chess player! Chess player! Over here!”. Where are the cops? They have seemingly abandoned the absurd bacchanal—a revolving theater, a spinning top.

As night would descend on the circle, the level of danger and criminality would increase—black ink-stain patches of darkness would swell all around this criminal outpost. Minor disputes over infinitesimal quantities of drugs or money would escalate into beastly rage—99% of the time it was harmless posturing and braggadocio, but you were never quite sure when the posing might lead to spilled blood. Deep into the ink-black void, the hustlers played on, with hardly enough light to play.

And where do they all go when they leave the circle? To what obscure haunts and hovels?

Brotherhood of the Circle

Driven out of my home across town, I naturally gravitated to WSQ and particularly to the chess circle. The concentration required to play a game of chess had the wonderful effect of driving all thoughts of homelessness and poverty out of my head: I was free in this circle! The fiery world within the circle represented hearth, home, and a piratical sense of fraternity. When it was at its absolute zenith, and was really cranking, the circle was the very center of the world, complete with its own hierarchy of potentates, warlords, overseers, and court clowns, jesters, musicians, and entertainers. In my perilous circumstances, it was the world outside the circle that held the true terrors. While inside the boundaries of that modern day Tortuga, that pirates cove, I felt a sense of gravity, of brotherhood, it was a privilege to be a part of this rogue’s gathering. Thieves, hustlers, escaped mental patients, angels, devils, friends, wonderful people, and men of great learning have all assembled over the decades in that electric quadrant. There were perhaps a half dozen personalities that would reappear year after year—but aside from these stalwarts, an ever-changing cast of characters would appear mysteriously in the early Spring, solidly establishing themselves for a season, taking up residence at a particular table, creating their own fiefdoms, and holding court in a most conspicuous and ceremonious manner, as if they had been there all their lives, then departing in the late Fall when the weather got too cold, never to reappear again. No one knew or cared what had happened to them—maybe they were in jail, shot dead, or perhaps just moved on, or maybe they simply disappeared off the face of the earth, never to be seen again. Where they all went in the winter was a great mystery, and I gave up asking.

Destruction of the Circle, and Banishment to the North West Quadrant

A few of the old regulars, now transplanted to the North-West Quadrant, appear almost ridiculous among the new polished-stone tables and antiseptic environs of the new WSQ. Vague echoes and crackling flashbacks of the old buccaneer zone haunt the park—a great New York institution now in limbo—gutted, transplanted, and uncertain of its future—the only certainty being that nothing will ever be the same. The Old Park swirls around me and through me—“Hey, chess player! Chess player! Over here!”