Spring has sprung

 

03-17-09

 

Spring has finally sprung.

While we saw crocus along West 9th Street Saturday when we wandered back to Greenwich Village, the early spring visitors had remained hidden until warmer weather arrived and brighter sun.

The change of weather, however, does not reflect the times.

The Seattle Times just closed, part of a pattern of newspaper demises that bodes ill for the future.

Our lives are not ours to control, and we find ourselves outsourced by new technology and a loss of connection to our audience.

Everything is turning into video.

I know how Mark Twain felt when the war between the states killed off the river boat industry, and how he needed to find some new career, settling eventually into journalism.

So we see a new revolution in media, an out with the old and in with the new life cycle that has made living in modern times so unnerving.

I understand why people look back to times when things move more slowly, even though conditions seemed harder and life unfair.

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I saw two plays this week. One was on stage on the East Village, the other was made into a movie, both dealt with fate and fortunes, and seemed to delve into the underworld.

I consider myself lucky to have escaped that side of life relatively unscathed.

I keep thinking of Sue Walsh and how she wandered into that world, and never returned.

Some people get caught up with the concept of pure survival, stripping themselves of those think rules of civilized life.

The two plays depressed me partly because we had such great hopes for our generation, and yet we have come back to that depressed state our parents knew, greed still rules the world, while those of good will struggle to modify its worst effects

We’re all struggling to keep from falling back to our savage existence, and  see our finger nails scraping sand as we slide.

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Kelly, who I worked with at the Worrall’s and for a time at the Reporter, is headed back to Virginia to live with his parents until he can get a job again.

We all go home sooner or later for a time, to reorganize, but in these times, we find this aspect a bit unsettling after all we have tried to do to fly from the nest.

I went home after Pauly and Garrick threw me out of the Passaic apartment.

Garrick forgets that part of the situation when he jokes about my moving uptown to the fancy apartment on Paulison “Avenue to live high hog in a building with an elevator.

I spent two weeks sleeping on my mother’s couch until I could find a new place to live in, and then after a year, ran back to the rooming house in Montclair.

I miss those times dreadfully. They seemed bitter at the time, yet filled with the potential for hope.

These days, we live better, but have less hope.