GARY - the magazine #2 - DATELINE : AVENEL

DATELINE : Avenel - 'Times It Is To Say - Enough!' - Everywhere I go I get depressed. Things are depleting, running down, being killed off. Having a dog allows you the unfettered - sort off - access and freedom to roam a bit more, people let you go, nod and just walk off. There's a park in Rahway, right on St. Georges Ave., after the big cemetery. Muncie's Hot Dog truck is always parked right there. He's had the authorized location for years, on his dime, I guess, but he does well. Over the years two maybe three new trucks, replacing the old ones as they go on. Always people stopping, pulling over, getting out. Wintertime, it's all football stuff. Radio, small-talk. Summertime, Yankees, Mets chatter. A bunch of gibberish, but no matter, at least it's got mustard and sauerkraut on it. Entering the park there, and proceeding all the way to the back, it gets a little wilder, trees and brush, a piece of the river. I posted once or twice some photos from it - fall scenes, big old hawks up in the trees. Anyway, Parks like that are sacred things. You'd think. Parks Departments, on the other hand, are tax-sponsored, municipal catch-basins for jerks in need of a job. Give 'em a hatchet, some instructions, and send 'em out to hack and saw, for 20 bucks an hour and benefits. Out to the rear of Rahway Park, I saw today, they've now taken probably five acres, just guessing, 1/30th of the park maybe, and they're turning it into still more sports courts, paved and netted, and a parking lot to go with it. In addition to all that was already there. Trickle by trickle, there goes the parkland, and the trees. A real shame, and only on the brightest of weekend afternoons are any of these courts in use anyway. Otherwise, it may as well be Needle Park. Losers and joggers, in that order, probably me included, on the fringes. There really ought'a be a law. Anyway, that's Rahway; nearby but still elsewhere. In Avenel, nonetheless, the mayhem still goes on. On Avenel Street, now, next to the old Imbriaco house, there was always a nice, compact, leftover parcel of woods. Now, it too has been carved and cut, laid bare and is being built upon. The same thing happened, last year, down the 
other end of Avenel Street, by the old Butkiewicz land. I had figured this new property was bought and someone was putting up a house. Now I see it's on speculation, by Oak Tree Real Estate, in Edison. I know them because about a year and a half ago I complained about an old place they'd torn down in Edison, out by South Plainfield, for three new houses, and was shut down by the wife of this Frank Zappia guy who fronts for this stuff. Avenel people, I'm pretty sure, at least it was on the Avenel site. What I'm saying is, these people get all huffy over being criticized (they also did, at Avenel Street and Rahway Ave., that full parcel there) while they're stepping in and ruining even worse the town they live in, while fronting for a neighboring town's real estate company. No matter. Nothing I can do about it except shout out; but it ain't fair and it ain't right. And if that's so then at least 'he' should step forward and speak for himself while he traipses his crap through where I live. I think the time is ripe now, right now, for voices to be heard, and loudly. There really is a place in Hell set aside for Developers. But if we cannot stand up and say 'Enough!!' for ourselves, there may very well be a place there for us as well. And, going back to Rahway Park, take a look at Edison, and notice how Roosevelt Park is no different. Every new emplacement of something therein, buildings, pavings, groves, playhouse crap, is just more detraction from the dedicated park space that it was supposed to be, and dedicated for. Roosevelt Park, not Roosevelt Highway.

These people, the problem is, they have the establishment and the system on their sides. There's nothing we can do about it. Town meetings, and zoning and engineering department hearings and all that, it's all bullshit, comes down to nothing. If anyone wishes to go ahead thinking they have your best interests and your concerns in mind, go ahead, I won't stop you, but it's graft, and it's corruption, and it's old-boy network crap, the guys who sit around jawing at each other and trade the deals - my paving company contract for your lumber deal for your trucking-in, and for your excavating. At inflated prices, and with hand-outs, giveaways and paybacks too. if you don't believe me, I have a bridge I can sell you. At least Muncie drives in, parks his truck, cleans up his own crap, and drives away. These guys leave there shit around forever. There! I've vented and said my piece. Thanks. gar

GARY : THE MAGAZINE, #1 - Chinatown - Dim Sum

One day I was sitting in a Chinese restaurant idling with some sort of fish ball soup and whatever occasional dim sum the lady would bring around along with some tea and it was about 20 degrees out and cold with a biting wind that had pervaded everything and the only life on the streets was to be found out along Chinatown and its crazy rim where nothing ever stopped the fish-sellers and vegetable people and the little tables with all their goods for sale and toys and hats and gloves and the rest and that incessant chatter of the Chinese tongue was everywhere  -  even with air blowing out of frigid mouths as I imagined each breath taking the form of some changing Chinese characters in the air around them and I imagined the great cacophony of sound to be allied with the same great melange of sight and everything together red dragon New Year's snakes and rat and pigs and all the rest and I wondered if anyone even noticed and sitting there in the cozy restaurant which seemed from another day indeed there were a number of people around me eating and the two workers nearby had spent the entire time so far cleaning a huge mound of Chinese pea pods or something on the table and I watched them work swiftly with their hands trimming and tearing the harsh parts of the pod-leafs off and the table had a grand mound of green things and I thought what a job for an entire shift and they'd said not a word to each other just both facing each other at the round table engrossed each singularly in thought and across from me at the round table I was at was a woman with her two boys perhaps ages 10 and 7 each and though they looked alike they were different in size and someone alongside from where I was said "excuse me ma'am I couldn't help but notice are those two boys your twins?" and she laughed aloud and said "no no they are three years apart" and she rattled off their ages and everyone smiled and the one boy said "mommy I don't want any more rice it tastes like water" and she said "finish - you must just have a little more" and that went on as the dim sum lady came around again and people took more things and I'd just refilled the teacup and took two sort of dumplings or something on a small plate with four on it and it tasted as good as anything else and more time passed as I watched the sculpted dragons on the wall  -  large and fearsome with red lights for eyes  -  and wondered at their decoration and what presence they were meant to evoke and it went on from there  -  how the twinned boys seemed as coupled as did the twinned dragons and the twin dumplings and why I'd gotten everything in two's just then and the two guys at the pea pod table made me sure to expect a bill of $12.22 if nothing else but that didn't happen it was all fancy and my own whims at play and I started thinking about 'Fava Beans' which I'd just read about which were some French concoction a tradition of the 'galatte' a round flat pastry with a favor hidden in its dough  -  a practice which I'd read continues each year through the month of January and the galatte when distributed for centuries in France had begun as a custom whereby whoever got the slice with the favor in it became king or queen for the day complete with a paper crown and the favor was said to bring an abundance of good fortune and even to this day the favor is still called a 'fava' (or originally the French feve) for beans were what French bakers had originally buried in the cakes but they  eventually became porcelain little toys and trinkets and are now - of course- instead PLASTIC items of the same variety little trinkets decorated with flowers texts or other themes meant to delight the recipient and I thought how parallel all that was to Chinese New Year good fortune customs and trinkets and luck charms and even fortune cookies but I figured at some point perhaps all things do mesh together so that each culture and every tradition soon enough is found to trade off the same human needs by condition everywhere and now the Fava Bean though it still exists is kind of a mysterious bean only occasionally eaten and without much other intention or presence and so long forgotten as that it could be but somewhere somehow tradition lives on even in a place like this  -  now that I mention it.
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And then I decided there's no 'favor' in this world where the sewers have been known to run with blood and very soil we walk upon is drenched in death but we forget and at the bank the fireman was talking about retirement and I figured every mind has thoughts but only great minds have great thoughts and the lady he was talking to seemed about as dumb as he was about everything and as soon as they were done I got my money too and left again figuring there's always room for more and there's always levels of elitism too  -  that fireman was looking to retire by stashing away enough cash for another home somewhere to retire to while I by contrast was just looking to survive and pocketing whatever money I could here and there by which to do so and that was another elitism entirely  -   elevated elitism versus lower elitism or something like that and the rank difference between the two was as yet unknown to me and if we each had a daughter they'd probably look exactly the same at first and only later start looking vastly different (well that was a hunch anyway) and some people blame circumstance for everything and others blame environment while others say fate and I never got any of that straight so I just let it go because no matter what else sometimes it all comes so simply and leaves everything else behind because of its grand simplicity while other times everything's as difficult as hell and you just can't do anything about it anyway plus I thought to myself that sucker that fireman could die in a city blaze tomorrow and everything's for naught anyway and it was all like some fervid zen koan ringing in my modern-day ears like 'why did the cookie cross the road' and the answer is 'it had no ears' just as simple and paradoxical as that and another one 'what did the zen Buddhist say to the hot dog vendor?' and the answer is 'make me one with everything' and both of them made me smile (that enlightened smile seldom seen) and I realized how fateful - no matter what - everything really is and one moment anyone could be laughing at themselves while the very next hour they could be drooling on a metal cot shot in the head over a parking spot and that's the hand that the city plays up  -  one minute to the next you're double-crossed and just as dead  :  and bang your head and you ARE the missing link and so what of it.