Towards a Desolation that is Wellness in the Schools
TBD
For a block of so much construct, one would assume the florists had not turned shanty, grown pickets. One would not expect brick-filled windows atop photos of rolled barbecue meat in commercial nuance. One would expect to see luxury in the form of a cyan sign, or the close proximity of a Whole Foods, but what lay inside the (former) East River Savings Bank is not riches but the rags of Broadway publicity and run-off. One of the dingier CVS pharmacies where the gray carpeting makes a starry night of lint and the largest section of the store is sparkly greeting cards paired with envelopes in reds and blacks. Ibuprofen and bandages will be low in stock and only bottled diet coke is sold.
Children at Famiglia watch the grease ooze from their pizza in a position parallel on the prime meridian to the children of Mad- ison, who glare at you through a Starbucks window, and next to them their fathers will be caffeinating. The kids at Famiglia drag wheeled backpacks and tug collars of their bright orange shirts. And being of a famiglia they commit to school by dress and atten- dance, but being of a familiar sight that is hurling towards bridges, they’re craning their necks over single slice pizza boxes they have not yet opened. Not out of refusal but out of forgetting, of prolong- ing a return to famiglia, and the Famiglia, and that familiar start of school the next day. Not out of willing to not consume, but by abruptions and the shared flashiness of digital moving pictures. Such a time of day would be a time of release if they were not to re- turn home and put off dinner in the same manner, over the flashi- ness of digital moving pictures. But Wednesdays are long ones, and Thursdays come on like the uncoiling of silicone chess mats into flat battlegrounds for eggshell soldiers. Yellowing plastic pieces rotting in the pockets of Chess in the Schools and botching the essence of strategy by the fat hands of elementary-aged children.
What emerges from luxury merges with the campaign for wellness in the schools. They push for the children to learn nutrition and the proper way of cutting fruit. They are to instruct the children on how to make couscous in clear PET cups and salty watermelon salad. The children will watch demonstrations within the crock- pot on the blacktop science counter, remembering the recipe for vegetarian chili to make at home. They should be inspired to copy over the recipes on receipt backs for family friends who only pos- sess Bic pens, running out of ink. They should acquire the ability to copy over from memory. It will result in the disregard of mea- surements in cups and teaspoons. And the phonetic misspelling of words like cumin as “cuemen.” And the domestic refusal to pur- chase seasonings and garnishes besides 2-in-1 salt and pepper and capers will result in the elimination of such spices.
When the schools begin to tell children about HIV/AIDS, they will talk as if sharing needles is common knowledge to a child emerg- ing from luxury on a cyan sign. As to avoid the mention of sex, they will leave out any means of “protection.” Later, they will define ve- hicles of transmission through a song and hand gestures. The chil- dren will repeat the terms to the children in lower grades and tell them to shake imaginary salt into their mouth. Some will strain for definitions, others reside in unknowns and avoid hugging the op- posite sex. The visiting sexual education program will sell T-shirts when the trimester is over and the few sensually enlightened will acquire one and abash the jokers and the sexually immature.
No one challenges the freeway even though it refuses to let peo- ple through. No one questions the placement of a freeway with- in a strip of park. No one questions the river as unswimmable. It is green by radiation and will bring any body within it to a slow death. By that it is desolate, but desolation is unmentioned in Riv- erside Park. Desolation is unmentioned, but one only goes there to feel the weight of how much the city upsets them. To travel along the greenway is to either be shadowed by the midtown cascade of urbane production or to chase the distant image of the George Washington Bridge and the getaway that seems to be the Palisades. You are ever approaching the consecrated tribute of interstate gap closing and you are aware that only one group has ever made it all the way there, only to be told that pedestrian access was prohib- ited because of the snow storm. School trips taken in boats have the children scream like New Year’s Eve on crossing the underside of the bridge. There is no one to scream for beyond the mast but steel. A girl takes photographs of the bridge bottom with a dispos- able film camera. Her classmates make her take photos of them. A few other kids brought them too, parents handed them over on their way out the door, bought from the drugstore upon reading the permission slip ... disposable film cameras could and should be brought on the trip ... No one brought their film to get developed and all photos of the bridge trip exist in cameras buried in photo boxes or picnic baskets made craft storage or acrylic-coated book shelves, all photos reside undeveloped less the few which appear in the yearbook, taken by the parent chaperones. In these photos they realize they were screaming for more than mast and steel but for Edgewater docks and condominiums. For harbor and pinwheel bikes and Little Tikes Cozy Coupes in red and yellow bursts along the stone path to the Acropolis, which seems to be the Palisades. And there, harbor view apartments emerge from woody hills and townhouses and bicyclists fall into the river beyond unmoving barges.
“If this should be luxury, I say I don’t mind.”
“My dream is to sell the place for one on the waterfront. I check for listings everyday.”
“I wanted the kids to have a place to swim. After seeing people swim in their shirts I had to stop taking them to the public pool. Oh, and Coney too.”
Building by their own volition is slippery for builders; they will erect boutique buildings in places they do not belong. They will conspire against neoclassical and pre-war renderings for the sake of contemporary life. They do not believe that time should build vines, that rust is like effort. Making sense begins in curves mak- ing balconies. Extrusions are weightless but stone rests heavy on a facade. A frieze is like mash on gravy, gravy is stone. The front of the building will melt off by weight of stone, by melting off mash into the river and awning of Lucky Lotto. That melting goes un- noticed to the kids at Famiglia, and they have abandoned their taste in physical Pokémon cards for inventories of creatures made by the shared flashiness of digital moving pictures.