productive
making productive use of unproductive time. tagging 550 photos with geo coordinates. that‘s been a buzzkill to get home with 500+ pictures and then have to spend 3 or 4 hours tagging them with geocoordinates. i don‘t really even need those coordinates, but hey, why not. a long and at-times pointless day wandering upper astoria. i realized as i traipsed around up there that i had not seen that area for what seems like a long time. maybe since early this year. on the way back i hit a section of steinway street, little egypt, which is an enclave of arabic culture. i feel out of place there. since dating a muslim girl for over a year i find i know nothing more about the culture now than i did before. it is closed. i was a secret to her family and her circles of influence, and i sometimes imagine i was a repulsive thing inot to her but to her world. she ventured out, but could never let me in. astoria, with its fundamentally different cultures and nationalities rubbing elbows in ways unimaginable anywhere else on earth, is like a museum. a display case for nationalities and religions, but astoria is no Byzantium. or maybe it is. maybe Byzantium‘s mythical reputation as a place where religions and creeds co-existed in equilibrium and cross-interest was just that: a myth. maybe the muslims in Byzantium shielded their eyes when the jews passed by, as they do in astoria. maybe the arabs looked with fear at white men like me, as they did on steinway street today. maybe i felt like a hookah lounge was a place i should not enter, and maybe i imagined that this part of astoria must be a vile hive to the timothy mcveighs of america. and last night i met another 9/11 worker. a welder. he dismantled the chunks of the twin towers for loading onto ships to staten island. he spewed disbelief and disgust at the building of a mosque near that ground, comparing it to building a synagogue at mecca. i said nothing, as i am never nimble with strangers and new acquaintances, but i might have asked him when the last time he went to
ground zero to pray, or when did he make a pilgrimage to the pits, those square holes in the ground which stare up into space once filled by thousands of office workers, repulsive architecture, disproportionate wealth, and empty office space. i might have asked the welder these questions and i might have had a face that looked like a meatloaf as a result, for no one questions the integrity of 9/11 responders, the victims‘ families, or anyone whose agenda was forever populated as a consequence of those buildings coming down. yes, i spent some time in little egypt today. egypt town. i love the colorful things the women wear. they look at me suspiciously.
