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4.19.69

You rows of houses! you window-pierc'd facads! you roofs! You porches and entrances! you copings and iron guards! You windows whose transparent shells might expose so much! You doors and ascending steps! you arches! You gray stores of interminable pavements! you trodden crossings! From all that has touch'd you I believe you have imparted to yourselves, and now would impart the same secretly to me, From the living and the dead you have peopled you impassive surfaces, and the spirits thereof would be

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evident and amicable with me.

Walt Whitman

page 150 Leaves of Grass - Song of the Open Road 3

At night the streets of New York reflect the crucifixion and death of Christ. When the snow is on the ground and there is the utmost silence there comes out of the hideous buildings of New York a music of such sullen despair and bankruptcy as to make the flesh shrivel. No stone was laid upon another with love or reverence; no street was laid for dance or joy. One thing has been added to another in a mad scramble to fill the belly, and the streets smell of empty bellies and full bellies and bellies half full. The streets smell of a hunger which has nothing to do with love; they smell of the belly which is insatiable and of the creations of the empty belly which are null and void.

Henry Miller Tropic of Capricorn p.68

4.19.69