In between morning errands, I walked down to Bond and First, along the polluted waterway, to watch the construction machines digging up piles of the “black mayonnaise” at the bottom of the toxic canal.
I remembered when
the superfund started a decade prior when the kids crossed everyday on the way
to school.
The toxins in the physical and mental environment are many.
A hundred years of oil spills and pollutants and PCBs are not easy to clean up in one decade, much less one day.
“I wonder if they
are going to dig up a dead body,” said a man standing there watching.
Brad Lander, the councilman in the district, stood up to praise the process, relieved that the process of federal support for the cleanup had moved forward from planning to action.
"It almost makes you proud to be an American," said he.
In the distance,
a woman held a sign declaring, “No Gowanus Rezone!!!” opposing plans to build
housing on the brownfields surrounding the canal.
I walked home thinking about all that had happened the last ten years,
the friends who'd come and gone.
I thought of Charles, who my godfather had known since his college years Sewanee, five, six decades prior.
They knew each other in college in the 1950's and Vietnam and then San Francisco.
We'd have dinner together every time I went to San Francisco.
He didn't come back from the hospital; neither did Georgianna.
We held her memorial later that week.
Andrea Elliott, New York Times
Reporter, who
wrote her obituary, said:
"She was willing to talk….. to articulate a sense of justice… As a social worker, she said we can have expectations of power. We can push politicians to do the same. Fight for the right thing. Keep fighting because this is what is right… Listen to people where they are at… at Auburn Shelter… in the cold. Listen to their stories...
"All that she was," she is, concluded Victor, her close friend.
"Stay safe and heal."
Dion told me about his days with Charles.
Meeting and letting go.
My 51st birthday, all week.
Jazz and bonfires and friends and Barbes, and five hour Union meetings, schools closing.
The center is not holding I thought, looking at a tight vote over a strike.
The gaps between us are growing vast.
Can we find a center, I thought along my bike ride to Ocean Ave to pick up cards to register voters in GA, for a special election for the senators from Georgia.
The center is not holding, I thought
Along the walks to to Dumbo,
and back to see the girls,
and then to the AIDS memorial to see friends for a coffee,
where our friend Tim was not able to make it, ALS grasping his body.
Via Tompkins Square Park with the teenager,
back to see Rev Billy and Savitri.
And another bonfire with friends, where we talked about the organizing over the years,
the creativity that needs recharging.
And a walk through Red Hook on Sunday.
Looking at relics in the streets,
Our favorite houses, with vines crawling, retaking them, paint crumbling, a gatto behind a fence.
Pieces of what was and is becoming in the streets, a bike covered in vines, a mural on the Valentino Pier and the waterfront, Lady Liberty in the distance.
The winter is coming.
But inside us remains, that invincible summer, says Albert Camus,
“..no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back."
Sitting in the cold with infection rates rising, we're all looking for that summer.
