Last Wednesday I left Clinton Hill to act the role of a drunken pool player in low-budget film. LATE FAME. A movie from a 1894 novella about a forgotten poet discovered by the young. My friend was the lead.
"This movie is about you."
Famous for never. I know it well
One scene was all I got.
A local losing at pool to the hero's friend. None of the extras looked like barfly. The actor couldn't play eight-ball. I guess I was there to add cred. I had drank, since the age of 12. I hadn't had a drink in four years. Doctors' orders. No other choice other than to be sober.
The shoot began at 9. I was out at 2.
I walked to the Grove Street past the Harsimus Branch Embankment. Erected in the 1900s to carry trains to New York Harbor. Red sandstone. Each block a ton. According to Wikipedia the Pennsylvania Railroad branch served its freight yards and carfloat operations on the Hudson River at Harsimus Cove
Landscape historian John Stilgoe writes of the structure as having “the everlasting solidity of Egyptian pyramids and Inca roads."
Fairly amazing masonry work and still standing, although the ground has sunk under its weight. The height varies from 13 to 27 feet. The top is inaccessible to the public and since its closure in the 1990s nature has taken over with woods spanning the one mile stretch.
I saw no way to scale the walls
A new Eden.
Without man.
No Adam or Eve.
Mankind back to whence we came
No one.
Ps I thought the Embankment was pre-Roman.
No comments:
Post a Comment