(2011)
Jimmy, an old man, was a Japanese homeless artist living around a deli on 7th and Prince 11 years ago, though we had left the city a few months before. We'd gotten to know him - which was a bit difficult, trying to follow his discourse in a heavily accented, broken English. He might have been schizophrenic or more likely have had other problems (stroke), seeing as his mobility was somehow not quite right. Anyway, he never asked for money, in fact refused to accept charity of any kind. So we would 'commission' art and bring him supplies and then buy the resulting works, heavily influenced by his Onymodo, yin-yang philosophy. The balance of things. And there on the street he would elegantly move his hand and arm in the drawing of koi's in a pond or other, seeming happy at least in those moments. When it was very cold at night the help in the deli would let him sit inside the plastic tent covering their flowers.
Still, as slowly he incompletely related his life story over the course of a few months, one thing which strongly stood out: his distant memories. He was born in Nagasaki, it must have been in 1935 or 6, and survived the bomb in '45. As did his mother, though she would have many health problems from then on. He didn't say much about his father, so I presume he died either in the explosion or as a soldier in the war.
After several harmonious drawings he then drew a picture of his memory of the event, something much harsher and darker, a mountain, fire, stick figures. Anyway. 11 years ago Prince and 7th was part of the evacuation zone after the towers fell, the second plane using 7th to orient its path into its target. Boom. I've been back a few times since and always asked around but no one there had any information on Jimmy, or even remembered him. Which is usual, I suppose. That part of town had already become one of those homogenized playgrounds of the wealthy who really don't consider place for itself but place as possession. Yin and yang are metaphors only that revolve around, well, themselves.
In Cernobbio, Italy, they're having their annual conference for what are now called VIP's in these days. It's dominated by men with ties and coats, uniforms, the same kind that create the circumstances that in turn lead others to drop bombs just to see how effective they are, others to fly themselves into symbols of power. There'll be lots of harrumphing, lots of interviews. Men who have always fundamentally treated women basically as two tits with holes to screw will declare how important woman are to the workforce. Men who own houses in Soho and Paris and Singapore and Portofino and Rome and ecc. will say how everyone else has to sacrifice. Men who couldn't fix a leaking pipe or create a program or discover a drug and whose businesses they administer would do quite well without them (see Argentina) will proclaim to everyone else how things should be done. I wonder how Jimmy would paint their portraits. Like the balanced Koi, or as part of a burning mountain. Well, actually I don't.
Do you have stories, happier or still sad, on that bad day, or the way the world has evolved since then?
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