3.27.2010

The Devil's in the Details.

It came as no surprise when I spotted it
for the first time looming over the entrance
to the Lincoln Tunnel like a futuristic hawk's nest
encased in white steel and tinted windows.
I'd seen man-lifts before on construction sites
but never with a fully concealed control tower topped
with cameras and spotlights and blinking yellow bulbs.
The letters "NYPD" informed the public of its
benign intentions, but I knew better than to believe
the ruse. A portable vantage point from which to spy
on the locals was all too Big Brother for my liking.
"They're probably looking in here right now through
their binoculars," I said from the second-storey bedroom.
"I'll close the blinds, you're still undressed."
No one in the neighborhood will feel any safer
due to its presence. If the shade of the windows
wasn't so impenetrably black maybe it wouldn't
be as imposing. "The sun's rays require it. It's like
an oven in here," the officer in question would say as he tried
to cover the air-conditioning controls with his clipboard.
We taxpayers aren't as gullible as the polls would suggest.

Later on during a stroll through the Bronx I watched
people gathered in a chain-link cage with a wall
down its center, the most appropriately sized venue
for sporting activities that a city that crowded can fit.
Old men with gloves crouched low to reach stray blue balls
and smack them back at the wall, their opponents waiting
for the rebound. They cursed their arthritic knees and misspent youth
as future generations of handball contenders practiced on the court
opposite them not knowing that the world they were inheriting
was a far less trusting place with masses of men in blue
protecting them from themselves and the mistakes they might make.
Maybe the ones who don't want kids are right.

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