Coney Island is like an old resilient Dostoevsky character, bestowed with that solitary sadness that comes with the territory of prolonged sufferings and a sheer volume of years amassed. It was lonely last time I visited there, except for the small remnants of some, uh, ritual that had taken place before, probably the day before from the looks of it. It was a memory I encountered the wake of. I imagined it had been a wedding, b/c that’s the only sense I could make from rose buds, tamale wrappers and a Virgin Mary hankerchief…but, wedding or not, it all bore little optimism b/c of it’s succinct fading…left was slight remnants, barely visible, almost invisible, giant in their smallness. Times certain and inevitable erosion of everything was, on the other hand, something that was entirely visible and certain and exact. That a chord was struck is blatant, but for some reason the remnants, the entire place made me think of a sentence, which I’m only able to paraphrase, from William T. Vollman’s novel Europe Central. It went something like this, “when we believed enough in books to burn them.” That this line came to mind made no sense, except, I guess, b/c I was for a moment aware of history and what we can believe in. (-and, yeah, if you haven’t read Vollman, do so tonight, b/c he can write…in the Gaddis, Pynchon, D.F. Wallace camp of really-heavy-thick-smart-books.)

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2007

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2007

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2007

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2007

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2007


photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2007

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2007