noblesse oblige

it appears that undergraduate housing at the finest of our noble institutions of higher learning in the united states finds the most minimal of accomodation standards quite adequate ...

NYC Rent Guidelines Board
Sec. 27-2067 Sanitary facilities in rooming units (intended for those formerly homeless but now on their way at least to salvage)

a. Every building containing rooming units, and each individual apartment used for single room occupancy, shall contain at least one water closet, washbasin and bath or shower for each six persons lawfully occupying rooming units therein, and for any remainder of less than six persons.

river

A river of sadness runs in spate through the landscape of my mind altering familiar landmarks and creating the unfamiliar. As I wend through this land, known yet new, I wonder again what time it is. Patches of light illuminate distant spurs of ideas to my minds eye, snatches of songs vaguely heard and half remembered, not quite forgotten. I am here yet, where I was is here, once again. I remember sitting in a barber’s chair, I am a child getting my hair cut, it is an old building from colonial times, it is rounded, an entire side is open to a verandah that flows to the outside through a row of columns, a clean well paved open space with a large shade giving tree, a benevolent giant stands there, a few cars are parked there and it is quiet, uncrowded, that afternoon. The image, perhaps drawn and not a photgraph, of another haircut, depicts the side of the head of a model, dating from 1944 – that is what I remember, it appears to have originated at the time of the second world war – serves to guide the man who trims my hair, I am not happy to be thus shorn. It is not a warm day but neither is it cold; in an instant this last thought brings me back to where I breathe ... in the present. The future is glimpsed like the tantalizing shimmer of something wished for, half imagined, half ‘real,’ not quite understood. I am here now.