Where Yesterday's Tomorrow

Short Story-In-Progress

  Moving slowly east on 48th Street, past Seventh Avenue, after previously crossing Broadway, before both converge at 47th Street, I was aimed toward Sixth, and a cavernous site to behold appeared where Manny's Music once majestically stood. Those white second-floor clapboard windows harkening back to, but not quite, a somewhat villages era. I'd seen the spot before, when the gutted building's shell was left. But now, the physical presence gone, the moment for lamentation was full upon me. The sense was of when corporate care translated as several era's ambitious musicians happening there. Kerouac wrote that he'd followed Lee Konitz to Manny's. 
  156 West 48th Street and a huge amount of surrounding real estate was not, then, just a huge humongous pit, from which the surrounding lights of Times Square reached, illuminating the entire surrounding cavern of of mid-size pyramidal towers. Though each in their own right hold themselves mightily upright and tall. It's, it's utterly paralyzing how many people live near enough to the clouds that they might spend much of their lives wondering how people down here survive in that maze. Or not. 
  Standing and looking, leaning on the bike's crossbar, the site was a vast theater-like light. That, in its' down-to-earth way framed the huge hole as magnificently as the towers. No matter how much more space was filled in around that big location, and near twin across the street, in terms of New York space, that spots was huge. Yet not. You wonder how Manny's ever survived as long as it did? Knowing New York was always propelling forward, in exactly this way. The demise of the quaint and homey, as obviously inevitable as the cracks in the character of the streets that still passionately fly as if everything were meant to glide by so fast, no amount of disregard's worth a stare. 

  The new building will not only dwarf the hole itself, but the buildings it'll stand amidst. Definitely fascinating, all the tools life's gradually grown to encompass us all within. Have to be virtually destitute not to be within modernity's grasp. With more promised coming. 
  Even the outsiders, with little to attach to, have little left to see, to slip through today's congested present to yesterday's untethered future. Today seemingly held together by power's influence, you're either in sync with or enough out of touch not to matter.  

  Yesteryear's buildings have most probably been a thought subject for centuries. Where now even the young could feel left behind by the old lament that not losing touchstones is what would have helped with keeping up. ... 

  Gone are old places where drifters held on before an inflexible economy eliminated the lower end's possibilities. Though programmed exploration is much advised. 

  Yeah. Manny's was good being there to pass by. Had to go in under that green awning that probably covered everything except the hugely big money. Comme Ci, Comme Ça. 
  When asked? I was looking for a trombone and referred across the street. I remember there were counters and a drum kit against the right wall. And second floor that looked down on the first.  
  Just chiselin' a livin' baby echoes from the streets. The hard grind that New York was, still is. But brighter. That was the overwhelming fact about staring at Manny's huge pit. This isn't the center and without any lights here, in the middle of the night that spot was brighter than day. So if the world's as bright as this, why does chaos exist?
  Turns out, having concluded a few evenings passing Manny's spot, the illumination itself partly came from the lot too and turns out to not be a pit yet. There's always today. Get the level of the land, man.
  ...