The Camera Club of New York

Once upon a time in Amsterdam, a piece of layout containing floor plans of Chungking Mansion was brought to light.  I was then working in New Belgrade, years after and in-between those legendary Balkan wars, at the Blok 70 Chinese market where shoppers float like jellyfish in and out the dim lit alleyway that is my perception.

I came across this discovery in a Dutch-spelled newsletter a passerby tossed in my stall.  The paper has a name: “Plans to embetter Amsterdam-Chinese language acquisition,” I believe it says.  Who this stranger was, I cannot recall.  It had been minutes, perhaps hours ago, as footsteps had already meddled with the paper’s folded existence.

The layout was complex, just like here in Blok 70 where I write to you. Methinks: Who hasn’t heard of the Chungking Mansion via that movie from the last century by a certain Hongkongnese Mr. Wong?  If not, I have a copy or two editions pirated awaiting for you here- if you care to watch- and that is, may you plan to visit my distant stall in Blok 70, New Belgrade.

Now I’m imagining Amsterdam.  I’d like to visit there, surely somehow, after my selling enough plastic stockings and pirate discs, Euro currencies tumbling upon my belly… We’ll see… or maybe I’ll head to New Amsterdam- a friend’s friend has what they call an artist studio there- I could perhaps provide cheap ladies’ underwear and Yugoslav music cassettes for all his friends…

Speaking of faraway contacts, I’m here expecting a certain someone named Wing to arrive soon, to my stall, by train, from the east, to one day substitute my imaginary absence.  I seem to have the person’s full name somewhere, but I forget if it’s a man or woman.  Don’t they all sound the same and interchangeable from that far Cathay east?  Those foreign names… I once was too, and now what became of it?  I shall switch names again one day and move, with my savings from eating ramen and fake cigarettes, towards that golden far west, the Badlands, so they say, swimming the Levee that Breaks, catching the Last Picture Show, or perhaps merely a glimpse upon a cow and a boy and a girl, and some big body named Pacifica along the way, and perhaps pass through wherever I’d come from… at some point…

random list of films seen in recent month, which can all be found at the New York Public Library

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Friends_of_Eddie_Coyle

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_deuxi%C3%A8me_souffle_(1966_film)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classe_Tous_Risques

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revanche_(film)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blue_Dahlia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_Wave_(1954_film)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vanishing_(1988_film)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lady_Vanishes_(1938_film)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lost_Weekend_(film)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insomnia_(1997_film)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walker_(film)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where_the_Truth_Lies

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Baader_Meinhof_Komplex

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_City_(1998_film)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Panic_in_Needle_Park

Not sure where I’ve been… after the flood, briefly Bethleham, PA, where H.Musto has moved to, the new house on drier grounds, we presume, in this once company town, people have stopped dreaming of pink elephants

<The Bethlehem Steel Corporation (1857–2003), based in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, was once the second-largest steel producer in theUnited States, after Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based U.S. Steel.  After a decline in the U.S. steel industry and management problems leading to the company’s 2001 bankruptcy, the company was dissolved and the remaining assets sold to International Steel Group in 2003.  In 2005, ISG merged with Mittal Steel, ending U.S. ownership of the assets of Bethlehem Steel.  In 2007, the Bethlehem property was sold to Sands BethWorks, and plans to build a casino where the plant once stood were drafted. Construction began in fall 2007; the casino was completed in 2009. Ironically, the casino had difficulty finding structural steel for construction, thanks to a global steel shortage and pressure to build Pennsylvania’s tax-generating casinos. 16,000 tons of steel will be needed to build the $600 million complex.> From Wikipedia

http://richardrenaldi.blogspot.com/2010/06/walker-evans-bethlehem-pennsylvania.html

Many thanks to H.Musto’s wordplay in upcoming posts