* * *
I hadn’t seen him for some time, possibly two or three months — which is quite a while considering we used to see each other everyday living in the same converted loft on some street off the JMZ. Eventually I moved out of there and then he moved out and I don’t remember exactly where it was we used to live but I used the directions he gave me to find his new studio on Bushwick Avenue.
* * *
About a week ago Occupy Wall Street celebrated Halloween, or as one skeptic observed, “Yesterday was Halloween, today is Halloween, tomorrow will be Halloween. Don’t you all get it? It’s always going to be Halloween in your little park-” He stood near the west end of the encampment and judging from his comments he was new to the scene. He didn’t seem to understand that on this side of Zuccotti park, them’s fighting words.
* * *
Working groups are a large part of what make up the Occupy Wall Street movement. They are among the less obvious and less reported events even though they actually happen on Wall Street. They are easy to overlook since they don’t photograph as well as riot police, witty protest signs and people sleeping in a park and yet they are a crucial part of the movement’s structure. In form, they are groups of people, seated in a circle, discussing issues pertaining to Zuccotti Park and the growing national movement. In practice, they reveal the pleasures and pitfalls of communication. They loosen the grip of prejudices, moving conversation in the direction of consensus. They can also be painfully inefficient at times, degenerating into a mob of opinions unable to find common ground. When this happens, an agreed upon form of communication becomes helpful.
* * *
D- He kept on saying: ‘I have a diggity-.’ He was saying, ‘I have a diggity in this and a diggity in that’ and I’m thinking: what the hell is that? All I know is no diggity. (Derek’s dry laughter interjects for a moment before subsiding to the more serious tone he takes when recounting life on the sale’s floor.) Well, I follow the guy around the lot and he keeps talking about diggities and I just put up with it trying to smooth it all along, trying to land him on a vehicle. Eventually I come to find out he was trying to say degree. He says he has a math diggity and a philosophy diggity and all these diggities. The whole time he’s saying degree. I guess the guy had a lot of degrees.
* * *
Being down at Zuccotti Park is enlivening. In the background rise the towers that will soon fill the site of the former World Trade Center. Each day more and more shining glass panels are added to their facade. Glass that is likely engineered to withstand high winds, heavy storms, flocks of misguided geese and at the very least shelter its occupants from the sound of the city below. But they’re not complete yet.