I Love New York, or Starbucks out of Hell's Kitchen

1

(Enter)

(Touch the faithful on the shoulders, arms, and head as you enter from back. Choir blasting)

Welcome children. Alleluia. Stop shopping . . . Stop it!

Here's the good news.

We can lift our hand from the product. We can turn to the CEO and say, "Turn down the easy listening."

We can break the celebrity embrace and walk free . . . Amen . . .

(Gaining the pulpit)

For those of you who are new to our church . . . We believe in the God that people who don't believe in God believe in. We believe in the logos that people who don't believe in logos believe in . . . We shop the way that people who don't shop shop.

Here's a big one in our church . . .

(Go ape-shit)

Put the odd back in God!

(Expansive, Swaggart-like)

I love New York; it's the greatest city in the world.

The Greatest City in the World.

The Greatest City in the World.

We are assailed by that phrase, aren't we children?

It's on the radio every five minutes. It's on graphics that sail over our heads. Rudy's bannered it on all the lampposts. It's across the backs and chests of people walking by. What's going on here?

Is this a city-state, a religion, or what?

Don't get me wrong. I do love this place. It's just that I started real slow. I wasn't born here, and by the time I got here I could barely stand it. My approach . . . my plan . . . almost fatally ambivalent . . . but . . .

I lived here once a year every ten years. Once in the '70s. Once in the '80s. Can you believe that?

(Suddenly musing, out from pulpit)

Looking back, I was the ecstatic rube from gopher prairie, but I actually knew it. A self-aware rube; in a word, a romantic. So, since, I mean, New York came to me from satellites and jazz notes coming through the static. I knew I had to take it slow because it would be so expensive by the minute and by the mile . . .

(Tortured, searching the congregation for nods of agreement)

Yes, I wanted to know how does New York feel. The total mind-body information bath, where I'm on the Empire State deck and zooming in the tube under the East River at the same time. Where finally the hologram beats me to death, too many perspectives, and then . . . I take nine years to recover. Amen, I love New York, alleluia.

(Suddenly Unitarian, soft-voiced, right-thinking)

And so, children, after all that, what was still carried in my muscle memory . . . that would direct me. The riderless horse goes back to the barn; that is, in the case of your humble servant, back to New York. So that would be my plan. What is a plan? It's a general path littered with wrong turns. A plan is how you find your way. My plan would be in my body if it was anywhere. I would know when I was a New Yorker. I would notice that I hadn't left.

The plan was the body.

That was the plan.

Am I making sense, children?

I've noticed that you haven't left either. You're still here.

This phrase . . . maybe it will make more sense later . . . it's a line from a poem by Robert Creely . . . but you'll help me? Will you say it with me?

On a count of three--

The Plan Was the Body.

The Plan Was the Body.

The Plan Was the Body.

Alleluia! Wonderful. Oh, we're building something here . . .

2

(Suddenly lots of authority, sergeant-like)

Now let's get back to the Greatest City in the World.

Everyone put your hands in the air, palms up. That's it.

Put your programs down, gloves off . . . I want to see a sea of open palms . . . Very good.

We're going...