When you live in most parts of the country, most major events are accessed only through the Internet, a newspaper, or TV news. It’s easy to forget about these events, and why not? They make us think, question, and feel. It hurts. In the sixties, Timothy Leary encouraged people to “turn on, tune in, drop out,” but nowadays most of society would agree that it’s better to turn off, tune out, and throw away.
When I lived in Texas, the only national news coverage my hometown ever got involved natural disasters and a single slain Tejano singer. These became short-lived Corpus Christi claims to fame. We weren’t so much tuning out as we were tuned out - we couldn’t even pick up most frequencies.
In NYC, one still learns to tune out, but in a different way. It’s not that huge national crises don’t affect people here daily - they certainly do. It’s that they choose not to dwell on them. Drama is constantly unfolding, barking and running underfoot, like a manic Yorkshire terrier. People defend themselves by plugging up their ears and automatically saying, “Sorry, I don’t have any change,” when a stranger approaches them on the street.
When this happens, I think, “Maybe I should have change.” Or maybe we should all just change.
So a national event is always is my proverbial backyard here in the city. Rather, my front stoop. On Sunday, some people on my block created a makeshift shrine to some guy, complete with posters, framed pictures, slow-burning candles, and bottles and bottles of whiskey and beer. The shrine is on the outside wall of my apartment building, feet away from the trash receptacles.
Since Sunday, revelers have started drunken vigils around 7 pm. They’re still around at midnight. When they get cold, some people go into the lobby of my apartment building to warm up before returning to the shrine where they rap and cry and joke. Yesterday was the dead man’s birthday, so there was a party with balloons, cards, flowers, cake, and lots of marijuana. The dead man would have been thirty.
The people outside aren’t menacing, but they aren’t in the safest states of mind, either. Police set up barricades during the day, sometimes patrolling the area. At night, they drive by in packs. The dense crowd at the shrine keeps on hanging out. It’s more of a party than a funeral.
Last night, Ethan and I discussed the mysterious ghost on my block. We looked at his pictures. He looked like someone I could have seen before, but who really knows? His notoriety is posthumous for me. On his poster, someone wrote “Fallen Soldier.” I thought his death was gang-related perhaps or maybe he was another American needlessly killed in Iraq.
I was wrong.
I looked him up online. Weird. He lived in my apartment building, but I only know him now. I probably passed him on the stairs. Maybe those were the noises of his everyday life - the stomps, shouts, music, and running water - that flowed into my apartment through the walls and ceiling. What if he was the guy that used to sing and rap really loudly, much to my chagrin?
He was shot in the chest early on Sunday.
He died and left behind a wife and three children.
He was Busta Rhymes’s bodyguard.
He was my neighbor.
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* Since I wrote this in the morning, I’ve learned that Israel Ramirez grew up in my building, but I think only his mother lives here now. His father used to be the superintendent. His family lives on the fifth floor.
