would have the law books and i would literally try to go to the exact same places that fawcett did. one of the things i tried to do in the book was alternate between the past and present you could get a sense of how expeditions had changed. of course i had a gps for aa"d pe. extremely cruel to the indians of the arena and he had built a very large manner described as a

very big place. we tried to find it and i knew where it was based on this describes in the river where they cost to get to the ranch and we found some prepare the indians and we said to you know this ranch and can you take us there and they suggest we know where this. some of them took a machete and let us through the jungle hacking away. he reached a part in the jungle and took the machete and slammed it and said it right here. what did he mean right here? he said right here. you look on the ground and sure enough you can see some bricks and the more we look we could see the ruins of this great man are. and it was in a moment that i had some sense of how a civilization and a great city really could be swallowed by the jungle. this had only been a few decades in the jungle that had consumed it. the other thing that was pretty shocking in terms of his comparison of trying to see where fawcett had gone and we're

on what, earlier in this point where we started i had fawcett's letters and he described the ordeal of pushing through this dense jungle and a one point so dense that he and jack got separated and when we set out i kept reading these letters and i would look around me and there was nothing there. it literally looked like nebraska and his picture. the jungle was gone. all that was left were burned stones from the deforestation and sway been farms spreading out into the jungle. there's another picture. eventually, we got to be outpost and the indians were the first tried in the region that the brazilian government had made contact with in the day fawcett went on his expedition and he describes in the letter the contact was recent. he describes in the letters the

disease and poor conditions in this outpost and when we went they quickly set you need to come speak with this woman here and she was about 100-years-old. she didn't know her precise age but she was a little girl when fawcett and his party can through the expedition and she was able to describe in great detail what she remembered. and she was probably the last person or certainly the last person of life we know of to have seen fawcett and his men. so we continue deeper into the xingue river river. we went to the tried and again i'm trying to follow as closely as possible to the route. then we push toward the settlement and this is the indians and their settlement in the xingue jungle. this is the plaza which is quite enormous. this doesn't give a sense of its

grandeur. and all along here on the outskirts of this plaza ortiz bohm houses where they live. and they are all much made up of a thatch material and they look like the holes of ships. they are enormous, about the size of this room each one and in these houses were extended families. they were extremely cool, they don't have windows and they keep the bugs out and they are quite comfortable. once you get this far into the jungle they really have preserve traditions with remarkable continuity. here they are celebrating the when spirit. here they are celebrating their dad and one of their most sacred rituals. and probably the most interesting thing on my trip is when i came to this area this

once again the area where based on fawcett's diagrams closer to where z would have been located and the very region. we met with an archaeologist, michael. here he is with the chief on the right and michael is on the right. michael had worked in this area as an archaeologist more than a decade doing research and he actually conducted his own inquiry. he was fascinated by specific and conducted his own inquiry and said even though fawcett was an amateur in many ways she knew a lot more than the professionals and eventually he led us around and took us here to this area where there is a big marched ditch looking moat where he had excavated and what

had been was the ruins of the boat that had gone around an ancient settlement. it was often 30 feet wide and a mile in diameter. i was perplexed. why would you build a mill in the middle of the wilderness and he said there had been a wall here and then he began to show the ruins of 20 pre-columbian settlements in the region with roads and plazas, streets at right angles and here you can see a better picture of the moat. the settlement were connected by a huge boulevards and roads and even had bridges that span rivers. the settlements and clusters of settlements that were interconnected had a population of any where each kind of cluster 70 population between two or 5,000 people which made them about the size of the medieval european city. and they were occupied at least in this area between 808 d and

1500 was a discovery like this that is really helping to bend traditional assumptions about the counterfeit paradise. other archeologists are fueling this revolution in the ability and foot plans for example were fawcett first described seeing the pottery on the giant earth mounds. archaeologists are now going with high-tech gadgets, things that fawcett could never imagined, satellite imagery, ground penetrating radar that can pinpoint buried artifacts and sure enough they are finding tons of pottery and evidence that these mounds were in fact connected by these are normally transforming fawcett who was one of the more daring eccentric explorers ever to set foot in the americas but it is transforming our understanding of the amazon and with the americas really looked like before the time of columbus and the level of sophisticated civilizations that existed.

and i just want to end this talk with a little story, not such a little story but the story that the indians told me. here's a picture of the indians. one of the amazing things when i was doing this trip is that a lot of the tribes they don't have written records the of oral histories and these oral histories are passed down for generations with incredible precision and they are almost like a thick palms and to my astonishment they had one about fawcett and his party because they were among the first white men they had ever seen who come into that area and this oral history has been translated by anthropologists from the language and it maintains the epic rhythms of this and i just want to read it to you in closing.

i should say before i start one of the things about these oral histories the had incredibly precise details and things i only knew about again because i had these letters and they described even the equipment and fact fawcett carried a musical instrument. fawcett in this case read a flight recorder and he told his wife he always took one so he wouldn't go mad in the solitude of the jungle. one of them had remained by himself while he sang. he played a musical instrument. his musical instrument worked like this. he sang. he put his arm around this way while he was playing. he watched the christians. while he was playing. then i will have to be going, he said. oral history continues for a while and it describes eventually how the expedition moved eastward and they could see the full year in the

distance. there is the christian fire we said to one another. it was going on as the sun set. the next day as the sun set again of the fire rose up. the following day again just a little smoke spread out in the sky. on this day the fire had gone out. it looked as if the englishman's fire was no longer alive, as if it had been put out. what a shame why did he keep insisting they go away. this before so much. i will take questions now if anybody has any. [applause] >> great presentation. thank you. back here. over here.

the material he discovered in england at his granddaughter's home, how did she happen to come by them and what was the period of time you think estimated between the last evidence mentioned in those articles that she had and when he actually died or do you even know that? >> that is a good question. well, fawcett had been extremely private and then after she disappeared, one of the things i found was that there really wasn't a major biography written about fawcett, and part of it was the private papers were assumed to be lost or missing or the family kept them private and fawcett's wife and the younger son had been ripped apart by this tragedy and what seemed like a great mystery even to people like myself and others who came come for them it was a tragedy, and said they had really guarded fees peepers for generations and the remand and never would show them to outsiders. it was only recently as that

generation past and the granddaughter was next generation of she was willing to share and show them. to your second question in terms of the timing it is a little hard to say in terms of a precise time. i would have guessed the dispatches came out for about five months. the last one came back from dead horse camp and a dead horse camp as i should earlier on the map from there to the tried where i told you the oral history, it is several days of track, probably a weak track so we should have taken about a week to get their. based on this long history they were not alive on that much longer after they left the tribe and after there was last dispatches and letters. anybody else?

>> of the civilization collapsed around 1500 that is a little too early for any disease from the europeans to hit them. any idea what caused the collapse? >> no, it really was disease read the first amazon expedition first came in 1842 and in 1542 and a lot of these settlements go up to 1500 with a carbon dating. so the early disease would have come from that initial contact 1542 and spread quickly. it's only now people are getting a full sense of the destination because the size of the populations were assumed to be smaller. one of the things they are finding is a lot of black earth and this black earth is basically enriched from organic waste and also from charcoal from burning. one of the things indians did that was in genius is the used this soil, this enriched soil

from organic waste products they would throw away and also it is believed possibly systemic charcoal to make the soil much more fertile so they could grow crops in this area and overcome the notion of the counterfeit paradise but when things archaeologists are finding is massive amounts of black earth, which is direct evidence of settlements because there is organic waste through the amazon the it millions to sustain people. >> when fawcett went on the trips where did he go and? did he go from the pacific site and were about six ackley ? >> usually fawcett in his early expeditions would come over the andes so he would sometimes he would come through the panama canal and on his first expedition he describes crossing the panama canal and it was being constructed at the time very early on, and he could see all along the sides stacks of

coffins of people dying from yellow fever and malaria and he had his first inkling what he was up against but then he would go across and he would come down p you in your experience but how did you make out with the bugs?

[laughter] i don't like bugs. i had better land than they did. in fact paulo had a wonderful japanese land and that he was a strong advocate of and it worked pretty well. and i did fairly well. i had a lot of, went with a lot of shots and took my malaria pills and the is were things they didn't have back then. i did get some paris of the conditions that affected my stomach and the bugs were bothersome. one of the interesting things though as i described the homes the indians stayed in. when we were camping out and would sleep with kim him exit was miserable but when we got to their hammocks it was moving on up because like i said one of the things this book was really about is about many of the ingenious ways people of the amazon have adapted to the conditions to overcome that and so a lot of these images which they were true. any of these explorers the

expeditions' would come with thousands of men and they would die and gave an image of the amazon as a death trap. but the people who were living there had been there for a long time have really found amazing ways to live there. i can't see. anybody else? someone over there. >> excuse me. you mentioned briefly the advanced technology being used. why haven't we use more of this? it is the 21st century after all. >> what kind of the advanced technology? >> the satellites and all of the kind of technology we have now. >> they are now but one of the things that happened is for so long amazon was assumed to be counterfeit paradise most scholars saw no reason to do too much serious work. it pretty much had kept a lot of

archaeologists away. i can burger told me that and said most people haven't come in to the xingue because there was nothing there. now that there is some etymology done the kind of evidence of looking for ruins and archaeology, one of the reasons was the assumptions. but now there is a group of revisionist scholars who been going in for about the last 15 years and a visiting the sites with technology and they are coming up with amazing discoveries and shattering many of these conceptions. anybody else? over there? >> wally z? did he refer to it as z if it is a mystery city and what did his wife think? >> those are too terrific questions. don't ask my wife what she thought. i think the theme this beaten because i don't know if i could have had a book called the city

of n. it doesn't have the same .... in all of his writings and i found years researching for too long and he never explains why he called it that. fawcett was he had a sense of drama. he almost saw himself as a mythical character and this figure to read he grew up reading these adventure romances and in fact his older brother was an extremely popular novelist at the time and in fact, according to the malae doyle novel probably borrow a little bit in terms of the themes from one of fawcett's brothers' early novels. in terms of why z if it had a sense of romance and, but beyond that he never specified. as for his wife the relationship was extremely interesting and i didn't really talk about that in the lecture by go into it all lot in the book and his wife is

extremely -- they loved each other deeply but her life was pretty miserable. i read a lot of her letters. he would go off years at a time and leave her to man the family and he also became so obsessed with finding this great city that he pinker to the family. he would use what little money they had as taking his pension and investing it in his trips and he left them with almost no money and in the end they were basically living almost as if they were in the jungle. they had a house in the 20's. they didn't have electricity or running water and she describes the chores. so her life is hard but she also was and enable our isn't quite the right word but she was kampala said. she was tied up in his adventures and in a way she was

the chief spokesman when he was a we in the jungle. she would do everything to promote his legend and so there was a partnership. she was very tight up and one of the things i try to wrestle with and explore in the book is the decision to take your oldest son to die and the decision making process that went into that. over there. okay. >> thank you to be i was curious about reading the journals and stuff did you find out why he was so physically capable to keep going into the jungle and not get sick and passably like the rest of his team members? was it eating habits or did he work out? [laughter] >> he had -- he was leaning. he wasn't a burly man. he was very clean almost like a

marathon runner but he was extremely muscular and in many of his letters and people of the world geographic society would describe this kind of remarkable constitution and at the time it's interesting there was great speculation about it. people would actually write in the literature how does this happen? he goes and with his party, some said it was his eating habits and some said his various the way he learned to adapt to the jungle. a good part of it was to some extent he did begin to adapt many of the methods of the tribes he would encounter and by the end he pretty much lived like a warrior chief in the jungle even painted his face. and so he had adopted various methods but there was an element of mystery and it is a little bit inexplicable what it was that allowed him to just be so resistant to malaria and yellow fever when so many of his men would die.

it is had various consequences. it made him fairly merciless with his companions because he really couldn't comprehend weakness. and so he was an incredibly daring man but he was also am i ogle. he would drive them through the jungle and if you were a weaker man, you actually despised him. and usually has been divided into two camps. those who worshiped him, the strong like carlson i should do the picture, his longtime assistant and then there were the week. i shouldn't even say week. they were human. some of them were strong but they broke down and they grew to dislike him. the other thing that happened was fawcett was older when his last expedition and he actually fought a war one and he was at the battle and it was the first time he was wounded. he was gassed in his constitution even though he will never admit was not the same by the last expedition.

he was 57-years-old as well which was really old to be going to the john black that time. yes? somebody else? >> i can only see the front row because as i describe i have very bad eyesight. [laughter] >> my question is did you have any idea beforehand the tribes had an oral history about fawcett or was he complete medical supplies to you and if so how long did it take you to translate? >> it was a complete surprise. i had no idea and it took awhile, but it was one of those kind of wonderful moments i didn't know about at the time and she does a marvelous job and my account is the oral history is sometimes slightly different and some of its version but its central temmins are always the

same. one last question. >> national geographic has done a lot of work on dna tracing and i was wondering -- in brazil and there was a lot of interest have been some of the upper amazon indians be of something other than predominant blood type which is a typo which all the north american and most of the south american indians have. did you run into any information on that? >> not too much. i've heard about this and it's interesting. one of the things that is happening with the new discoveries as they are shattering the old paradigms'. and we are at the beginning of the revolution and so, we do not yet fully understand that much of the civilizations in history. we are just up the cost. but for example, the human presence in the amazon, they have found in a cave now it goes back to about 10,000 years before -- 10,000 years ago and

that is twice as long as anyone thought there was a human presence in the amazon, and that is undercutting the theory of how the americas were first populated across the bering straits and eventually migrated down because the settlement, these human presence in the cave is as old as the first settlement in north america as there is how could he have gotten from there to there in the same time. we also don't have some of the same artifacts that were defined by the way they had these grooved heroes and there was one found in the settlement, so we essentially what is happening and part of that is to say kind of where are these populations. various theories did anyone ever across the pacific in a raft and there's all of these theories coming around to explain and the truth is we don't have full answers. we have some but we are at the beginning of this. so, it is kind of wide open

right now. for a long time nobody thought that the indians were allowed to use stone to build and recently they found an observatory being called the stone hedge of the amazons of these discoveries are happening from when i came back the keep happening and in fact it is hard often to keep up with them because every time people come in and are using this technology they are finding new things. again i want to thank you so much. i will be outside signing books if you're interested. thank you so much. [applause] was excerpted

in "esquire" magazine and has written about his experience and "land of the lost souls." this is 45 minutes. [applause] >> welcome. tonight we have to reuters. one is a novelist and one is a memoir. they work very similar to rain.

the first reader is matthew goodman and she's written a book called "hold lot strong." by touchstone books to read it said in a fictional housing project in queens and it is a retelling of the biblical story of abraham. and it's just out. matthew grew up in white plains or neyer white plains and lives now in brooklyn and he spent about six years or so working with prisoners who had just been released from prison. and i look forward to hearing him read. here is a few good -- is matthew goodman. [applause] >> how is everyone? good. i parents and friends so you always get a good response from them because they have to love you.

so hopefully come you don't have to love me but maybe for five minutes you can just listen. [laughter] this is a story about a young man named abraham and his family. they live in a fictional housing project called ever park and he lives there with his grandmother, his two cousins, his aunt, his uncle and himself. this is -- i will begin by the beginning of the book. this is a scene his mother is 13-years-old and she's going to give birth to him in the bathroom of their apartment. and his granma who is 30 is going to deliver the child. so this is where it begins. in the bathroom my grandmother and my aunt helped my mother take off her clothes. my shirt, too, asked my mother? sure, too, ordered my grandmother unless you have a short to pay for a new one if it gets blood. so al qaim my mother's shirt and for a moment my grandmother, my aunts and my mother just stood

there. three proximate shades of brown women in a small plane that room with white walls, white porcelain sink, white bathtub and white toilet with a broken plastic seat. my grandmother and my aunt looked at my mother, looking in the bathroom mirror looked at herself as well. in addition to the disposition and body type of my grandmother, my mother was the color of an old hand at the bottom of a wishing well. equally she reflected and absorb sunshine, street lights and the hopes of those who wished upon her then cast her off. her eyes and lips, her nose come shoulders and breasts, even her thighs and hips were shaped like new leaves, fall yet still tenet, still approaching their even shul mr. speak. my grand mal snatched the lead bath towel from the back of the bathroom door and put it on the floor. here, she decided, laid down on this, and rhonda, get down

behind her. it the babies coming. i can feel it. we ain't got much time. my mother laid down. the bathroom was so small her had crossed the threshold of the doorway. behind my mother on her knees rubbing her arms around her and waging her thighs against my mother's back my aunt rhonda yield on the coarse gray carpet of the living room. my grandma stepped into the bathtub. she hiked up her skirt over her knees, squatted and put my mother's ankles on her shoulders. lord have mercy, she said. number have some fucking mercy on me. my mother shivered from the pain. another contraction came and went. then she cursed and screamed and told my grandma she didn't want to live no more. shut your mouth, demanded my grandma. stop thinking about yourself. you're about to be a mother. on the couch darnell asked question after question and eric awoke and hollered for my aunt

rhonda. he reached out and fought to get out of my uncle's farms. he tried to keep them cold. he softly sang verses of spontaneously composed all lies. he tried to remind my cousins about the movie they just saw, how et had a magic figure and left ressa -- candy. my mother had another contraction and she moaned and world her head from side to side as if her neck and spine were suddenly severed. then she stopped and looked down at the mound of her belly. her eyes were so why it seemed she was surprised by the site. she put her hands on it and with her fingers spread as wide as they could stretch my mother began to weep. but it wasn't bleeding caused by physical pain or by ignorance or even weeping caused by fear. my mother wept because although she was still a child, she had enough sense to understand she was not prepared to shake my life. she couldn't will apply or divide. she didn't know north, south,

east or west. she couldn't tell time on a regular clock. this is not to say she was dom in fact my mother was brilliant. so smart she could remember all the words in the song after hearing it just wants. what my mother was then was the product of low expectations. she had been a field so she failed. and yet social promotion. she had just completed the seventh grade. but when she felt weak and helpless and useless and bake my grandma to make the pain stopped, to let her quiet, my grandma said no. my mother couldn't stop, not even a great god almighty himself said she could quite so because my grandma wasn't the type of woman anyone could disregard my mother pushed with her life. she clenched the air in her fists, granted her teeth, closed her eyes so tightly she's all everything she ever wished to see come every mountain and ocean. every sandy beach, tropical waterfall, elephants and lions

and giraffes and africa, she saw jesus. she shook president reagan's hand and saw the statue of liberty. herself with a car, for coat, call were like lassie, she saw herself as a movie star, her toes curled, her calves cramped up, her head became a volcano bursting blood. she saw her dreams, she felt their temperature, she smelled them. my grand mal sallai head. she to get in her hands and pulled gently but then holding one hand up as if holding a train she shouted stopped. every muscle in my mother's body went limp. mike umbilical cord was wrapped twice around my neck. my mother is pushing combined with my twisting and turning was killing me. i was being lynched and hanging myself. my face was the color of an electrical blue bruise. one more push or pull or twist and i was dead. my mother begged to understand

what was happening. mom, she's and propping herself on her elbows, please, what is wrong asked rhonda? , what is it? my grandmother reached deep. shush, both of you let me think. outside of the bathroom eric stopped hollering. darnell stopped asking questions and my uncle roosevelt stopped pushing in a single license. all of eckert park and queens went silent. then and through the door burst the neighbor. an ambulance is on the way. am i odd rhonda looked over her shoulder. her allies demanded silence. jerry stopped in the middle of the living room. what's going on she said? her voice a fraction of its proceeding size. in the bathroom my grandma looked up at the ceiling. god, she whispered, jesus, somebody, please help me save this child. my grandma took one deep breath, closed her eyes and made the

same prayer silently. then she opened her eyes, gently held my head and slowly drew my shoulders free. she paused to think what next? what could she possibly do? the umbilical cord was taunt. she caught her hand beneath me, briefed, and cautiously guiding me in an unhurried somersault turned me upside down, freed my legs and unwound the umbilical cord from my neck. my grandma saved me from that which fed and kept me for the first nine months of my life. she cleared my nostrils and mouth with her pinky then wiped the blood from me with the palm of her hand. roosevelt, she called out, get me a knife, a sharp one, one of the ones with a wooden handle. but wasn't my uncle who brought my grandma's life, it was darnell to read like a miniature mercury, he burst into the bathroom and held the knife out to her. then he stood on his tiptoes and looked at the new life my

grandma's cradled in her chest. this is your baby cousin, she said. she pushed me into his arms. now hold lot strong. bourn el held me against his chest like a ball of lose your and my grandma cut by umbilical cord and left me the ugliest lt the world has ever seen. she washed the in the sink and handed me to my mother. and as my mother helped me on the floor in the bathroom, as she wept and dealt with the all of my making, rhonda asked what my name should be because my mother had not yet been able to settle on one. abraham, my grandma announced. like the president, rhonda asked? no, said my grandma. like the old man in the bible that god said was going to be the father of a great people as numerous as the stars. so that is his birth. i'm going to jump ahead eight years. so his cousin, darnell, is now -- he was 4-years-old at his

birth and is eight years later cities now 12 come and darnell just got beat up that and his decision to defend himself he has decided to work out all the time so he has just come back. it's like the late spring. it's june. abraham is eight and darnell is 14, 12, sorry, bad at math. he's 12 and has just come back to the apartment after running up and down the stairs with bricks in his hands to sort of build up his strength. and the electricity is out in the apartment and abraham has been sitting in the kitchen with his mother doing his homework in the dark except for when the electricity is out in the apartment the grand ma has those candles you can get at the corner store, the 99-cent campbells with all the patron saints so she's sitting in the kitchen giving his homework by candlelight and darnell has just come home and told him that someone put one of those plastic kiddie pools on the roof and

talked abraham, his mother to come and go swimming in the school. also this is the same time in new york city history when we had our first black mayor which was david and if anyone knows the history of that like when he became president it was also like a pretty bad recession in the city and there were tons of job cuts and abraham's grande all worked up a hospital doing laundry and lost her job, so this is eight years later and they are on the roof of the building. ..

the elevator ran smoothly. dawe knell talk like an adult, like he was husband and they were his wives. he could do that. he had an ability to speak in the manner and on the terms of those he was with. i have listened then looked up the sky, watch the lights of their planes blank shoeblack this, wondering who wet where. are you alright asked bundle, shifting the conversation to me. yeah i said meeting his eyes,

why? reshifted his eyes to my mother and lost its tumble a breath. abraham and be so quiet. he has always been that way my grandma said. my mother reached over to "meet the press" and slid her hand on my ear, my cheek and along the line of my job. calling me by the name she used for me when she wished to tell me how much you love me, but either chose not to or could not say the words. donnell spun himself around in the pool, hooked his legs over its dewaal and lane backwards into the water. he floated on his back on his arms at his sides, his head in the middle of the pool. the only sound was the waves made by his movement, the water lapping against their bodies and the walls of the pool. look at the moon he said talking louder than necessary because his ears or submerged in the water. the men was nearly full like someone had punched a hole in the black night and there was light on the other side.

my mother later arms along the edge of the pool, leaned back and looked up. sometimes don't look so close you can touch it she asked? don now turn to a side and splashed water. lanier back he said, there's nothing to be scared of. who said i am scared? donnell lifted his legs from the heads turned and sat on his knees. here he said lange is hands on the surface of the water, lean back. flein back in put your feet up. you are going to pull your hands away i said. i got you, trust me. i turned around and bend my knees over the pull in looked over my shoulder at donnell. come on he said some time before i am dead. eileen then lowered myself until i felt the tips of donnell's figures and then his hands against my back. slowly he lowered me. abraham ramel left open your eyes. they are open i said. open them wider donnell order.

i opened my eyes as wide as they could. the surface of the water covered an inch from the corner of my eyes, 2 inches from the sides of my nostrils and half an inch from the corner of my lips. my #@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ n i don't know, what do you want?

to? eucom a school that my mother. all lacy is this guy donnell said. there could be thousands of people in the water for all i know. so what do you want? a vote for one day said darnell, then after a brief pause the added, and the trumpet. if i had a trumpet donnell, if you had a trumpet what? suddenly police sirens broca's from below. jesus, my mother's side. why did they isaf to be doing that? never had it been so still, never have been in a pool on the roof. i looked at the moon one last time and then i closed my eyes. i was surrounded, floating in darkness, the wail of the sirened stated, disappeared and i waited for someone to speak, to say anything, to overcome the silence, to speak before police sirens a ride again. so am i grandma finally said whether you going to do with

your trumpet? if i had a trumpet donnell answered, if i had a trumpet i don't know. that is it. [applause] thanks. >> that was great. august in new york is a dangerous time for one's mental health. just like most it was won festering august 6 r seven years ago that i first met cadillac. i was taking a shortcut through the alley that ran below the viaduct that cuts across astoria on my way back to my apartment having just returned to the city from two weeks at the beach down south with my friends and family. i was in one of those just back in the city and what amaya doing with my life states of mind,

heading back to the rancid air coming to my um air-conditioned apartment, which was going to look exactly like it had when i left because the lived alone which meant i was returning to a tomb of my own making an error in this newseum that featured teetering stacks of magazines, books and newspapers and dust as big as tumbleweeds rolling down the hall. i recall the wisdom of some fellow, truce solitude is when no one anywhere is waiting for you and that was my state. so true-up thought, so true. i figured an i.c.e. cold bath and an i.c.e. cold gin and tonic was going to be necessary for me to accomplish new york re-entry. it was in the midst of such joyous reflection is that i rounded the corner where a homeless man under the viaduct-- did you have a good vacation he ask?

you have been gone for two weeks. i stopped in my tracks. wow, maybe this guy was homeless and maybe all of his possessions were in a nearby shopping cart that he had borrowed from. >>host:, but he sure was friendly. in fact, he seemed to be a one-man welcome wagon with direct access to my subconscious. hyle i love new york. those of you already know cadillac understand it in another of life he must have been a great politician a true man of the people, maybe from the days of bost sweden too many hault when the fires still ruled and apparently cadillac is one of those great old irish names like o'brien. he can tell you exactly how he inherited it. even now he could be their local councilman peter alone without having to change any electoral laws in the process. he shakes hands, he kisses babies, he consults the sad and

he comforts the lonely and i've seen him do it many a time. that august day six or seven years ago he began to work his magic on me. we struck up in the coins that developed into a friendship. it seems that homeless guys and freelance writers, which is what i was, have more than a little bit in common. cadillac probably made more money than i did which could bring in 100 bucks but nei theroux buses exactly rolling in the doe. and as is often the case with freelance writers that i know cadillac and i always had time to shoot the breeze for hours, solving the world's problems of not our own. one morning when we met under the viaduct i notice that he was opposed to me, actually riding. and one of those old-fashioned spiral notebooks. what is that you are doing i asked? he told me. he was writing the story of his life as a homeless man.

by that point he had been on the streets for close to a decade and that was eventually to discover he believed he was fated to die out there. and, as a result he wanted to leave the record at this time on the streets to his three daughters. he hoped when the authorities discovered his body, before they have shipped it out for burial to the potter's field on hart island, the land of the lost souls, the title of the book, which is where he believed he was going to be buried in a plywood coffin, late into a long tranche dug by prisoners from rikers island and before that happened cadillac hope that someone might find a no book on his body and instead of throwing them in the garbage, deliver them miraculously to his daughters. but i didn't know that then. then i just knew that he was one more aspiring writer on the block. everybody in new york it seems as a manuscript, even the

homeless guys but for some reason i said to him words that as a former editor i try never to say to anyone, if you ever want me to take a look at it, i would be happy to. and i said this as softly as i could. i actually mumble that. but he apparently heard, because if you months later cadillac handed me know book cannot ticket home to read. by deal with myself that night was that i would read only until i got bored. so i sat down and started to read what turned out to be the story of his relationship with henny, a run away with whom he fell in love during his early days on the streets and this is long before carol, his current love. it is now one of the final chapters and "land of the lost souls." i read it with increasing excitement enough to send it to "esquire" who would run in excerption then traveling to bloombury who gloriously saw fit to make it a book.

they handwriting was a little norrell but as the fits the hand that is delivered a punter to and it's time that there was a story there with dialogue, with wit, and have the sensibility of an older new york. it was courtly and suwannee at the same time like something out of damon runyon. it damon runyon had been a homeless guy in love with the run away. the next that went back to cadillac and ask him if he had any more to read, and he did, lots more as it turned out. hundreds of pages as it turned out. pages about street fights, about wizard sands lost the old men who talk to themselves, who drank and lived alone, about streetwalkers and pimps, about how much you can come to hate christmas music when you are homeless, about how to find a safe place to sleep at night and how to live with loneliness and how to make friends wherever life takes you. it is not all bad times out on

the street either. there is also freedom and adventure and carousing which is one reason i think cadillac has a soft spot for life out there today. his colleagues on the street include such characters as old crow, rubber man, chocolate milk, bones, shaky, detroit and twinkie among others. they are all there is largest myth in the land of the lost souls which cadillac imposed outside the died-- in between shaking hands and kissing babies and joking with and comforting and consoling those of us who walked past him. "land of the lost souls," a harden mandez the book shows the line between homeland homelessness is this then is a few big ways and long as a lifetime but also, and this is maybe more important, home can be made anywhere a man or woman is brave and the intrepid and curious enough to make one so

tonight, i give you a man who is raped and intrepid and curious enough to do just that, my friend, cadillac man. [applause] >> gosh, how can i compete with that? i love you, my brother. i really do. thank so much everybody for being here. how can i copied him? welch. the book, yeah. just in case you didn't see it when you came in, there is the cover. anyway, i am going to be talking about the very beginning, i live out in the streets starting in 1994 and then slowly going to

the later years. if i get a little nervous, then just bear with me. baby it is just that my teeth are little loose, i don't know. i was 44 when i came out on the streets. before then i had a whole life, maybe a lot like yours. a childhood, growing up, some time in the army, jobs sometimes. and three beautiful kids. one way too early, when i was 14. and two others from my previous marriages. i am going to talk about a friend of mine we called joe the bum. back then, we didn't think of homeless people as bums. just people who fell on hard times.

and i still believe that, even now. i learned a lot about canning before there was canning. let me explain. back in the day a friend of mine taught me how to pick up bottles, so the bottles and beer bottles. we didn't have much cans back in those days but still he taught me. joe the bum was a neighborhood fixture in hell's kitchen. i met him shortly after my father left back in 1960. i was a little kid then, 11 years old. it is hard to describe in now. he had to be a least 6 feet, in his 30's, with red hair, receding. he walked with a limp. he served in world war ii. i know because one time he took me down to the brooklyn navy yard. i wanted to go when but he just showed me from a distance. i liked him. everybody was afraid of him but when he was sober he was a real nice guy. when he had a few in him, he

would mumble and grumble and scare people off. but that didn't bother me. he got stopped by the police one night, filthy dirty and everyone said he was a bum. but, never looked at a person that way in my mind. he is an alcoholic. one day he told me, i am going to show you how to make some money. we went to the garbage cans and picked up the bottles. the little bottles where to send send a great big bottles or 5 cents. oh boy i thought, this is money here. back in 1960 if you gave me a quarter, i was in seventh heaven. you know, it's candy i could get for a quarter? candy was like to for a penny and soda was a nickel. what happened in all of these years? the i don't know. everybody was a drinker back then and there was a cheap high so there was always bottles

around. some days we would make a dollar easy. we usually didn't have to go that far. there were places in the neighborhood that would cash in the bottles. i knew a lot of people and they liked me because i was a cute little boy with red hair and freckles and i looked like how do you duty. i hope nobody remembers how do you duty here. but i am still cute, anyway. joe would wait outside. they wouldn't let him in. so, joe would get his beers or he would go to the liquor store and get a bottle of wild irish rose. they still sold that stock. do you believe that? that was one of his favorites, 40 cents a pint, real cheap stuff. and then whenever money was left over was for me although once in awhile i would say, get your cigarettes too, joe. so i would just be happy, number one is having the company and

number two get whatever herb money i made after he got his wine and smokes. eating was out of the equation and never seemed to mean anything. so, he actually taught me aboutb to survive. i know i couldn't panhandle.

to me that was a step down from asking somebody can you spare a quarter or a done. i still can't, and i'm proud of it. but i knew about canning. doing it walkabout in the put the noticed this beer distributor that there was a group of homeless out there and they were putting all these cans into one of these cardboard containers and they were going inside the store and coming out with cash. when i was living at home, it never really occurred to me to do something like that. whenever i had an empty can or bottle i would just put it in the trash but when i hit the streets i was saying to myself, this is an excellent source of income. so, the first time in 34 years i started canning. after a while, homelessness becomes a way of life. in the very beginning, i was

content with making five, $10 a day but as time went on, i had a lot of time to kill, so i would spend more of it out canning. it was something to do. so i could easily make $50 a day, the men among. most people don't have any idea how much money you can make out there. i called it nicolo heaven, 5 cents a can. there were times when i could easily make 80 to 100. i found myself a nice, big cart, sitting by its lonesome on the corner, near the a&p on ninth avenue. i used it for canning. on any given day i did a least 15, 20 miles, walk, walk, just load up the court. i would find the cans in front of the residents. you can get bags right out of the trash cans from people at the redeemer after they were done cashing in. later i would sometimes find

some restaurants that would give me hands but that was very rare. for the most part, i just stopped in front of the residents come up put them in the recycled theroux and also at the corners, the wastepaper baskets with people would be dumping. it is all tax free. but it takes time and energy. you want to make 50 bucks a day? you are going to have to work, meaning what. i will give you an example. later on i had a map of queens and the department sanitation. this map told me what days everybody puts out their cans and bottles in any given location so every so often i would walk from the sorry to flushing, alone over three hours, collecting cans along the way. there were times when i couldn't even get to flushing. i had so much stuff that they had to turn back. i would unload some of that and then go right back to another

area. sometimes i would work 24 hours straight because canning gave me something to do. you know, one of your worst enemies out there is boredom. and the loneliness too. it hit me hard in the first couple of months out there. nobody was talking to me, i mean nobody. when you are homeless, who will talk to you? people don't even want to see you so sometimes you may not realize it, you'll be talking out loud to nobody. you just getting it out of your system. it was just like this guy at the meat market that i used to work at, named bernie. he used to work in the freezer and nobody wanted to go down there. it was too cold, below zero down there. whenever somebody needed something they would just call down, bernie, put this on the

elevator. i would go down there on vacation and he would be having conversations. i would be looking in there and saying, who is he talking to? the same thing on the street. it gets lonely out here. the closest i ever got to a conversation with anyone was when somebody was going by and they took a look at me and started laughing, laughing at me. my first week after i-- i was sleeping right in front of this bank on park avenue between 47 and 48. every night this guy would come over with the sandwich and say, here you go you bum, there you go. nice, nice sandwich. then one day i decided i'm going to see what this guy looks like. i opened up my eyes and i freaked out. i am even shaking right now. he looks something like that of a horror movie, lipstick, tattoos all over his face.

this guy looked like a complete cycle path and i said to myself, that is it. i have got to get out of here because this guy's going to kill me in my sleep one day. but still it was good to have some kind of human contact. and i didn't have much, but it really helped that i kept a journal for my day to day activities. but mostly, i went canning. finally, by word of mouth then observing other homeless i found my place is where i could get myself a hot meal so i could save money there. it is hard out here in queens worry live now. there are no places to go and eat a hot meal unless you go way out to jamaica. there is nothing in astoria, long island, corona, jackson heights, nothing but in manhattan and the bronx my gosh it was like every third or fourth block you could get something to eat. paradise. maybe that is why i gain so much

weight. so it was impossible for you to starve. there were times i would go into a restaurant, some places would serve me, others within. i must admit they did look like a maniac with my beard and everything else, but i was trying to keep myself clean. the main thing that worried me. gosh, that was so hard. but even after two weeks the considered myself free. i liked the lifestyle. the first couple of days i was sleeping on a piece of cardboard and thereafter my travels i came across a dilapidated beach chair and i said, i could use this for a bed. in that same day i came across these banners that macy's throughout. it was in macy's clearance day. i am looking at them and, i could use these for blankets. so now i've got a dilapidated beach chair and i have got

blankets. so what else do i need? everything was falling into place for me. i finally-- found it enjoyable that i could adapt to it. there were a few inconveniences' but other than that everything was fine. washing was the biggest inconvenience. i would go into fast food places for a five manatt rub-a-dub-dub you take off your shirt and wash your armpits and wash between your legs and that is that. it made the situation more bearable. alright my clothes are dirty but at least i've got a somewhat clean body. even though it is between my legs and underneath my armpits. there were even places along sixth avenue where they used to have these outdoor water displaced. i think they still have them. it was 2:00 in the morning, and i figured, a hill is going to be around? go right in there and that is

all. boy, that water was cold but during the summertime it feels good. i had a bar of soap and there. i could be in there for a good ten minutes, wash behind my years, wash my hair and everything, even dunk underneath the water. great. there were times when the square badges as we would call them would come out in act ruffin tough and they would come out and say what in the heck do you think you were doing? in fact one time the call the cops on me. the cops came in the security was so proud of themselves and the cops told them, don't worry, we will take care of this. then they would look at me and say okay you have got two minutes. get the heck out of here. but, it was a convenience. little by little i figured out how to do everything. i feel so free. nobody riding my back saying to this, do this, do that, do that. i did whatever i wanted to do

and i didn't have to answer to anybody. i was free. you had so much freedom, so much time. out in the streets i could basically come and go as i please. like today i will be going to queens and maybe tomorrow i will be going to brooklyn in maybe the next day i will be going to staten island. this last section i found home at last. 499 to 02, i moved around a lot before really settled down. i went back to hell's kitchen for a while and then i went to brooklyn. i was out there for a couple of months in coney island for a while. i was even in new york, east new york too tory stuck out like an oreo cookie but i got along good

with the people over there. in manhattanite look for some old friends but no luck. we were like nomads for the most part but i was slightly disappointed when i got over there and nobody was around. of course i went to central park and there were street people over there. i didn't want to make their quaintance. so i went to brooklyn, and hung out in prospect park. from brooklyn i went to the bronx, and then i was there for a little while. from courtland i went back to hell's kitchen again and from there i came out to a story of. in those years, i would just be free, one place one day, another place the next. i slept everywhere. there were times when i would be sleeping underneath trailers, behind the big wheels and nobody would notice me there because i wore dark clothing and dark blankets. anything not to bring to much attention to myself.

i.c.e. lupton garages. you could hide in people's backyards. provided the conceal yourself very well. i spend a couple of nights in old maintenance rooms underneath the triborough bridge. if anything else was open i would be over at the cemeteries. i think i visited every cemetery the areas. i like the calgary cemetery and woodside. there were several mises and brooklyn, like green would. that is the perfect place. who is going to bother you? the data not going to bother you. with some cemeteries they have security guards but it night they don't want to go out of there and check the grounds. i wonder why. this cemetery is a perfect place to hide, and you can get plenty of rest. at saint mic's i slept in the mausoleums. one nida slept between two

coffins. it was a husband and wife, but no big deal. they didn't mind. there was a little bit of a musky odor in there, but other than that, no problem. then there were times that i was just so tired i even slept in open graves. it was just like when you were in the army. they made you dig fox hole and you slept in it, so what the heck is the difference, if fox hole, a great? a whole is a whole. you know, they are going to put somebody in there the next day, so in the meantime i might as well go in there. believe it or not it is one. not warm, warm. you still need a blanket in there and it is not drafty. cemeteries r.e. good place to stay. parks too. central park is ideal because it is so big and the precinct over there does not have enough manpower to cover the whole area

and the parks department does not have that many people. in fact i don't think they even work it night. just name your spot in you can hide in the shadows. prospect park was another great one, the bigger the park, the better. astoria park is no good. it is not that bacon the patrol pickel and that their remember when i used to go canning their the cops used to yell at me for going down there after midnight. they would say, what are you, crazy coming down here canning with all the trouble that goes on over there? they do a good job at the 114th patrol yet, but you still hear the stories, what goes on there when the cops leave like the little get together is, the drugs and maybe on occasion in mugging. central park back in the '70s and '80s, forget about it. your life wasn't worth a nickel

if you went through there after dark. now this like little house on the prairie over there. but still a lot of people won't go in there at night, so it is a place for the street people because they know they want the hassle by one of the outsiders going jogging. you know, i just got a street person sleeping behind those bushes over there. it never failed, it never failed. that is what i loved about the story of. there were so many cubbyholes some places to hide. i settled undenied they viaduct where live now. before that i was going to months here, three months there but when i hit the streets i have no particular destination in mind. i would go to one place where i felt fine and i said well, there's a good place to plop down. all i was focused on was just getting some sleep but now with the wintertime here i had several places like it states

where i am away from the elements. ifill save there. that is the key, to feel safe. the viaduct on 33rd street and 23rd avenue, it is painted yellow with murals on both sides. on one side is a big blue and white painting but some statues and the word athens. there are lots of great people that live in the neighborhood. on the other side where i parked my way again, it used to have a beautiful mural of firemen and policemen holding up american flags. gosh, last year some kids painted over it with some political thing where bush and hillary were fighting it out. i don't like it as much. but, still, this is my place. this is where people come and see me in the evenings, all the birds in new railway trestle above the fight that began to sing as though they are getting ready to go to sleep. you wouldn't believe the noise in the mornings too.

astoria is my comfort zone. we are very territorial, my people, absolutely territorial. when i planted myself down underneath the viaduct, i said that is that come on no way am i leaving a especially the way i am treated by the people. you know something? i like it here. seeing these people, how concerned they were and it is o bs. it was genuine concern. a while back i finally cemented the back of my wheels of my ca