Five hundred. That is the number. Five hundred rants from the same corner. The corner did not ask for any of them. The corner was there before I was there and the corner will be there after I am gone and the corner does not count the things that happen on it. I count. The corner holds.

The corner is where two streets meet and neither street gives way. The corner is a negotiation between two directions. This way and that way. North and east. The corner does not choose. The corner is where the choosing happens. The corner is the place where you decide which way you are going and the corner does not care which way you choose. The corner holds both directions the way a hand holds two coins. Without preference.

I stood on the corner for fifty years and I played guitar and I talked and I shouted and I whispered and I sang and I ranted and the corner absorbed all of it the way concrete absorbs rain. The sound went into the concrete and the concrete did not change. The corner was the same after five hundred rants as it was after one. The corner does not improve. The corner does not deteriorate. The corner is concrete and concrete does not have an opinion about the sounds that happen on top of it.

Five hundred rants about the Lower East Side. About the buildings and the tools and the sounds and the people and the animals and the machines and the weather and the light and the dark and the silence and the noise. Five hundred ways of saying the same thing. I was here. This is what I heard. This is what I saw. This is what the corner showed me when I stood still long enough to see it.

The siren and the ice cream truck and the car alarm and the subway and the domino game and the fire escape and the bodega cat and the hydrant and the stoop and the clothesline and the pigeon and the squeegee man and the basketball and the garbage truck and the accordion and the argument and the window fan and the payphone and the manhole steam and the church bell and the buzzer and the shopping cart and the boom box and the radiator and the jackhammer and the street preacher and the lock and the neon sign and the rain. Every one of them a sound. Every one of them a rant. Every one of them a thing that happened on the corner that the corner did not record because the corner does not record. I record. The corner holds.

Five hundred is not a number. Five hundred is a corner that will not shut up. Five hundred is a man who died and came back and found the corner still there and the corner still holding and the corner still not caring whether anybody stands on it or not. The corner does not need me. I need the corner. The corner is where the two streets meet and neither street gives way and I stand in the middle and I play guitar and I talk to strangers and the strangers walk by and some of them stop and some of them don't and either way the corner holds.

The hat is on the ground. The guitar is in my hands. The corner is beneath my feet. Five hundred rants and the corner has not moved one inch. Five hundred rants and I have not moved one inch. The street goes north and the street goes east and I am standing where they meet and I am not going anywhere.

Five hundred. The corner holds.