7555. BELOW THE WATER LINE (pt. 95)

BELOW THE WATER LINE 

(pt. 95)

I never got too unsettled by things. The way

we grew up was pretty steady and without too

many surprises. In ways that just aren't done

anymore, we stayed unified as a group while 

adhering to a small sense of self. I think now,

for kids, the sense of self comes first. It's an

idea of entitlement, in a way that everyone

getting a trophy is a reward due each. Or

not getting left back in a grade. No one fails

in the old sense of 'failing' anymore -  it all

becomes negotiable, something worth a

compromise. That's fine at one level, but 

in the end all it does is undercut any meanings

that one is supposed to get from events. It

all becomes just a big, schlocky glass of some

bad chocolate milk. I never much liked chocolate

milk, even though it was pretty clear-cut there 

where your choices were. In my day anyway :

you had the powdery, Nestle Quik kind of stuff, 

which often left harsh residue at the bottom, a

powder soot which hadn't dissolved; or you

had the more intense Bosco version of it  - a

thick, rich syrup that  -  if played right  -  also

left some of itself at the bottom. Chocolate lovers

would say, 'oh good!' I never was a chocolate

lover, in any way. I guess there were Bosco people,

and Nestle Quik people. For such a divide, they

fight wars.

-

Back to being unsettled : one time something 

happened to me, after the train accident -   well 

after it  -  but for all the life of me these many years later 

I can exactly recall who said it to me. I remember it was 

my Confirmation sponsor (a note here : the Catholic 

Church has so many dumb layers of fall-back parenting 

that I never was sure what they were so worried about. 

It was unsettling  -  Baptism God-parents, then 

Communion sponsors, and then, finally, Confirmation

sponsors. These were all supposed to be adults who'd 

swear to take care of you and bring you up right of 

your parents died or whatever -   they'd keep you in 

the church, etc. To my mind it was stupid, and just a 

way for the crafty church, 'Our Lady Of the Perpetual 

Gimmick', to get more and more adults involved into 

its fluff), who was a cousin of my mother, no one I

knew at all. A guy from Spring Lake, Charlie Archiello,

I think, he said to me, after someone had mentioned 

something about the train wreck and my recovery and 

all that, 'You don't get lucky twice.' I think that was how

he said it, maybe 'You can't get lucky twice.'  I don't

know. I was twelve, mixed up in still another boring

church ritual, with adults I didn't know and with no

real clue as to what was even going on (why couldn't

these church people just leave others alone?) and this

guy's almost threatening me with downfall? You can't

get lucky but once? Is that what he was meaning to say?

Telling me my quotient was then somehow up? Wasn't

that what 'luck' was? That you could get 'lucky', even 

twice or more? That was the idea of Luck! You got

lucky! What the hell was this guy's problem? I'd

already been hit by a train, had spinal fluid leaking 

out my ears, half my stupid body all cracked up, then

hit in the head with a baseball bat and knocked out, then

run down by a car in a very minor bicycle mishap. And

more. And I was out of luck? I thought already that I was

unlucky. No longer, I decided, did adults make any sense

except their own self-serving gobbledy-gook. I had had

enough of that for sure. When he came over that day, early,

we were outside, I was anyway, painting the white picket 

fence. It was wood, and it took paint maintenance to keep

it looking fresh -  my father was fairly fastidious about that.

We stopped, and went inside I got cleaned up and dressed.

He presented me with a gold Hamilton wrist-watch. Pretty

nice, twist-o-flex band. I was told in no uncertain terms that

Hamilton was a great name in exclusive watches, take care 

of it and all that. And two hours late I was told I had no luck

left. Makes a gut want to run away.

-

Not too many of my other friends were mixed up with all 

this church stuff. My friend across the street, Jim Yacullo,

his house was, for the most part Godless. No church stuff 

there. My other friend, Ken Lackowicz, I never detected any

church input there either. Donald and Richard Florio, none

that I knew of. Barry Wynne, nothing. Everywhere I looked

no one else was getting chucked into all this church-fires stuff.

Billy Zellner, yes, he went to Sacred Heart Catholic School in

Perth Amboy. Ken Kaisen had some hook up with a Ukrainian

Church in Carteret. Harold Witt, nothing; Frank Strohlein, 

nothing. It seemed like I was bearing the brunt of this stuff.

I never balked, just kept it up. Some of my best friends were

Christians; others not. My answer to all that  -  little known  -  

was prayer. Even after that Godfather guy had left, and I was

waiting, day by day, for my real luck to expire, I took up

prayer as an idea. It was like writing, or like meditating. In 

order to pray  -  really pray  -  time had to stop. Like real stop.

Only a one-minded devotion to it could succeed  - you 

couldn't be doing anything else. If your mind wasn't at it

110%, it wasn't going to work. I found it was pretty cool to

stop time like that, just zone out and disappear, even though I

could still be seen. It was like the presence of non-presence,

like what I read about in the book  'Autobiography Of a Yogi',

which was a pretty good book in my opinion  -  took me a long

time to read it, but I was glad I did. Wound up meaning a lot to

me. I don't know how I stumbled on it, but I did. It was published

in 1946, and written by some Paramansa Yokananda person.

Attaining God realization. The Law of Miracles.  Some pretty

heady stuff, but I stayed with it. The guy's photo on the cover kind

of annoyed me  - it was a little too boy/girl for my taste, and I was

never sure where they were going with that idea. Stopping the

realization of what you are doing, re-focusing the light and energy

concept of each moment into the fulfillment of personal goals and

impetus, that was all prayer, nothing of luck about it. You can't do

two things at once. It was all about One-Mind. Stop-Time. Pray

your Avenel ass off. It's nice, as it goes, to be in church, yeah,

but it doesn't in the long run matter. The body AND the world,

man, they're both better churches without a brick or a window!

-

It makes you wonder what people are up to : who was doing

what behind the closed doors of these little houses. Were

people talking and communicating anything real to each other?

Was there a spiritual presence to nay of these homes and

domiciles where families and friends played and stayed?  If

that was so, then we kids were basically a pretty aberrant bunch:

Jim Yacullo going through his mother's underwear drawer;

Larry Walker, week after week, stealing pocketfuls of candy

for Boy Scout meetings; each of us, skipping church to smoke 

cigarettes in the portables' alley at School 4, then pretending

to have been there by lying about church. Speaking of luck,

how long could any of that last us? Thank God we weren't

old enough for girls yet  -  they'd have been pinned to 

the ground wihout mercy. Avenel boys? Every one

pretty much turned out to be a pussycat.

'Give 'em Hell From Avenel', as the motto went.

I think not.
-
Whatever luck I may or may not have had, I sure wanted
it to last around a little more. I wasn't ready for some
Cyclopsian perfidy to take me out. I was just getting started;
some jaded Country-Club Groundsman wasn't about to put the
jinx on me. I wanted to call him a glorified janitor for rich-people's
grass and get on out of there. But I didn't. I probably even thanked
him for the watch.