7756. BELOW THE WATER LINE (pt. 149)

BELOW THE WATER LINE

(pt. 149)

So, you'd never have known it in Avenel, but

a long time ago Stravinsky's 'Rite of Spring'

caused a riot. 'Just a piece of music,' you'd think

to say. Yes, I guess, but it represented a new

modernity, it represented upheaval and change 

-  stuff that people weren't ready for and simply

didn't understand. So they went primal and rioted.

Now, we think, 'over a piece of music?' Well,

whatever it may have been, that was the era of

the lightbulb and the cash register. New things too.

The whole world was changing. 'Artificial light! The

'Subconscious?! Someone has just proved that

we are all monsters!' You listen to it now, and it's

really difficult to fathom the tumult it caused.

-

Avenel, of course, would have had none of that, and

probably wouldn't even have learned of it until some

great time later. It was like expecting someone out

front of Murray and Martha's to suddenly be sitting

there reading Charles Baudelaire or T. S. Eliot. It was

always funny to me how Americans reacted to things

and got started with them  -  this entire classical music

thing being a good instance. It took Walt Disney, of

all people, to infuse Stowkowski, classical music and

Mickey Mouse as a unit to bring people to even see

classical music; and, yes, they had to 'see' it, with

cartoon-idiot characters, before they'd accept it.

I remember going to see it in that cinema that used

to be in the shopping plaza of what's now Shop Rite.

The movie house has become some big-deal bar,

undergoing renovations now too, and an auto

parts place. Everything original is now gone. In

1969, when that movie theater first opened, or

whenever it was, we were doing the initial printing

at NJ Appellate Printing, and the movie-house

manager, some guy who'd been transplanted in

from Missouri to run the new cinema, he gave us  - 

in order to drum up business and fill the place up,  -

wads for free tickets to pass around. I handed out

bunches of them all along Inman Avenue, friends and

neighbors. As I recall, the opening feature was Dr.

Zhivago, a big hit at the time. I remember nearly

everyone going to see it, basically on my free ticket.

It was cool. My parents went with Walter and Betty

Fehring, neighbors a few houses away. They all had

a great time, and thought I was great for giving the

tickets to them. Movies back then were still just

one large movie room and screen  -  only later did

they start putting up walls and smaller screens and

making what were called 'multiplexes' of them. The

movie house lasted there a long-enough time, like

thirty years maybe; and this little, chubby guy from

Missouri eventually got moved on to someplace else.

His specific job was moving around to new theaters

and sitting in for 6 or 8 months while it opened and

got established. Walter Reade Cinemas, I think it was.

Then he would get transferred to wherever the next

newest opening was. Cool job, I guess, but it must

have been hell on a family, if he had one. 'Hi. That's

my dad, Mr. Rootless.'

-

The only thing I remember about that movie was a few

cool scenes with horses in the Russian snow, jumping

out of rail cars and things with soldiers on their backs.

The same scene pretty much happened twenty years later

too, in a movie called 'Reds', about the Russian Revolution

and stuff. Similar anyway, unless I'm just mixing them up.

-

It was always hard to figure out 'culture' in  Avenel. There

really wasn't any. I have no clue as to how many people

held season memberships or passes to the opera or the

ballet, or memberships to museums and stuff, but I'd bet,

if any, it was only a few. You need to remember, this

really was a place where you could get on a train at the

local station, and be whisked to NYC in about as much

time as it takes to sit in a diner and order and eat. There

was really no excuse, if one cared to, to partake of those

opportunities  -  but it was far enough afield, as a place,

to be, at the same time, considered distant and rural

enough so that you didn't need to be concerned with

urban stuff and all that citified culture crap. Distant.

Far-off. Maybe they tried teaching that stuff in school,

but it never took. Even the supposed best of the best,

like Mrs. Oettle (pronounced 'Ooot-Lee'), someone who

prided herself on high culture and high 'learning', she

wound up, for cultural experiences, to just take her

fool class-kids to movies in NY, like 'Morgan', and

'Georgie Girl'  -  which weren't really culture at all.

Just more mainstream class culture pop crap that

was just as soon made and seen and forgotten. No

theoretical discussion or cultural context given; just

the wildly-growing idea of hip-fun. Lightweight

silliness. I never went, nor could I have cared less

for what they were peddling. My 'culture' was

elsewhere, and I had a fine seat at the library to boot.

Made no difference to me what Valerie Andrews or

Bonnie Klein or Jeff Gutman or any of those wedgies

were up to. I was up to me.

-

The lines and the connections were always sort of

crooked and garbled concerning culture. It was maybe

spoken of but never acted upon. The biggest deal, as I

mentioned way earlier in chapters before this, was the

minstrel show portrayals. What was interesting about

them to me was the connection I was able to make,

actually and real, between, say, them and people like

Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain. The Civil War

and race relations. Whatever it may have meant, and

the vitality that went with it, could still be found between

the pages and the unspoken lines and words of people

I'd pass in the street. No one in Avenel ever said, as it

were, a 'real' word about anything. It was all surface

frosting and fluff; like a light, puffy bedding with which

everyone stayed comfortable. That wasn't good enough

for me, and it wasn't going to be. I sought authenticity;

I sought the branching out and the real sourcing of things

from within, and I somehow knew Avenel wasn't going to

supply that for me. The frame was OK, but the painting

it went around just wasn't up to snuff. There were a million

ways out, and I had to decide which was for me. The poles

of choice were far apart  -  I considered the suicide of

joining the Army  -  just throwing all meaning aside and

letting myself do what I was told and get shot-up dead

as if on purpose, without any care or without any meaning.

I might have done it if I didn't so detest the enforced

confinement of being with other people, constantly,

and then of following the foul, chicken-shit orders and

routines of military life. I thought of 'college' by the books,

but I had no money, nor the energy to beg and borrow so

as to just piss it all away in rooms full of lies and

deceit and assumptions. And, again, other people. I

decided to just chuck it all at the first opportunity, follow

my star, and take to the streets of NYC, without even a

real name to go by. By this time, I did have a girlfriend,

was content with all that, had sex whenever she and I

decided  -  so all that crazy tension and sexual anxiety

was gone. That was left to other people, kids going crazy

on street-corners or jerking off until near-death. I had a

clear head already, at age 17, from that internal tension

being all gone  -  you'd be surprised what that does.

Half the wars of peacetime, and half the peace of

wartime, have to do with sex.

7755. WHICH IS IT?

WHICH IS IT?

The dark streets are twisted with anger and crawling

again with deceit. All those people in their night coats,

trawling around with beer and crackers, they talk like

the end of their world was nigh. I am hungry, and I

just watch others eat  -  a maddening sensation indeed.

I sit to wonder, is this want or is this real need?

7754. OH JERUSALEM

OH JERUSALEM

I'll just come in to sit awhile, a new and fervid

hope of man. Watching window smoke dissolve

over some fruitful plain. Just like a Florida of

the mind, I will bear scented breezes blown in

from the sea. Looking forward, I will search

for you. Alas, to find, alas to find anew.

7753. BELOW THE WATER LINE (pt.148)

BELOW THE WATER LINE

(pt.148)

There was an entire undercurrent of crime and corruption

once you passed the area of the junkyards. Weird stuff was

always going on. I remember once there was a place there,

on the left, headed towards Rahway, the first business under

the always-flooding underpass-bridge at the junkyards. The

place was called Marcus Transformers. I guess that's what

they made. It's empty now, just some old factory building,

now part of some larger metal recycling guy's place. It

employed some 30 or 40 people at least. The guy never

paid his payroll taxes or anything, and one day (this is

back, let me add, in the mid-60's) the Feds just closed

him up, and that was that. I was always told, after that and

in various business formats, that you can pretty much do a

lot of chicanery in a 'business' format, but you can't mess

with payroll deductions or taxes. I guess this proved it. The

place never re-opened, and all those jobs were lost. I don't

know what ever happened to 'Mr. Marcus.' Another time,

down the street and left, there was a company called Thayer

Products, or something like that. My mother worked there

for a while, in the mid-70's I guess it was. She was never quite

sure what was going on there, or what exactly they 'made', but

she just did her job. There were always, milling about outside,

mysterious types of people in bunches. They all wore mesh

hats and things  -  the sort of work garb needed inside the

place. It was funny because you could see, in these work

jacket vest things, there were no pockets, just open mesh

external pocket substitutes. No one could steal anything

because anything pocketed would be seen in the mesh by

shift-inspectors who watched people coming or going. So

my mother said. One day she went into the bathroom, the

Ladies Room area, and there was a lady dead on the toilet.

It was quite a scene, but my mother, again, was never too

sure what had happened. There were always shady deals

going down. The whole area was unknown, like a half-ground

for business ventures that weren't too sure of themselves. The

junkyards, of course, they held tough and mattered, but this

was their territory and place  -  oil, grease, metal and rubber,

contaminated ground, run-off and leaks. God forbid any

waterway here. Who then would really want, except for

dark and low-level business ventures, such a place for a

business address? Whenever we walked around that area,

or hung around there, it was always railroad or junkyard

stuff. I never saw it as a good place for regular business.

-

There's another place, at the end of Inman Avenue, across

from Hiram's Trailer Court, named Brandywine Truck

Salvage or something (it was actually our large 'junkyard

of choice' as kids, and easily accessed by us from a few

different locations and angles). Whatever it was they

did there, and by what means they did it, the owner was

killed there, shot or something, right on the premises;

sometime in the 1970's, I think. Crime was always

just a thin piece of paper away.

-

To my knowledge, back then, and to the other kids I hung

with, there was no 'drug' culture at all. We'd never even

really heard of that. Boozers and stuff, yeah. We'd see a

few of them, and we knew what was up with that. It just

would never have occurred to us to include the presence

of drugs in any part of our worldview. Twenty years later,

I guess, that was all different : Whatever that lady died

of on the toilet, and whatever those guys were milling

around with in their parking lots, by the mid-70's it could

easily have been drug business. Just never knew. There

was never anything classy or polished about any of the

businesses in that area. Rahway proper had its jewelers

and camera-shops, respectable and presentable. But nothing

like that here. It was funny, anyway, how 'society' of whatever

nature, just began deteriorating pretty quickly after the 60's;

drugs being just one example. Bad taste and bad choices just

took over. It was all downhill from there.

-

That all had to be reflected, of course, in the regular course

of events; and it was. As I saw it, everything else just began

to deteriorate as well. Judgmental stuff, I mean. It became OK

to forgive, or let things slide, or even to profess 'understanding'

for someone's really awful action or attitude. When all those

underpinnings begin to fade, it's really already over. No one

speaks up for anything, the leaders lose all sense, and as it

progresses, the people with any 'old-line' thinking just get

ridiculed or defamed. It's too bad, and it was too bad, as well,

to watch. Even priests started trying to become hip. All it

ever did for me was add to the confusion I was living. I knew

a guy, all he did, every day, mid-morning or whatever it was,

for the entire Summer or time he was free of work, was walk

the streets with a small transistor radio, held to his ear, on

which he'd listen to this kind of pop-psychology, radio show

 run by a Dr. Joyce Brothers. She died a few years ago, maybe

ten or so, but in her own day, through the 50's and 60's, and

beyond, she was a pretty well-renowned person for reference  -

talk-shows, pop confabs, even situation comedies and TV show

cameos and walk-ons  -  to the slick and the hip. A sort of

breaking 'pop' guru for the counter-cultural race that was then

underway. This guy would listen every day, and rave about it.

He once said to me, 'Radio is great, I love it. It would be perfect

if they'd just get rid of the time and the news announcements.'

He didn't say anything about the endless stupid commercials, so

I guess he didn't mind that. It was funny though, because I'd never

before heard anyone object to the 'time' announcements given on

the radio. ("The CBS News time now is 12:04').... 

7752. THIS IS THE UNUSUAL

THIS IS THE UNUSUAL

Under the waterway, the drain that's clogged

gets backed up all the way to the curbing that

protects the lane of traffic. 'Like driving through

Lake Erie', someone says. I'm thinking, 'You from

Ohio mister? No one says that around here?

7751. FOR ALL THE LIVING

FOR ALL THE LIVING

The long part of parthenogenesis is over,

the world has traveled on, Creation is done,

the light is all in place. This God, having moved

on, sends signals back, only meaning to linger

to give us glimmers of something other than 

ourselves. And oh do we try. 

Yes, and oh do we try.

7750. BELOW THE WATER LINE (pt. 147)

BELOW THE WATER LINE

(pt. 147)

Theatricality and ovation. Emotionalism and

vulnerability. Those sorts of things, and their

being opposites of a sort, always projected

themselves into my field of viewing. Sometimes

I didn't stop to explain myself. Sometimes I was

pretty madly vile. There was a guy I knew, from

working at NJ Appellate Printing, Harry Halpern.

He was one of the richest landowners in Woodbridge

and held lots of properties and holdings, collecting

rents from everyone. He looked like a bum and walked

the town as if lost in space and without a care. He had a

large, estate-type house, set back and hidden by hedges,

on upper Main Street, Woodbridge. It's been long ago

cleared and the house 'erased', just gone. Nothing left

but a big empty, gravelly lot with sometimes a few

trucks on it; right near to it there's an abortion clinic

and each day there are two or three protestors, with

placards and large photos of babies and things, with

crosses and rosaries, standing out front to challenge

or otherwise harass in their own way anyone who is

arriving or departing. The protestors are kept, in a steady

stream, supplied by the Knights of Columbus Hall just

down the street, across from St. James Church. I always

have to laugh because that's about the very spot I'd

always be seeing Harry starting or stopping one of

his jaunts, in the late1960's anyway. He was a short,

strongly-built guy, always in gray khakis, like a

workman's uniform. He never spoke much, or well.

I was always intrigued when I heard of his wealth

and riches, told to me by others, and watched carefully

to see how he acted or what his routines were. They

never appeared any different from anyone, though I

could never really figure him out. I always wanted to get

inside of his head, ask a million questions, find out what

he knew and felt about the Woodbridge he was transforming.

This was the beginning of the 'garden apartment' era, and

those hideous and dumb-looking brick outlays were cropping

up everywhere in what used to be fields and meadows. I

always wanted to know where Harry's education was from,

whether or not he had come up through the Woodbridge

system, with an engrained sense of place and feel for the

town itself, or if it was just another business opportunity

for him. Nothing important, just rather the sorts of thing

I used to think about. I myself had somehow grown an

attachment, whether emotional or intellectual, to that sort

of information. We were, after all, living 'somewhere', and

that somewhere had to have a story and a history to it.

I had another friend, in New Brunswick; she was a graphic

artist, about ten years, maybe, older than me. Her name

was Joanne Mannion and she came from old-line New

Brunswick stock, somehow, and would always tell me

stories and histories, through her family, of old 'port'

New Brunswick, when the waterfront was vivid and active,

stevedores and river pilots and boiler men stalked around,

piles of freight and cargo, boat traffic and drayage people

everywhere. She was way down on that which had befallen

New Brunswick, cursing the town and its people, and by

extension all of current 'America' and its standards and

practices. She had a heart for all that had gone away,

and she somehow sensed I did too. It was one of the

few times I felt that someone was on the track to

understanding a little bit of the way I thought about

things. The funny thing, too  -  let me go back a moment  -

was to see how this Harry Halpern guy gave no care to

being starched or stiff, like any of the rich or historic

characters a place like Woodbridge would puff itself

up about. Here was a regular kingpin of the town, an

invisible real-estate mogul, raking it in, and I could

somehow never envision him getting puffy or important

about himself  - suits and ties and all those dinners and

club-talks those sorts of town guy bigwigs were always

involved with. He really knew how to pull it off. An

interesting and funny corollary to all this, in my own life,

which pretty much exemplifies what I'm saying, was when

I was at St. George Press, just about the year 1990, and

ready to leave, just feeling cramped and constrained too

much  -  all over again  -  by the business world and all the

crap that went with it. I'd begun skimping on haircuts, getting

seedy-looking again, not much caring, and the owner, Bob

took me aside, finally, one day, and told me to straighten up,

look right, 'because the town fathers come in here often. You

know that.' (We did a lot of municipal printing and we'd get

the Mayor and Council people and big business types and

Kiwanis Club sorts, and all the rest). His point was that they

were important enough that I should appear reserved and

proper to them. Oh boy, did I have to laugh at that. (I was

gone about a month later). He actually called them 'town

fathers', like some landed colonial gentry or something. These

were guys whose idea of a grand time was a scrambled-eggs

breakfast meeting, a golf-outing, and maybe a local Colonia

Country Club soiree and dance with their wives or brooding

other. Being a 'Town Father' was the last thing on their minds

and they wouldn't really have had a clue as to what that meant

anyway. All they really cared about was making a buck, and

from what I saw all that meant to them was 'expansion'; growing

the business base of Woodbridge Township  -  more business,

roads, factories, warehouses, housing units, shopping centers

and parking lots. The complete opposite of a town 'father, for

sure. More like 'Town Despoilers.' The whole thing had

become a bad joke. Yet I had to 'look good.'

-

Places seem to, eventually, just become either ghosts of

themselves or parodies of themselves. Cities begin to

deteriorate and crumble, the 'right' people move out

(meaning the 'money') and the crumbs are left to the

next strand of arrivals, always lesser in standing and

money than the previous, and they let things slide a

little more, and then they leave as they grow out. That's

how suburbs begin, spread and fan themselves out. All

the big-time writers who write about the places they lived

or grew up through, and which are no more, they all write

about things like that. The dilution of place and value.

It's like an old-time American saga wherever you go.

The rise and the fall of the places that were; and it's a kind

of a gift for the writer too, because he can mine that raw

material and spin it in any manner he or she then chooses.

That's called interpretation. I don't really know that Avenel,

using my own for instance, has ever had such a treatment, but

here I am, trying at giving it one  -  it's a sort of structural

abyss around and into which I've woven the DNA strands of

the place I called 'home' in the way that I lived it, or thought

it anyhow. But it's more difficult and awkward here, because
in reality 'Avenel' had only the most rudimentary previous
history. It was really nothing ever more than an out-reach
settlement along a highway that kept expanding, and it sort
of wound up being providentially placed near to where at
least six of these big-time, commercial roadways, met and
crossed. A 'hub' as it were -  not so much for people at all,
which is where the legacy and history would have come from,
but for business and commercial interests. The complete
opposite of any sense of goodness and place; just instead the
'locus' of a rapacious, steady, and greedy growth where
'good' things were steadily eroded and taken away, and
only the most mediocre, fouled, congested and transient
things somehow always remained. 'Town fathers' indeed.

7749. NOT A MOMENT

NOT A MOMENT

Here where the gargoyles burst their

britches, the rain pours out in buckets.

We become united kingdoms of our own

utensils  -  some shred of a shredded wheat

over  -  as they posit  -  our own Niagara Falls.

Wherever is the haunting mystery of that, I wonder.

-

Then again, thirty years later, I sit alone to watch a

midnight moon remove itself from sight. Some stand

awestruck by eclipses, when things disappear. I get

star-struck by appearances, and the visons of all that I see.

-

Whatever is the haunting mystery of that, I wonder.

7748. MUSIC FOR KLEPTOMANIACS

MUSIC FOR

KLEPTOMANIACS

Some things just make you want to say

'take this!' The staccato of the strings is

vile. I like the 'Devil's Trill Sonata' myself.

Giuseppe Tartini  -  isn't that a name

to reckon with?

7747. SOMETHING ABOUT MADISON

SOMETHING ABOUT MADISON

More like that than anything else, a porn name

more like it. Laughingly, those melons. The

well-scooped orange walls, with some stupid

bucolic modern paintings on them.

7746. BELOW THE WATER LINE (pt. 146)

BELOW THE WATER LINE

(pt. 146)

Funny how things are : Avenel was always pretty

rigidly drawn  -  a person knew where each road

went and to what it connected. It was secure in that

factor, not much room to doubt, except for the

occasioned rough areas, not yet fully developed,

or anything on the east slope, the swamps, which

ran down to Carteret and the rest. They were always

unknown. Mysterious, haphazard. The mystery to me

was always how, in all other effects, that was all forgot.

Mysteries are always crooked and hazy to behold, but

the rest of the world seems to always want clarity.

The schools taught linear thinking. I always disliked

linear thinking; the sort of scientific thought in which

the basic sequence of things '- a - b - c -' is always thought

to bring forth 'd'. While that may well be, by their code,

it was never anything I could find belief in. My world

was different, and I knew that, most certainly, between

'c' and 'd' there were myriad other possible outcomes, and

letter factors we haven't even imagined or known about

yet. You see, in reality (what a stupid concept) that's

what Science's job is, and the goons don't even know it.

They keep 'discovering' new concepts about things, and

get flabbergasted when they stumble upon elasticities of

time and the fluidities of objects and states of being. It's

like sending a nine-year old out to do the task of a brawny

lumberjack  -  simply not up to the task. 

-

In Avenel, land of straight streets and straight houses, the

mystery factor was encompassed most simply by 'Cozy

Corner.'  In Science there's something called a 'Singularity',

now; a time when creativity and intelligence will burst forth

and create new things. I always misunderstood that, wrongly,

to mean something that was 'one-off', unique. It's still a

quarrel in my mind, because I can't quite understand where

they're going with that one (it seems so unscientific in

concept), but Cozy Corner, let's then just say, encompassed

something, and always did. 'Singularity' didn't exist, 

except maybe conceptually, back in the 50's, but the 

concept was there in the ethos. Cozy Corner wasn't really

a corner at all, and I could never figure it out, it seemed to

start and end by itself, turning back in on its own space.

I always figured it could be called 'Crazy Corner' and better

define itself. It was most certainly Avenel's prime anomaly.

It was a huge, slow curve  -  not really a 'corner' at all. It 

almost seemed to have its own 'time', a different element of

density or thickness of things. It was also funny, to me, in

that it seemed the 'place' for hot-rodders and all the car 

guys to live, just right. But they all seemed to live in he

Fifth Avenue area, out behind Murray and Martha's. Or

maybe the Cozy Corner crowd had heir own place, like

Charlie's Sweet Shop or Dirty John's. I never knew. Funny

too, how Dirty John's today is, instead, some cloth-napkin,

Italian Restaurant, and has been for years, thriving. Called

Dominic's. I know the owner guy, we started him out in 

business, in fact, some time like 1982  -  printing all his

needed materials and menus and changes and gift cards

and the whole shebang back at St. George Press. He says

'This restaurant has been very good to me', now, and he 

does real well. Even the square back room where John's 

had all the pool table areas is now in use as his rentable

banquet space. Funny how things turn out  -  all these

squibblers in there, chomping down their veal scallopini

and pasta dishes and chocolate desserts have no clue.

Jo-Jo De Marino, and Vince Martino -  two local political

hacks  -  they know about all of that, but not many others. 

Those two guys are in there at least once a week to 'dine'.

Can you imagine people 'dining' in Avenel, land of beer

and baloney sandwiches and pickles in wax bags? Funny.

My seminary friend David Shershen used to live right next

door, where it's all condos now, and his father  -  for years  -

had Shersen's Barber Shop. Everyone on that side of town

frequented Shersen's for their haircuts. They all moved  -

the Shersens  -  to New Hampshire long ago. But anyway.

in looking for the twists and turns of reality, Cozy Corner

always embodied a particular form of strangeness for me.

Certainly a break-out from the usual Avenel linear rigidness.

It must have had something to do with just a parcel of

excess land the developer found left over and decided to

cover with homes, or, more likely even, it had to do with 

water.

-

There's an entire underground concept of water that we 

don't ever know about. The world of progress and civilization,

in fact, used to orient itself by water, nothing else  -  maybe

water and paths through the woods. Like we use highways

and interstates now to connect places and map things, the

original concourse of travel, trade and commerce, obviously

had always and at first and for the longest time, been water.

The section of Avenel that began and was tucked down under

Cozy Corner was water  -  swamp, bracken, and riverway. 

Every so often, a furious storm comes through and re-awakens 

everything  -  the watery torrent returns, and people even die

there -   like Alvin Williams and those two kids he was trying 

to rescue. (He was a Woodbridge cop, back about 1982, who,

 along with the two kids, gut sucked into the raging water 

funnel while he was trying to rescue them, and they all died. 

He's now honored here and there around town with parks 

and namesake plaques. Anyway, once men began to

understand and learn how land could be drained and water

could be led into underground sluice pipes and causeways,

all that original geography began to change and nothing was

ever the same  -  mostly thanks to Henry Ford and those

motorhead geeks who transformed the nation with cars and

roadways  -  no looking back, no regrets. (I never even 

understood who of those guys would eve understand to

invent 'rear-view mirrors'; it's a concept completely foreign

to them). It's hard for us to imagine now how things were

because so meticulously transformed everything and

gotten away from any semblance of the original concept.

Try to consider new Brunswick, if you will, as a bustling

and important inland port, with schooner ships and 

cargo-boats bustling and jostling around with trade and

commerce, an entire (now gone) waterfront of shops and

tanneries and hard-goods and cartage and wagon stops. 

The terminus of waterways and canals to places like 

Bound Brook and points west, north, and south. 

Now there' nothing like that, as any Joe can get in his

car and fart his way along Rt. 18 or Rt. 1, forget the

past, and get where he's going. Eventually. And the

only real place,  -  to prove my point  -  that shows 

any of this historic, old waterfront history is in the

vestibule of St. Peter's Church, which, with its 

ancient cemetery and markers. They have a few 

old photographs of when that was a small, mariner's

village area, right on the waterfront. It's all mostly 

inaccessible now, and the area gone  -  highways 

and condos and everything in its place. You have

to use your imagination to see. But, there really once

was another world people lived in entirely, when

rivers and waterways were the highways of the time.

Native-Americans lived right on the banks and the flats.

They moved as they had to with the seasons and the

weather. Nowadays every little doofus complains 

about high-water or flooding or surges, like little

stupid spoiled brats whose realization of things stops

at their nose's end. They built all their 'permanent'

homes in places the waters still occasionally claim.

An Indian would just, wisely and with good sense, 

at that point, pack up things and move along a little,

until the next dry spot or spell. They sure knew how 

to do things, way better than us.

7745. CAN'T DELIVER

CAN'T DELIVER

The things I used to hold are all gone now, the

place where the place-mats were kept is empty.

There's only a sluice pipe for the waterway, and

it's really just filled with grime. Down the street,

they're digging holes again  -  and I expect by

Spring the construction they've planned will 

really be working. New noise, and another

break in time. The field, once left alone

and fallow  -  ages and acres of chemical

mess, is now cut and opened again. All

the old gaping Earth see air 

and sky anew.

7744. FALLING EMBERS

FALLING EMBERS

These falling embers, like the falling moon

that I see outside my window, are dropping down

to a steady pace : collegial in their ways, they tumble.

7743. DOCTOR SAYS

DOCTOR SAYS

The doctor says what ails? I say 'Doctor

I want a heart, and arms to hold and a place

for that to be. I want silver, and I want gold.'

He sits down to ponder. I watch the red water

in his waxy mindless desktop toy. Yes, it's

come to this. Oh boy. He looks back up and

says. 'I can do for you only what I've done

for others.' I look forward. 'And what is that?'

I ask. He scratches a small cartoon, as if it were

an itch, and says, 'Well, I can't very well transplant

just what you want, they do not make that yet. I can

instead give you good cheer. You will probably 

live another year.'

7742. BELOW THE WATER LINE (pt. 145)

BELOW THE WATER LINE

(pt. 145)

One of the hardest things to have to do is 

to find a meaning; I guess that's the most 

ordinary quest of youth. All the tales and

fables, exploits and conquests, deal with

it, each their own ways. What is civilization,

after all, but a unification of many quest-stories

into one larger, over-riding myth. Everyone, in

their own way, takes it up. My own world, in

so many ways, went no differently than anyone

else's. That was an odd thing I always felt about

myself; I don't know why, or what it meant, but

it felt as if I'd actually 'been' at every stage of

every man, of every other person along the way.

It led to a shared complicity, and was a way of

getting along with people, although none of it was

really 'me'.  If someone was a sentimental crybaby,

I felt that I could help and understand, because I had

been one of those once too. If someone was tough and

gritty, I could be that, because at core I understood

perfectly well what living with the level of Life was

like. I'd have done that. With the sickly, I could be

sickly; with the religious, religious; I'd done that.

In fact, that tired old phrase, 'been there, done that',

it seemed to fit me pretty well. It's a way of getting

along, I suppose. Been there, done that was later

supplanted somehow by 'yada yada', which was a

sort of Yiddish version of etc., etc. All so strange.

-

There were two guys  -  this was later, during that

high school interregnum for me,   -  two seminary

guys from like Fords and Perth Amboy, I think,

maybe Fords and South River, something like

that  -  Ed Nadolny and Ray Nalepa, as I recall.

They kept coming around, more than a few times,

sort of to check up on me, say hello, hang around 

a little. They'd always been a twosome, pals forever,

and now that the seminary was breaking apart, I guess

in their doldrums during those waning days, they 

were set loose. They seemed fascinated a little bit

by me. I was sort of just bored stiff by them. It was 

bad  -  the reason I say that is because I'd somehow

developed a haze, or a hazy screen, around myself

that wouldn't really let anyone else in. I knew those

two guys were talking to me, at me, but I really

wasn't intent on listening to what they  were saying,

and can't even tell you what it was. As I said in the

previous chapter, in that quote, I had become my own

biggest obstacle. No one could break through that 

screed around me; it was custom built just to keep 

others away. I had no idea what these two guys could

possibly want from me now, and I let them know it. I

feel pretty shitty over it now, but that's the corner-box

I was painted into  -  embroiled, raging, trapped. I was

soon to get out, but at that moment I had no place. I

had no place because nothing was real; the entire 

world presented to me was a sham and a working lie.

And it wasn't just them I did this to  -  I have another

Avenel friend, way back from kid days, Al Zinze. He 

relates to me how, in these waning high-school days,

one day how I just blew right past him and another 

friend, Robert Stewart. Didn't even acknowledge 

them, responded to nothing, went right on by their

entreaties as if they weren't even there. I've tried to

explain, and I've told Al how sorry I am for that

now  -  but I was lost, I was unresponsive. I was

living in another place  -  so far gone I couldn't

even hear the whippoorwill or the owl if they were

perched on my shoulder. I still feel so bad over this.

There's no triumph in that. I was a fool, being a fool.

-

Imagine what it's like, to have someone tell you, forty

years later, what you'd done  -  or not done  -  to them

that is still so grievous that it wounds yet. It's not a 

good feeling. Quests, and all those 'searches' for 

meaning, they're actually quite meaningless. 

-

Time was passing. I'd achieved a few minor milestones

of my own, one my own, but now was coming the

transitionary stuff that brings one over the hump, to

adulthood, or at least to growing up. To make that

passage, there are certain rudiments you need to meet,

I knew that, and I wasn't exactly ready or willing to

meet them. One of them is 'social' conditioning. That

was a problem to me. I remember, I guess it was

Christmas, 1966, my mother did a weird thing to me  -  

in her zeal to have me merge well, and in her and my

father's zeal, as well, to have me 'find' an Italian

girlfriend (I'm going to admit ahead of time this is 

a solitary and bizarre story to relate, almost as if

some form of 'arranged' marriage was being formed,

but it's true. Alas, it didn't work, much to my parents' 

chagrin. Not, however, to the girl involved -  she turned 

out quite well, married someone else and has had a

lovely, and successful, life. In addition, to avoid any

embarrassment  -  mostly my own  -  I've simply made

a name). The girl's name was Emily Bardozza, and

she had three or four sisters, and a young brother.

I'd taken her, already, to the high school senior play,

under duress, yes, and again to appease my silly

mother, who thought this to be a wonderful match 

made in Heaven. The play that year was 'Brigadoon', 

some supercilious mess of fantasy and wonderment 

about a magical place or kingdom or something (I really

paid little attention. It bored me to prickly heat.) with

all these silly, singing people. Seniors in senior plays

are gruesome  -  all that chummy happiness and singing

and jumping around. It's fey, humorous without intent,

and 'barfy' as well. The play sucked. I sat there glumly

counting my marked cards and hoping for out. I'd also

been recruited to take her to a few basketball games,

a sport I detested  -  smelly, rank, noisy and useless.

She was a popular girl, attractive as much, and every 

time she'd reciprocate a hello or a smile to someone

back, a lot of guys too, I'd think,'what's going on, she

certainly doesn't need me around here, dragging her

fine ship-of-social-state down.' It was horrible. I

mean, as well, to say, we never kissed or fondled  

or none of that. I was too stupid anyway. This was

all my silly mother's doing. And then came Christmas.

For whatever the Hell the reason was, my mother had

it so that I'd go over to their house (around the corner)

and spend Christmas morn with them. Imagine this!

Like five girls and a boy kid, and a mother (I can't

actually recall the presence of a father, but whatever).

They got their presents, there were like cupcakes and

stuff brought out, small talk, social stuff, and the rest.

Her mother was real nice and seemed to wish me well,

went along with all this, and smiled nicely. I was as

awkward as a beetle on a tentpole. The morning ended, 

and I left. The whole thing had been like a Louisa

May Alcott story or something. That was the end of 

that entire experiment, never mentioned again. I 

didn't see that girl again until years later, when we 

met in a hospital lobby as parents were ailing, and

then again a few years later at some  guy's 'friend's 

reunion party' that I got suckered into in Freehold, NJ.

-

So, I brought all this out to sort of see if I could

integrate the bones of this story into the more rattly 

bones of my own life. Finding meaning, socializing 

and getting along. Well, the answer, thankful to me 

to say, was and is 'NO'. A great big outstanding NO. 

Because I was me, and that was it  -  my mother and 

father would have never understood that, school certainly 

had missed that boat, peddling all their shenanigans, 

and all my Avenel days and friends no longer much 

shared in this stuff at all. A sort of mannered parking 

had taken over : you get to where you were going, 

pull over, park, and stay there. That's how very many

of these people ended up, until then, about twenty

years later or less, all those same people began 

breaking apart, getting divorces, splitting up kids,

losing a house, paying all those bills and alimony 

and tuitions and cars and vacations and all that. There

was a whole, sweeping period of that, and then they

all settled down and did the same thing all over again,

except with someone new. In therapy, that's called

'repeat behavior', and is the base result of an enforced

'patterning' that's been engraved in a young mind. Most

of these people can't escape their fantasies if they tried.

They're all stuck in their own versions of  'Brigadoon!'