7661. BELOW THE WATER LINE (pt. 127)

BELOW THE WATER LINE

(pt. 127) section a:

'seminary days'

I was in seminary school the day President

Kennedy was killed. In the library, in fact. It

was about 1:30 maybe, and one of the priests

came in and announced that the President had

just been shot, and was in Dallas, in someplace

called Parkland Hospital, I think it was. There

were maybe 15 of us around there, in the library,

doing various things. The library had a central 

seating area, nice chairs and stuff, and an entire

two-level metal-stairway wing of elevated book 

stacks with a little balcony overlook. We were 

told to get down on our knees and begin praying 

for the President. I think the one priest began 

reciting The Lord's Prayer and some other stuff. 

That was kind of always supposed to be on our 

lips and mind anyway, Hail Mary's, all those 

little litanies of prayer and supplication, Lord's 

Prayer and all that. It wasn't much of anything 

different. So, following orders, I did as was told, 

but I don't remember much, except that everything 

just sort of stopped until someone else then came 

in and said he was dead, the President I mean. Then

the whole routine began again, but this time really

in earnest. And then, as it transpired, it lasted for

three solid days. No one did a thing except watch 

all the TV stuff in grainy black and white. In the

lounges we had; there were three or four TV's 

scattered around. Nothing I ever watched, but they

were there. These were the years of like Mr. Ed, 

and Green Acres, Petticoat Junction, and Beverly

Hillbillies and I think something called My Mother 

the Car. Weird stuff. In later years whenever 

anyone mentioned those shows it was incumbent 

on me to say I had no knowledge of it, and try 

to explain then why I wasn't lying. No one ever 

believed me. I just never watched. The one time 

we were actually force-fed all that TV junk was 

like about 1964 maybe, when Pope Paul VI 

visited New York City. Again, all that black 

and white, grainy mush mumbo-jumbo. I never 

cared; made no never-mind to me. Traveling 

Popes and darting minstrels, all the same. 

The other two really cool times I remember 

watching TV were pretty vivid : we were 

watching the live coverage when that Jack 

Ruby fellow, also in Dallas, darted out of 

the crowd of bystanders and put two bullets 

right into the gut of Lee Harvey Oswald, 

who was right then being walked to his 

arraignment in I think an underground 

police garage or something. I'll never forget 

the look on his face as he got shot. I knew 

he was down for the count on live television. 

The other time, almost equally cool, was 

when Malcolm X was shot and killed at the

Audubon Ballroom up at the top of New York 

City. I can't remember if that was live, or even

why I was watching it all, but he too got shot

and twirled around pretty good, and then 

he too was dead.

-

In that library, and as that seminarian that I was,

I was reading a photo book  -  captions and 

photographs and an introductory essay, I think

by Carl Sandburg. It was a volume I often returned 

to and, at that time, it was considered a sort of 

groundbreaking exercise in photo-essay journalism.

It was entitled 'The Family of Man' and had been

a photo-show curated at the Museum of Modern 

Art, by Edward Steichen, and it had traveled the 

world since the MOMA installation in the mid-50's.

This was a book made from the exhibit. It was always

fascinating to me, worldwide, photos from everywhere,

all sorts of people and activities. That what I was

viewing as the President was shot. It's always been

funny how people say 'What were you doing when 

Kennedy was shot?' Stuff like that no one cares about

these days, unless it's some rap star who got sucker-

shot by his homies or some regurgitated pop star 

dropping dead. Then everybody goes nuts with

all that 'where were you you heard Kurt Cobain' 

blah, blah, blah, don't bother me. In actuality,

another thing about that seminary library  -  which

I always thought horrendously unfair  -  was that 

they had a reproduction, a pretty good sized one 

too, about 2 feet high, of some half-famous old

painting from somewhere, of a young woman,

eyes all a'blaze, fleeing from something  -  all

stressed and contorted looking but beautiful as

hell too  -  and she was wearing lace and a cloak

and all this stuff, except that it was all windblown

and really sheer -   which of course enabled her

breasts to be clearly portrayed and seen, nipples 

and all. That was a little too much for this 12 year

old, at any time. I never figured quite what they 

were thinking but though I never leered that 

painting was enough times on my mind to, say,

distract me from whatever I was reading -   

in this case the photo book. It was, until that

point, by far the best anatomical surmise I'd

ever gotten of a woman's breasts, and I was

always up to refreshing myself on the lesson.

So, truth be told, what I was doing when Kennedy

got shot was closely gazing at a woman's breasts.

Now, how's that sound, respectful enough?

-

One other philosophical quandary brought up by

all this, and one that immediately set the usual alarm

bells ringing for me, was that those prayers for the

President's life, in that period after he'd been shot

and we were told to pray, had obviously failed.

The priest, of course, had, without comment, just

immediately kicked it up a notch to then pray for 

his 'Soul' on its post-death endeavors, or whatever.

Essentially he was hiding from the  actual truth

that we'd failed miserably at whatever we'd 

undertaken to do. What did that mean? What

then was the efficacy of any of this 'Prayer' stuff?

How can one explain away such a failure? By

simply ignoring it? None of that was enough for me.

I needed answers and a re-directing of mind and

reason. What was everyone up to? Was this just to

be yet another endless con game? I know, of course,

the answer was already 'yes', but I had to figure my 

new way through all this somehow.

-

It was also curious how it involved fate : The man had

already been shot  -  in fact half his brain was splattered

on the car's seat and on his wife too. That had occurred.

By whatever means of altered states or manipulations,

that part of the factual deed had transpired, and yet we

were attempting to change something of it by prayer?

Now? Was this Catholicism then nothing more than a

medieval seeking for some bizarre magic? An alchemy

of the moment, sought? We were most obviously to be 

unable to change a moment of the previous two hours,

and this bloated, not so great anyway President was dead.

Period. The flapping gates of the twisting nation were

still slamming with their awkward noise when everything

rushed in : the church and its quaint 'connection' to a

Catholic priest. Down the drain on that count. It all

held little reason. We'd always been taught sternly about

a separation of church and state, how those who arrived

here came for religious freedom. It was all malarkey. They'd

obviously, in their peripatetic Puritan ways, set up very

quickly their own nation-state of religion. Which included

the death and dismemberment of any other tribe, culture

or people in their way. I didn't know much, but I was from

Avenel  -  we'd been taught at least to know what shit smelled

like. I detected the enormous aromas of endless piles right

off. There wasn't anything I could do about it here, trapped

as I was in their endless playbook  -  page after page of

sentiment and sadness. Maybe this Kennedy dude would

rise from the dead? Was that the catch. For the next number

of days, hell, I watched, and watched carefully. As Fats

Waller or one of those fat, black Jellyroll guys used to say,

'One never knows, do one?'

-

Everyone in the seminary, if they wished, had these little jobs

or tasks they could latch onto. Mine were twofold : one was

an agricultural bent, slopping the pigs. Out behind the barn,

a good ways walk anyway, there was a pigsty where were kept

some 10 or 12 really good sized porkers. I guess they were all

different and kept getting replaced. I never knew, not really 

being THAT involved. There was this farmer guy, Brother

Cornelius or Brother Sebastian  -  I forget which one  -  a 

small hairy guy, all big-bearded and such. Very much like 

that Avenel hermit I've written of earlier. (Jeez, I wish 

people would just read this stuff, and then I wouldn't feel 

the need to always drop in that 'previous chapter' phrase).

He was the one who had slapped Hitler. I haven't told you

that story yet, and I probably won't  -  unless someone actually

asks me to as proof of 'readership'. But anyway, he was a

totally quiet guy. I'm not sure he ever talked. All these priests

and brothers were German guys, the old ones from Germany

itself, and the younger ones from some German religious 

colony in Wisconsin somewhere, their outpost. Sebastian,

or Cornelius, he was straight out of Germany, long time 

back. He ran the barn and the farming operations, totally. 

Hard work, constant attachment. You hardly ever saw the 

guy if he wasn't at the barn. My daily task, for a while, was

to take the pails of food garbage which would somehow

materialize at the barn each evening or late afternoon, and

wheelbarrow the loads over to the pigs, along the winding,

sandy, dirt path (there were any number of these) which ran 

to the areas of the pigsty. I'd then just flip it all in to the big

feed-troughs that ran along the fencing, and all the giant

porkers would come snorting and raging to begin their

nosing and rummaging through all that food junk to eat.

And eat they did. I could go on how, to me, that was

a perfect analogy to most anything else in this Human

life : religion, politics, sports, knowledge, whatever.

Throw out some shit, heave it in front of the hungry,

dumb hordes, and they'll lap it all up in no time. Well, 

there were a few occasions when I did go on, but no

one quite wished for me to continue. I always thought

that was what was nice about girls and sweethearts and 

love and all that  - which to that point I'd not had. A

girlfriend right there, then, if I had had one, would have

made all the gentle difference  -  they listen, they let you

go on, they take what you say and weave it back some with

those nicer and softer incidentals of only a girl's ways. I

never cared a whit what people said; girls had a different 

feel and touch  -  not just to them, their persons, but in the

entire way they held and wove the sweeter world. I was

really getting tired of all the bitter charm of Manhood's

ways. So, I daily fed the pigs, worked the barn,'grooved'

on Brother Sebastian, or whomever it was. Okay? My next

task was as a seminary barber. All these stupid boy-heads

always had hair growing, and we were there to maintain

nice, short haircuts  -  not buzz-cuts or anything, but just

the old, normal short, boy's haircut. I did that  -  barber chair,

2 or 3, in the barber room, guys coming in, sitting down, the

big white sheet, the clippers and the brushes. Just like that

Floyd the Barber guy, I later saw, in the old Andy Griffith's

or Mayberry's or whatever that silly show was called. All

during this Kennedy funeral crap  -  the slow horses, the

upside-down boots in the stirrups, all that sickening 

bewailing and endless TV mourning, that's what I did.

Like three-days of constant haircuts. Everybody had

something to say  -  constant chatter, sad boys, portents

of doom, and all the rest  -  except for me. My role was the

wisecracker, barber asshole. You come to me, you're gonn'a

hear some shit. 'You know that the last thing that went

through Kennedy's mind was? A bullet.' You know what

Jackie was saying in that limo, to the Secret Service guy?

'Get me the fuck out of here!'. None of that holy, sentimental

sad-royalty stuff. I was a regular Lenny Bruce with scissors.

No stopping me now. No stopping me then.