7702. BELOW THE WATER LINE, (pt. 136)

BELOW THE WATER LINE

(pt. 136) - section 10 (last)
'seminary days'

One time my Avenel friend, and neighbor, 

Donald  -  I guess it was senior year, high school,

we took a train to New York City. He was doing a

report or something on sitars, the Indian instrument

used for ragas and stuff (Ravi Shankar, you'll recall).

I can't recall it perfectly well, but I remember being

a bit in the role of guide and scout. We got there right

in the mid-morning of a busy workday. This was when

the garment district, in 1966 or '67, was still a really

active and functioning work district. There were

Spanish guys everywhere, pushing wheeled carts

of fashion and clothing and clothing samples and

fabrics, everywhere. Back then a lot of the operation 

involved small-scale fashion cutters and stitchers,

design houses, style protoypes and such. Pretty big

operation  -  it's all gone now and all there are left is 

an occasional small scene, but all the out-on-the-street

transport is over and the fabrics and styles in use now

are just mostly cheap knock-offs for all the discount and

to-the-trade stores there  -  all the street-vendors that you

see (the stores say 'to the trade only' or wholesale

only, or 'sold by the gross' - 144 pieces, I think). They

range now from cheap handbags to cheaper sunglasses

and trinkets. The whole city street-trade buys from here 

for the street-table sales. In a year or so after this visit

with Donald, after I'd moved into NYC, all this still

went on and a lot of the lofts in use, as they were no

longer IN use, began to be illegally occupied as artist

studios, jazz and music lofts, etc., with people actually

living in them and making homes. All against code. I'd

often find myself, at some late-night hour, entering a

17th, or a 30th street loft, for whatever. It was how people

lived, or at least the art and breakaway crowd. I loved it.

You kind of had to see it from within to understand it.

Of course, Donald and I, at that point, didn't know any 

of this and we were just more awed by the spectacle.

Dirt, dust, crowds and noise. Music shops, with all those

strange instruments in the windows. People standing

about  -  you knew everyone was involved in something,

deeply and with fervor. And also, back then, in NYC,

daylight was one thing. The night scene was totally 

different. I can't really remember much of what we 

did, he says we got to the music store we sought, and

the sitar he was going to buy, when he got to it, no longer

seemed like a good deal, so he didn't. What was cool about

it was us  -  two Avenel kids, just stalking out, bumping

around the city streets without a real clue and with nothing

to do. On the one hand, that's how kids get in trouble, but  - 

on the other  -  that's not how it was for us. We weren't

after anything, all the mad scene was still like a year or

two away, and we were content to just walk and gape.

When you read other kid's episodes now, when people 

write of their early visits to the city, or their first times or

their life IN the city, it's all different. They write with all

the street-smarts and smart-alecky wisdom they have  -  

whether it's a late-addition or real. They knew, they claim,

where the drugs were, or the babes, or the crime, or the

stolen stuff and cheapo deals. Maybe so - but we sure as

hell didn't. Weren't even aware. It was a willow-the-wisp

serendipity trip in for us. Good day; but I can't remember

much else.

-

A couple of things I always took with me as lessons and 

memories, whether Avenel or NYC, were deliberation,

slowness, and clear-headed devotion to the task at hand.

That always seemed the key, to me, people get all mucked

up when they rush into things, try to do five things at once,

do too much, screw it up, over-compensate, etc. Instead, I

found, you just have to be steady and wise, quiet and deep.

That was the entire key to life : coolness and aplomb (love

that word? hate that word?). City kids would jump the 

turnstiles. I never did that  -  they knew how to do it, would

take the risk. Nor for me; it was too slapdash and too sloppy.

Why get in trouble over the stupid price of a subway token?

Up on the streets, crazy-ass kids I'd see would jump onto the

backs of trucks, for that ride downtown or up or east or west,

wherever it seemed the truck was running. A quick jump at 

a light or a corner, and  -  smack in the middle back of the 

truck, just hanging on good, the driver couldn't see you. 

It was a blind spot. Like when trucks run that warning on 

their rear, about wide turns and all that  - 'if you can't see 

me in this mirror, I can't see you'  -  fair warning, and thanks

Bud, that's what we were hoping.

-

After the seminary, and when still in it, I was walking around

with my head ringing. There were so many lessons and things

within me, and all the stuff I'd noted and noticed, that I was a

walking, veritable, writing time bomb. I knew it all had to come

out. I was seeking happiness, basically, that was it. The happiness

of making a person  -  me. The product. As much as I wound

up distancing myself from 'organized' religion, I turned out to

be a really religious cat. Just in different ways. The only person I

ever, ever, got hung up on was William Blake. You could look

him up, London, 1757-1827. Bizarre, beautiful guy, got it all

right and correct. Reached a perfect product. Wrote all those

'prophetic' books, the poetry (not that great). Mystic visionary,

fighting against the Industrial Revolution, all that establishment

crap of his day in Lambeth and all the places he moved. Always

in trouble with Authority, fighting with cops in his yard, all that

stuff. American Revolution. French Revolution. People stealing

his work all the time, claiming it as their own. He had no clue

what to do about any of that, he was gone. Out there. Happiness.

Bible verse, Philippians 4:6, 'Be anxious about nothing'. That

means 'nothing'  - staying totally cool. There 's another verse that

goes, 'Rejoice in the Lord always.' That's pure Life bliss. All.

-

Of course, it was difficult imparting this to others, so pretty

much I just didn't. I bided time. There's a silly strain in American

thinking that somehow says there's a strict separation between

church and state, or secular and religious. At the risk of sounding

like a Muslim, with their Sha'ria laws, I disagree. There's no such

thing as secular at all  -  life is ALL religious, man, and you either

do it right, take it inside, and work it from there, correctly, to back 

outside, or please then don't bother. You're already a dead man and 

your life's a waste. All that prattle about individuality and pleasure-

seeking and individual rights, and all that, they pretty much are

smokescreens for bad intent, even Evil intent. Selfish, denigrating

ways. Dead Souls, as Gogol wrote (1842). Part of the real problem

today, with America AND with western civilization as a whole, is

that mix-up. Buying into shit, as it were, and loving it. Devil's

Kingdom, and all that. If you can't own up to that, you're sunk.

-

There was this guy, in about 1939, killed by the Germans, for

harboring or protecting Jews. Right up until that point, this fellow

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, was comfortably set, lining in NYC, at

Union Theological Seminary. He chose to return to Germany, 

leaving his security, for the depravity of Nazi Germany, where

he'd soon enough be arrested for supporting the Jews. One day,

in his reading at the seminary, he came across 'He who believes

does not flee.' He really felt God was speaking to him, saying 

that if he had faith he would not worry about his life but would

return to his race and his country and his family and people,

and face whatever he must face. Sheer obedience to that voice.

He was murdered by Hitler's henchmen, himself at age 39,

two weeks before the Americans liberated Flossenburg.
-
That was how I felt. I no longer saw any reason for that cloistered,
hideaway holy stuff, preached under covers of darkness and
magic. Life was for the taking, for the living, outside, on the
streets, in the hearts and spirits and minds souls and beings
of every other person I'd see. I was done. He who believes
 does not flee. It was back out to the streets for me.