7980. THINGS ARE DIFFERENT NOW, #9

9. DENTON PARMENTER

I was never comfortable in my

skin, still am not; it's as if I'm

annoyed at being human  -  that

sounds funny, but it's not meant

to be. I can swear to lots of things,

and a few of them are, (I swear),

that I see things and hear things

that other people don't. I sense

variations on the shades of things

and the essences which prove that

things aren't. Simply are not. Just

not there. It's not much fun : have

you ever tried to explain to someone

else a sense of the non-reality of

their world. It's almost non-sensical.

Back in Pennsylvania, when I first

bought that old farmhouse and land,

the barn which I possessed instantly,

for me, became the ghostland of that

present. In the creamery-room (like

a workroom for the milk business of

the barn) there was a 1957 calendar

on the wall, just left there, as if

they'd just exited yesterday, and

were coming right  back. There

were some tools, and chain left

there, on the workbench. Even

something I'd never heard of,

something called a 'creep-along'

or somesuch; kind of a ratchet-lever

and a cable thing, with a big,

rounded hook at the end. It fell in,

somewhere, between a winch and

a pull-bar. We'd even use it now

and then to drag a car along with.

(I was left with five junkers in the

yard, a 1960 Mercury Turnpike

Cruiser being my favorite of them,

but it was already a black wreck).

Funny how you can run across

something never known before.

Having it just left there, that tool,

I always felt it was like getting a

million dollars, freely. In fact,

just today, running along the

roadway at 50 miles per hour, I

came across a serious hammer

with a real good claw end, right

there on the dividing line in the

middle of the road. Normally, I'd

pull over immediately to retrieve

something like that  -  it having

fallen off a truck I'm sure, bet in

this case traffic precluded me from

stopping and trying to get it. Too

bad. I was out of my skin with envy.

See that! See what I'm saying  -  the

same guy (me) who goes around

banging the drum for nothing

existing, all hung up here over a

hammer. That's what Life is like - a

predominant over-riding assumption

about the world we live in, seen as

real and experienced as spirit too.

I've never been able to put my finger

on it. Anyway, back to this barn  -

upstairs, where the hayloft would

have normally been, this previous

owner (known locally as one crazy

dude, problem-infested loner),

Denton Parmenter, had built walls

and a bathroom and stuff. Never

finished  - his intentions had been

to rent these out to hunters  -  it all

was just set in place, ready for real

flooring, wall-spackling, paint, etc.

It had a bathroom, had a sink, all that.

In the bathroom, crazily enough, was

a pile of magazines, called 'Arizona

Highways.' All dated from about

1960-1964. This was like 1970-71

and it was weird to say  -  for a few

reasons. The time and dates and place.

And Arizona, oddly enough, through

the pages of this magazine, was still

congratulating itself on its highway-

building and its connecting of all sorts

of far-flung places within the state by

new roadways. Car and truck travel,

and it even showed campers and

vacationers driving all about. It

was all just very weird and

disconcerting  -  here I was in the

wilds of dirt-road Pennsylvania,

galvanized and happy to be away

from it all, and this stupid magazine

on my premises, for some reason,

was promoting and celebrating access

through highways, travel, speed and

roads. How this had happened, and

all the strangeness of it, I never

understood. But that's how linearity

is  -  straight-line craziness, always

at work.

-

To me, there was always something

more important in straight-line

everyday living than anything else.

School and colleges didn't make

any real sense to me, still don't.

You have to buy the dream with

that stuff, and I never did the buying,

let alone had any part of the dream.

I heard somewhere once, a long time

ago, a quote, and I always liked it,

that 'Colleges are like old-age homes,

except that more people die in colleges.

There's really no difference. Colleges

are part of the American institution;

everybody respects them. They're

very rich and influential, but they

have nothing to do with survival.'

And I sure found that out soon

enough  -  underscoring and

reiterating for me just what that

little quote meant to sum up. If

it's not you, don't do it.

-

There's more than two sides to

anything; I've found that out. And

everyone's got their own side, so

how many is that? Like God once

said, to Isaiah : 'I form the light,

and create the darkness. I make

peace and create evil. I, the Lord,

do all these things.' That was

pretty stunning and who are we

then to squabble over all the grays

in between? I know not me. Earthly

life is just a temporary sojourn, one

wherein nothing really exists at all

except for its own terrible, fleeting

moment. And that includes the good.

-

And by the way, along the way, this

Parmenter guy, after he left Pennsylvania,

his kid came to visit us once, about age

20, wanting to revisit the place he'd 

grown up in. I asked about his Dad, 

why he left and where they all had 

ended up. Here I was, living my own

version of reality in what I thought was

the hog-wallow wild-outs of a deep

country Pennsylvania, and this kid 

said, 'Dad? Dad just had to get away 

from all this, he said it was too built 

up  for him. We ended up way out 

in Ohio somewhere, at first. It's all 

shut down and beat-up, and then we

moved some more, way out to the 

country. There ain't nothing around

us now, 'cept for birds and stuff, and

some Amish people a few miles off.

Dad's real comfortable now, but 

he's getting old now too. But

I'll say hello to him, for you.'

7979. BUSLOADS OF MALCONTENTS

BUSLOADS OF 

MALCONTENTS

I see them swagger, singing now

at  the top of their lungs. The bus

roars by, with thirty of  them at 

least, in song. It flies a flag at the

front-right side. Fleur de Lis, or 

some coat of arms. I think they 

were headed to the killing 

grounds. Like an old film, 

still running in my mind.

7978. OVERLOAD

OVERLOAD

Sharpshooter Romanowski wants 

to recollect: things said in the heat 

of the moment are now disowned. 

'I didn't say that,' he swears, and if

you say I did, it wasn't what I meant.'

7977. THINGS ARE DIFFERENT NOW, #8

8. PRAYER

Walking a big city is like walking

in the woods  -  except the trees

are people and, maybe, the cars

are squirrels, and other ground

animals, maybe the taxis are

birds and the buildings, the

buildings all around, instead

of being trees of anything

towering, they instead represent

'awareness,' the closure of place,

the wrapping of the situation into

and around oneself. Hard to put,

exactly; but I get the very same

sense of wonder  -  perhaps even

more  -  in such a scene, than I do

in the densest most unspoiled part

of any woods, any Hacklebarney

or Stoke's Forest hereabouts. I know

it doesn't exactly sound correct, and

that nature people usually disdain

urban things and city people, but in

my case the swing-set has equal seats,

thanks, and both are comfortable.

-

You see, I think about a lot of things

as I walk, and in so many ways it's

like prayer, more than anything else.

The strange part of the idea, the

conflicted dichotomy, is to decide :

should I walk with an empty mind,

in  a 'meditative' manner, or should

I walk totally consumed with a

presence, of prayer, of God

consciousness, or whatever? It

all sounds simple enough, but it's

not really. All around me, as I walk,

is the presence of humankind, but also

of Godkind. I get astounded by the

idea of 'Man', the engineer, the designer,

the maker, who can craft so heavily

all these many things  -  the spires, the

tall buildings, the vast roadways, the

railcars. A million imponderables all

going on  -  as it is  -  at once. Wherever

can I even begin my thoughts?

-

I am reminded, again, of something else : 

One of the problems with prayer is that

it's said to be, after awhile, completely

consuming, so much so that, once done

correctly, it becomes automatic and you

need no longer consciously set about

praying  -  your life and your being just

automatically always are. Totally and

completely absorbing, of the body-feel,

the body-concept, and of the complete

and conscious (and unconscious) work

of that body. Automatic holiness amidst

the unholy, amidst all other things. Sort 

of like a halo  -  except instead of being 

at the top of one's head it's everywhere,

and it's around you too. In the middle of

a vast city, any city, you can feel it  -  

why? Because of the unholiness 

prevalent too. Like some magnetic or 

electric consciousness, the dichotomy 

is set off, ringingly, between the two. 

You feel that current flowing and 

fighting, and, if prepared and done 

rightly, the prayer side always wins. 

(Prayer's not the right word, not even 

a good word, here, for this. But 

it's all I have without ponderously 

right now inventing another one : like

'Manifesting', or 'Gracifying' or some 

other awkward concept). The complication,

as I see it, for most people ends up

being that they can never just 'do' it,

mindlessly. And if you're not doing

it that way (if it's not, therefore, only

a simple meditation on the 'screen 

of place') it's useless. Most people

screw it all up by insisting upon 

praying FOR something  -  a result, 

an earthly end product. How's it said,

'God don't do vacation homes.' 

Meaning, of course and simply, that 

if you're asking for things by your 

praying, what actual good is any 

of it and where do you (or anyone) 

get off doing that and thinking that 

your 'human' concern deserves it?

Aren't you trying to lay up some 

kind of treasure  -  a one that's as

negotiable, really, as any other 

useless thing. You can't just go

ahead and play the 'God' card as it

pertains to your health or well-being,

or possessions or wants and travels.

It simply doesn't work that way. 

It has to be an empty yet solid, 

consuming sense of presence that 

anyone else cannot really even 

talk about to you and with you 

over. There's no difference, again

between someone greedy for 

material treasure or greedy for 

spiritual treasure. You can't 'want' 

something from your prayer. It has

to just be. That's why we are, at base,

each a 'one', alone. To base our 'pray'

upon the  Monad that we are.

We are NOT the mass.

-

Just the other day, this chubby little 

guy in leisure clothes approached me, 

as he was handing out little religious 

cards about being 'Saved' and 'Salvation'  

and all of that  -  his church, his mission. 

Personally, I, right off, disliked his look  -  

way too colloquial and way too much in a 

comfortable vein. I'd have been much more 

interested and impressed if he was 

bedraggled, ascetically thin, unkempt even, 

and hairy. To be factual, he seemed a bit 

too much of the 'Vacation Harry' sort to me. 

Perhaps that works in Idaho or Indiana or

 Ohio, but not here. Fact of the matter is, this  

little Blimpo was interrupting my moment, 

my prayer time, by his applied, (misapplied, 

as I saw it), concern for me, (seems too as 

if everything is always paradoxical for me). 

His demeanor was annoying  -  in the manner 

of any such thoughts of 'God' being pleasant 

and fruitful and happy always are  -  everything 

lacked 'gravitas'. Evidently I looked to him 

as someone who needed that special extra 

moment -  he seemed of a concern for me, 

which I suppose was OK, but I couldn't get over 

the other idea of him just needing or seeking 

another ass for the pew in that little mission 

church building of his he was advertising. 

Anyway, the topping on his helping of 

whatever here was what really got to

to me. He stopped, looked at me, and 

asked, quite face to face, if there was 

perhaps  'any need for prayer, anything I 

wanted that needed praying for right now?' I 

said 'no, thanks,' and he moved on.

His next contact. a woman some hundred

paces from me, I noticed, evidently did

acquiesce to a prayer need  -  as I saw them 

both together, on the sidewalk, facing each 

other with heads down and his hand onto 

her shoulder. Amazingly, in a moment, as  

she walked by me, on the same path she'd 

been before, she was holding a tissue and 

I noticed her eyes were

streaming with tears.

7976. TONGUE-TIED

TONGUE-TIED

Tongue-tied, ample lipped, flaming

doozie you are. Wash my hands with

oil and water. Here's where it all comes

together. Every night, same damn thing.

-

The negative till is empty, and the cash guy

is out of cash. Hastings-on-Hudson got

nothing on me. I look out over the roadside

cliff : I see nothing but depths below. 

7975. ROOM AT THE INN

ROOM AT THE INN

Charades and beery James the

kinkadoor. That's the name they

give the concierge in this foreign

place that does the shirts. Gravy

stains and milestones, all together.

-

Here the Lincoln is parked near

the doorway, the watchman stands

still by the sink. Outside the window

there's nothing but rain falling down.

-

(There's room at the inn all over this town).

7974. THE PYRAMID CLAIMS

THE PYRAMID CLAIMS

I kind of like the pyramid claims I

read about once : way before Homer,

way before the once we read about after.

They were placed here by a magic hand,

from afar  -  landing but for a moment in

their own time, but like twenty years in ours.

Hard, besoiled labor, in an instant. They left

without doing a thing, but, in turn, they left

us, all, with implanted stories of the great

stress and turmoil it must have taken to

make up those grandest of mysteries.

-

(And, anyway, they're only a waking image,

and not really there at all).

7973. RIEVES AND TOLDER

RIEVES AND TOLDER

Accounting firm, or lawyers, 

or something. It was all I could 

see on the fourth-floor window. 

Looking up to a seascape of sky.

7972. THINGS ARE DIFFERENT NOW, #7

7. MANSARD ROOFS

I was going around today thinking of

what was my favorite house. Dumb

self-question, nearly stupid, and with 

nothing to go on. What caught my 

attention was, in strolling along College 

Avenue, Rutgers, by the Alexander

Library, I saw a few Mansard Roof'd

houses still in good use and grand

repair. The Mansard Roof has, these 

last 5 decades, been considered dour, and

sour too. An architectural monstrosity

to be avoided at all costs. To me, it 

never came across so badly  -  Lewis 

Mumford's book, 'The Brown Decades' 

has always been one of my favorites. 

It  -  the Mansard Roof, I mean  -  

always looked separated enough 

from the regular duty of ordinary 

life as to make it, if not attractive, 

then desirable. I'd love to live in 

a nice one  -  garret-high, southern 

light, all that. I researched them once 

and was surprised to find a large part 

of their history had to do with stealth

and illegality. Bad tactics by landlords 

to get around things, taxes mostly. 

Real estate taxes. Seems like, a long 

time back, it being illegal to house 

people in upstairs attics and the 

aforementioned garrets and

studios, there began a mad rush

to the 'falsified' look of the Mansard

Roof window casements so that those

attics and things would begin to appear 

as rooms and extra levels, which they 

were not. But, I still think, people 

must have somehow been pretty 

stupid to think that sleeping twenty 

people on an unfinished attic floor

would be concealed (and also, how this

would save the 'tax' money of showing

extra floor) by the addition of pleasant-

enough looking outcrops and dormers. 

It's still all pretty confusing to me, but 

the intentional (or not) look of the 

Mansard Roof continues to please 

my Brown Decades eye. So, walking

along College Avenue (the Alexander

Library is right along there, plenty of

old-time New York and New Jersey

collection books about the early days)

today, I just carefully gazed at the 

housetops that I saw : a few already

taken away and being replaced by the

'modern', and another few in a now

progressive state of disrepair. Still,

a few shone on, and stood out.

-

It's funny to me how, over the years,

housing design has deteriorated, even 

as people have grown more wealthy and

wealth-orientated, making sums unheard

of to me before. Flying off to Europe on

whims, for vacation, homes at the shore,

living like kings and queens in most

every other aspect. The world has 

certainly taken off from its more 

humble beginnings, at least around 

here. But the diminishment of taste  

-  in the other direction  -  has proceeded 

with precipitous speed. In fact, we live 

amidst, now, a real overflow of bad 

taste. There are entire towns (Elizabeth,

New Jersey comes most immediately

to mind) where the rows of older 

homes, having been done over now 

probably two or three times, in two

or three different ethnic tastes and 

variations now too, are simply

outrageously poorly done and as a

not at all enticing visual nightmare:

Porch after porch either redone and 

mismatched, with no regard for quality

or fit, varied forms of sidings put on,

sometimes glaringly offensive and one

right over the other, iron and scrollwork

with pink masonry or stucco, or brick,

work. The clash of a Portuguese taste

ringing up now against a South Asian 

taste, where once before it had been

a Puerto Rican, Spanish, or Black taste,

and before that Italian or Hungarian.

Lingering arches and scalloped moldings

and beams, all haphazard and without

reason. Ostentatious entryways and 

really, really bad front door treatments. 

It's all really rough, and wherever you

do perhaps find some older, original

structure, it's sadly neglected and falling 

in. Inhabited by people barely hanging

on. Many of the once grand and broad

American places have now been taken 

from us. A lot of these houses were

waterway houses  -  think of that. The 

days when one's comfort and wealth,

from trade and commerce, say, could 

be given evidence by your stately home

facing the river, the river traffic, and the

wide expanse of waterfront  -  your cupola

and 'widow's watch'  -  are all gone now.

The rivers have no use at all. Roadways

and interstates ring them, and separate the

people from their proper settings. No one

knows the rights or the values of water and

water traffic any more. All is clogged by

highway and traffic. Even today, on College

Avenue, the steady stream (no pun) of

campus buses and autos just ran by. The

campus of Rutgers is now so far flung  -  

with the urban New Brunswick part of 

it being only a small fraction  -  that there

is need for streams of buses to keep taking

students to and back from the outlying

'suburban' area expanses of 'drive-to'

campus on what was, until 1990, give 

or take, farmland. It's a car-campus

college now, this 'Rutgers'. Why it 

has any, in fact, reputation now, is

beyond me  -  it seems a drone school

for teaching nothing but drone habits;  

a real no-consequence mess just barely

pretending to act at educating people.

It's a grind-mill, New Jersey's very 

own. The old, downtown part is 

nothing now, more an adjunct to the

car-campuses of varied sites out in the

once-woods. The old observatory 

telescope, in its little, rounded, building

is probably the best thing there now, and

I'd bet it too is not long for this world.

-

There is a great silence, most of the time,

around me, and it's one I'm happy with. It

allows though and it allows a certain other

level of 'communication' with the broader,

interior world, the world which better 

understands some of all this : the mysterious

villains of the unseen and invisible, the secret

spaces, between words, even as they

are being spun. 

-

So, where does any of this leave me?

I don't know. In flux, always, I guess.

Somebody like myself, I suppose, is

always, needs always to be, in flux. Seeing. 

Observing. Sort of 'renegotiating' the world.

I sometimes swear that everything is in 

constant motion and only stops dead, the

 entire picture stops, when the eye hits it. It's a 

world in motion and all that motion undergoes 

constant change until the next 'stop' moment, when 

the viewers' (alone or en masse) presumptions 

and predelictions and ideas have all changed 

again, still more, and the resultant 'new' frozen 

picture of the world  reflects all that. At only that 

instant, and then it's all off  to crazy-land again 

until the next stop. That's how public opinion

shifts, and paradigm changes and new gestalts 

take effect. That's what Thoreau and those 

Transcendentalist guys meant by saying

'consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.' 

They meant that you simply cannot just 

always be of one mind about things  - everything 

is always underway, on to course somewhere, 

undergoing changing. When we go to sleep

and all those strange rudiments of 'Dream' begin

hitting us, that's exactly what's going on  -  

the world, in flux, re-arranging, trying on different 

guises, trying to make sense of a no-sense deal. 

Hiding twenty people in that attic upstairs, 

behind those false-front

Mansard Roofs.