8076. THINGS ARE DIFFERENT NOW, #33

33. DREAMTIME

One thing about New Jersey

that jumps right out : people

are totally passive. It's no wonder

the environment and surroundings

are butchered and have been

allowed to wither. No one ever

seems to care about anything. Even

the most simple procedures are

giveaways  -  at a red light, say,

that turns green, and the first

car or two aren't moving,

because the drivers are not

paying attention, looking down

at phones, or whatever. I swear

to think that if they sat there the

entire light, no one would say a

thing. Jeez, at least honk. Like a

passive lamb to some slaughter, many

 NJ people apparently take no steps to

proclaim themselves, their sovereign

beings, their presences. It's THAT

engrained, all this meaninglessness

and dead personality stuff. No one

ever gets riled. It's pretty pathetic.

And sad, and  -  just as much, as I

said  -  indicative of the state of

affairs they've allowed themselves

to live with  -  politics, society,

schools. As I pass around here,

I refer to it as APS  -  'Avenel

People Syndrome.' Like walking

around in ill-fitting clothing,

weirdly color-combined, pants

that appear to be pajama bottoms

all day long, a K-Mart step up

from sweat pants, I guess. In

such a red-light situation, I have

the notion to get out of my car,

go to that car's window on the

driver's side, rip the person's

face off, leave with an ear or two,

for fun. Why put up with unneeded

bother? I thought it was 'give 'em Hell

from Avenel', not 'Don't wanna'

move, in Avenel, that's swell; the

light's turned green but, oh well.'

Damn, I love crap poetry.

-

I lived here a long time. Then I

didn't. Thomas Wolfe said 'you

can't go home again', and yeah,

he was wrong, but he was right

too  -  mainly because wherever

you left from, when you try to

return, it will no longer be there.

It's a pretty certain fact, because

no one will ever lift a finger to

stop any alteration. Everything

eventually gets bullshit-translated

into something then considered

'good'. All that stuff I hate. I hate

'Good' when it becomes a cause  -

'for the kids', 'to help those less

fortunate', 'in times of need'. Blah,

blah and you ain't foolin' me none.

Tell it to someone else. There's

absolutely nothing worse than

when someone is posting the ideas

by which to judge others in terms

of their own (the poster's) innate

high qualities and intentions  -

because it's always false, and

there's a cashbox somewhere

with an unlocked or an open

lid. You can bet your bloomers,

sweetheart, and I'll be the one

to take 'em down for you. (I

think I meant the bloomers,

not the person posting, but now

I already forget). So, anyway,

that's how I get when I see jerks

and unattentive people getting

away with it all and no one

saying a thing back. Passive

and useless people abound.

-

When my aunt and uncle lived up

in West Milford, NJ, way up in

the hillbilly hills of NW Jersey,

at a place called Genader Lake,

which was maybe a pond really, I
forget, there was, next to their house

a big, deep hillside of wooded acreage

I'd get lost in there for hours, I mean

the entire visiting day. There were

old cars, hulks of scrap, trees and

heavy undergrowth everywhere,

little animals and streams and

rivulets. The arched treetops

were my altar's Heavens right

there, and if I never re-entered

the realm of the ordinary and

the miserable again, I wouldn't

have cared a whit. I can

remember still  -  in that deep,

wooded silence, away from

most everything  -  walking

along and coming upon old

cabins and lean to's  -  I guess

from old hermits or campsites

or people who had been living

in the woods there once. Used to
be you could do that stuff; hide out;

Depression people, 1930's and

1920's sorts. When an older way

of life still had meaning. Old, craggy

boards and dead doorways, soup cans

and soup labels, peeling and rusted,

blown our or bent and mis-shapen

in old shelves and counters. On the 
little windows, there'wouldn't be 
curtains; instead they just used to
nail up cloth, like old shirts or 
dish-towels, and remnants of these 
old cloth pieces would still be seen,
tacked on and blowing, or just hanging,
like a rag, from the inside frames. In the

weeds, dead and forgotten, old rusting

hulks of squared-off cars and trucks.

Mobility stopped dead in it psychic

tracks and not a trace, not even a

grave, not even a left behind towel,

or the waistband of some old pants

or anything. It was absence, nothing

more; negative space only, where

things once were, the old 'perhaps'

of the village of Possibility, which

had long ago closed up shop. All

I smelled was doom and death, loss

and destruction. But it was the

happiest smell I've ever smelled too.

The ghost was the Mayor, and

the Mayor was a ghost.

-

I found, then, in walking along, that

everywhere I'd come across a dead

tree  - ten or fifteen year old saplings

that had died, but remained in place,

just like trees, but dry and lightened,

that with a certain, determined and

steady kind of push, they'd slowly

be dislodged from the rich, loamy,

dark soil and, with a certain sort of

quite audible root or tap-root 'snap'

the entire tree would come tumbling

down, keeling over, as it were.

Another thing I found and did, was

to take the thin trunk in both hands,

on these dead trees, and with a

whip-sawing motion vigorously

go back and forth so that, sometimes,

in the bending and movement of the

tree, the whipping motion would

snap off the higher top part of the

tree, which then would come

tumbling down. And of which I,

of course, had to be sure I remained

clear of. Such were the exploits

of one, lone 1959 ten-year old boy

in the woods. I don't know if such

is possible today, or if it would even

be desired. You can't go home gain,

because it ain't no longer there!

-

Out behind that house, in some further

high woods connected by a thin dirt

roadway, was another, old house  - 

still functioning, made of round

stones, large, arched, windows and

views, lots of space and well kept,

though locked and apparently

unused. I can still picture it,

perfectly, and, in fact, as recently

as ten or twelve years ago it was

still there, in the same condition. A

nearby cemetery has by now grown

quite closer to it on the one side, but

the foliage is all still there and it's

well hid  -  if you weren't aware of

it being there, even from the cemetery

grounds, you'd miss it. I asked my

aunt about it, years back  -  she was

just as mysterious over it. She said

it was owned by a Russian couple,

who very seldom used it and were

very seldom there, and when they

were they were quiet, stealthy and

secretive. Of course, in my mind

all I could think of were, in that

time and era, were cold war spies,

secretive documents and handoffs,

relays, Rosenberg stuff for sure. The

Soviets, and all those Reds! In

retrospect now, I can still see how

it appeared in my imaginings, even

though, it's really more Tolstoyan

than Mikoyan (a Soviet Foreign

Minister in the 1960's government).

-

All these things are still with me,

like the tag-ends of memory that a

body can't shake. Everyone's got their

on version of that which pulls their

memory strings, tolls them old bells

('Ask not for whom the bells tolls, it

tolls for thee')  -  Marcel Proust had

his madeleines, and Jan Sheperd had

his boyhood home and friends. We've

all got something; the trick is in finding

them and ferreting them out from the

darker mass of black that we've

allowed to grow up around them  - 

but, at the same time, the trick is in

knowing how and to what to connect

them, so they don't just become a simple

and dumb 'nostalgia', a boring re-telling

of something. We've all got something,

and sameness kills. It's like being stuck

in a room with someone who insists on

re-telling to you, in eager detail, a dream:

Nothing worse, nothing more slovenly,

and nothing more boring, than that.