8360. THINGS ARE DIFFERENT NOW, #104

104. CRADLE AND ALL

The fact of not having dreams

troubled me, actually, once I

fully realized it was happening. As
if someone to whom I had become 

used was always tapping me on 

the shoulder, or gently, ever 

so, prodding me along, was

now gone. All of my usual

experiences up until then had

welcomed and included the

dream nature, the input and

expansions afforded. And to

be frank, I had numerous dream

locations and situations to which

I'd always returned and which

most often became more real to

me than the supposed reality

I was living. That too was

gone, and now  -  to make it

more serious  -  only the glum

and the fierce new experiences

I was undertaking were carrying

my hold. That was tough. It

was a new exposure to another

form of 'nothingness'  -  for

without that psychological

component always being

underway and adding to my

constant experience, life was

quickly nil. I could still carry

on, yes, and eat and talk and

digest, but the multi-faceted

'proofreading', as I called it,

which nightly dreams and

reflections-by-dreams undertook

and consisted of, was gone. Days

began to stand alone and lose

some of their context. Breaking

continuity, I felt, was not good.

-

A man really never is as helpless

and abandoned (I don't think) as

he imagines, but that's what it

felt like : a sore abandonment.

I was without signal posts, and

the rest of all this was yet too

raw and overwhelming. Time

was becoming thin, where dreams

had always given it a thickness.

Dreams, as well, give a person a

lifetime's accumulated worth of

experience to draw from in that

very curious dream manner. Gone.

Anticipators of action, Ghost

reminders of a 'future' forming.

Gone. That was treacherous

stuff, and I felt more put out by

that than even about hunger or

discomfort. I had always had

that thread, and kept to it, for

writing and art as well as living.

Also gone. Consciousness, yes,

enjoys its physical manifestation,

but needs its dream manifestations

too. When they're gone, you become

subject to things : physical schemas

go off-kilter, the body stops reviewing

and correcting itself, even for health.

That's when sicknesses sets in, when

your body stops correcting its own

physical plant, ceasing to monitor

itself. We only see with a very

limited self-scope, while dreams

are multi-layered and can present

many alternate version of events

and possibilities. Compressed, as

they are, by us, upon awakening,

we remember them each only

confusedly as one, strange.

thing. Oddly compressed into

one, perhaps, predominant point

or series of 'occurrences' which

then confuse or perplex us, whether

momentarily or for an hour or two,

before receding even further back

into the pin-prick white dots of

off-flash consciousnesses that we

sometimes get, intermingled, with

the dailies of everyday life. All

those deja-vu's and 'Hey! Wait a

minute here!' moments. They all,

actually do take existence and

do exist, and we in them, but

we block ourselves out; almost

refusing, within the common

run of things, to admit to our

greater soul's ongoing

self-knowledge of all these

things. This all has to do with

death, and what goes on after

we die (we 'think' we die). (I

know, I know, you're saying,

'what's with this jerk, what's

he talking about?' Well, I'll

put it this way: Remember,

at the end of February, '58,

I was dead. This is all

revealed information, and

I awoke from my coma and

came back to haunt you all.

You think Halloween's such

a big deal? Why?)...

-

The most ancient pharmacy I'd

ever seen was down by 6th Street

along Second Avenue. Something

like that anyway. This was all

heavily Jewish immigrant area,

even in 1967. It was pretty

old-world wonderful; I mean

OLD world, like shtetl style.

This place was like a magician

shop in old Lodz or something.

If you asked for a god-damned

aspirin, for instance, they'd have

to put on their shawls and consult

first with Yajweh  - the same

big-guy whose name, for

some reason, they couldn't

utter, yet to whom they could ask

about aspirin. It was heady stuff.

and the answer was mostly 'no',

but they'd throw intense shades

of meaning into that 'no' to give

it layers and depth. 'German

company, Bayer, not good.

No. But Yahweh may just

look away for the moment

that we need to give these to

you, at three dollars please,

but never speak to Him that

we know of this.' I always

forgot if it was Yahweh,

Yajweh, or Yahjew. This

place had the very greatest,

(see the slipping in of

hair-splitting esoteric Torah

study-knowledge here),

'very-greatest of most-great'

signage, old displays, old dust,

chemical tubes and globes,

you'd ever see. Like 1933.

Period. I'd walk that street,

crooked, lambasted and

sideways too, though never

drunk or drugged (Rapaport's

crummy office in the rear of

a sweaty laundromat was there).

Nearby were old Yiddish theaters,

all sorts of Fanny Brice kinds of

shit, ancient vaudevillian junk,

lines along the sides of all the

old buildings, where people

always touched  -  I never knew

what any of that was about but

just figured it to be some twisted

and overly intense NY version

of  a wailing wall or something,

Solomon's Temple be damned.

Temple Mount? I use to say, back

then, the only Temple I'd maybe

mount was Shirley (she was 38

then, and I figured still doable).

I found, on the whole, the Jewish

people everywhere to be both sad

and funny. So many intense, little

gray areas and lyrical ways of

skipping over scriptural context

things. I want to say I enjoyed

all that, but sometimes it was

so perplexing, so archaic, so

tribal, so annoying with ritual

almost. As in, 'which world are

you in?' I could never understand,

ever  -  all those specialized

religious connotations to just

about everything, and yet they

were always, without fail, in

range of a cash register. Always

trying to make a penny here,

two pennies there, profiting

from something. I wanted to

say, 'where are you, really. What

world do you inhabit anyway?

Chosen, special, ancient and wise?

Selected by God? Really? What are

that God's feelings then of you all

always hanging around lucre, selling

and cutting jewels and diamonds,

twisting profit from the sap of a

stick, ruining his creation with

all those renowns  -  real estate,

buildings, developments. Wives

as be-laden with glitter and false

glamour and jewels as to be the

Devil's own. Foul, obnoxious

entertainments. Violence amidst

all your sadness, but violence for

money here. Tell me, what gives?

How does the bevy of lines cross

over, Mr. Gross? Metro, Goldwyn,

Meyer, indeed.'

-

Did you ever wonder about terror

and tragedy? The real dark side of

the old Americana we used to, as a

people, live with? Death at childbirth,

hundreds of tiny, small graves for infants.

Mothers who died, diseases that killed.

Wagon and farming accidents. The list

can go on. New York City, once, long, 

long ago, had its own lines of the tragic

and the deadly. Explosions, fires, and

the like. People getting trampled. 

There's an entire history of death  -

open flames, gas fires, heaters. I

always thought, to exemplify

perfectly the consciousness and

pervasive attitude of sad and tragic

with which people used to live, that

this summed it up all very well:

'Rock a bye, baby, in the tree top;

when the wind blows, the cradle

will rock. When the bough breaks,

the cradle will fall; and down will

come baby, cradle and all.' Imagine

people living with things like that.

Wow. Now, by contrast, if the cable

reception gets interrupted, people

are in a panic. And in NYC too.
-
The Jewish people, what I learned 
of them, by living among them, and 
their God (oh, excuse me, 'G-d'), were
tricksters. Cry as they might against 
being called duplicitous, shyster, 
schemers, etc., that's all they were. 
Up and down these streets and avenues,
outside of all the daily and usual scenes
of decrepit and sorry old people slouched
to death on new world benches while still
finishing out their old world ways, they 
populated this lower east side for real.
The Jewish people have this curious
cheating mechanism they use, as if both
G-d and anyone else were not, somehow,
looking or noticing. To begin with,
Eruv Tashilim has many ways of 
cheating by which to get around 
restrictions. Each tedious, overly 
studied, and ridiculous. Then there 
is the 'eruv'. The word itself means 
'mixture', and it is a stringed or wired 
area, (a 'ritual enclosure'), stretched
overhead above Jewish areas that are 
NOT specifically Jewish areas, just 
close enough to the neighborhood to 
hope that they 'remain convenient.'  
They get municipal permissions to 
string wires overhead which symbolically
extend their Jewish neighborhood,
supposedly integrating 'private' areas 
into one larger private domain  -
so they can do the things 'forbidden',
restricted on Sabbath and holidays.
Like carrying keys, tissues and 
medicines, even babies and strollers 
and canes. So, I have to ask you, how
crazy-ass stupid is that?
-
That's what it was like : incredible to me
that, anywhere, not just here, people
could be so stupid and insulated from
any dynamism of being : downtrodden,
burdened, broke. These are YOUR 
restrictions, don't you understand
you're making cheating sidesteps to
get around your own stinking rules?
You either believe this stuff or not,
but whatever you decide, own up to it,
and get the hell out of my sight-line.
Well, then, yeah, that was me on the
streets of lower east side, mixing it up.
Mixing it up, for real, for truth and GOD.