161. RIGHT OFF THE MAP
When I got to Columbia
Crossroads, a few years
later, it was like a big
cleansing, a wash-out,
a cleaning of my soul.
By design. I realized it
all had become intolerable
and that the New York City
noose was beginning to leave
marks on my neck : there
were two dead hippie
bodies with which I wanted
nothing more to do. My
draft-resistor lounge-
underground railway
stop for those on the
way to Canada had
been raided. Everything
and everybody had been
carted away. The place, as
I returned to it, was police
taped. I had nothing.
I returned to it, was police
taped. I had nothing.
509 east 11th Street,
by necessity, had to
become dead to me, as
did all the people, on the
on the above floors and
below. Anti-Vietnam rage
and fury, fires and flames,
were everywhere. Bomb
factories, guns and
hideouts. The Studio
School was it - all I had
and all I wanted, but even
then I knew it was too
close. I somehow knew,
or my inside voice told
me, that to become what
I wanted, I had to flee.
I needed, once again, to
almost fictionalize my life
and come back with a
different character to
represent me. Short of
being one of those old
noir-movie guys who get
their fingerprints burned
off and some facial
reconstruction done, so
as to become new and
'invisible'. Once again, I
needed to rebuild. I wanted
to stay within myself, yes,
and remain authentic, but
some new and finer tuning
was due. I bought a map
and found an area in
northeastern Pennsylvania
that seemed sparse, lots of
white space between town
names on the map, and called
the phone company and they
sent me (pretty cool) phone
books for the three places
I mentioned. (Bentley Creek,
PA., Elmira NY, and Canton/Troy
PA, which ran down as far as
Williamsport). Everything was
pretty perfectly a nice enough
250 miles away. One of them,
pretty perfectly a nice enough
250 miles away. One of them,
Elmira, NY, just over the border,
had three big print shops listed.
I casually and innocently wrote
to them about employment, one
of them answered, gave me an
appointment for an interview,
and - blindly proceeding - I
went there and was hired for
a sometime 'future' date, as
quickly as I could be ready.
(Odd, lucky, liberal break,
yes. This guy was actually
going to 'hold open' a job
for me, until I could get
there to rightly catch up to
it!). The guy, Floyd White,
who 'hired' me said he did
so because he himself had
'done pretty much the same
thing 25 years or so previous
in leaving Plainfield, NJ
and setting out blindly for
places unknown,' in his
case Elmira, then a
more-thriving little city,
where he'd successfully
started a business, Whitehall
Printing and Mailing, (his
wife's name was Marge Hall,
thus 'Whitehall' Printing, the
combined name). What kind
of gift was all this? Of course,
he only got the most skimpy
version of my own story. Then
a real search began for a place
to live. I wanted deep country,
I wanted isolation, and I got it.
I've told this story before -
in one of these books I've
written here - about the old
walnut grove, the tombstone
etcher guy's place, the Parmenter
farm, etc. (More info can be
forthcoming, I guess. If you care,
ask, or I'll get to it all sometime).
It has to pop up again of its
own accord, as all this boils.
I don't much write by design,
in fact I'm probably crazy
enough to just go with whatever
flows here, as things arise
and come through; if
redundant and over again,
I just tweak a bit and add or
remove factors from the
tale. It's all quite lovely. I've
got a God in the sky, and it's
a Word-God who really works
with me.
-
Soon enough, anyway, I got
a house, 12 acres, a big
gigantic barn, outbuildings,
etc., a monstrous, crazy place.
I had just enough money for
a small down payment and
a mortgage, from when I
was creamed by the train
on Rahway Avenue in 1958
- from which I was never
supposed to recover, but
la-de-dah!, here still I was,
and back again, and still
'spinning records.' Moved in,
got started at this Whitehall'
place, and it all settled in
eventually : quiet,
unassuming, I looked
totally different, shorn
and clean, even got
muscular and chubby
a bit. The weird thing
was, really, now, my head
was in a far different
place, still. I was at
heart a writer and artist,
that was never going to
change. It was the way
I saw things, simply -
and with no alteration.
And I couldn't change that
anyway. These people had
completely no understanding
or awareness of any of that,
about me or about those
concepts in general. Art
to them was a velvet clown
face or a stylized horse, a
bunch a balloons in a vase.
That was fine, because from
their side they had it all over
me in the other directions:
beautiful, clean, white
spaces, wonderful rooms,
the stillness of country
living, placid days and
nights of an ordered and
lemonade-scented, existence.
Compared to any of that,
I was a twisted mumble.
No matter how hard anyone
ever tries to escape themselves,
it's fairly impossible. We are
what we were meant or put here
to be, and there's no altering
those fingerprints or noses.
The more I tried to get away, the
more the authentic me would come
back from the core, to the outer shell.
A strange, but good, feeling.
No matter how hard anyone
ever tries to escape themselves,
it's fairly impossible. We are
what we were meant or put here
to be, and there's no altering
those fingerprints or noses.
The more I tried to get away, the
more the authentic me would come
back from the core, to the outer shell.
A strange, but good, feeling.
-
The hard days and the
calm nights were just
beginning. This real
country-living was
such an eye-opener.
It startled. I lived next
to a cornfield, something
I'd never seen before.
By mid-June that first
year, the corn was already
head-high and beginning
to 'tassel out'. I loved that
phrase - farmers taught it
to me, when the corn plants
get that little hairy growth
that flows out and later
surrounds the actual corn
cob. It's a weird, long,
hairy-wet bunch of strands.
Really cool. The rows of
cornplants make noise in
the wind, the tassels blow
and make a whisper, the
plants sway and blend, and
their certain 'stiffness' makes
a tweak and a rigid noise
all their own, sometimes
almost metallic-sounding.
Animals run between the
long rows, things try and
grow, cornplants take
different heights, the
dryer areas remaining low,
the stalks in the better
moisture really thriving.
Ears of corn everywhere.
That's cattle-corn, not people
corn, and there's a real
difference. You don't
want to eat cattle corn.
Those fields and the
acreage around me, even
the unplanted and the
wooded, and the ponds
and the meadow, it all
went together to bring
to me a new somewhere,
totally. My body was
sound, but my heart
was in pieces and my
mind was all over. I so
wanted all this, and
kind of knew I could
manage it, but still, yes,
there was a void of sorts.
I guess just the 'city' void
for what I'd gotten used to,
the things I used to see and
do. All gone, right off the
map. This was aprons, cows,
and daisies and doilies,
compared to all that.
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