RUDIMENTS, pt. 4
Making Cars
So, by now you're probably figuring
'what does any of this have to do with
'making cars,' as the title suggests? I'm
trying to get to it but it's not easy. When
I look around me...wait. First off, let me
say that just the other day someone asked
me 'why' I do things, the things I do -
which are, I grant you, at some time a
quite contradictory remove from what
I say I actually feel about things. Wanting
to be left alone, disliking scenes and the
one-on-one aspects of personal relations,
they wondered why I go to the extents I
do to please and welcome others. It's a
good question, I guess. Then they said
I wasn't half the crank and ornery beast
I made myself out to be. I had no ready
answer. I didn't say 'because I love them.'
But that's true. I didn't say 'because I like
making others happy, even just for a shared
moment.' Either of these could have been
used, as hokey as they sound. There are
probably ten or fifteen reasons I could have
said, but I instead mumbled something
indecorous and the conversation dropped.
Or was dropped. Not sure how to say that,
it's awkward, but really sometimes the
conversation itself drops. Other times
we drop it.
-
Like I just did. On of my bugbears has
always been other people. Figure that. A
couple of years in a sort of slow training
for the priesthood brought to my attention
the fact that there was a good chance that
the remainder of my days would have been
spent administering to others. People. But
not in an authentic fashion - and that's what
killed it all for me. I don't mind anything, if
it's real. If it's authentic. I'd serve a sick, old
bum soup in Winter from my bare palms, if
that little puddle of soup, served sincerely
and in earnest, would bring something to
that fellow. But doing all the crud I'd be
doing through the dogmatic impetus and
strictures and regulations with explanations -
or sometimes no explanation at all because
there ain't none - would have just killed that
too. It's as fake and artificial as a TV ministry.
It just ends you up detesting the people you
are serving, because you're doing it from a
tightly-stitched box and not from your own
wet, leaky soup-palms. That's where the good
glory is. Even if the situation is sad and not
good, I want the human, the laugh, the crack,
the wit, the sparkle, the 'joi de vivre' that comes
from the authentic. Tight-assed ministration
can't have any of that, however, because
sooner or later and one way or the other the
attention gets turned to the bottom line, the
proverbial Kingdom of Mammon, the Lucre
of the Lucifer. You can't serve two masters,
it's been said. You can't serve both God and
Mammon. One of those two suckers has
got to go. Or be sent away. Not sure how
to phrase that either - you say 'be gone!',
or it just goes away on its own.
-
Like that. Like I just did. When I look around
me, wherever I may be, in the slowest, saddest
small town somewhere in Pennsylvania or
Kentucky, or in the middle of my own teeming
big-league stadium New York City, I see the
human animal, the human bi-ped, unknowingly
going about its task. Pre-ordained task, or not,
I never know. Sometimes I think everyone is
programmed already for the doing of their own
doing - a perfect self-absorption with no harm
that brings each of us to our set task, or tasks.
I love to see that, to observe and watch the
undertakings. Thousands per day, probably,
in my eyes - or at least one or two thousand.
The human bi-ped, the pitfall-mind within
and the harmonious flow without - energy,
balance, fluid, blood, food, thought - just
moves itself about without much thought.
Pre-occupied at all times by THAT very
time, that moment they're in. If there's a
grace/God connection, that's it right there.
I can watch and see - people walking in the
exact same fashion of walk, different for
nearly everyone, that they learned to walk
with at ten months old, whenever that
occurs. That's as natural as rain - the
alignment of all those bones, the swift
surety of that glide and slide, that twist
and wiggle, that makes up a walk. No
one 'knows' that. They don't watch
themselves walking, they can't observe
their own observation. It's just the natural
harmoniousness of the Human. Moving
along, getting things done. Making haste
while the sun shines - any of those bullshit
phrases we use. That's how thing get done.
That's how the salesman gets about selling,
and the utility worker gets about climbing
poles and rigging his truck, the loading
dock guy, pushing and heaving, or just
whistling as he works to the piped-in
warehouse music. (I witnessed that one
twice just today - in one place it was 30
year old music, in another it was Spanish).
-
That's the bliss of living. That's where and
how all that grace and livingness comes from.
It's just there, like a current, into which and from
which our bodies and minds connect and function.
Authentically, 'con gusto' (music term), without
too much reflection. Well, I guess I never did
get to that 'making cars' idea in this chapter
either. Each time I get near it, something else
comes up and it just. Goes. Away.
Like this!
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