RUDIMENTS, pt. 56
Making Cars
So there comes a point when the real
mettle of a single person either rises to
the occasion or fails miserably. Like
Leibniz's original monad, we are each
a factor of one. Which is what biography
really is - pretty miserable because it's
mostly an acdemic statement made by
someone posing to dig facts and feelings
out of a personality (or persona) who has
made some public name and acclaim,
which then the biography does one of
two things with : either bolsters and
backs up the fame, or in some fashion
finds points and ways to debunk it, or
scandalize it, or ruin, otherwise, that
person's name. Besmirch. The murkier,
or zanier, oftentimes, the better. After
all, publishers want to sell books. The
writing craft of Biography-work would
be nothing take note, without individuality.
Memoir and autobiography, on the other
hand don't suffer these fates as much.
But, on the same note, how many one-man
re-tellings of the 'seven years of driving a
taxi' can anyone read? How new and
interesting can it get? That's a drawback
for the mem0irist. Subtext : who cares?
You have to stay with the things, mindful
of these ideas, when paddling along your
way. Man, you've got to hold your reader,
drawing that reader in, tightly.
-
The point here will be Elmira, New York. When
I got to Elmira, there was already underway a
curious phenomenon - a woman near my home
was writing books gathered for her from another
entity, and written for her, through her, as the
mouthpiece. Yep; and they were good, and
they were right. They weren't the usual sorts
of books or information. These were timeless,
space, cosmic, ageless, unique, and aware
of a lot. Sure, sure, sounds like erzats anything
but I met the people and it was real; true. She
held weekly or sometimes twice-weekly classes,
with some ten or twenty plus people attending.
A vanload of guys from NYC would travel once
a week the 250 miles needed to attend. They
would sit around, sometimes a circle, mostly
not, noisy, lots of news and things, and then
this 'entity' would arrive, taking over the main
person's being - different voice, completely
different physical mannerisms, not even the
same 'sex', though this timeless being had to
be something, so I guess it arrived male and
plopped into a female (always the way, right?).
No one ever talked about it or cared, and it
was explained that these are non-considerate
matters, all those terms and definitions are
human things, deal with it some other place.
The lady's husband, a local artist, would take
all this discoursing down, in some sort of
personal, magical shorthand, to be later
transcribed, plus he'd often sketch the scene,
that which was coming through - past-life
realities and experiences and personalities.
I know it all sounds like BS, but believe me,
I lived it and was there. The best way I can put
it all, let me think, is like this: You're writing
a sentence. The sentence has a certain length.
The length is running on just a little too much,
I mean by a smidge. (Life). What can you do?
You look for errors in the sentence, and find
a few. Three spots where an 'o' was mis-typd
for an 'i'. You can still understand the message,
but with the three 'o's, it runs too long, wrongly.
By changing them to 'i', as they were supposed
to be, you realize the 'i' takes less space than
does the 'o' and that little typositing difference
makes ALL the difference. Yes. It then fits,
and the message reads too. It's perfect, and
the light goes on.
-
It was said in these sessions that what you were
going to hear there would be astounding, yet
that whether or not you believed one iota of it
would not change the reality of it at all. The
strong certainty of that statement always stayed
with me - to my mind it outclassed even the
Bible in the surety of its profound grasp of its
own sense and being. At the same time, reeling
that backwards from myself neither did I really
care one way or the other if it was true. Wouldn't
matter to me, because I knew I was on my own
path, and sticking to it from the realities I was
given and the information, in turn, that was
presented to me. Which kind of was his whole
point anyway - preserve yourself; regard your
own reality, because that's the one you're creating.
Elmira was that and more to me : it represented a
tolling place, truly ringing on its own plane, an
energy level different from the rest of the world.
Paradoxical junctures like that happen often
enough - biblical lands, for sure, all that sand
and desolation ringing with the talented force
of God in the bushes. Burning fires, consuming
nothing but burning away. While I was in Elmira,
I witnessed its desolation (Hurricane Agnes) and
its somewhat rebirthing. That same force. The dead
here were different : Mark Twain, for instance, and
all those Confederate prisoners, the dead swindles
of the years of quaint and brutal riverside living.
The place knew no bounds, and the fury of nature
did eventually eat it up. Weird. I go there now and
all I see are ghosts and dead people. In that order.
I can't even begin here to correctly comment on
the reality that exists there.
-
There are places where the vortex of time happens;
where there really are 'openings' as it were where
the vortices overlap and open up. There were,
in Elmira and Ithaca, and the vicinity in
between, a few of these. Certainly there was
one then at Water and Walnut Streets. I've
gone back, in fact, and they're not always in
place. They move about : scenario - you
can really slip in and out of time/place.
-
You have to be alone. These disappearances
can only take one person. You can slip out
of time, and disappear into other places -
schemas and frames. Portals to alternate
worlds, alternate realities anyway, the places
which are created constantly as the version of
your every thought. You can retrieve things,
come back with material, find memories and
ultra-beings, source information, and return.
Different. Refreshed. Completely altered.
The trick here, too, is, no one else knows
you've gone. To appearances you are still
here, in place. Just not seen, but the absence
is understood; no one comments or notices.
Perhaps a, 'Hey, where is Gary?' But
it's momentary (like all life).
-
A few years back I went back to one spot
I remember well. Just above the right side of
the bottom of Lake Seneca, in Watkins Glen,
there's a convergence of the main road, and
a dirt road, long and winding, which eventually
takes you through farmland and horse land
and some dumpy cottages and shacks too, over
to the SW end of Ithaca. Maybe 12 miles of dirt.
There was, in my day, an opening there, in
Watkins Glen at the lake end as you rise above
it on that hill. It's gone now, apparently closed up.
Yes, I was sorely disappointed, but I quickly,
by next morning, had located another amidst
the Confederate graves at the old Elmira Prison.
I was gone for three days; with people just
thinking I was out touring.
-
If it sounds like a crap story : that does not
change the reality of what I experience,
and still do, one iota.
-
There are places where the vortex of time happens;
where there really are 'openings' as it were where
the vortices overlap and open up. There were,
in Elmira and Ithaca, and the vicinity in
between, a few of these. Certainly there was
one then at Water and Walnut Streets. I've
gone back, in fact, and they're not always in
place. They move about : scenario - you
can really slip in and out of time/place.
-
You have to be alone. These disappearances
can only take one person. You can slip out
of time, and disappear into other places -
schemas and frames. Portals to alternate
worlds, alternate realities anyway, the places
which are created constantly as the version of
your every thought. You can retrieve things,
come back with material, find memories and
ultra-beings, source information, and return.
Different. Refreshed. Completely altered.
The trick here, too, is, no one else knows
you've gone. To appearances you are still
here, in place. Just not seen, but the absence
is understood; no one comments or notices.
Perhaps a, 'Hey, where is Gary?' But
it's momentary (like all life).
-
A few years back I went back to one spot
I remember well. Just above the right side of
the bottom of Lake Seneca, in Watkins Glen,
there's a convergence of the main road, and
a dirt road, long and winding, which eventually
takes you through farmland and horse land
and some dumpy cottages and shacks too, over
to the SW end of Ithaca. Maybe 12 miles of dirt.
There was, in my day, an opening there, in
Watkins Glen at the lake end as you rise above
it on that hill. It's gone now, apparently closed up.
Yes, I was sorely disappointed, but I quickly,
by next morning, had located another amidst
the Confederate graves at the old Elmira Prison.
I was gone for three days; with people just
thinking I was out touring.
-
If it sounds like a crap story : that does not
change the reality of what I experience,
and still do, one iota.
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