RUDIMENTS, pt. 44
Making Cars
OK, here's where it's beginning to get
tough, all this relating of things. I'm
tooling along, still something like
Oct. 1967, doing my most brash ways
to poke and prod things along. I'm
settled in a little, my feet are finally used
to things - no more real 'homelessness' -
no more sleeping in the park, food in the
gutter, dumpsters, barrel fires, old guys;
all that's over, except by choice, when I
'select' to do it. I have friends there. I've
even got a decent, steady bathroom to use.
(Go ahead, you can laugh, it's OK; but
when you've been there, if ever, you'll
know what I mean when I mention how
important something like that becomes,
and can seem). I've written of this before,
but I had an old-timer friend too, a chestnut
guy with a horse and a wagon - he'd pull
this little vendor cart around, clomp-clomping
through the village streets, with a little fire
going in the bottom of the rolling cart, coal
and wood, and above that the chestnut trays,
warming and all. By the end of his day, each
time, he'd have to go back you to the area of
w38th, where there were a few horse and cart
places - to tend and feed the horses, hold and
clean the carts. They were in a row, these
spots, part stable, part garage. All mostly gone
now, Javits Center and all that stuff. The two
or three still there are now, last I knew, service
places for - mostly - taxis and motorcycles.
Anyway, this old fellow was really special -
and represented a whole different era that was
running down the same drain he was. We'd
go along, he'd talk a little, kind of a drawl.
I never knew what he made of me. I wasn't
Hell's Kitchen, nor was I the docks, to him.
But he never sadi anything about origins
anyway. While - for me - that's all he was;
a sort of representative for any of the origins
of old New York City that I was trying to
decipher, and find (first). I was on a mission.
That was why I'd left home on this vagrant
quest for origin or identity - knowing there
wasn't any of that in Avenel, NJ. Years later,
funny thing, I read a book called 'The Westies'
all about this area, the Irish dock thugs, the
crime and the penny-whistle antics, murder,
drudgery, toil and poverty, whores and spent
hookers. It was all I could do, then, to stay
out of it. We'd get to his spot, he'd do his
tallying, I'd unhitch the old horse, which
would just shuffle off to its stall. Some guys
there did the rest - there were bags of raw
chestnuts, heavy canvas, the roasted ones
leftover had to be kept moist and held over
that lessened fire, until the morning, when
they'd be mixed or used as starters for the
new ones to be sold. October would be
the start of the whole Fall and Winter
chestnut season thing; people would visit
seasonal NY sometimes just for that to be
included. The smells and the tastes, yes,
they were pretty special, but I don't know
if I'd leave Iowa over it. No one does these
anymore, chestnut carts are long gone - as
is that warmth and aroma and the fires. Now
there are a zillion carts of sweet, sickly coated
candy-peanuts, bags of I don't know what,
things sold by Lebanese and Mideast vendors,
falafels, candy, soda. Even ices and ice cream
are more difficult to find than they used to be.
The entire vendor-component of all this has
turned over. All these great old guys are dead
now, 40 years on, and they've been replaced by
India and Pakistan carts, Mideastern quick
foods, simmering all day but smelling of nothing
but grease, toil, and gross animal fat. Yet still,
people line up. Just that the horses, the chestnuts,
and all my guys are gone now. Replaced by idiots
on cell phones, while they work. I tell you, you
can't get a decent deal anywhere - some swarthy
broad-mouth and big-booted rap-star type is
always sneaking around trying to sell fake or
cheap jewelry, gold chains and teeth, knock-off
bags with fancy designer names. Like who cares
except some Jew-ladies from Scarsdale, really?
The world really ought to just get real.
-
And then it all started, for me. No kidding.
I was living in the basement at the Studio
School, writing and reading my ass off until
whenever and how, painting and drawing
upstairs, cool lectures and gallery romps,
people hanging around, Jim Tomberg and I
doing weird stuff - (You need to read other
things, way previous, to fill in on my Jim
Tomberg chapters of time and place). What
started for me? The messages and the voices.
I said no kidding. I hit the taproot of something,
some other room or place from which I could
go, and come, from at will - like a monstrous
cosmic library; it was filled with volumes of
already written world-words, voices bouncing
around, messages, intentions, and things for me
to write down, to get, to retrieve. I said yes. I
accepted it all, knowing I'd probably never be
the same, nor be recognizable again. This does
probably happen to everyone, whether at 9, 12,
15 or 25 years old. Most people just say, 'no
fucking way, thank you.' Well, they just say
no, let's put it. And they move on. Not me.
I let it hit me and take me just like a
cinderblock had hit me squarely in
the middle of my forehead.
-
After that, a lot of it just got real easy. I was
gold - to myself. But more importantly, I
no longer really cared so much if I was NOT
gold to others. I was on my quest, and that
ship was sailing on my own blue ocean.
It was a very personal way of seeing.
-
Also, one thing I learned, right quickly, like
a first responder learns CPR : nothing is exactly
right. The gist may be OK, but the details are
always wrong and never set. I'd found family
life wanting - sort of like capitalism was also
wanting. You know how people say someone
is a Model Son, or a model this or model that.
It's a trap. All that means is you're stopped,
frozen in place, being 'Model.' When people
say that they no longer allow you to change,
grow, adjust, or alter. That's dangerous stuff -
don't be a model anything. Like 'Capitalism,'
you can never get to the end of achievement
because inherent within the spectacle is the
constant need to continue. Once you get
something, or, in the case of Capitalism,
once you amass possessions, things, stuff,
they'll always throw some new and latest
desire on you, to do more, to still go farther
and amass something else. Once that pressed-for,
manufactured desire is stopped, it's over.
Capitalism can never cease to manufacture false
desires, for more - if it did, if everyone did
become 'Model' - filled with achievements
and in happy possession of all their goods,
there'd be nothing left. It would all be over,
quickly. This, the contradiction. That old
chestnut guy never told me this, though in
his own slow, plodding manner, time after
time way, I began to see it, from him.
Happiness somehow meant work, always
more, always new - not in goods and
services, and certainly not in things,
because I had little of that. Just in the
creative idea of working forward, the
stretching out, moving along. I quote:
"It's not just the soul, but the soul of the
body that you must learn to trust, for the
soul in the body represents the corporal
meeting of the physical and nonphysical
selves in the most practical of terms."
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