10,013.ONE MILLION MILES

ONE MILLION MILES

The river seems dark green today, like

a lacquered box in some old hardware

store, where the Slavic owner never

stops talking about nails. I can't take

it anymore, though I'd love to see you

smile. Heck, one million smiles. For

one million miles. Like free money to

me. Similes like that are hard to see.

10,012. URANIUM RICH, LIKE THE LAND MINE

URANIUM RICH, LIKE 

THE LAND MINE

I am unsure of. Should. This land be trod?

Does it yet have a soul? No mistakes in life.

Some people say. I'm not so sure I. See it. 

That. Way. If it's the way God designed

it, there can be no wrong road? The enemy

is subtle. But. How can we be so deceived?

-

Put down that blue-glass ashtray you're 

holding. It was a gift to me in 1973.

And. Now that person's long dead.

10,011. PLAYS IN PERMANENT GUILT

PLAYS IN 

PERMANENT GUILT

And the Truth is true as long as you

want it to be. Within that cave, they

are forced and bound, watching a 

version of things cast by light upon

the wall. You know, you know. Who

can say. With nothing else to go by,

they believe what they are shown.

Someone bursts in, who has escaped,

and seen the 'outside.' They laugh

him off, with his false reports.

10,010. RUDIMENTS pt. 90

RUDIMENTS, pt. 90

Making Cars

Clarity. I think that's the best word

I can use to try and approximate what

it was I was seeking to achieve. It was

my feeling that most people  -  those 

I knew and had seen and grown up 

with  -  had missed that. They worked

through their lives in a working form

of confusion; it passed muster, yes,

but for most people I ever saw they'd

never brought anything to states of

having been defined, decided upon,

and effected. The rest of their lives

and times just seem ad hoc, by the

moment, reactions. In my life, the

people who have affected me the 

most, stunned me, even, have been 

those who appeared to me to have

reached 'clarity.' All ages, all varied

sorts of people. It was always good.

I never reacted to fashion, money,

looks, and all that  -  motorcycles,

artists, workers, teachers, it was this

'clarity' that I always reacted to, and

sought. Running for President? OK.

Show me some clarity first, jerk.

-

You know the way a horse eventually

finds its trot, or its gait; it soon enough

slips into that sweet spot, for horses,

where land and hooves become one, 

rider too, I guess, if there is one. That's 

clarity, maybe that's even 'horse sense,' 

whatever that was supposed to have 

signified. But it can get that way for 

individuals too, not the same of course, 

but symbolically, in terms of trot and 

ease and comfort, it's like a oneness 

that breaks into the routine. Like the 

zen thing with archery  -  hitting the

target perfectly without even aiming.

It's the aiming that throws everything

off. And I think church people call it

'grace,' as well.

-

Maybe it's also what's behind that 

odd 1960's idea of 'charisma'  -  

although I doubt that one. The two 

biggest jerks of that era I can pick 

out were John F. Kennedy and, later, 

of course, (or 'off course'), from him, 

William 'Jefferson' Clinton. It was 

more media hype, soon disproved. 

The only charisma either of them had

probably ended up where it shouldn't

have been. Involving the 'fairer sex,' 

I mean to say. [Can we say that anymore?]

Running through the 1960's, for most

of the time, was an outrageous almost

religious respect for this 'martyred' 

President guy. I sure could never abide 

it. There was, first off, never any 

connection for me between secular, 

political junk and religious martyrdom  

-  which was supposed to involve strange 

sanctity, devotion, rolled eyes, and taking 

one for the cause, as it were, knowingly 

and by choice. Not like Kennedy, whose

accidental head was just a bit too high 

in the convertible Lincoln that day. I

never dropped a tear or spent a moment

thinking about loss over that one. Same

with Clinton, whatever that mess was. 

He could keel over tomorrow and, 

maybe, I'd think about sending a card. 

(Or emailing one through a personal 

account, just for fun.

-

The whole 1960's thing was in reaction

to an assassination. That's how it seemed

to be  -  maybe not so much in New York 

City, where it was mostly subsumed by 

commerce, but lots of other places. I 

never undertook or had any 'analysis' 

(NYC and Park Ave. was filled with 

tons of shrinks too), but if I had I'm

pretty sure that for those next 7 or 8

years that was always high on the list 

of things your basic, cheap-visit, shrink

would get started on : how you felt 

about that, what were your feelings, 

in light of the murdered President, 

towards you father and family? There

was, everywhere, compensation going

on for what had been defied as a horrid

and gruesome national crime played 

out for days in prime-time primitive 

TV formats. Every commentator had 

become a form of a national shaman,

and every talking head had become a

healer. Where that left President Johnson,

I could never figure out; but all I saw on

his part was projection and over zealous

compensation to start wars (beginning 

with the 1965 invasion of the Dominican

Republic), and then other things. Everything

was in place  - kind of like now  -  to

gin up for war and destruction. It was a

mass-hallucination that was being formed.

Frenzy-induced manipulation to kill and

be killed. Everyone sick just strode to the

front : politicians, music and entertainment

people, scientists, mad bombers, you name

it. They talked. Everyone listened, and it

all went on for years.

-

Seen through the eyes of Art, my particular

perspective then, I guess, even Art trended 

that way: it sort of lost self-control over

itself and began trending outward into

movements of this or that  -  the frenzied 

and the vile, the sexy and the outrageous.

The breakdown there too became pretty

complete. One guy had himself nailed

onto a Volkswagen, really, crucified to a

bug. Another guy, Vitto Acconci, had

a platform built, in the gallery, that people

walked over, like a fake floor, underneath

which he, the 'artist,' was. Masturbating.

Another guy, for his 'art,' had himself

publicly shot in the foot for his own

'peformance' art. Too bizarre, but it was 

a wartime of its own. God knows what

else was done in the name of 'Art' that

I never knew about.

-

Sometimes, even in the Studio School,

where supposedly 'artists-in-training' were

perfecting their skills and craft : life studies, 

drawing, classes in theory, art history, and

the rest, we'd wind up just avoiding each

other's eyes in some weird-warp of too-self-

conscious embarrassment over what 'Art' 

was on its way to becoming. I know I've

told this story before, and probably too 

many times, but in the studio I had, I

shared some space with a Jewish kid

from Montclair, NJ. He wasn't that

often present, went home a lot. etc., but

when he was there he worked. Since we

shared a big studio room (atop that famed

Youth Hostel I've also written of, kind of

next door, but also underneath) and all

he ever painted, and I mean ever, were

maybe 3 feet by 5 feet painted portraits

of military people. Really. Just like that:

Staring out, standing straight, maybe 

on an airfield with a helicopter or

something behind them, with all their

uniform things, service ribbons and badges,

military cap, maybe gloves  -  all that you'd

think of. It was really strange, especially

for me because sometimes he'd be gone

a few days in a row and I'd be stuck with

Sergeant Dunkirk or whoever the hell it

was, 3/4 complete, staring out at me.

Whew! Talk about clarity!

10,009. FRENCH BY ACCLIMATION

FRENCH BY ACCLIMATION

It all works, except for your Dutch shoes.

Those Holland clogs don't make it unless:

On Tuesday, I was French. Liberation!

10,008. MERCY, MERCY YOU

MERCY, MERCY YOU

The distant hatch that leads upstate : we take

the winding highway somewhere. There is no

rolling countryside any better than is. I swear

off the plains and prairies, and just like rocks.

10,007. SLOW NIGHT IN FANDANGOVILLE

SLOW NIGHT IN 

FANDANGOVILLE

'I don't want nothing and I want the that old

radio off!' Someone was playing dance tunes

from 50 years ago, the kind of ballroom music

you maybe heard your father have on in the

den when you still couldn't understand how

he thought. Wars of different eras. Every

moment, brewing with something.

-

Even if you won't admit to knowing what I

mean, I know you do. No matter what your

age is; it's pretty much the same for each

of us, although the incidentals may be different.

As for me, I never lived in a house with a den.

My father used to re-upholster chairs in the

basement, most all hours, with the AM radio

on, 1950's music. William B. Williams, Milkman's

Matinee, all sorts of  strange Ray Coniff stuff.

Nothing I ever figured out. Only the thumb-tack

of upholstery tapped by a hammer. I wonder how

many drummers got their start with that sound?

-

Maybe that's why I've always hated Frank Sinatra.

Insincere, smirking son-of-a-bitch with his cigarettes

and his pitch. All that snarky orchestration and his

love-lorn bullshit music. Stood about five-feet-five

in his stockinged shoes. Tommy Dorsey, Nelson

Riddle, Harry James. I used to be amazed to learn

of all the work the orchestrator did, while that 

schmuck just sang his titillating wop-eyed gumbo.

-

So maybe that's the sort of things I learned along 

the way and, Jesus, look what it got me : wicked 

tendencies in a countervailing wind, and a spit 

that blows right back in my face.

10,006. RUDIMENTS, pt. 89

RUDIMENTS, pt. 89

Making Cars

Sometimes I used to think the life I
saw was not much more than a constant
do-over, mostly by the same people (a
vast 'everyone'), repeating themselves
while trying to convince each their that 
their acts and rituals meant something. 
Frankly, it was all up in the air and 
anything could (can) always be said
to signify whatever you wish to have it
signify. That was the 'cinch' on everything
that the real, normal, world tried to
constantly keep tightened. As much as
possible, tight. Sometimes so sinfully
tight that even a smile between strangers
could be misconstrued.  I remember one
street-murder guy confessing, as to why had
he lunged at someone and stabbed with a
knife : 'He smiled at me.' I guess things like
that are why we have laws, and cops. That
sort of broken faith that yet endures was
always curious  -  and sorrow-filled  -  to me.
- Another thing I noticed was how people
 kept going back to the well, time after time,

even after they knew the pail had no bottom
and wouldn't hold water. That too was part of
the constant do-over, the 'repeat-behavior'
I've mentioned previously. It wouldn't have
mattered, and there was never that level of

introspection in them to be considering any

of all this. Even with their apparent strict 
belief in logic and sequence, it all passed

them by   -  the fact that their packaged 
beliefs were all untrue. That was always one 
of the things that made me the saddest. Odd 
to say, and probably considered rude too  - 
how all these people struggled, broke their 
proverbial backs, adhering and clinging to
all these sad, old-world beliefs. I'd have 
thought that would be one of the first things 
to go after leaving the old world  - I knew it
would have been for me (what is this vaunted
'Freedom' all about anyway? I used to mutter
that they changed or mistake 'Freedom' to 
'Freedoom'). But they narrowed in on it,
it seemed, even more, as it somehow
replenished their sense of worth or 
belonging to something to burrow down
deeper of and within their own people 
and old ways. I suppose, in our 'today' 
world, it's little different from the way we 
see, around here anyway, all these new
immigrant-entry Hindus and Muslims
in their native clothes and such, which 
usually last for six or eight months, after 
which time you begin seeing the same people,
uncomfortable, in their first attempts at
ill-fitting, and poorly-fit and colored, local
slacks and shirts, etc. From Ganesh to
gaberdine, as it were.
-
I had to make sense of all that, on my

own, in order to continue. Over on St. 
Mark's Place, (which had become like
my own Main Street of weirdness  -  
every local village outrage or quirk ended 
up there. It was a real monster-Bazaar at 
all hours, and one could learn very quickly
there, as well, any local behavior needed to fit
in). Around Eastertime of that first year, I 
witnessed two different events when the 
cap was figuratively blown from the top of
my head. There were two separate Sundays,

at this little Polish parish, across the street 
there from the Polish National Home - a

sort of apartment building and baths  -  and

next to, a few doors over, from what later 
became The Electric Circus, of hippie,

Andy Warhol, and Velvet Underground
fame, where they had, in the 'spirit' of

the Easter and Spring season, two events 
which startled me. The quaint, held-onto,
 old-world flavor of the event jumped out 
at me, as if all these people were still 
forest-dwellers in the deep Polish woods
instead of in some small-world ethnic enclave
through which the modern world was now
barreling. It was all very strange and
conflicted, but I guess no one noticed. 
People flocked to both of these events, 
held on separate Sundays, and each
well-announced before-hand. People 
lined up. You know how T. S. Eliot 
wrote that he 'did not know that death 
had undone so many,' about all those people

walking the bridge over the Thames -  well, 
that's how I felt. I was simply not aware

there were so many old-world, naively

honest people around who still held to 
such tenets. There was nothing modern 
about this. One Sunday it was 'The Blessing

of the Animals'. I wasn't sure what it meant,
but it appeared to mean pets. There was a

streetload of people, standing steady, 
babbling away in whatever Slavic tongue 
they spoke, each with something: dogs,

cats, birds, hamsters, snakes, lizards, 
even globes of fish. In their own religious

way, the idea was for procession with

the animals through and within the

innards of the church, for an eventual 
blessing by a priest. The very next Sunday,

the same thing occurred, but with baskets 
of food  -  to be representing bounty, not 
just that particular basket. I guess for people 
used to hardship, it held a real meaning. I 
was just baffled. There was such a pervasive, 

back-time, old-world feel to all of this. From 
it, I sensed the reality of all these people - 

suffering, hunched, laden down with a 
million things. The same strenuous, rigors, 
dictates and strictures which ruled their 
beliefs, ruled, as well, their lives. To be 
honest, to me they just all looked as 
equal to dead. Why bother to go back 
again and again  just to repeat 
the same errors?

-

It began becoming apparent to me that
many aspects of New York City were just 
as barren, or worse, than what I'd left in

Avenel. At least in Avenel, all besides my 
fighting against it, they were letting 
'modernity' take them in, and move them

along. The incidentals were new, and

things were changing as much of that 'old' 
was pushed aside and our parents simply
left with Mom and Dad in other places,

like Bayonne and Newark, and Irvington. 
All the places they'd left. Not here however;

these people were ancient in their ways,

medieval in their beliefs, and fixed and 
certain of it. Small, squat old women yet
in their babushkas and hats. Stern men

yet saddled within by something still

still horrid. Faith in God the Supreme

and Fiery, who would, perhaps, if

asked rightly, deign to stoop down and

bless this pitiful food and these horrid

creatures, lest we forget his power and 
his glory and He smite us anew, in some

other way. Boy, was I stuck, and seeing

it. I could walk over to McSorley's  - 
where the average age of the men 
sitting around was about 114, give 
or take  -  and imbibe their sorrowful 
blues along with them; mug after mug

of a fastidious, home-brewed McSorley's 
Ale, which you had to buy two at a time - 
until some knock-out power came along

to strike you, and then knocked you down 
- and try to learn their ways by hearing

their stories  -  pretty much just like the

bums and hobos I'd sit with at the piers, 
with their barrel fires. But these guys 
here, at least they had ten bucks or so

with them. Bills as folded and wrinkled

as they themselves sometimes were. 
Anything 'new' about New York City did 
NOT happen down here; this was ancient

throwback land. All those hot-mouths 
always going on about New York and the

wonder of the city, the glamour, excitement, 
the adventure, the new, well they meant

about 50 blocks uptown. That was all where
 magazine and TV New York was, the 
Batman Gotham high-society bullshit, 
which the average Joe couldn't touch with a 
500 mile pole.  Truman Capote, Gore Vidal, 
and Norman Mailer and all those bravado-
faggot-creepfest types of that day. You'd 
never get near it, and any Holly Golighty 
Audrey Hepburn cockamamie horseshit 
would never cut it here.  Like I said, 
these people were dead.

-

Thing was, I mingled with everyone; 
which was kind of cool. I could ride the 
subway uptown, looking like a slouch,

some out of touch artist bum, and get

up to the Fuller Building, 57th and Lex.,

wherever it was - 5 solid floors, back then, 
of class A art galleries, get off the elevator,

and mingle like the rich among all the art 
schmoozers. Or, a few blocks away, at 
another corner, some building above 
Bergdorf Goodman's, as I recall, right

by The Plaza Hotel, and do the same 
thing there. Layers of rich people, the 
day-wives with jewels and binoculars, 
swishing around looking at an Arp 
for the living room, or a Picasso for the

dining chamber, all that crap. No one

there was hurting about anything, 'cept 
maybe a leak in the yacht. And they 
weren't even the really, really rich. Those

people would have agents out, buying

for them, or scanning the art-auction 
houses and placing enter bids and 
threshold bids from the cataloques or 
in-person viewings. Yeah, like some

bizarre funeral home. I always had

fantasized about some filthy-rich

person ambling about, looking for a

schmuck artist to subsidize, take on as

a patron; sent 7 grand a month to just to 
make and produce art. Never happened, 
and not even one of those rich babes out 
for the day ever asked me to go home 
with them for an 'afternoon tea', like the

sleazy storybooks had it, happening all
the day, everyday, every afternoon at 
2pm. 'Horny rich housewife boffs new
and upcoming artist on speculation of 
future merit as an artist.' Talk about 
misplaced faith. Too bad.

-

Years later, what astounded me

was how motorcycle guys, Bikers,

when I got involved with them, a

lot of them fell for the very bizarre

practice of a yearly 'Bike Blessing.'

Like those people with their kittens 

and ducks on old Polish St. Marks.

Pretty much the same thing as those

old food and pets people; a remnant

of some medieval, quaint custom 

from the Vatican hierarchy in Rome. 

Selling indulgences, anyone? I

wonder, did the Teutonic Knights

have Father Jimeny Althazar bless

yearly their horses? Strange world.

I was free, or free enough, yes, and

determined to stay that way. Plus,

sort of, you can't step backwards

too easily when you cut loose the 

rope bridge over which you've just

crossed the hellish chasm.

10,005. I WAIT TOO LONG

I WAIT TOO LONG

Pig jeremiad. I want to go back.

I left too early. Now there's noise

in the mountains. That daughter

of the farmer, the one with the

yellowed curls, I do like her a bit.

There are other people of note, 

yes, but she works over at the 

land assayer's, and I have to go

there anyway to arrange for a

survey. All these tedious things

she just seems to make lighter.

Perhaps that's the magic in the

realm of fixation : maybe even

that's why she got the job in the

first place. I would bet, yes.