Saturday, September 30, 2017

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.

Friday, September 29, 2017

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, 
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 
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.