RUDIMENTS, pt. 93
Making Cars
It always became difficult, at some
point, to get across what I was saying
or thinking. I'll try to make that a bit
clearer (there must be a word or a
concept, for this : exemplifying the
very problem one is trying to explain.
In this case, 'getting something across,'
being both the problem and the attempt).
There were a few years in the 1980's
where I was giving readings. It's pretty
easy, doesn't really mean anything, and
there are a thousand libraries and civic
writing and poetry groups just dying for
'guests' to liven up their paltry sessions.
Reading aloud is a bit of a gimmick. The
emotive flamboyance begins to take
precedence and kill the language. I must
prefer my own stuff read, in singular
silence, by a reader. Forget the show.
I did it a lot, and did it good too; did
my own little publicity, flyers, postal
cards, and chapbook, journals, and
small publications. Being in the printing
business helped a lot. But then I just
gave it up. After all that effort, lists
of people's names and addresses, etc.,
I realized that - outside of the effort
and the writing involved (which I'd be
doing anyway) the working idea behind
all this tended too much to resemble
'neediness.' I wasn't. I didn't seek, nor
want, anyone's approval; people were
always coming up saying this or that
was great or effective or came across
so well. Memorable. Can you do that
one again? The feeling was good, but
it was also unwanted. I sought no one's
kinship. And so many wanted to be kin.
I had never had that before, the feeling
and the result of the effort - there's
something about it all that's off-putting.
Like free-fall. Back in New York, 15
or so years before that, I'd never even
have given a thought to myself, doing
that, being in that situation. Everything
was solitary and kept to myself. Which
is just the way I liked it - the human
situation always somehow draws others
in to it, for completion or for satisfaction,
I never knew. But I was that keen on it.
-
Which is where I got knee deep into that
Ericsson observatory thing. Science is all
organized and programmed now, certainly
the 'madness' is gone from it, if there ever
was a 'mad scientist' aspect. But this person
caught my attention, right off - city-centric,
inventor of metal-boats, Civil-War thinking,
scanning the skies from a weird home-built
observatory, and living there like that with a
few servants. It had to be a perfect solitude,
for this guy - the last two years of his life,
never even exiting his house. This here was
solitary science - outside of program, like
setting the world on fire and calling it the
Heavens! I couldn't get past that. Like I
said, often enough on big-moon nights I'd
go down there, just to look up and see it
all from that vantage - swirling night sky
like a vision, the black river rolling by
reflected and distorted lights and ships.
Trucks and cars, dwindling but still
battling it out for the day's preponderance.
No winners on the Earth; just in the Heavens.
-
I'd somehow know where I was, but not
know too. The concept that gripped me (I
threw it in before) was 'free fall.' I'd look
up at that fat moon and that was all I could
think of - free-fall - and it somehow just
as well explained everything for me. The
entire cosmos, the skies, the Heavens, the
worlds, were all in free fall; not a fixed
firmament at all - or, rather, if fixed that
all together as one experiencing free-fall
through the deep dark abysses of space.
Could this be? Space expanding then,
outward, but only as the 'need' for it occurred,
by that very free fall of space, concept, and
object through it? What sort of element is
all this? What formless concept was our
experience? As one? Or all together, and
separate? The moon, the very moon I
supposedly saw before me, I realized as
I concluded, was in its own free-fall, yes,
but attached by gravity to that same free-fall
of the Earth, which gravity was constantly
attempting to pull it into itself. Which
then accounted for the phases of the moon
and its rotation in a circular orbit 'around'
this earth, which was, in consort with all
else involved too in its own falling - the
only thing it really ever did was keep
moving from the moon, while attracting
it, and causes that same 'crazed' moon, to
wing around it, in a constant and rotational
order. Objects in constant, twirling, fall, pulling
to each other but never reaching each other
because the falling motion between them,
and of them, kept each from ever getting
to that sought-after point they were seeking
and would need for the collision to take place.
Movable targeted objects, on the prowl,
but eluding completion. THAT was the
dynamics of motion and the dynamics of
Reality and Change. That too was what
had brought me to the city, and lost me
within it. The greatest thing in the world
might be not even of the world - a constant,
circular attraction of all things for each
other, holding the world, and our own
consciousness as we know it, together.
-
Yes, yes, and then things would settle
down again, and I'd be still, and silent,
and solitary once again. Until the next
time, until the next question arose, and
it always, soon did. Is a Man but a man,
or the memory of being that man?
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