RUDIMENTS, pt. 105
Making Cars
I was kind of swept into life
on a dead-pool of zone that I
never understood. Like the wino
in a hurricane, who says 'any
port in this storm?' that was
how I felt - slightly off-kilter,
maybe a bit amazed and drunk.
Certainly a singular try, much like
the tepid joke attempt above, all
my attempts at things were pretty
frameless and I was a waste. A
happy, maybe, stupid, waste, the
kind of kid you'd see, five hours
after his little league game, still
wearing his spikes and uniform.
The little internal struggle I was
always undergoing had to do with
convincing myself that I was OK,
that things would be alright. Kids
have a way of getting on the nerves
of adults, and being a silly kid doesn't
help that; but neither does its alternative.
For sure, no one wishes to have an
eleven-year-old Jean Paul Sartre at
the backyard barbecue. So, I had to
face it, I was already - early on -
a strange mess of things. My personal
tally-sheet was too confusing to tally.
First, of course, the train wreck. The
biggest, most amazing thing in your
life at age eight, and by age eleven
diminished away to a mere footnote.
That was me? I'd hear people start
talking about what I'd gone through
and I'd never be sure any of that was
true. I recalled, maybe, something,
but it was personal and pointed only
to me and not newsworthy at all. I got
annoyed as others tried to feed their
kindling into my own false fire of the
'near-tragedy' they'd make my life
out to be. I wanted to be a comedian,
screw the rest of that. They had no
idea of what the real me was like.
I had no vast goals, really, no course
in life to follow, no money-making
schemes needing education and
learning. I had it all already together,
for myself, and much of it was just
small-horizons stuff. I always hated
people with big heads.
-
One of the things I tried on, in order
to effect an escape, was the religion
angle that got me to the seminary. At
least in that, for a while, I'd gotten to a
place where I could be quiet and left
alone. Within the confines of their silly
program, I grant you - which is like
saying you enjoy solitary confinement
because the jailers are so nice. In a way,
this was the opposite side of me and for
me to just say I 'wanted to be a comedian'
is a complete lie. Disingenuous. False
for effect. Calculated. I also wanted to
be a Philosopher-King, an artist and a
writer. That's an awful large order to
fill - what shoe size and shirt and
neck size would be needed for any of
that, I never knew. Talk about big heads.
-
As I pointed out, no matter the intense
damages, I came back from getting
walloped by that train pretty good,
in fine shape. Perhaps I became some
mythological death-denier to the other
kids on Inman Ave. and surrounds, but
no one ever said anything nor did I see
that I was ever treated any differently.
It was more a feeling of guilt on my part,
actually, for getting all messed up with
that issue - slapping around on crutches
for so long, all that doctor junk. One day
it all just disappeared, and I forgot about
it. Never mentioned again. My brains
could have been splattered on the Rahway
Avenue tracks and replaced with something
other, for all I knew. The guilt idea led me
to want to flee, just be gone, disappear.
Then, of course, by choosing the seminary
I'd always get these really weak-kneed, pious
types, like my aunt, who said to the effect
that out of a gratitude for being let to live,
I was thanking God by wanting to be a
priest. It was my gift back. Yeah, sure,
what a cackle that was. People actually
fell for that stuff - in fact, some accepted
my idea of a 'vocation' as a priest to be
their automatic leg up on having a better
chance to get to Heaven by knowing one or
having on in the family. What a crock.
-
It's still like that a lot, except at least
the church has lost a lot of its luster
(thank God!) because of its perversion
and irrelevancy at last being shown
the light of day. Whether the world
at large ever gets over all that stuff is
another story. The problem with religion,
as I've found it - Catholic, and the rest
too - is that it feeds off the bottom rungs
of society, and they'll always be around.
Seeking solace, and believing in future
glory. Right now, the church, as lackluster
as it has become here, is booming all
over the lesser world : Africa, Philippines,
South Asia, Central and South America.
They're still lapping it all up, as it continues,
somehow, to represent a form of liberation
theology though it's not at all. OK, so my
little 13-year old brain knew all that already,
and pompously went away, right into its
own slaughterhouse of seminary, to
anneal and strengthen those ideas,
believe it or not. The adversity even
moreso convinced me of the rightness
of my beliefs. I think, had my 'Spiritual
Director' Father Carlton or Father Jude
(I forget which one it was) realized
or known or seen (or been told) that,
back in that day, I'd have been plunked
away the very next day. I played a good
game for some three plus years.
-
Newton said for every action there's a
reaction, others have said all things
have two sides, even a ball and a circle.
I happen to know that such ideas, and
conclusions of that type, are both true
and false, together, and at the same time.
That things can be and not be, together.
That's what all of life is - perceptual
diversity banked into illusion banked
into conclusion then about that illusion.
That's as stupid as it all comes out to be.
The only reaction worth its salt is to be
spontaneous and real about things : no
lead time to look up conclusions in a
book first and then align your own with
what you've seen elsewhere. That's
completely wrong (and right!), and
maleficent too. I may not have learned
much from laying in that foul hospital
bed all that time, but what little I did
learn taught me the lesson of getting
out of Dodge, or at least the Dodge of
rigid thought and rigid expectation. I
kept asking nurses, one after the other,
'Where is the magic?' and their only
answer ever was to go back and say,
'Yes, doctor, he's still delirious.'
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