RUDIMENTS, pt.116
Making Cars
One thing I always had to fight off
and be wary of was having a - what
I'll call - 'Moses Complex.' I had
to stay very discrete about all that,
since in truth of fact I was often
enough dealing with 'revelated'
information and revealed knowledge
which had been dispensed to me.
(Go ahead you can laugh; I don't
care - nor will it change the factual
reality of what I'm saying one iota).
I was supposed to take it, and work
with it, given to me more as a 'raw'
material stream than anything else.
Look at all my stuff these years.
I've done my job. Now, it didn't
ever, and doesn't, mean I have any
new or privileged information to
impart to others in formats of direction
and course. I'm not leading anyone
anywhere. I don't possess any secret,
inscribed boards nor have I been
anywhere special or not to where
I've gotten this info. It's just there,
within me, part of my story and
soul. So I'm not any Moses, lead
no special flock, and am not about
to be pushing or prodding anyone
to follow my dictates. That's all the
Moses complex weird stuff I keep
away from. That entire story never
did set right with me anyway, based
on my own belief systems. That was
all psycho-drama and fear. I can't
lead people where I've never been;
I guess it's sort of like that.
-
There was trouble enough for me in
wending my way through the threads
of people I'd encounter - each of those
street people and low-level workers
in NY City - I was surely a nobody,
and I realized it quickly. A lot of my
life there took place in the cold. That
first Winter anyway. I'd never thought
about the cold before. At home, I can
always recall my own parents using
70 degrees as some Wintertime ideal
for a thermostat setting - which seems
high now, for me, in these days. And
in the seminary, I'd remember how w'd
occasionally grouse, on those late-night
study hall nights when the first chills
came through and we were, yes, cold.
They had a policy of 'no-heat' being
turned on until some date in early
November, the 10th or close to that.
It wasn't anything religious, just a
policy of the organization, and I
suppose it all had to do with budgetary
considerations. It never much mattered
to me, as we were just dumb kids, always
on the move and managing to stay warm
just by exertion. It was the long, slow
dread of the dark study-hall 10pm
nights that made us feel the cold. Not
moving around, forced into a small
desk space, and probably bored and
tired too. When I finally did move
myself into the Studio School basement,
there was always a richness of warmth
and I'd luxuriate, while reading or
whatever, in listening to the pipes
clang, and feeling the heat rising
out as it radiated along, and I think
of curious questions too, things like
how does metal expand and then
contract to make those noises, and
what were they, and how long did
the heat stay in one place? Duckbill
cosmic, questions like that on the head
of a pin, with no real, ever, answers
-
Forgetting all that Moses stuff was
also a way of keeping myself humble.
That was important. There wasn't
any ways or means for me to think
differently about myself; I certainly
hadn't won any lottery, and they
didn't do lotteries back then anyway
except for something called the
Irish Sweepstakes, which I never
got to the bottom of, nor ever really
heard about either, except in passing
or in someone's off-handed reference.
Now, there's some sort of bungled-up
lottery every ten minutes and some
state or government agency is always
peddling them in your face. It's pretty
incredible how things have changed,
like sin-stuff, like naked babes, like
gambling and lotteries all together.
And I found that everything I touched,
I really didn't know anything about.
Helping the horse guy, whatever
he meant about firing the bellows,
lifting the plugs, anything about
blankets, horseshoes or oats, I
hadn't a clue at first. Same with
all that welding stuff and the
metal working that Jim Tomberg
got me involved with. Like Greek,
at first. I myself had evidently come
out of that lowly Avenel chute with
nothing to go on but hunches and
picking up information instantly
along the way, learning by doing,
as it were, and then trying to fake
that I'd 'known it all along.' That's
not, for sure, any way to try and
have people following you.
-
I was more apt to play the corn-pone
route, impress to do my best cackling
Mark Twain infusion. Re-telling
stories in a weavy-roundabout fashion
that held the center-stage lights steady
as people watched and listened. I found
that type of repartee and reportage was
what held people's attention and got
you into places. Nobody wants just
another hard-faced egghead slopping
around with stiff lips and acting like
royalty, telling you all he (or she) knows
about everything you just asked. That
gets so un-colorfully tiresome in about
25 minutes that even the geese want
to v-up and fly the heck out of there.
And it's all understandable. So I took
my clues elsewhere. Intellectuals
bored the hell out of me, and I could
read whatever I wanted whenever
and didn't need no haughty-mouth
talking me down with any self-serving
commentary about it.
-
Some years later, when I did finally
make it up to Elmira, NY, and lived
in the Elmira and Ithaca area for six
or seven years, pretending to be
schooling in places like Cornell and
Elmira College, otherwise a real
drudge, I was as surprised as anyone
to learn that Mark Twain was buried
there, in his wife's Langdon family
plot - nice grave and tomb, and little
hillock area and all. It gave me good
chuckle to think of old Sam Clemens
buried there as Mark Twain and being
interred as he was, in that family plot,
with a son-in-law of his named Ossip
Gabrilowitz. Yep, that's the name, and
they have plaques and head carvings
and all. This Ossip guy was a famous
Polish pianist who'd made world tours
and a grand reputation playing Chopin
and Liszt and all those guys. When he
died he was rightly famous, and I always
pictured the surprise on Mark Twain's
face in whatever Twainian Heaven or
Hell they'd be, lifting his eyebrows upon
seeing he'd be in eternity with a piano-
cracker named Ossip. The same Mark
Twain who peopled his world with the
simplest of named characters and
straight-line intentions - Becky, Huck,
Tom, Jim, and the rest. If he ever used
a name like 'Ossip Gabrilowitz', it would
have been to make fun of haughtiness or
some otherwise over-wrought trait. That's
the way Twain did things. I pictured him,
picking up his ears, and saying, as he
chomped on his cigar in his celestial
white suit : 'Now, Ossip, there, I may
have, I do believe, detected a slipped
key, a blue note, in what you've just
been playing, Ossip, and, ah, now, Ossip
seeing as to how you and I gets to spend
eternity together, well, Ossip, I do think,
you' a'better get to practicing so as to
avoid that off-key and mis-noted material,
I may have been hearing there, Ossip.'
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