RUDIMENTS, pt. 136
Making Cars
One of the most fascinating and
captivating things for me, growing
up, were magnets. I suppose in the
years - 5 to 8 years old - they took
up a lot of my time and thought.
My father, for whatever reason
it was, had two very large magnets,
each of them about the size of 3/4
of a shoe-box, but quite thick.
They were horseshoe-shaped.
Massive objects, to me. A dark,
almost harsh, metallic grey, and
always cold to the touch. They
were also heavy, surprisingly so.
(As I sit here writing this it hits
me now that I have no idea
where these may have ended
up. Long gone). In addition to
these 2 objects, I began collecting
or getting small magnets of any
size and shape wherever I could.
Puny and weak by comparison,
there were, surprisingly enough,
lots of places from which to get
them. Toy counters, five and ten
cent stores, model kits sometimes
had a small magnet involved, and
I even remember small horseshoe
type magnets, wrapped in pressed
paper, in cereal boxes. No matter,
that. One time, for Christmas or
something, I remember getting like
the worst possible, most dumb, gift
of 'electric football.' It was hideous,
but each player had little magnets
at their base (I soon enough detached
them). The idea of the game was
that the weak magnets, once you
plugged in and turned 'on' the game,
were not 'strong' enough, or just
adequate, to hold the players in
place UNTIL, with the electric
current, the board began vibrating
smoothly enough and the vibration
moved the player/magnets along.
You'd have your players in their
formation, and it basically just
was a magnetic vs. current free-
for-all to see which 'quarterback'
or runner made it to the goal line.
There was no passing or anything,
and the players were quite static and
boring, so I wouldn't know what the
moronic motivation would have
been to play this game. It sure
made no sense to me, and really
annoyed me. Funnier than that
annoyance was, was the fact that
we had family friends who came
over and they had a kid my age,
named George, who thought this
was the coolest, most fascinating
game in the world. I got stuck
playing it that day, over and over,
with the nitwit - who, amazingly,
in later life went to Drexel Pharmacy
School in Philadelphia, and college,
and became a Pharmacist. I may be
biased but for the rest of my life I
always grouped pharmacists with
the same categorical, dull, and
rigid-by-prescription people who'd
become toiling pharmacists, mixing
their allotted doses of powders and
concoctions, by rote.
-
What it was about magnets was the
idea of attraction and repel. I was
absorbed by the conditions of the
magnet's power to make physical
some weird invisible force. The
little magnets were just for fun, but
those two large magnets entertained
me philosophically and conceptually
at all times. Whatever the 'power
force' of magnetism is, the two
large magnets were so fierce when
placed in opposition to each other,
repelling one another, so as to move
the other, literally, in the opposite
direction. I could feel and fight the
force, but I could never break it. I'd
sometimes pile heavy objects on one,
on the floor or a table-top, just to see
what weight was needed to stop the
force of movement. It was amazing,
and the fighting force of 'repel,' in my
hands could be felt, but never harnessed
or controlled. It was always on the
verge of being out of control, would
run sideways, or move my hand. I
would observe that the small, weaker
magnets behaved in the same, patterned
behavior, just in weaker forms and
with fewer resistances. I was fascinated
by this mimic-behavior between large
and small. I would take one of the
the large magnets and just walk with
it, running it over things just to see
what was magnetic and what was
not. A simple matter, but intriguing.
I can also (and this was most wondrous)
remember doing something with the
large magnets - though I can't now
recall what I did - so that, overnight,
whatever I'd conjoined with the magnet
would, the next day, be a magnet itself.
Right now, this still baffles me, the
memory is hazy, but the concept rings
clear - how stunning and fresh it was
to realize that 'transference.' Truly,
one of life's mysteries.
-
There are so many things of like and
ponderous thinking that went on. Well
after I was no longer a 'kid,' things still
kept bubbling through me, these fantastical
concepts that I'd then try to handle. It was
difficult sometimes, to go on, walking
in the normal fashion of people, one
step in front of the other, to propel
oneself along. Simple as it sounds,
where did that start? I never fit in well
with normal character groups, mostly
because I simply wasn't 'there.' I never
'shared' space. In later years, one of the
concepts was how we 'create' time. How
it doesn't really exist, and is just an
affordable, discrete 'word' to signify
what we are agreeing to by it, or
agreeing to do. That was a difficult
concept, but it came to me one day
as I was driving. Yes. Here, I'll explain:
-
This explanation may be a little
convoluted and strange to handle,
but it's the manner in which I went:
I've always hated jamming on my brakes.
last-second stops, emergency jam-ons,
they really annoy me, and I much prefer
the well thought-out, organized and more
gradual come-to-a-stop routine. When I'd
get to a light that turned yellow suddenly
close, or the guy in front of me who I
thought could make it, suddenly stops
instead, causing me to jam to a stop,
I'd get all annoyed, and then I (thinking
of brake use and wear) begin counting
the lights and stops I DIDN'T catch,
realizing, in turn, that each of those
was adding time to my my use, and
essentially removing time from the
heavier brake use I'd just had to do. I
was driving 'ahead' into a still uncreated
time, in which I had already been sourcing
some duration, of moments which didn't
exist - except for my agreed-upon
stipulation that it (they) did. Perfectly
non-sensical sense, delving into places
where nothing existed except concept.
Yet to me it WAS the perfect logic, the
equivalent of a pharmacist's formula
for curing aches and pains with a pill.
My rational attraction AND my magnetic
repel, as well to the life and situation
I was living. Needless to say, I never
was able to tell anyone about this.
It made little sense, and who had
the time for it anyway?
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