RUDIMENTS, pt. 155
Making Cars
It's funny now, if I place
myself in the present - where
I don't really want to be, but
don't wish to die either - my
feet would be in the now, yet
perhaps my heart would be in
someplace about 1950-1964,
and my head in an 1920-1949.
There are rotten guesstimates all,
but who cares? Remember how
it was, about 1965, when you'd
always see pictures of people
standing on cars - their cars
or others - to get a view, of
maybe a space-shot, or a
ball-game or something. You
never see that any more. Things
like that have passed from the
scene, our scene, whatever that
is now. It's really a non-scene
anyway - people don't know
much anymore, got nothing to
run on, same old bad or useless
information as ever but just made
way worse now by over-use. I'd
have to call this a post-apocalyptic,
head-snap, fuck-up. Life as ashes.
Ashes in a heap.
-
I take pride in my past, being a kid
and having, now, my say about it
and my opinions of it. Like a magpie,
the bird that steals from other nests
to make its own, I construct from
my invisible lands, that kingdom
where I rule, and I bring them here.
I never wanted to get to the point
where I would have it made 'impossible'
to be me, so I had to walk a careful line.
That weak and overused W. Somerset
Maugham image of 'The Razor's Edge'
comes to mind. Walk straight and
don't look down, never mind back.
In about 1978, I knew Philip Petit
for a while, informal stuff. He's the
guy who once vaulted, or walked
anyway, danced, sang, jumped, and
bounded in joy, between the Twin
Towers, when they stood and when
they were a new thing, and when
anybody really cared about stunts
like that. Today, no one would look
up to even see it, and they'd be more
worried over what labels were on
the clothing he wore and what was
on his feet - 'gotta' go buy that stuff,
me cool!' - he used to talk about all
that, reduced as he was then to walking
a line stretched between trees, low
limbs in Washington Square Park, for
dollars. Juggling balls on the wire. People
would come around, watch, and say,
'Who's that schmuck?' Once or twice he
used my kid too, in the act, holding this
or that, or twirling a hat or - in his
accompanying magic act - find the
fifty-cent piece in the ear, or pull on
the kerchief with the rabbit suddenly
underneath. Philip Petit was an otherwise
awkward Frenchman, short, rugged,
and built like a peasant, a thousand
year-old peasant, I used to say,
French red-wine in his veins.
-
You just wouldn't see that sort of
thing today - the joy has been
taken out of life and replaced, I
suppose, by electronic simulacrum
- directional GPS for people who've
really got nowhere to go anyway,
and who would follow any forms
of direction that 'authority' gave
them. Right on into Hell, apparently.
I have not seen nor heard anything
of Philip in a long time, but the
trick has always stayed with me.
(Petit, I always thought, was perfect,
or close enough anyway to Petite
too. He always wore Frenchified
bell-bottoms, and had some really
nice style top-hats, which I always
liked too. Shiny black, I don't know
the fabric name, but probably I should).
No matter, the point I'm after is about
life-definition, what we make of
all of this. It took a strange, almost
deluded, outsider to do something
like that - the average New York
stuntster would rather go on stage
to the Comedy Cellar or somewhere,
to make jokes about it instead. It took
a far-out outsider to do it that way, the
way it was done. A lot of this went
unspoken between Philip and me,
but I always let on that I knew he
was better than the rest of us. And
in doing what he did, he really
somehow was.
-
As it is, right now, I still get to talk to
a lot of people, not always that I want
to even but they just start talking : I
get all sorts of information, about jobs,
home-life, money, kids, situations
with wives and girlfriends, cars and
trips. People are nothing like I'd ever
expect anymore, certainly they bear
no resemblance to the sorts of people
I grew up alongside. I meet them on
walks, hikes, travels, and in dog parks
too. That's where the real blabbers lie.
Every imaginable story, I get. Except
maybe the sex-life of wolverines, but
I bet that's coming too. Soon enough.
People just like to talk that way, a sort
of self-consumed presence that they
both make and inhabit at the same time.
It's all connected and wired. they say
five words to you, and glance back
down to a screen or whatever - rows
of photos of cats and fish and dogs,
lines of jokes as dowdy as Miss
Winterbroom was doughty. But,
as a writer and a person with a
jaundiced eye, I thrive on it all.
It's where my 'past' me gets to
mesh with what's 'out there' now
and I can see where it fits, maybe,
in my present perspective. In a
way, it's my own version of
standing on a car, looking out.
The height's OK, the view is
good, and all sorts of interesting
things go flying by. I've always
been like that - my second
grade teacher again, remember?
My problem with 'questions,
more like, though she didn't know
it, my problem with Quests.
Mentally, it's a symbolic
me you see - like Philip Petit -
out dancing between things,
stretched along a high-wire,
really high, but dancing and
jubilant too as the wind rocks
things and I just go bouncing
along intent on good intentions
and content too, with a
nice contentment.
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