10,315. RUDIMENTS, pt. 170

RUDIMENTS, pt. 170

Making Cars

I was born with one foot

smack dab in the middle

of nowhere and the other

stuck somewhere back in

some other place I couldn't

describe. Sometimes people

try to get me to explain

myself  -  what am I doing,

where does this stuff

come from, what is it

I'm trying to say, how'd

I get so weird, whatever.

So, in the middle of

these long and complacent

jaunts down a hyper-real

memory lane (perhaps they

call it such) here I'll try  - 

this one's probably going

to be a real dribbler, but I'll

try to ground it with enough

local detail to keep your

roving eyes interested.

-

You see, part of going the

creative route, being the

artist, etc. is not missing

anything. That takes a total

fealty to the moment, and

the image of the moment

and the shadow it throws,

both forward and aft. Forward,

I say, because every passing

moment creates the one right

in front of it, and the past 

moments, well they just 

come around again and 

try to affect or influence

the new moments. Sure 

gets confusing. All my 

early years were spent 

bowing down, as it were, 

being perfectly nice and 

doing what was expected. 

Give or take, I'm not saying 

I was perfect at it. But I did 

it all while watching carefully 

everything around me. It took 

me a lot of years to find a 

means of reaching the place 

where I could say 'bug off,' 

and more years still to have 

nearly perfected my very 

own world. Now most 

everything is outside of 

the standards and the 

means of that 'other' world, 

and that takes me, most 

generally, right out of the 

mix. Yet, I look at that 

mix and say, 'Holy Hell, 

how do those people do it?'

Entire, rational, straight-sleek 

lives spent on lawn and pool 

service, vacations and groceries, 

movies and the rest. You can

hear it in their voices. You 

can sense it in their eyes. 

There's a yearning for

the cosmos.

-

At the least, once I'd gotten 

myself to New York City 

I could say I'd 'done 

something.' It was like 

a three-alarm escape 

from bondage. I landed

on my feet/ass/feet, I 

never knew which was 

which anyway, so I just 

kept going. "Keep on 

keepin' on" could have 

been coined, as a phrase, 

by me, forget the Dead or 

Dylan, or whichever 

bundles of warmth said 

that first. You try and go

bankrolling yourself to 

nowhere and see how far 

you get. I was running in 

reverse, in the sense that 

all along I'd been taught 

that one should always be

moving forward, towards 

something  -  education, job, 

house and home  -  and I'd 

pretty much searched out 

my own best path for 

researching need and 

want and deprivation. 

New York has always 

had a great and an effective 

history of newly arrived 

losers, wandering aimlessly 

after their disembarkation 

from something  -  ship-side, 

wagon train, whatever. Well, 

all that crap was still in effect

in Summer '67, except that 

times were different and 

the means of arrivals had 

changed some. But no one

judged. I was loose, and the 

living was easy.  Like any 

runaway, demonic socialistic 

parasite from the hinterlands 

of old Europe, (or Mom and 

Dad's facsimile version of it 

anyway in their heads), I was 

set out, in floppy, straw-filled 

clothes and a bedroll.  I was 

surely moving backwards. I 

guess you know you're in 

trouble, by worldly standards 

anyway, when poverty becomes 

a lifestyle of choice.

-

There are no words to describe 

it, and why bother. I lived on 

quarters. A bowl of oatmeal 

and a coffee, for a quarter. 

I've told this little episode 

probably ten times, but the 

little Polish guy at the corner 

of 10th and Avenue A with 

his little coffee and restaurant 

place was always there. He 

had weeping eyes, pink, they 

were always running wet. He 

was a concentration camp victim 

with numbers on his forearm  -  a 

sad, blue, monotone tattoo of a 

series of digits. To his grave. He 

saw me quite often, gave a counter 

spot to rely on, threw me a roll 

and butter or something sometimes. 

In the mornings, the Con Ed guys 

would come in and sit around. 

Sometimes it was weird, because 

the people in my apartment on 

11th street would have been 

sitting up the previous night too, 

talking and planning how to blow 

up their workplace, the generating 

station just east down the street 

to 14th. Tough life. Even tougher 

for a young nobody like me. I had

more in wordless common with 

that Polish guy, in my speechless,

other-language'd reverie of 

connection, than with anyone 

else in the whole, entire world.