Sunday, December 10, 2017

10,276. RUDIMENTS, pt.161

RUDIMENTS, pt. 161
Making Cars
I've always been a little strange
I guess, into adulthood and now
old age. I'm not going to change
anything, so I guess it's best to
just admit it. Like, whenever I
read anything by Don DeLillo,
after, it's always so completely
unsatisfying that I feel like going
up to him, wherever that would be,
and asking for payment back on the
hour and a half, or three, or seven,
hours that I just squandered. It's very
galling. And he's such a darling of the
universe right now, post-modern
writing and all that stuff, that it's
considered incomprehensible why
anyone would say anything negative
about him and/or his work. That's the
way the sanitized world of elite-brass
popularity goes. But the fact is, not a
one of the cocktail-patter class who
anoints his drivel knows what they're
even talking about. It's that 'closed-world'
isolationism that does it. Actually, I
doubt that they even read it. Once you
enter that cloistered schema, nothing
else matters. There's a story entitled,
'The Itch,' maybe a half-hour read. Boy
that one really got me going, I wanted
to demand about 70 bucks back for just
wasting my time. It's the most coldly
insipid piece of drivel. The things in it
are atrocious -  the main guy has a
problem, ongoing, with overall itching,
all over his body; in his office environment
there's another dweeby character named
Joel, who writes 'untitled' poetry during
work time whenever he can, and has
ceased sending it out anywhere for
submission. He's hung up on the word
'Zaum.' It's his word for what he calls
'Transrational' poetry : 'Words and letters
are free, outside reason and tradition.'
'When was it ever the case,' Joel says,
'that language could truly describe reality?'
OK, that's fairly plain and basic, but
in this story it ties in with the itch guy's
divorce and the new woman he's seeing,
'Ana'  -  with the missing other 'n' that
so bedevils him. We have to read all
about that, and why it's not 'Anna.'  But
the key crux here, after the doctors' talks,
and the itch creams, and the office visits
to three different doctors, is that it's this itch
guy (Robert T. Waldron, which name we
don't even learn of until the final sentence),
who says, (and then this becomes subject
in the story too), that when he urinates,
over the bowl, at home, only at home, for
at work he uses the urinal, 'there were
times when he heard what sounded like
words as his urine hit the water in the
bowl.' In the story, he's telling this to
Joel, and they go on discussing it.
('The semblance of a tiny voice saying
a word and then maybe another word,
and he tried to describe the sound....)' (?)
Yes, yes, so by now you must understand
what I mean. (And yes, Joel, OK I get
the point  -  when did 'language,' even
here piss-patter, ever truly describe
reality). Oh, please. The dead-end of
a post-modern fiction of this sort is
almost disgusting. Dare I say?  Does it
not reflect the self-absorbed consciousness,
like a winging boomerang which never
returns to the jerk who's flung it? And
then remains, instead, always flying
somewhere, above our heads? Truly,
this guy owes me some big bucks.
-
I was never like this before : coming
out of Avenel, and then the seminary,
most of my expectations were fairly
normal. Certainly as far as 'reading'
went, they were. I sought the usual
arc of information being included in
a story, tightly woven, some facts
thrown in as digression, recognizable
objects and experiences, things that
spoke for themselves, items the reader
knew  -  a pail, a wagon, the old parlor
chair, the sagging car not often driven
anywhere, the sister with the droopy
eye, the cat, and that fence, always
sagging and near to topple. Those things,
in a writerly way, exist and each carry
emotion. They become recognizable
touch-points, in good writing, so that
when you get them, thrown in, the
correct gong rings, internally. You're
not lost, having to endlessly read about
some jerk's itch, or worse. And who
cares about a one-dimensional 'Ana'
anyway? The excuse for a lot of this
is 'alienation.' It's the peculiar form
of feeling 'lost' and worthless that has
supposed to have so defined 'Man'
over the last seventy-five years. [By
that Man I include Women. Do I yet
need to say that?]. Everything has now
gotten so skewed, (and skewered),
by fault and intention that a person
can't go anywhere, can't say a thing.
There might be a good point of post-
modern fiction there, about a person
who never leaves the 5-foot area he's
ensconced in because he (or she) has
so closed up the world around 'self' that
he's become completely alienated and
torn off from every other fabric-point
of existence.
-
It was a smaller world, for sure, as I 
grew and lived in Avenel. Most things
were just left unsaid. A couple of the
fathers along the street had shrapnel
or other still-active war wounds that
mostly kept them home. That was a
new occurrence for me, seeing that.
It brings a different immediacy to
otherwise normal idea of kids and 
war. I don't think there were any
war-widows or wives no longer 
with living husbands; that I knew 
of anyway. It was just assumed that
everyone was Christian  -  there were
infant-Jesus- centered decorations and
lights, and no one ever seemed to be
reticent about the word Christmas or
manger or wise men or Mary and
Joseph or any of that. It was pretty
crazy. I know that my own father
went at house decorating each year
with zeal  -  manger, lights, candles,
stuff on the house (the lights beck
then were nothing like today's gibberish.
Just large, single colored bulbs in that
distinctive Christmas-light shape). I
remember one year, something 
happened and my father's large yew 
bush or whatever the name was, all
heavy with lights, one on each side
of the house front, torched up. The
large bush on the right, just took fire.
I guess it was a short or something. My
father put it out, disappointed as all get
out in losing that symmetry and display.
A few of the neighbors went really
all out, and there was some oddball 
sort of personal status found in that
outdoing of others with your house
light display. Or so it seemed. I
wanted to tell him, 'Well you won 
hands-down in the flames division,'
But I didn't; he'd have probably
thumped me good.
-
I spent a lot of time, odd as it seems, 
back then too, studying Buddhism. I
guess I was just 17 then, maybe, just
finishing up at home. My parents were
all perplexed over me, and they sent,
at one point, the local priest up to my
room to see if he could talk me through
troubles, or whatever they thought he 
would do. I knew the guy pretty well,
but he was creepy nonetheless. His
brother was the Mayor of South River,
a town nearby, and his family name
was big there. Polish or something.
He liked boys, and I already knew that.
But in this case, nothing of that came up
(no pun), and all he did was try to figure
out what all the things on my wall were
  -  zen sayings, a few Buddha quotes and
all that. It made no sense to him. Bardo
Pond meant nothing, and the Tibetan
Book of the Dead threw him for a loop.
Once we left, I was still what I was. 
Buddhism was about stillness. Zen koans
(pithy sayings) and all that, they carried
the root of the idea of the feeling, and
that was all I cared for. Like the tale of 
the monks who decide that it isn't the
wind or the flag that's waving in the
breeze, only their minds. That was the
poetic and charming side of Buddhism.
The best of things. Contradictions and
paradox being bridged by smiles, and
a wave of the hand. Things exist, but
they are not real. Like : 'You don't have 
to believe, but it's true.'




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