Monday, December 31, 2018

11,437. RUDIMENTS, pt. 551

RUDIMENTS, pt. 551
('get back on the bus, gus, and make a new plan')
In the previous chapter,
as I finished writing about
the leather and wood of the
lawyer's office, etc., it came
to me that I'd read something
of that sort before, perhaps
in some James Joyce entry.
So, I went and looked back
and, sure enough, there, right
before me, jumped out a good,
nay, better, version of what
I'd put across, or at least
hoped to have put across.
In the Nestor chapter of
Ulysses, Joyce has Stephen
enter Mr. Deasy's office, to
get his pay for the school
teaching he'd been doing,
which is distasteful to him
- the work at the school and
and the students. Deasy
himself has become equally
distasteful. Yet, here in this
office, Stephen catalogues
what he sees  -  the items,
the photos of horses on the
wall, etc. Then, this one
description arises, of the
room itself. So fitting :
"Stale smoky air hung in
the study with the smell of
the drab, abraded leather
of its chairs. As on the first
day he bargained with me here.
As it was in the beginning, is
now. On the sideboard the
tray of Stuart coins, base
treasure of a bog : and ever
shall be. And sung in their
spooncase of purple plush,
faded, the twelve apostles
having preached to all the
gentiles: world without end."
-
Well use some consideration
there anyway; I find there to
be a connection, though it may
just be me. As in so many other
Al-things, I guess, deftly wrong.
(I notice the typing of this makes
little distinction between 'A-1,'
and Al. Whichever I have used,
you may name it).
-
As I move along in my life, this
day, of age and all its adjuncts,
creeps up on me. Around me,
people are dying; it happens
all the time. A person lags
behind and events suddenly
push from the rear. Friends
die, or  -  in my case  -  people
show up telling me of one who
died. I knew the sister, the
uncle was a judge, my father
went to the racetrack with
her father back when....and
it goes on. Do you know
people? Are we all supposed
to know everyone? Joanne
Miskinis Awad, poor dear,
now joins the limitless dead,
at 71; and I'm saddened. 
Mark off one more, but, 
hey, leave the space there
for me too, OK?
-
What's the use of youth, if
it just dies in old age? When
I was about 9, we had a bus
trip, some group I was in, a
small, creepy, marching band
troupe out of the old Woodbridge
VFW, on Pearl Street. I had
a trumpet at the time, and I
used to like playing it; I 
enjoyed the 3-little presses 
it had, buttons, whatever 
they're called. Stops? It
was good for tunes and 
changing notes. There's also
trombones, but I don't know
the difference  -  nor do I
care now  -  one has the
button keys and one doesn't.
This did. Maybe that's the
difference. I joined because I
wished to play that instrument
in the march-parades that the
legion band played in. I was
accepted, BUT, they quickly
handed me a snare drum of 
sorts and a strap for my neck:
Some canvas contraption to
hold the drum in place as we
marched, and I simply became
one of 5 or 6 drummers. It
was equally as much fun for 
me. A budding Buddy Rich!
-
Whatever Winter and Spring
that was, a lot of it was spent,
Weds. nights, I think, at what
was maliciously called 'Band
Practice.' It was more like a
screwed-over musical anarchy.
The meeting room was tiny to
begin with, maybe 20 feet,
rectangle, not square. Some
form of dimensions. The noise.
of course, resounded, and the
acoustics were maddening, and
would be, even to the deaf.
In some idea of formation, 
we'd simply march around this
pathetic room, wall to corner,
practising, well, whatever it 
was. Let's say 'Patriotic Goon
Songs' done by the inhabitants
of a young-mens' madhouse.
I don't know about 'for the
criminally insane,' but, yeah,
maybe that too. Cacophony.
Sounds a bit like a chocolate
drink, but it ain't. (What's it all
about with chocolate anyway?
I never knew  -  have never liked
the stuff in any case, and  -  go to
find out, in Arabic there's no word
for chocolate. No, I made that 
up. But the word for coffee, 
in Arabic, means wine).
-
So  -  back to the track here  -  
boys being boys (it's universal. 
It's maddening, and it's usually
sexual too) all I got from that
wayward stint as a seasonal
snare drummer is a very weird
memory. I won't mention names,
because they're not important.
Yet, I guess I mention mine, since
I'm writing this recollection.
Inman Avenue chaps! We had 
a bus trip for some parade or
another, to a place by Weehawken
called West New York, NJ. We all
gathered at the hall there, on
Pearl Street, for the bus ride.
Equipment, snacks, jackets, all
that. Puberty hits boys like a
rocket; one way or another it
worms its way into the young
man's system until the poor kid
starts babbling to himself over
pictures in a damned magazine
ad for socks, or such. We're in 
our high-back bus seats, and 
the kid next to me, a friend, 
maybe almost a year older, is 
kneeling up on the seat, facing
backwards, instead of sitting.
He's eagerly awaiting the bus
trip to begin. I say why? What's
with that? I should have known
(and  here, dear reader, so should
you have). He proceeds to instruct 
me on how the motion of the bus 
ride, if you press and remain just
right, in place, will advance the 
'boy' to that heightened state of 
bliss that comes and goes, let's 
say. Put succinctly, instead of
'going' to West New York, you'll
be 'coming' to West New York!
For this I played a snare drum in
a local, crummy, marching band?
Heavens, let's do that  again.
-
Of course, maniac that I myself 
am, I could go on and on over this,
and, in keeping with the initial
theme of 'aging' say how we
meet the dead coming, and 
going. Yet, I shan't. We were
all children once.
-
I read a book once, about 
such  things, and the chapter  -  
speaking  of one-upping boys  -
about girls in these same
situations, and in tribal settings,
the African savannas, etc., 
would make a man, let alone a 
boy, blush. Menarche, Desire, 
Menstruation, Coitus. There's a
period in a female's maturation, 
it is said, where she can start 
fires with her eyes. Only a shaman
can sense these times and ferret
out the needed impulses. Other
periods of time, she is cast with 
the matron, or she-witch of the
tribe, to be coached through it
all; but at the specific and most
major moment, she is assigned
to the shaman, and remains with 
Him for a few days, until either 
the 'fire-power' goes away, or 
something else passes off. 
And here I am, worrying about
the seats on a drummer-boy's bus?









11,436. ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND THE KETTLE DRUM

ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND 
THE KETTLE DRUM
[There are places by the shovelful 
and they are filled with people and 
pickers and soldiers and sinners and 
gents who work flat on their backs 
and with derring-do they sit out 
eternity with nothing to do dressed 
in their finery their suits and last 
dresses and clothes chosen by children
for the last of those caresses but there's 
nothing to be done for they're crowding 
the lawn and so many people have 
passed us that the land of the dead is 
ten-fold plus vaster than the mere acre 
the living inhabit - Civil War Soldiers 
cry with Mesopotamians and the 
Chinamen scowl with Egyptians and 
African princes accompany Finns and 
Germans and Greeks and Hannibal 
I see plays cards with Socrates and 
Plato and there's nothing to be done:
'it drives me crazy all this crowding 
and clamor' and all I ever wanted to 
know was 'is there a graveyard for 
vegetable pickers?' but instead they 
said a mass for this guy out in the 
fields and they threw some dirt on 
his body as it was lowered into the 
hole and the stalks covered and hid 
the grave in secret and the foreman 
had one less to count that night one 
less bed was filled and he was short 
a man I'd guess but even if he knew 
what could he do because 'they fall 
like flies in this Autumn heat' and 
that's how I learned my lessons that's 
how I figured it out  -  reading books 
on the sloping lawns watching the 
workers pick peppers looking at men 
through their junkyard lenses figuring 
out girls while the brilliant sunlight 
shone through their slim dresses and 
left evidence of (at the least) what 
anatomy was and everything known 
to mankind (I would think) was alive 
in those fields for me to see and I saw 
(benediction of self 'Veni Vidi Vici' 
indeed) what I thought was Abraham 
Lincoln in person going down for 
his eternal flat rest still raw and 
bleeding but at peace (at least once) 
with himself - and the fastest growing 
field is the field of the martyrs' yield.]

11,435. RUDIMENTS, pt. 550

RUDIMENTS, pt. 550
('cigar-chomping devil hound')
Pools of escort, I already
had. I never really went
anywhere alone, it seemed,
because I had always brought
with me everything I was
aware of, all that I had
learned. Like some fool,
protecting, beneath his
cloak, the jar of treasures
he'd bought, I operated
as if, always, there was
something to be kept
concealed. It was always
easy for me to see this
'concealment' in others :
the person who knows
they've been found out,
or seen, or their canard
exposed. It's in their eyes,
a sort of running terror.
Scientifically, in such terms,
it would be simple: 'Light
travels faster than sound.'
When you see a jet in the
sky, high up enough, the
jet is there (point A), and
you see it, but the sound for
that manifestation is back
'there' (point B), lagging
well behind the jet. That's
because the speed of light
is swifter than the speed of
sound, and the image, what
you see, is outrunning or
advancing what you hear.
It's like that as well with
malfeasant people  -  their
words, however false and
bad they may be, are
preceded by their 'light',
the image of their being,
which you see as eyes and
face undergoing recognitive
terror. To wit : they know
their own screw-up, even as
they speak it  -  but before
the words reach you the
image is already given :
Caught in a cinch, knowing
they've been called out.
-
When I was hit by the train
in that train crash in Feb. '58,
well after the fact, for the little
trial that ensued, I was 'coached'
in what to say when on the
'witness' stand. It was all very
weird; some year and a half
later, the Reading Railroad
already bankrupt, monetary
damages of some sort being
sought, etc. It all seemed. to
me, a dazing hopelessness.
To begin with, I was being
coached, as some dumbed-out
9 year old, in what to say about
what I recollected, though the
real problem was I recollected,
frankly, nothing. The only
thing, perhaps was that I
remember the resounding
wail of a train engine, the
blinding crunch of the hit,
and, really, nothing else. My
shock-manifested and mangled
self had blacked all else out.
However, 'Nothing, your honor,'
would not suffice. Thus, any
words spoken were words
put there. My speed of light,
in this case somehow inoperative,
was being supplanted by a far
slower and (disingenuous) speed
of sound. Pantomimed sound,
in fact. (I wonder now how
like local politics is this?).
-
Anyway, nothing came of it.
The simple award, to me in
'trust' until age 21, was $1900.
I guess the legal fees and all
the rest of that mess were
also paid, though I don't know
-  I don't even know who paid
all the hospital stuff, nor how
much any of that all came to.
I was so in the dark you'd
think I'd also been blinded.
But, it all stayed in my head.
We had this lawyer guy,
in Newark, some office
building on Broad Street.
Solomon Wolfman was his
outlandish name. I went
there, along with my parents,
any number of times for trial
rehearsals. It was the most
stupid stuff in the world  -
he was using conjecture,
based on his experience
and knowledge, of the sorts
of things I'd be asked (me,
a 9-year old, I repeat); how
they'd try to confuse me (?),
not that it was difficult; trick
me into saying the wrong things;
incriminating things? To me
this was all very bad  -  I
wasn't a master criminal
whose motivation for murder,
rape, and pillage had to be
hermetically dramatized.
However, being in front of
a train at a non-propitious
moment is, in its own way,
I suppose, a crime. The point
is how truth, or reality, even
in this precocious and most
foolish situation, was being
both 'created' and manipulated.
Hello, legal profession. The
most galling aspect of the
entire thing was  -  and this
drove my father crazy with
anger that day (I well recall),
over all this practice and set-up,
my nerves had settled and I'd
gotten comfortable with this
Wolfman guy  -  who otherwise,
I could sense, was a really
annoying person, a crack liar,
a manipulator, and problem as
out and out shyster too. (My
uncle, with a service job on
Wall Street, had made this
high-blown legal connection
for us  -  all the usual, 'crack
hotshot lawyer,' stuff, never
loses! My father took it all).
On the day of the trial, Mr.
Wolfman doesn't even show!
Instead, he sends some 25
year old lawyer-in-training,
new at the profession, reticent,
unassuming, non-brash, in his
place. I immediately detested
the guy, and after my father
had gotten done ripping him
a new butthole anyway, I
think he lost all interest in
the case. His light had
surely preceded his sound?
-
Things I remember? OK,
about all this, the scent
of cigar smoke lingers.
Wolfman sucked on one
constantly, in that unpleasant
movie manner  -  chomping,
pointing with it, gesturing.
With thick smoke hanging.
He even 'talked' cigar, if
such can be imagined.  A
year or so later, I'd have a
piano teacher with that
same habit; a CPA, doing
people's taxes and books,
and giving piano lessons
as well, in his little CPA
garage-shed studio set up
out back  -  a nice stone
and brick house at the
corner of Lockwood
and Ridgedale. In that
situation, most everything
was covered in a heavy,
yellowish, coating. Even
the piano keys were
yellow, not white. I also
recall leather. Real office
leather  -  the serious and
old kind, chairs and seats
and bench-seat couch like
things to sit on  -  thick 
wood and dark leather. A 
huge desk, one you could 
live in, if that was called
for. I guess maybe it was
all 1940's stuff, even 1930's.
Nothing at all like you see 
now. In these offices the
word plastic had not been
invented. I remember seeing
this odd-looking contraption,
and asking about it. It was
an Edison Dictaphone, as 
I recall it  -  a boxy thing, 
again all nice wood, etc., 
with a cylindrical center, 
and a goose neck think with
a black Bakelite ending that
fit the users mouth and lips.
The user (not me) would
speak or read into this tube
think over his or her mouth,
and some sort of ticker-tape 
and etching would take place,
and whatever was just voiced
would have been 'recorded'
or turned into a paper-punched
record and a waxen cylinder.
I think that's how it went. A
'Dictation Machine,' I guess
is what it all later turned out
being called. I suppose a lot 
of secretaries used to use them,
until outmoded. The machines.
I don't know about the secretaries.
Another funny thing, about 8 
or so years later, I remember
finding one of these is the trash
somewhere. With my scant
knowledge and memory of 
having seen one, I realized 
what it was. I brought it home,
thinking it was worth a bunch,
but it turned it to be nothing,
and I can recall it, about 1966,
out in my yard, weathered, wet,
forgotten, in all sorts of weather;
and then finally just thrown out
once more as trash. Funny, how
technology just runs over itself
and leaves its trash behind. Think
of all the cast-off phones and 
computers in mounds allover
in places like China, Egypt,
and Africa. What a world!
-
I don't know whatever happened
to Sol Wolfman; nor to his new
hire sidekick. I can't recreate
where his office was, except 
to say Broad Street, Newark.
This was all vivid and definable
to me as memory and experience,
but the logistics and actual gambits
escape me. I was to be put on a
'witness' stand, though I'd really
'witnessed' nothing. That too
baffled me, as a misuse of words,
if nothing else. If something
'happens' to you, can you still
be said to have 'witnessed' it?
I didn't think so; other things
of the instant take over  -  you
witness nothing. It's others who
do the witnessing. Go pick
on them, you cigar-chomping
devil-hound you.




Sunday, December 30, 2018

11,434. HOW COME

HOW COME
How come there are no capital 
numbers like there are capital 
letters. I want an uppercase
$104,888,451,675.00 sent
my way by Parcel Post. OK?

11,433. HAPPY NEW YEAR, TOGGLE-SWITCH TOMMY

HAPPY NEW YEAR, 
TOGGLE-SWITCH TOMMY
It's the solid end of another spoiled
year. Goddamn and barumpparum.
The Devil takes the hindmost and the
cat's got your tongue. Nothing we can
do to celebrate but pack these crates
and gun the Chevy to the lake.
-
I'll go first if Patty-Cake Mary doesn't
come : her sister's OK, but she's so glum.

11,432. GOSH ALMIGHTY, WINGMAN

GOSH ALMIGHTY, WINGMAN
I hung my hat. There was no door.
I hung the the door that was no more.
Gosh almighty, Wingman, did you
see that? He's standing on the floor.
-
Encyclopedias will tell us of the
Aurora Borealis : those Northern
Lights we speak of down here in
the South. Wingman, did you see?
-
The filtered coach between us makes 
a matted head, and all those people
that I know are gone and running;
off at the mouth, not feet, instead.
Gosh almighty, Wingman, look!

Saturday, December 29, 2018

11,431. RUDIMENTS, pt. 549

RUDIMENTS, pt. 549
('of thee I sing')
I want to backtrack a little
here and remark some more
on my ocean-going vessel father.
Of whom I wrote about: the days
fishing, the fish, and the crabs, 
and the rowboats and the deep
sea and the outboard motors.
In the days around 1960, he 
was maybe 35-38 years old.
Full of energy and ready to
go. We would get to these
small spots of isolated beach
and sand that he knew of,
pitch the boat, and spend some 
time on these little beaches.
Perhaps I'd swim while he
surf-fished. As we did this,
most of the time there would
be five, six, ten other people
doing the same thing, or pretty
much the same. Some kids, lots
of adults. I made do with passing
the time as I would.
-
One day we were there, on one of
these sand outposts, and among
the people fishing was a young
kid, a boy, maybe 12 or 14. I'm
just guessing. I still don't know
how it happened, in one of those
casting motions with the fishpole
and all, he snagged his own foot
as he cast, and the hook went
deep into the base of his foot.
The barbed hook. A barbed hook,
you may or may not know  -  as are
all fishing hooks  -  are made so as
to be difficult in extricating, as
that 'barb' on the hook's end is
made and designed so it will
not easily leave the pulp-body
it enters. The barb, besides 
keeping the hook in place, rips
and tears the offending tissue
on the way out. If you just pull
and tug, lots of damage can ensue.
This all sounds pretty cryptic and
dire, and perhaps it was  -  in any
case, this kid had gotten the hook
somehow set really good into the
flesh mass of the bottom of his foot.
-
A jumble ensued, of people
not sure what to do, gathering
around the kid in some sort of,
if not 'pain' then anxiety for sure,
over what had happened. I'm not
even sure where we were, and
I guess no one else either knew
the precise procedure for getting
help. Coast Guard, rescue, transport,
assistance, etc. In today's world,
I don't think this would ever any
more happen, but in 1960 apparently 
the wide-world of being was quite
different. In any case, no one gave
thought to liability, damages, law,
suing, etc. My father whipped 
out a belt knife, told the kid to
lie down, bite his (own) hand if
he had to, and he took the kid's
foot in his grip. With which
grip he (almost expertly, it 
seemed), began gouging and 
cutting into this kid's foot, and
long and well enough to unmask
and pull out the offending hook.
-
Balance need and process, please,
if you would. This youngster,
though now free of the hook, had
a deeply-carved cut and gouge in 
the base of his foot, along with
blood and the rest. The foot was
salt-water cleansed, and wrapped.
The kid was OK. My father was
thanked. The crisis moved on.
-
Oddly, this moment allowed me
a distance, a place outside of the
'action,' since I wasn't involved,
to watch all this take place. It was
all quite curious : I knew my
father's actions and ways and the
mannerisms by which he operated.
That was all normal. But to see
complete strangers having faith
enough for, or allowing, this 
sort of beachfront mini-surgery
was startling. I can remember
my father saying something like,
'Don't worry, salt water cures
everything. Make sure you keep
it in the surf here for a while.
Let it soak.' Pretty much that
was it. No exchanges of information,
identification, no police, or marine
police anyway, activity on scene.
Just a quick and almost cursory
attack at the problem with,
basically, the same gutting 
knife he used on fish. I don't
think any of this would have
happened today.
-
By the same token  - and from 
the complete other angle  -  I don't
think that anyone BUT my father
would have so heedlessly and in
a headstrong fashion, ventured 
into that situation. Knife-blade,
incision, cutting and gouging
like that. No second-thoughts,
no hesitation. I had to think,
was he foolish, unbound, crazy,
too giving, or just innocent? It's
just like a naive person to dive
into a situation such as this,
have the get get gangrene or an
infection, and be sued and brought
up on charges. Smashing headlong,
as it were, into the other realities
of people's angers and hesitation
and the sorts of stand-offish behavior
that did in, or had done in, for pity's
sake, a scant 5 or 6 years previous,
Kitty Genovese on the streets of
New York City. (If you don't
know the reference there, you can 
look it up. Let's call it 'bystander
indifference?').
-
Nothing more was much ever 
said about this; which was another 
weird thing that baffled me. I'm the 
sort of person who, after something 
like that, would have demanded info,
for follow-up and contact. I guess it's
just the way I go  -  but to my father
it just rolled right away into the
never-never land of never happened.
It's like, to me, seeing an avalanche
and never telling anyone  - all that 
stuff rolling down a mountainside, 
trees, homes and, possibly, people, 
getting rolled over and smashed. 
You sort of have to say something.
-
So, anyway, Life-lesson learned
right then and there. It did stay
with me, and has become one of
those watchword things by which
I run  -  beware naivete. Not quite
the same as the situation itself,
yet the lesson I drew from it has
always been to keep a slight remove
from others, others in bad scenes
or situations. Kitty Genovese
notwithstanding; it's always the
token naif who brings others into
their dangerous webs  -  infractions
and mistakes  -  by which the 'others'
in their zeal to help, or what they
think is help, get likewise implicated
or injured by entering another's scene.
The next thing they know, they're
on the other side of the witness stand,
looking out, being drawn deep into
some web of intrigue woven almost
psychotically by the seducer, the
problem-prone one who has suckered
them in. Learn to keep away, and
it's never worth it if you don't.
-
It sounds, perhaps, coarse and nasty,
but it's what life is made up of. One
simply has to develop discernment.
It's a personal matter. I remember
in elementary schools, #4 and #5,
having that ridiculous 'My Country
'Tis of Thee' song pounded into 
my head; we must have had to 
sing that five thousand times in 
those 6 years. Without thinking.
I look back now and realize it all 
as the web being woven, the
enticement of the psychosis of
others being used to drag us in  -
to what, for most of the boys there,
ended up as being the woven web
of inducement that ended up in
Pleiku or Hue. Sweet land of
Liberty. Of thee I sing.