Wednesday, January 31, 2018

10,469. DISENFRANCHISED

DISENFRANCHISED
I left pain, I thought, on the right
side of my heart. And then you 
came along  - and the mysteries
of the forest were opened, and I
walked right in : some Amazon
forest locus of a presentiment of
tomorrow. You reminded me all
the time of Louise Nevelson. Don't
get a big head, that's not a real
compliment. She was a pesky
lady no other artists liked.
-
Have you ever seen her work?
Ugh? Too many solid chunks of 
woodcraft. If you ask me. Oh,
I thought you had.

10,468. THE MORE SWAGGIER I GET

THE MORE SWAGGIER I GET
Yeah man, I'm that hip : the more 
swaggier I get, the less you can 
keep up. Dumbfounded stinking 
idol  -  like worshipping the monkey
tree with no monkeys around. Some
Buddhist guy here wants to disappear. 
I say 'sure, go ahead. I won't miss ya!' 
I wear a scapular made of pancakes; 
and I keep a chandelier made of ice 
for all those cold, cold moments of 
your fancy-beating heart.

10,467. U. S. MAIL

U.S. MAIL
I wouldn't come down with a fever
if I were you  -  there's something
going around. A definite sort of 
malaise I want no part of. These
people seem to cough at will. I
can feel lost and sick already, as
in some brash Ikea treadway with
arrows on the floor, a few small
pencils scattered around, and those 
silly fabric rulers they give away
for free. No wonder disease is 
rampant. Lamps, and dressers,
mirrors and chests of drawers.
-
Next Tuesday is the 10th already.
Gosh then, what should we do
before that? Pay this back or go
deeper in dept? Every time I turn
around, already there's another
bill in the box to pay. God I hate
the U.S. Mail.

10,466. THE OLDEST CIVIL WAR

THE OLDEST CIVIL WAR
The soldier dead were all men;
Lying scattered on the ground like 
that, we'd have to guess  -  property
of the State? Wasn't this then a
contract? And does not then the
State now have to return certain
obligations? An accounting for
this destruction of human terror?

10,465. AND EVERY SO OFTEN

AND EVERY SO OFTEN
Tired of myself : egg crate cartoon wastrel.
The listening garb I wear is some old monk's
castle. Nodding off to Saturday's world.
-
Sit you me down and share this morsel.
Meatloaf in the pot nine days old. But there's
no pot in the meat; and ain't that cold.
-
I parked my Grub-Hub truck down by the
marina because I just knew you'r be calling.
Even brought the mustard just you like.
-
There's a Spanish carousel in that park, from
1841. It still works, though it's some weird
hand-crank mover. All the tired horses.
-
How far they've come.

10,464. RUDIMENTS, pt. 212

RUDIMENTS, pt. 212
Making Cars
The first time I ever saw a
Tesla was in Princeton : the
very early hours there would
bring out these on-the-way-to-
office types, stopping and 
dashing in, to either Small
World, or Starbucks, for their
coffee. A veritable array of
expensive cars set loose. I
for some reason thought this
was a one-off car that the guy
himself had manufactured. I'd
had no exposure before that to
any of this Tesla electric-car auto
manufacture stuff. After enough
times I began talking with the guy,
and we'd go over his car, and I
learned the finer points of Tesla
electric ownership   - range,
charging, power, expense, etc.
These were all big money people,
and this guy was quite proud of
his Tesla ownership. (Here's that
moral-superiority riff again). After
a while, roundabout conversations,
we realized, (he, jokingly  -  me, to
heart), that the entire idea of Tesla
automotive design was essentially a
farce. This bothered me to no end, 
but to him it was massive, miraculous
marketing. You see, the Tesla is
built and designed as if it was a large,
long-hood, muscular, powerful car.
Like some sort of big Jaguar or 
Maserati. It's all illusion  -  the car 
itself needs none of that. It could 
be shaped like a shoebox as long
as the component batteries and
electric motor were in place. He 
said, in fact, that they could even 
be purchased, somehow, with the 
recorded sound of a bristling, 
mechanical power-plant, as if it
WAS a muscle-car. Now I don't
know what obligation, (if any),
that pretension has towards function,
but it seems to me that something
here was amiss  -  the pretense of
a muscle-car in the real-coat of
a lamb  - but that falsity suited this
fellow just right. It's an electric
motor, and if that's the choice you've
made, why then does it need to look
like it isn't? May be it was all
OK and of no matter anyway. I
didn't want to go getting all filled
with philosophical insight over this
issue, but it seemed to me, as I
thought about it, fairly fitting. He'd
be the guy to eat the sugar cube, but
leave out the LSD droplets that were
in all his friends' cubes, just to say
he was there. Come to think of it, as
he ordered his daily 'de-caf' coffee
it made total sense. Completely.
A Tesla was the equivalent.
-
That was, I suppose, what passed for
the muscular in Princeton. Fake cars.
They probably were working on
having fire trucks that no longer had 
to make loud noise  -  just a sign out
front reading, 'Loud Fire-Truck Noise!'
to which you'd have to react. As I said
previously, in the early morning hours  
-  5:30 or so on  - the Royal Foods trucks
and Sysco Systems trucks would come
barreling in, each with two or three pallets 
of a day's supply of eggs, butter, bread,
cold cuts, meats, vegetables, milks, sauces,
etc. Places like 'Olive's' and 'Lahiere's'  - 
when it was there; 'Alchemist & Barrister.'
'The Nassau Inn', and many others. There
were all sorts of dining places. The army 
of slow-street trucks   - along the streets 
yet too early for any real traffic  -  was 
met by a mass of Mexican heads from 
below the ground. They'd come tumbling
out from the Trenton or New Brunswick
buses, 15 at a time, and walk down the
street to their jobs, both males and
females  -  chattering away and almost
running in place  -  plus there was an
entire bevy of bicycle-riding, also
Hispanic, locals who lived about and
reported in. These folks manned every
kitchen, washroom, dish-wash station,
pizzeria, and sandwich job you could
find. Beneath the sidewalks, they worked
monumentally each morning  -  ice, rain,
snow, hail  -  to get all this stuff in and
down to the basements as quickly as they
could. Deep, narrow stairways, close
quarters, ramps and rollers. I truly
don't think there was a meal in town 
that you could by that had not been
prepared by someone other than the
properly named or shown and/or the
titular name and ownership. Massimo's:
pizza, by Mexicans. 'Olive's' - an otherwise
pert and half-classy take-out venue for
heavily detailed fresh and fast foods  - 
Mexicans and Hondurans, top to
bottom. It was the same everywhere.
-
Princeton was a bubbling illusion,
and even in the University dining spots
and lounges, all the food service, or 80%
of it anyway, was by Central Americans.
I used to try to dwell on this, thinking,
'what has happened here? How have we
transformed all this, this country, from
one thing into another?' There was an
entire, sub-class industry of doers and
servers, underground and out of sight,
and I just wasn't sure this sort of thing
had ever been in the planning of the
nation. Unseen to anyone, a whole
sub-set of serfs doing the all of the
dirty bidding. The whereabouts of all
this complicity, I figured I could see  -  
all around me. But it was all, by others,
unspoken and unmentioned. I knew
it had happened in New York, and had
seen much the same thing, but there it
was all cut-throat living and people
swam or drowned. Here, by contrast,
it was a form of subterfuge  - of others 
climbing up all atop the servant class
of slobs that they kept hidden. There
was no talk of this. In the center of
Witherspoon Street, by the library,
there was a sushi place run by the
most in-your-face, brash Asian guy.
He worked; took orders, cut fish and
prepared the such rolls and seaweed,
all the while carrying on a monologue 
of sorts for anyone to hear. Almost
embarrassingly rude  -  a young couple
would come in, clingy and shy, to sit
and order. He'd start going at them :
'So; good looking girl! You lucky guy!
She giving you much yet, ha! I bet
you getting plenty!' Not to be leaving
anyone out, he'd then turn to the girl
and say 'And I bet you likee too, ha!'
Sometimes I'd sit there eating shark
or eel rolls, almost in shock.
-
I never knew how much of any of this
the rest of Princeton knew, but it was
out there, as general knowledge, and
just went on. A co-worker of mine, 
named Andrew, first sent me there  -
'Go, go, you gotta' hear this stuff; you
won't believe it.' I went. Andrew used
to go almost every day, at his lunch 
time, for 'eel.' He'd come pack every
time all fired up by what he'd witnessed.
Was this some sort of ersatz Princeton
theater, a play-act to keep people amused?
What did this crazy guy know? How 
aware was he, of how he came across,
what it all looked like? At least it was
authentic  -  a sushi place with but
two real Asian workers. For real.
Andrew lived in town, was a real
Princeton person, all his life. He soon
left the bookstore, after some feud
with management, and went back to
his old jobs, at the far other end of 
Princeton, at some retreat/monastery
place where he helped take care of
'severely-challenged' and troubled, 
kids, and at the local health-and 
natural-foods store. I last saw him out 
on the library plaza, quite near the sushi 
guy's place, actually,  years back, taking 
names and donations for Occupy New York.
He remembered me, and said, 'You likee?'
-
Everything else in Princeton was just
a twist away from real lemon: the nose
in the air type, for whom buying a
pen was a huge process. Let alone
the leather travel-journal. The
sublime there ran right alongside
 the ridiculous, and neither saw each 
other  -  because, and by design, they
made sure to remain invisible all
across the board. No racism to be
admitted; nor subservience, or
superiority, or disdain or hatred.
 It just all had to work, because
the cameras were always on.




Tuesday, January 30, 2018

10,463. RINGING THE HOMES

RINGING THE HOMES
At 9, I crossed the border for
the very first time : not me alone,
with my family in tow. I didn't
know the land, or even what they
called it. 'Mericum' or something
like that. My Uncle Amos told me 
first : 'This will not be what you're
used to, Henry, but do not worry
for we are here.' My Aunt Maisie,
still crying, just nodded. She held
a scrunched up little towel in her
hands  -  to dab her eyes, it seemed.
'Can I just as soon get a dog?' I
remember asking that. My father
said, 'Henry, we'll have to see.'
He always said funny things, and
I expected more but nothing came.
Just the day before, I'd asked what
we'd be doing, because I knew it
was coming soon. He laughed, and
roughed my hair. 'First things first
when we get to the Moon.'

10,462. FORCE-FED BABIES

FORCE-FED  BABIES
Live the longest. I read that on
the doctor's sheet hanging over
my head. Was that some vital
dictate? Medical information?
Something new. I immediately 
felt that way. 'Here, here, eat, 
eat.' Seventeen different words
for stuffing. What language
was this?

10,461. RUDIMENTS, pt. 211

RUDIMENTS, pt. 211
Making Cars
I've always liked things simple
and I've mostly (tried to) kept
things that way. I really can't
stand pretension and complication.
I like things in their purity of one;
without all that 'this means that
and this is therefore connected
to that, which means this....' All
the old-school loyalty and the
pretending at social station. It
really grates. When I got to
Princeton, I had to deal with 
all of that, as it was always 
ongoing  -  a bit of a hum of
haughtiness was everywhere.
Emulated by others, the town
had becoming a benchmark
place to which other, lesser, 
towns aspired. Whatever. The
ambiance is of a piece, and really
not worth the extra four bucks
it probably adds to everything.
My ways of living have always
been in the 'poor' category  -  so
little of any of those things had the
markings of class or higher culture.
Princeton sort of took the cake.
With a well-established and well
connected coffee shop already in
place, for instance, only Princeton
would get upset when a Starbucks
decides to come in to town. It was
all they could do to 'say' them, let
alone have the likes of a real Burger 
King (there had been one but they 
forced it out because of smell 
and sidewalk mess  -  after what
they termed 'repeated fines and
infractions') in town. The sloppy, 
inefficient use of property at 
the train station for the worst, 
anarchic 'WaWa' convenience
store you'd ever seen, was also
only tolerated because it was a
student hub  -  or more precisely
the place for drunk and sexually
outlandish students on late-night
beer-bash carryovers and pot 
marathons, to go and get their 
snacks and bananas at all hours  
-  and, being at the train station 
it was on the fringe of everything
and thus tolerable. But even then 
it was full of itself. The 'Real' 
Princetonians abhorred the place  
- but I'd bet a million that when 
no one was looking enough of 
them, themselves, sneaked their 
ways into there, ostensibly 
while 'waiting for the train,' and 
stealthily consumed their Snickers, 
Milky Way, or chips. It was all 
pretense; like most else there.
-
The funny thing is that pretense 
is completely inefficient, and 
scientifically so  -  it's all about
indirect detours to get to some 
other, pretend, place so as to 
claim it as your station. 'Ego-fied'
living. An entire boro of it.
-
But the people themselves 
claimed intelligence and wisdom
for the prime efficiency of both
their wealth and their finer habits.
They doubled down, very inefficiently, 
on their pretense of bring 'gold'  -  
while dining expensively at one
or the other of any of the 
Nassau/Witherspoon eateries. 
Local produce. Liberal values. 
Open mindedness (yeah, right). 
A naturally slaughtered beef
is still is large slab of tortured, 
truncated bleeding meet on 
the plate, whether it was done
with a silver bludgeon or a 
metal spike to the skull.
And I'm sure the bathrooms 
allowed no smell.
-
One of the other pretensions
of things was language, and 
pronunciation  -  like a classical
music station, where that too is
all in vogue (one year it's Carnegie
Hall; the next year it's 'Car-nay-gie'
Hall, and back again). The high-toned
style of bullshit changes. I ran
into this often enough, and used
to mess with their heads too  -  at
the bookstore it was easy. We had
an upstairs guy, Mark  -  all full
of this stuff. I'd go up with a book
and say, 'Here's the Weber you asked
for.'   -  'Oh, no, no, that's 'Veyber,'
he'd seriously correct me. I'll look
at him laughing and say, 'Wait, I'll
go back and get that bio of Richie
Wagner for you.' Schluphead. How
do you pronounce that? It wasn't
just him, and I don't mean to poke
fun, it's just that it's too easy. That
sort of thing was everywhere. The
owner of the place, in fact, was
probably the worst offender  -  he
had an entire, other voice he'd
use when he wanted to put forth
his 'pretense.' With all those
professors and such. It was 
funny, and it was also very 
deliberate, (inefficient), nothing
smooth about it : slowed down
cadence, a certain internal twisting
of the words, jocular pauses, head
dips. He'd come out all superior,
and you'd end up at the other end
of his at-your-expense ride. But, in
the end, I always thought, the joke
was on him because he was putzing
around like a salt-seller selling books
as deals, in the most under-handed 
fashion no less, licking the gap for
70 cents here, 50 cents there, and
multiplied out. Like any tiny
east-euro merchant anywhere.
-
What grated me then and does 
now, the most is the pose. No matter 
what the situation  -  today's blighted 
world has plenty of them  -  the issue 
itself, or the issues, plural, or the truths, 
plural AND singular, never get faced 
off. It's all abut stance, and about the
projection of some shitty 'moral' 
superiority, in the vein of 'I am
better than you because I think
higher than you do,' and Princeton
is a perfect concrete example of that 
abstract. A real person (think of Liu,
the Chinese guy from two chapters 
back, hosing down the front of his 
little store each morning, and setting 
up his goods and wares), does what 
he or she needs to do, sets out to get
it done, any old way they see fit. They
don't 'reflect' on what their aims and
efforts may appear as, or fit into. They
merely and authentically 'do.' In
Princeton, the most leftist mugwumps
you'd find, with all their smug and
superior airs and 'proper' thought,
they get the same things done, but 
it's DONE for them by underlings. 
Maybe called racism, maybe not.
Like snarky southern Manor dwellers, 
they hire the Mexican and Central 
Americans to 'do' their higher-toned 
begging for them. The windows and
sidewalks (I'd see it each morning)
are washed down by low-slung
immigrant shadow-people. The 
food trucks are unloaded, and the
food stacks are brought downstairs,
through the little below-the-sidewalk
entryways, warrens of filth and debris,
by shadow-figures in the semi-dark
of daybreak. The sinks and stalls and
bathrooms are washed and cleaned,
the dishes and plates are moved and
scored, by an entirely secondary
underworld of workers. All so that
the townfolk, with their high-stance
loyalties, can talk their smug rhetoric,
and send their books and care-packages
to prisoners, lifers, cop-killers and
thieves, while they satisfy themselves
that they are reforming and redeeming
people, and bettering society by their
cheesy, ill-founded deals. It was
as 'simple,' always, as that.






10,460. SHOOTING INTO THE VOID

SHOOTING INTO THE VOID
Pistoleros, 1,2,3. The world ends like
this : riding cheap tank tracks over
all this rubble, like a mental sore
that wants to take over. Marshall
Tito sis-boom-bah. Chairman Mao,
rah-rah-rah. This thing still smokes,
twenty-five broken places where
families once lived : kids crying
and parents dying. And if it's the
other way around, so what. Anyway,
the world ends not with a bang, but
with a whimper. Remember that?
Building rubble. Real estate bubble.
All these guys sure know the way.

Monday, January 29, 2018

10,459. RUDIMENTS, pt. 210

RUDIMENTS, pt. 210
Making Cars
Going like gangbusters sometimes
gets you nowhere : everything ends
up broken and you're licking your
wounds. Frantic words of haste, and
worries about demolition seem all
around. One time, almost in despair,
I took a job at a car wash. Yeah, like
an idiot. It's an automated line, they
hand you a rag, say stand at the end 
and swab the cars down, and hope
for tips. The car wash itself was a
simple fee, like $2.50. We got a dollar
and a half an hour, for working, and a
75 cents, say, three quarters, was seen
as a monstrous tip. Shared in a pot,
supposedly, to be split later for 
everyone on that shift to be cut in.
I never watched it close, never cared,
and never knew if I'd been cheated.
It didn't matter, and such were the
ways  -  half the tips never made
it to any bucket anyway, and I wasn't
going to be the one to go up against
any one or two of these clowns. Man,
these guys invented Brawny, back 
than  -  paper towel or not. New York
street-smart, car-wash, protocol.
Seeing up girls' dresses and stuff
was more fun anyway  -  it was a 
game. Skirts, and dresses, but skirts
really, in that era were about 14 
inches long if you were (un)lucky. 
Everybody knew this stuff, so no
one was fooling anyone  -  any little
stretch or bending over, yeah, of
course, mostly got you a view. I
see London, I see France, however
that rhyme went  -  man, were times
lame. But working a car wash routine
for any number of hours, a person
was crazy in a minute, had to have 
something going, and by today's
standards anybody there who ever
touched a rag would be locked up
or sent out of town for half the
stuff that went on. Whatever those
screaming women call themselves
today, back then they, I guess,
would have died of apoplexy. 
The place was killer. Pity the poor
girls working there too. The wet,
damp locker room, sitting area,
for breaks and hanging out and 
lunch, God forgive the transgressions.
NYC for sure. There was some
really jerk-off song around then too,
I think it was a parody song of a
Beatles thing  -  'Lucy in the Sky,
with lots of what you want....' -
it just went on from there and 
was a terrible song but it was 
like the theme song of the stupid 
break room. That and another
creepy song called 'Incense and 
Peppermint,' (Curse of Mankind)....'
another mindless 'huh?' song 
in my mind. But, this whole
car wash thing was quick and easy,
come and go  -  no one cared how
long and when you stayed, came, 
or left. Mostly, it was something 
to do and come away with 8 or 
10 bucks. I didn't do it long. I
hated it. And it seemed to have 
nothing to do with the city either.
Why bother? It was working there, 
 to be distant, or be one of the 
idiot street-goofs, if you cared to
be. Nothing mattered. This was
Broadway and Houston Street,
like the center of the lower 
echelon world : there'd be taxi
guys in a hurry, weird guys in
no hurry at all, street-people and
street-ladies, fruit-pickers, dope
fiends, nut-cases, half-sexers and
all that mis-alliance stuff that's 
now taken for granted but back 
then was was just totally 
freaked-out weird. Failed rock
and rollers, and failed mass 
murderers too. 'Yeah, yeah, dude,
you can have the tip, go ahead,
it yours; I'm here for my God-damn
health OK?' Two hours later he's
out of his mind somewhere, on 
your money. Square deal, my ass.
-
The role of a car in New York is,
and was then too, pretty odd. I
always wondered why people 
bothered, but I can also see why -  
mass transit's like having diarrhea 
in Calcutta and not being able to 
move. Stuck in place; and it's real 
bad.  I'd rather sit alone in my 
car any day, traffic or not. BUT, 
no excuse is that  -  having a car 
in New York, and then  -  to boot  -  
wanting to have it washed, is a 
pretty clear straight line to foolishness. 
The place, first off, is like dent-a-
minute unforgiving, so any worries
about the state of your auto is a 
waste of time; shiny or not, it's 
going to dent. The streets are 
clogged; you can't park, unless 
you're willing to fork over a 
million bucks for fifteen minutes 
of parking time, or close. Cars 
are always getting blocked in  -  
double-parked truck deliveries 
and guys who have no clue 
about time or the clock. Nitwit 
people passing out at your 
bumper, or in the gutter, or
eating on your hood or pissing 
on your bumper. Between-car 
activities  are a real riot. 
Besides the crime. The place 
is made  for the vertical, 
for UP; everything is vertical, 
and any of these little lateral, 
cross-currents of streets leading 
to clogged entries for bridges 
and tunnels is like a well-designed 
torture, plus there's no freaking 
bathrooms really, anywhere, unless 
you know the secret map of things, 
but even then you can't just park 
and pee. Might be a million bucks 
in that idea, if someone could 
figure it out. Most people just 
end up pissing in a big bottle 
or plastic container or soda-bottle, 
and the bottles are placed at the 
curb, looking like flat  beer, later. 
God helps those who help 
themselves. Maybe.
-
The biggest idea in New York is
about survival  -  for the regular
person, living there, or trying to
eke it out  -  like a thousands 
dollars a day should about do it.
For all the other people, the ones 
who come and go, travel in, travel
out, trains, cars, subways, and
buses, it's about money instead.
Making a bundle,  career-stuff,
going along with all the current
trends and riding the money-wave
while it happens. 'Going like 
gangbusters,' is the way, I guess,
I originally phrased it, here, when
I began  -  yeah, that works.