RUDIMENTS, pt. 194
Making Cars
I've always figured shortcuts to be
pretty useless - not the walking
kind, those I liked. They are the
ones that you see where countless
footsteps have cut the angle of a
corner, paved or sidewalk, and
gone across through the junk and
scrub-land anyway and forged their
own path. Those I've always loved;
they're very human, very warming,
and bespeak in me a good feel for
for the human predicament we always
find ourselves in. As 'Mankind' the
doer. Some primitive and ancient
tribal drive pushes us to do that,
cut that square and cross it with an
angle, path-worn and bare, and to
heck with the township or the county.
All those silly walkways.
-
No, the shortcuts I refer to are of
some other nature, of another realm.
Like suicide, for instance. I always
wondered what is anyone thinking
with that. It's the end of the same
path we're all on, and it always
beckons, but why the need for the
shortcut? How to answer for that?
Nothing can really be so peculiarly
depressing as to accelerate the normal
drift of things to that extent. Maybe
some extraneous exceptions can be
argued - some horrible diagnosis,
some wasting disease, an incurable
prognosis of death in 8 months. I
guess, but even then who knows.
That's a shortcut I've to date easily
avoided, so I'm entitled to talk big;
but it exemplifies what I'm saying.
One thing I'm noticing now, at my
own advancing age - (get it, the
numbers no longer make me to be
of a celebratory nature) - is how,
at the least, I don't have to give a hoot
about anything really. I'm gone enough,
off the curve, out of the picture, that I
can acceptably just grumble, patter on
about my own past, reel off any of
a hundred enticing stories that can
better what's around - things I've
done or seen - and say to Hell with
the rest. I'm finally unexceptionable;
and if I get any older (I'm hoping to)
I'll be so disgusting as to also be an
'unmentionable.' That's a new club
of which I'm President. The Loyal
Order of the Unmentionables. People
too out of the loop or crotchety or
curmudgeonly, about any of the
present that it's easier to just square
off and punch out some 30 year old
know-it-all punk who knows nothing
anyway and prefers emo-rap. Be gone!
-
I don't expect much anymore from
anybody. The whole stupid fiction
of their living has got me down. Just
the other day - a real story - (this
is how crazy life is) I'm driving my
wife around. She needed something
for next week. First we go to one store;
they don't have it, she doesn't like the
way the store is kept anyway. So we
go to the same store, by name, in
another location about 6 miles off
(yeah, pretty redundant I'd think),
and we get there and some crazy
lady is out front sending all the cars
away. She had a manager tag on,
from one of the stupid mall stores,
and as it turned out the mall was
closed because they'd lost power
in the entire place, all the stores.
None of it mattered to me; I don't
frequent malls in any way, unless
maybe I can bring in an M16 or an
Uzi and get a good shot-vantage point.
So we leave, and, yes, there's a third
one of these stores in another mall,
in East Brunswick, some 10 or 12
miles off. We get there, all is well,
she goes in. While I'm waiting, I
walk the dog, hang around the
perimeter, of the main lot. There's
snow on the ground, and plowed
snow in piles. People occasionally
walk about, but pay no heed, looking
at phones or daydreaming. I'm looking
at the snow piles and, believe this or
not but it's true, in the snowed and
weedy shrubs I start seeing dollar
bills - clinging to things, snow and
branches at the ground level. The
previous day had been windy. It's
a mall, a bunch of stores, and there's
a bank-drive-in nearby too. So be it.
By the time I was (carefully) done,
I'd amassed 12 singles. That's 12
dollars I didn't have 10 minutes
previous. I muttered curses at the
lame-brain who would lose only
singles and not fives or tens, but,
whatever. So, I'm thinking, where
to go with this money? Turn it
into the bank? No. Go into the
nearest store and tell them? Nah.
Wait for the little rent-a-cop guy
to come around again with his
silly amber light blinking on the
car-roof. No, again. I took the
(wet) money and folded it into
my coat pocket. I looked at it
today, and it's now quite dry
and the bills seem quite crisp,
thank you. Not a rich-man's
fortune, don't get me wrong,
and I know that, but a cool
stash to find.
-
So, where was my shortcut there?
What well-worn path should have
brought me to that pass? None. And
sometimes it's just much better to
slowly finish even the dumbest task,
the most routine and idiotic goal, like
leather gloves at Macy's, to find the
surprising nugget at the base of that
slimy tree. People ask me if I would
ever kill myself. I answer no. And
why? 'Because I want to see how
this thing ends up.'
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