RUDIMENTS, pt. 199
Making Cars
Robert Frost it was who said:
'Home is the place where, when
you go there, they have to take
you in.' I always understood that
but never wanted to have to realize
it. It would be the very last place I'd
ever have wanted to go back to. So
in my mind it was always relegated
to a sort of poetic imagery, a punch,
unheeded. Nice thought and all that,
but of no validity. For one thing, it
meant, or would mean, going back
in time, to seek comfort and cover.
In any case, how a person would ever
be able to undertake that, and make
it work, was beyond me - and I'd
seen enough cases of old parents
dwindling away at home in their
drool years while some wayward,
useless kid who's returned, sits
there and tends to them - same
sink and dishes and tableclothes
and curtains as ever. How depressing.
Maybe it was just me, but the memory
lingering, of all those shows and the
settings of the past starting up again
just gave me the shivers. That world
is dead.
-
Just the memory of lingering haunts.
I always wanted a clean break, a clear
separation. No one ever understood me
anyway, and for me to have to stay
somewhere where, for the umpteenth
time, I'd have to explain myself to my
father, would drive me nuts. I've sort
of killed my old self a hundred times
over, and I couldn't recognize me
anyway. There have been a few times
now where I've had to come to grips
with, to visit with, at wakes, friends
who have died - and they're always
dreadful moments because it's all
fantasy. Someone else's - whoever
cleans and dresses the dead, whichever
parent or sibling gets involved in how
or what they will wear and be situated
for that last moment. It's incredibly
sad, filing past something like that
and knowing you've missed the last
breath and are only now getting to
see someone else's version of your
friend. God, it's all so sad. One time
I had the most rip-roaring snide-ass
sonfabitch friend you'd ever meet, the
kind who'd blow out his nose into his
hand and hand the snot right over to
God, and there he was, in his box,
lid up, looking like himself but not,
and dead as ever, in his flannel shirt
and the identifiable rest - and there,
wrapped around his fingers, in the
most God-awfullest way someone
had twirled red, plastic, rosary beads,
with the black cross at top and showing,
around his two joined hands at his chest.
man, that blew me back five feet. Mercy
slides in under everything, I guess, but
this was in no way representative of
anything but wish and procedure.
Heaven forbid eternity if that's all
it amounts too - but I guess if it
makes the survivors better for it,
it's OK.
-
What's the whole holy hell difference
anyway? We live to achieve a spot
wherein we can stand and claim
comfort, and then we're swooshed
from it anyway. I looked down at
that guy and just muttered my own
form of prayer for eternal submission
to nothing but self. And I think that,
right then, had anybody come by me
to try and start explaining any of their
cockamamie versions of eternity,
they'd have been right there in that
box with him in about 10 seconds.
I respect oneness, period.
-
So, people like Robert Frost, who
somehow end up getting on my
nerves too, seem always to be
running the sharpened edge of
the knife of sentimentality over
your/my neck-skin. He was an OK
poetry guy, crusty, not too diverse.
I'd read he was mean and also a
son-of-a-bitch to to wife and
daughter or kids, I forget. Protean
air about him, the high-side of New
England pomposity and purity. In
some respects - to me anyway -
he was like the pen-version of
Norman Rockwell of paint - a
little too normal, a little too
inquisitive and mixed in with
the ordinary junk of everyday
bad-life. Not so investigatory
as they should have been; either
one of them. I don't know,
just my feelings. It's OK to
be that way, but for me the
randy essence of writing or
painting or any sort of creative
work is in the outlandish and
almost offensive - those out of
bounds moments where one's
drives bring one to the edge of
offending. I've been there lots of
times myself. It makes problems
and it makes enemies too, sometimes.
But, too bad. It beats the sappy
sentimentality of the rocking chair
or the rosary beads. That stuff
gets unspeakable. To begin with,
and not to get cruel about it, but the
rosary beads aren't anything at all
unless you're talking, The prayers,
you know, that are supposed to be
said in contracted and prescribed
fashion. So, what's the sense? It's
like gifting someone a racehorse
with no legs - 'if this racehorse
ain't got legs, then it ain't no
racehorse you're giving me, is it?'
-
Fact of the matter is, there's no
choice about anything. We're all
gonna' die, even if it's one piece
at a time, and when we get there,
it's gotta' take us in. Love and lore,
good feelings and all the heart in
the world. In one fell swoop.
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