RUDIMENTS, pt. 201
Making Cars
I can admit to being awfully
depressed, often enough -
depressed to the point not
of dysfunction, just more of
anger. The anger that gets
produced by stupidity. It's
as if, my entire life, people
have lied to me and just
kept on doing it. I don't
mean about where something
is, or who did what. I mean
more along the cosmic scale
of things. The whodunit of
existence. It was partially
that sort of feeling that led me
away, as I see it now, to the
outlier places of deep Pennsylvania.
Like that guy with the walnut
farm, chipping away at gravestones,
everything was of another world.
What did it mean to say, 'walnut
farm?' It wasn't that at all. Then to
call it, or not to call it, a stonecutter's
cabin would be the question; which
is more of what it was. Hovel, Retreat.
Hideaway. Trying to sell it as a house
made no sense, for it wasn't that;
and that's what I responded to, that
'in-betweeness' of both. It answered
to my sense of depression, and also
to my anger : everyone always trying
to gloss things over. Why couldn't
anyone just come out and state 'If
you're looking to disappear and be
done with the world, this is probably
the place for you.'
-
Funny, how things are. The entire
picture gets misrepresented and we
all buy into it. Some of those houses
in Pennsylvania, at the other extreme,
were pretty presentable, for sure, both
inside and out. Old family names and
customs, big heavy timbers, wavy
glass, and very well-placed, front
picture windows looking out over
lands that once must have been
perfect, 85 years previous. Once
the little farm-roads got covered
with asphalt and became widened
roads, all that old perspective changed.
This little place in its low-hollow had
none of that; it could still have been
1924 right there. I was so taken with
that idea that I forgot about light, and
drainage, and water, and being dry.
But for the sake of a sale, you see,
even this was presented as a
marketable parcel and given over
to the use of all those code-words
Realtors use : homey, fix'er-upper,
in need of TLC, etc.
-
My problem, even back then, right
when it was starting out, was that I
had stepped out of my proper shape
and clothing and put myself into a
situation I had no business getting
into - marriage and child. It's taken
a long time to admit that to myself,
and I don't rue my personal history,
but I do own up to my own errors
here. It all ended up putting me into
situations that eventually gobbled up
my life and time, kept me from
pursuing my real interests, and
brought me to locales I'd otherwise
have never gotten into. In addition,
I let myself get pulled away from
something I'd found that I did
really want. My father's insistence
on taking the practical route and
buying the 'other' place ( mentioned in
the previous chapter) again rattled
my perspective, off a dash or two from
my own wishes. I settled it personally,
but I still knew what was missing.
In any case, leaving behind the low
piece of dark, dank walnut-farm
bottom land was a mystery to me,
especially since, after that point, I
was never able again to find it. I'd left
no markers, or personal notices of
routes or landmarks to get me back
to it; so I never did find out where
it was or what had happened
to it, and the old guy.
-
And all of that buying and inhabiting
of the new house opened up for me yet
another weird cosmic space, and it's
one that still often haunts my dreams.
In that other house, the one I eventually
purchased and inhabited, the dream world
set in : it was bizarre. I'd never before
been in a place that was larger and
more expansive inside then outside.
And it grew, the more I entered it, it
kept expanding. It very much startled
me (years later, at the Gotham Book
Mart, in NYC, I found that some guy
had actually written, about 1999 or so,
a novel, or a book anyway, about a
house of this very description - a
house that grew as you got more and
more inside it). I thought it was my
experience alone. I still to this
day (or night) have vivid dreams
of this house I left long ago, and
it is still expanding and taking me in,
inviting me into it's opening places and
rooms and libraries. There's been
nothing like it, ever, anywhere else, for
me - although those weird basement
levels of the Studio School came close
and often played the same, mind-bending
tricks on me. But I know that this
house still lives on for me, and has
grown with pieces of itself inside me,
opening and bringing me to other places
and other levels or resource and reality.
-
So much for that. The big houses, as
I was saying, in Pennsylvania, were
all along roads - that transformation
which I mentioned - since I guess
the roads, as farm and wagon paths,
were the trade routes for the goods
and foodstuffs of these large farm
and landowners originally, and it
was only right, or fitting anyway,
that their own trade routes then
would become the very roads that
choked them. Their own wealth had
done them in. But these old, large,
sprawling homes remained, and in
them the old family names - even
a few between which intermarriages
had made united combinations of
land, riches, children, operations
and families. There were dirt roads,
real large ones, straight and endless,
too. They were just off the main
roads, between towns, (which
popped up every 6 or 7 miles,
even if just a crossroads and
a grocer or car and tire shop and
maybe a church or two, spires
and small graveyards), and those
dirt roads were where the real
magic was - and still is, some.
Over the last 2 years I've returned
a few times, to see, and travel them,
for myself. They goes on seemingly
forever, between places - and these
were the types of roads that were
never shown to outsiders, as in my
case, looking to move in, unless
you asked about them. Kind of a
no-man's club of insiders only.
It was as if 'anybody' could be
allowed to live on the paved
byways, but for the 'hinters' and
the unpaved 'hollers' certain
qualifications first had to be
met. Fracking has changed a
lot of that, at least now in Bradford
County, PA, because some of that
fracked land is now pretty useless,
the owners already have their money,
the water's gone bad, and any real
desirability the place might have
had is now gone. Selling to the
best bid-listing now seems the
best way out. Too bad; just
something else Mankind has
screwed up. It's enough to
get a person depressed.
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