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.