Friday, January 12, 2018

10,400. RUDIMENTS, pt. 193.

RUDIMENTS, pt. 193
Making Cars
A few things I've never liked:
kite-flying, and actually even
the people who fly kites. Just
annoying. And also, going back,
a long time, there used to be
these dark red, plastic water
rocket things. I never quite
understood them, nor what was
up, but they had some sort of a
pump mechanism that would
pressurize the water and then
you'd release it and this plastic
missile type thing went sky-high,
straight up or at whichever angle
you put it. And then it arc'd back
down and landed, or crash-landed.
That was it. I never enjoyed that;
watching it  -  for I never did it.
Other kids would use the rear
area, by my house and by the
tracks, and shoot them up over
the prison-farm area. They got
some sort of thrill. It never
worked for me; first off, I
didn't like the attendant silence,
and, while I enjoyed the arc,
and, with my mind, scaled the
mathematics of the throw-position
and the landing, the whole thing
was anti-climax. Like watching
a clown, maybe, taking off his
make-up. The same went for
kite-flying, but that was a
different scene entire  -  kids
and fathers, all goofy and polite,
making kite tails and discussing
weight and tail-length and
balance, and then fighting the
wind, or hoping for the wind,
running, etc. It all seemed like
just fake fun, a programmed
adventure of something fathers
were supposed to do with their
kids. Then the kite, if and
when it got aloft, just hovered,
stayed there, wiggled a bit,
while everyone ooh'd with
craned neck to watch. To
watch nothing much at all.
The physics and the dynamics
were lost on them, and there
was no Ben Franklin, and his
silver key, around. All that, for
nothing. Not very electrifying.
-
It all seemed to me to always 
be the 'same' moment; these
kids with their Dads and kites,
ice-skating in Winter, or going
to ball games. They were all
doing that, quite in comfort too,
but all they were getting was the
same moment, over and over.
And I guess that was enough 
to satisfy them. For myself, I 
always, by contrast, wanted 
a 'new' moment. I hadn't come 
all this way, to live on this 
stupid street, divorced from
anything real, to re-live the 
same constant over and over: 
school-bells, the fire-whistle 
at 7pm, the sounds of ambulance 
and police car. There's a philosopher 
somewhere, Husserl, I think was 
his last name, who had some
sort of theory about moments :
when we're about to enter a new
moment the body takes in all it
has, all it knows, of all the old
moments previous, and puts all
that experience into play to then
enter and go into whatever the
new experience is or may be.
It's like the courage of a boxer,
going into the ring, or a mountain
fire-fighter entering into those
high-pine-woods, intensely 
blazing, to brave those elements 
and try and stop the flames.
We never walk better than when
we walk alone and untested into
something new. 'Before I encounter
the new moment, I begin with a
sense of my whole experiential
situation.'
-
In most other respects, life seemed
mostly probable to just be a big bore.
I remember one time sitting in some
tiny little hot dog joint by the train
station in Woodbridge   -  this dumpy
little place was there for years and
years though it's gone now. They had
a counter and some few chairs and a
table or two. I was in there one day,
just sitting there, and there were a few
other people around inside, and the TV
was on, and it was something about
Sirhan Sirhan, the guy who'd shot
and killed Robert Kennedy some
time recent. Something to do with his
apprehension or trial or something.
The people inside (and this all
pretty much reminded me of the
kite-flyers, etc., had this middling
interest in what was being shown 
and what they were hearing, but 
you could tell they understood 
nothing of it, it was just another 
same old 'moment' again for
them being undertaken as the 
world and time worked its way 
past them. All they wanted was 
that 'same' again, over and over, 
probably just like the hot dogs 
and soda they ordered, for
the hundredth time. And the 
one thing that perked them 
up, brought them to life, got 
their attention, was that this
guy had two names, both the 
same. Palestinian. Called 
Sirhan Sirhan. Bot that got 
them going. 'We don't call
nobody here Bob Bob, or
Tony Tony. What's with 
that name?' I thought it was 
pretty funny, how all that 
little quirk was enough to
get their attention.
-
So, I found this local life, 
although good enough, to 
be not for me. It all came 
across, again to me, as in that
book-play by Dylan Thomas, 
the Welsh or Irish poet  -  a 
NYC drunk death, out by the 
White Horse on Hudson Street, 
about 1956. He had this book, 
entitled 'Under Milk Wood.'
It fascinated me, for a while  
-  it was about this totally 
nowhere place, clothes and 
laundry hanging on a line, all 
the little houses and chore- ladies 
and wives doing their business,
the quiet lonely mornings, the 
everyday tasks, and all that 
gossip, the house-to- house 
messages and tales. At the 
time it came it, it was pretty 
new, as a concept  - a written 
piece about an ordinary and
everyday place where nothing 
much happened and ordinary 
country-people lived. At first
I really hated that book, couldn't
hardly read it to finish. Then,
after a while, I somehow caught 
on to what it was doing and
what was the premise, and it
sat real well with me from
that point on. Nothing new,
I suppose, just the same, old,
eternal now, floating like
a kite, in the air above.




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