RUDIMENTS, pt. 243
Making Cars
I've written of a lot of things
and a lot of times there are
people who believe none of
it. Nonetheless, I proceed. I
think two of finest moments
may be 'Rarleighbourne Fischbein,
Negotiator For Extra-Terrestrials'
and this one, tentatively titled
'American Youth Hostel,' and
excerpted here. For now. And I
can probably add to these, if I
really think, an immediate five
more, including 'Tommy and
Lenora,' and 'Miasma Arms
Hotel.' And do you know why?
Because they come from truth,
and are real. I love my work.
-
The New York Studio School,
before it was that, was the Whitney
Museum of American Art, about
1924. Founded sometime after the
Armory Show, which showcased
European Art and its movements.
It was founded by Gertrude Vanderbilt
Whitney as a gallery, in a home or
her home (I forget) to show, in
response, American art and phooey
on all that European stuff. There
used to be three brownstones in
a row there, at 8w8th Street, etc.,
and they were combined and
given one frontage when the
museum came to be. Evidences
of all that 1880's stuff was
still inside them - oddly twisting
and connecting staircases, dead-end
walls, and more. It took some
getting used to, and knowledge of
it, to learn the insides. I'd guess it
was a 'conversion' unit for sure, and
early on one of the first. I really
found it congenial to the way my
own brain was mixed, and, in
addition, I became a denizen (the
lone denizen) of the vast and
twisting combined basements,
which, in 1967, still bore all the
shelves and equipment earmarks
of when it was the museum.
Lockable storage sections, a
safe, (I used to tell people, as
I pointed to the safe, especially
if there was a girl present, that
I'd 'invented' safe sex right there,
and I'd ask if they cared to enter).
I was a regular riot.
-
The fourth of these buildings in
a row, on its two base floors, was
the 'American Youth Hostel.' I'll
try to explain. In the years around
1966/7, and after, there was a
great wave of wanderlust which
swept the land, east and west. Here
in the Port of New York, the ships
and planes were daily disgorging
hordes of Summertime travelers.
From Germany, France, England
and Spain - as well as other
places - a wide wave of white
kids, with money and its habits,
would land here to 'vagabond'
themselves for one, two, or
three months along the vast
American scene. To hike, or
to bicycle, or to hitch rides, to
wherever any of that could get
them. Rugged hiker types, with
full gear, would head up to
Bear Mountain to pick up the
Appalachian Trail there and
head up to the trail's end at
Mt. Katahdin, in Maine.
Others would head south,
hitching or riding buses,
and still others would just
get a bicycle and stay put,
exploring what they could
make of the local isles by
bike. They all were loose,
had some money, had quite
interesting girls and girlfriends,
most often, and paraded their
lives around openly, without
schedules, commands or the
needs of interdictions or further
strictures. Most expected to be
done by October, to return home.
England, France, or Germany
would be missing them. I was
fascinated, and aptly watched
everything. There was always
something going on, people
mingling out front, entering and
leaving, bicycles everywhere,
backpacks, cigarettes, talk. It
was pretty wonderful and I've
not seen in again, even on the
very best college campuses. It
was like University, without the
University.
-
I don't always understand why
reality lingers, staying around
as memory or after-image. Often
they are the sorts of things we'd
think we'd never remember but
we do and there they are, lingering:
Ideas. Impressions. Experiences.
Maybe a word or an opinion, an
action or a nod; the look on
someone's face as reaction.
These things are often far
greater than even words can
make them out to be, and with
these memories we go on building
forward. Into time, we bring the
things we are so sure that we're
sure of, turning them too into
something: 'silent echo softly loud,
breaking over things like light with
a start or with a flicker.' I sometimes
think it all goes back to sadness,
and nothing more. Maybe a
sadness of loss, or one of regret.
Not so sure on that. But there is
a certain, ineluctable sadness
that permeates all our lives and to
which we can never point or finger:
Something strange, without a
definition, ghostly, so that we
know it's there though it only
occasionally makes actual motion
towards us. It's more imagined.
BUT, imagined or not it's what
we do the bidding of : All the
great stories and tasks of history,
Alexander's Kingdom, Hannibal's
Herd, Genghis Khan's fearsome
crew. It was the same then as it is
now; just the content is different.
Japan's horrorscope, Dresden's
fire from the skies, pestilential
smokes from the death camps with
piles of awesome bodies burned
and piled, or the stretched necks
of black men lynched amid the
stupid stares of the dumb, white
bastards. We go along without a
whimper.
-
So, in 1967 my bed is a crystal
palace, a dead mattress in an old
fireplace fixed on a plank in the
ground-level basement of some
rich-man's courtyard and right
next to me is the American Youth
Hostel. (I guess, if I was writing
a play, all of that scene would
need detailing in the marginal
scene-setting notes). I used to
think that every sort of kid
imaginable, one or two of each,
came through there, as typecast
tryouts for some drifter's play.
French kids, traipsing across
hippie America on a bicycle,
or trying to - going from here
to there with their delicate fingers
and delicate language, their fat
smokes, Gitanes and Galouises,
and the beautiful, lithesome,
well-traveled girls with their
shaded, sideways smiles of time
and triumph. German guys,
passing along the American time
in their strict and stern manners,
walking through doorways with
their beers and leather pants,
beer from the kettle beer, beer
from the barroom beer. They
enter, tall and white and big and
stand straight ahead. It's that
simple, and always instantly
recognizable, that difference.
Implacable. A vast, old European
stock visits America, to travel
far, to hang east, to go west. It
was all intensely interesting.
They read Tolkien, Hobbit
books, and they annotate their
copies of Alice In Wonderland.
They smoke, they drink, and they
bed down as they may. The
Spanish were few and far
between, it seemed, like
passing strangers on a train;
but these were Franco years, so
I sensed to understand.
-
The youth hostel was always open,
open all night. It seemed Europeans
kept different hours than did the
Americans, even in New York.
It was always taking someone in,
giving a place to sleep or stay,
or food, or connection. 'International
Vagrancy,' I took to calling it.
This was all a very horrid period
of time - as I've mentioned before -
there were draft problems, fights
in the streets, slogans, marches,
shouting and shoving too. There
were American hippie kids
running to stay free, confusedly,
in the 'land of the free.' To run,
and steal, and disenfranchise
themselves from the ridiculous
flames of ire they were seeing.
Manhattan had its own murderous
deportment, a reinforcing of its
own pillage and politics. It was,
all told, pretty incredible.
-
Sometimes we'd sit around. A
few cigarettes, some wine or
beer, talk (I understood their
harsh versions of American
English, and only a little of
what they spoke in their own
tongues. Except for the most
beautiful British tongue, which
language and which accent I could
listen to forever, trying to note
locales and places and dictions).
I felt they all were still living
in their own, home, international
time and somehow now seeing
from the inside out the old
American mansion they heard
so much about. Where 'we' lived.
To them I was a plural, it seemed,
representing America. As I sat
to thinking about it, I realized I
may be on a thousand
postcards to home.
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