RUDIMENTS, pt. 257
Making Cars
I always knew I was in a heap
of a jumble. I could sense it
from day one. A person wants
to be born at or be from some
place grand, with a massive
name. Mittendrof. Walsingsford,
Abeleck. Moraine. I got Bayonne
which was named after someplace
else, and then I got Avenel. Which
was nothing at all, by name or by
reality. Anyway it always sounded
too much to me like 'a venal place.'
I was talking some to someone
once and they said to me that each
of us are always our first zip code.
That we never leave or outgrow
those origins. I knew it was all
wrong, but I didn't tell them
anything, because it just simply
wouldn't be worth it. Both of
my places (I should have told
the dummy) had been from before
ZIP codes. I remember well, about
1962 or '64, when they came out.
And anyway, curiously enough as
it turned out, Avenel was 07001,
and Bayonne was 07002. So what
difference was there anyway. Logic
like that never makes sense. (By
the way, too few people know that
ZIP codes originally actually did
mean, used as an acronym, 'Zoned
Instant Postal' and it was introduced
with this little letter-man character
named 'Zippy.' True stuff.
-
Sometimes, being alive, to me,
meant just a pile of hurt. I very
seldom got things to be right. I
little knew back then the things
most people now take for granted -
ideas like autism and awkwardness
and not fitting in. I knew all about
that stuff, inside, before it was
clinical and discussable. I was
always flitting about, trying to
be funny, enough anyway so as
to glide through situations without
standing out. I mostly disliked the
situations I always found myself
in. The smoke from my fire was
scented with a different aroma,
and I was not sure from where my
kindling had come.
-
The poor guy who rammed me
with that train, the engineer, was
a guy who lived a few towns over,
in Fords, NJ. He was 49, then, in
1958. I swear I worried more about
him after that than I did anything
else. I at least wanted him to know
I'd survived, I was alive. Often I
just wished to knock on his door
and, as he answered, say 'HI!' I
still go past that house now and then,
figuring he's long dead, but just, you
know. Things change and alter, and
time goes on. It's all like one of those
kaleidoscope tubes that you look
into, peering while you turn the
tube and all the mirrored glass
and things inside it move about
and reflect - one, big changeable
nothing. Like life. We move on,
each of us, every day, with each.
step, killing bugs and anything
in the way. No thought involved;
it's all just events that occur,
wordless and unimportant. We
guess. Like that breeze in China
that affects a butterfly here in
New Jersey, who really knows?
-
When you look back over Anglo-
American law, funny things pop up.
Not that most people do that, but
I was always the investigatory sort.
The first patents and copyrights were
issues in the 16th century, although
they weren't 'rights.' They were
'privileges.' Favors granted by the
crown. For Walter Raleigh, on his
'discovery' of Virginia, or in 1611
by King James for the copyright
of the King James Bible, things of
this nature were granted, BUT they
were not understood to involve ideas.
Just 'things.' It was all a cerebral,
strange concept, as much as
'Incorporation' would later be -
an artificial concept, created to
secure safety, and protection, to
the 'business' owner, who, instead
of taking the rap, then had a fake
body (In-Corporo) which had
been created and was able, legally,
to take the rap. Insurance then arose
as an 'idea' in turn, to cover for
and protect, that false 'incorporation'
- sued for damages and claims. The
real guy himself never had to pay up,
because what got sued was the fake
'incorporation' representing him/it.
It was accepted, and became legal.
In the same was as money - another
purely artificial concept that is of
something simply 'created' out of
thin air. It doesn't really exist. You
have $150,000 in the bank. Where
is it? Go get it? That same 'imagined'
money (multiplied by hundreds of
thousands of people), if called for
at once, would precipitate world
riots, BUT, that same thin-air
nowhere money, on paper, exists
and is imaginarily taxed, and
compounded, and then the false
and imaginary 'gains' are also
taxed. Huh? And then accumulations
of all that imagined money are,
in thin air, loaned out by banks
and such for loans and mortgages
to create still more, which then adds
to the imaginary pile, as it grows and
is taxed. The mathematics here is
'All comes from Nothing at all.'
One of the transformations that
occurred in the 18th century was
that 'things' began being superseded
by 'ideas.' The ideas about such things
as 'Intellectual Property' began, and
the picture got clouded. Benjamin
Franklin, for one, refused to patent
any of his ideas, saying 'we should
welcome the opportunity to serve
others by an invention of ours,
freely and generously'. (Try that
hat on for size sometime, Mr.
Bighead). Since those days,
ownership of things had been taken
over by corporations. I knew a guy
at Merck (he lives in Arizona now,
long retired), from Westfield, who
essentially created the formulas
for Rogaine (hair growth, I think
it was), and a form of Viagra
(boner growth I think that was)
and received nothing but his
normal salary for any of it, with
the 'Corporation' he worked for
owning any and all of his intellectual
rights, by pre-agreement. He also
used to laugh a lot, saying those
two pharmaceuticals were very
close to each other, one ingredient
or overlap away. He always said
he was afraid for the day when,
through lab error, some poor guy
was going to wake up one morning
with a very hairy shaft. (He didn't
use the word shaft).
-
I spent a lot of time just delving,
Ripping into things. It was a bit
like a wandering death, or a
walkathon while asleep. Not
much else mattered - NY years
lost in the wilderness, in their way,
though now - seeing it all back -
it's a treasure and I'd not have it
traded for a thing. Uniqueness
counts, even stupid uniqueness.
And, eventually, we each just run
out of time. Too bad.
-
Here's how it appeared to me :
I was a writer/artist type, and
to me the world looked different.
I somehow was able to recognize
that I was detached from reality.
I accepted that. I knew about life
and death and love, to my own
small degree. Secrets that no
'realist' could explain. I was a
fantasist, by those terms. That
kind of stuff either lifts a person
up, or pulls him down and kills
him. I've lost a number of creative
friends, over these years, to their
own self-inflicted deaths. Whether
that's 'success' or failure, only they
could have answered. The drive
of the artist (the real artist, I mean,
not most of the schlubs you find
today), reveals the essential truths
that are buried so deep within but
must come out. Every artist has
that need to find out. To go beyond
the real to a more mystical realm
he or she doesn't know. It's the
equivalent to 'to be or not to be.'
'What am I living for?' Nobody
can really answer that.
-
Eugene O'Neill, as a for instance,
questions that and his answer is that
you have to go into the ghosts; you
have to go as far beneath them as
you can and discover whatever it is
you can get to or bring out. The
spiritual side of life lets you identify
with the sky and how it meets with
the ocean. If you begin to feel it,
understand and sense it, something
happens to you. Things fall away.
You are stronger for being free.
If not, if you do not liberate - that
literal side is where the chaos is,
and the blindness. Where things
fall apart; where the broken
lie about. 'The sky and the sea
give you a freedom of identification
with something above and beyond
and apart. The truth is: Mankind
inside has the capacity to be bigger
than it is on the outside; that capacity
to rise higher than his fears and
his material desires. O'Neill has
his characters vomit out the truth.'
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