Monday, April 30, 2018

10,779. WIDE-ANGLE LENS

WIDE-ANGLE LENS
The way this looks to me is 
that there's too much stuffed
into one picture frame. A life
oughtn't ever be that crowded.
Things fall out, run over the edges.
-
A viewer almost doesn't know 
where to look  -  like a large order 
of popcorn, in a movie-theater 
darkness, there are things falling 
everywhere. In such a darkness, 
you don't even know it and just 
keep gobbling what you have,
never knowing what you've lost.

10,778. YOU HAVE THE MAKINGS OF A GOOD SALAD

YOU HAVE THE MAKINGS 
OF A GOOD SALAD
I like the way your hips just
glide underneath that skirt. That's
very forward of me, but, sorry. Might
as well be truthful before this fruitless
bunch. Like bananas at a rocket launch,
or the heavily-laden bowl in a still-life
of some Renaissance artist, I get voracious
just looking. Or hungry, I guess I mean.
-
Whew! That's a tough one to put into words.
Probably I'm not even supposed to talk like
that these days. The way people are now.
Burning fat for for the charcoal fire
beneath the eyes? Man! That's a very
convoluted means of saying things.
-
Have we come very far? Have we now
garnered anything at all. Maybe I just
should have stayed in that goldmine
Sutter's Mill settlement, panning the
waters for whatever gold I could find.
But that was back in 1849.

10,777. MR. IGNOLIO, I GET DULY DEPRESSED

MR. IGNOLIO, I GET 
DULY DEPRESSED
I've been working in your pawnshop for 11 years
now, and it's brought me not much charm and
no good luck at all. Therefore, I wish to speak
privately with you  -  and I shall bring along
my rare, 17th century chainmail restraint, just
so, in your obviously delirious interest in its
worth or value, you'll not be upset if I tie you
in it, should we not come to terms.
-
I am at the most-disgusted ends of my own
service to you; sick of it all, and you too. I
watch what you do. I try to understand the
reasons you give for things you do, but it
never works. I still go home each night,
annoyed by you, and irritated. I can hardly
take any more of this meted-out enticment
to drivel and decay. The means by which
you live, I mean to say.
-
Here's my consolation : you will give me
one-tenth more of this business ownership
than you were thinking, and shall increase
my weekly take by two-hundred dollars
every six-months. Don't like that, you
say? (Crack!  a sound ensues of someone
being beaten). You may sit up, once again,
and listen. I do not come here armed for
force, just my own pale justice. This billy
club will not hurt you again. That once
was enough, daresay? 
-
Now, this leaves me another spot to point
out : I will henceforth control the register
and the clerking of the books. Why? (Slap!
the sound of a face being punched ensues).
Why? Because I no longer trust your double
entry. I no longer will turn aside, (did I say
neither?) while you alter the take from every
transaction. (Thud! A man his hit with a
crowbar. $28.95, payable, 3 installments).
-
Now, Mr. Ignolio, please get up again. Oh
dear, he seems not moving. Would that be 
blood I see that trickles forth for where I
last hit? Overdid it again, my little bit.
Mr. Ignolio, I am truly distressed.

10,776. BETTER MAN FOR THE JOURNEY

BETTER MAN FOR 
THE JOURNEY
Than me. There must be. 
I can't swim and play cards
at the same time. But then
again. Who can?

10,775. RUDIMENTS, pt. 301

RUDIMENTS, pt. 301
Making Cars
There are thoughts that you
debate with others, and there
are thoughts you debate with
yourself. For me, it was always,
with myself, 'How could I be
such a jerk?' Like the day that
my mother tearfully told me
that Robert Kennedy had been
killed (which of course I already
knew about, and wasn't current,
breaking, news; I forget how it
came up), I turned on her, in her
distress, and just said, 'Good;
maybe it'll teach him to keep
his mouth shut.' Looking back
now, that is about the most brazen
and stupid comment anyone could
make, let alone into the face of
their own sad mother  -  sad at
the occurrence  -  and not
deserving the snide swipe
I'd thrown at her. (I noticed,
however, she'd not been sad 
in the same way at all, just
previous, when Martin Luther 
King went down. I probably 
could have used that same 
dumb comment then too). 
Perfect idiot stuff. And, in 
addition, the comment itself 
makes no sense. He's dead. 
What's it going to 'teach' him, 
this 'keeping his mouth shut.' 
What an idiot human I was. 
So, once realizing that, what
was I then supposed to do?
I never really knew, and when
you're young enough for that
sort of illogic, all options are
presented to you as equally
maladroit. I didn't wish to 'go'
anywhere, after any of them.
There are a few years, when one
is growing up, that life presents
itself to you as nothing but a
string of stupidities and foolishness.
Pranks, bomb scares, crazy riffs
to get attention, squirming in
front of others to be sure you're
noticed. I guess that's what
'college' is supposed to collect
for you in one big place; all that
foolish stupidity, acted out, with
ideas of self-importance enough
to think any of it matters. The
'Keys Of the Kingdom' indeed.
(That was a 1941 book by A. J.
Cronin). It was still a big enough
Catholic deal in 1956 to be among
part of my mothers 'vast' library
(I'm joking) of Reader's Digest
Condensed Books.
-
Those things were crazy   - 
monthly, by subscription,
faux-important books
truncated and cut down
to size, (I guess because
they were considered so
important and ponderous
that even non-readers
should get a cut-rate
version of them for their
bulging bookshelves. (Joke
again). I used to look at them,
hold them in my hand (usually
there were 4 or 5 'grouped'
together in one monthly
volume), and think of the
poor author  -  who'd been
evading and fighting with
his pre-publication editor for
months over what to cut
or not to cut, for publication 
-  and then these Pleasantville,
NY, Reader's Digest people
buy the condensing rights
to the book from your
publisher/agent, and attack 
it with a cleaver and, as author, 
you get about a dollar and 
twenty-seven cents from your 
'publisher' for the privilege of 
expanding your (deep) audience.
By the end of the 1950's there
were a number of these high
Catholic books about reverential 
church things, such as this Pope
and 'Keys Of the Kingdom' stuff.
It wasn't until maybe 10 years
later after it had all collapsed, that
the reverence was gone and people
would just begin to laugh at all
that. Irreverence, instead, became
the catchword of the day. That's
how much things would have 
changed. One time, much later,
we went up to Chappaqua, New 
York, Millwood, Thornwood,
all these places. I turned a corner
and right before me, there was the
Reader's Digest Company's
Pleasantville Headquarters (it's
all gone now, and turned into 
office and other facility commercial 
uses), but back when this occurred
it was still in use as their space  - a
large, almost important looking, 
sprawling campus  -  greenery,
space, landscaped nicely, parking
areas, and a high, fine-looking 
building. At that point the only other
commercial place like this I'd seen
was the campus-like headquarters
of Merck, in Rahway. That too was
fascinating to me -   as it was much 
like a college campus for some 
mid-level organization of learning.
Which it was, but instead this sprawl
couldn't have cared less about the
old Greek philosophers or classical
thinking and learning, books, and
Shakespeare and all that. They made
medicine and drugs. That was their
research, and they made them for
profit, but within the campus there,
like Pleasantville, you'd never know 
that.
-
That's where I always got tripped up.
I never understood business. I never
understood why people's drive for money 
led them to do the so-many-dumb
things most people did all day long.
For money. Make bombs and hope
for larger defense contracts. Which
would mean, of course, the bombs
had gotten used up and more were 
needed, and the planes to deliver 
them with, to their kill-the-people
locations. Or defoliants. Or poisons
and gases. To take home a paycheck
on Friday? How could anyone be 
so low? It's not like you're doing
anything good. Working for 
Monsanto, making Agent Orange
in the 1960's must have been a real
blast. But that's just the way it was.
Maybe they should have just made
that stuff in 'Pleasantville' and told
Reader's Digest to go stuff themselves
and leave: 'We have better uses for
this nice location.'
-
These sorts of things were my own
debates with my own self. I never
talked much about any of this with
others  - my mind usually was off
running on some tangent somewhere
and I often ended up manufacturing
my own facts and figures for the
purpose of the tale. That's called
'controlling the narrative,' and of
course that's something writers 
do all the time because that's pretty 
much what writing is. Nowadays,
political types call it all 'fake news,'
but they do the same thing constantly.
In order to keep people under your 
wing, you MUST control the narrative  
-  thus censorship, authoritarianism, 
and controls. Remember, only the
victors write History. If Native
Americans had triumphed, their
version of what had occurred 
would be totally different than
what we'd ever been exposed to
before. They would, let's say, no
longer have to keep their damned
mouths shut.




Sunday, April 29, 2018

10,774. RUDIMENTS, pt. 300

RUDIMENTS, pt. 300
Making Cars
Long about 1964 I really did
fell  in love with the Russian
dissident movement  -  Samizdat
it was called  -  hand-published
manuscripts and critiques of
the society, hand-copied, or
printed and surreptitiously
distributed. It got lots of people
in trouble. Yuli Daniel, Andrei
Sinyavski are two who come
to mind right off; of course,
along with the biggies,
Alexander Solzhenitsyn and
Andrei Sakharov. I don't know
what I was doing among the  -
a know-nothing American kid
reading the fringes. But they
fascinated me, as did their
movement itself  -  the ways
and means of their distribution,
meeting, exchanging information,
eluding authorities. It was a
quite thrilling world, and one
I was quite caught up into for
a while. I liked the purity of the
ideology, even though, in truth,
I knew little about any of it but
through hearsay. These fellows
went through hell, labor camps,
exile, forced march, Siberia,
deprivation, punishments and
beating too. Still they stayed
with it all. That took guts. All
I saw was a certain kind of
Russian (Soviet) guts  -  enough
to be able to withstand engulfment
and physical horror. The was all
well before the days of any sort
of computerized resources, and
linking to look-ups and the rest.
This was all secret and done
surreptitiously, like the old
networks of revolutionaries
in the 1800's. A typewriter was
really stretching it. There were
odd things about too which I did,
in turn, see in NYC later, including
my friend Paul  -  silent typewriters,
or at least, as in Paul's case, varied
and self-invented ways of silencing
or at least greatly diminishing the
type-cackle of a late-at-night
typewriter. There were ways, as
weird as they sometimes looked :
corrugated boxes, wide enough for
carriage movement yet covered 
with towels and stuffed with 
cotton, to muffle. Paul was an 
inveterate all-night typist, or at 
least until he conked off while 
typing. There were always 
apartment neighbors who were
complaining about it. The pre-war
buildings of the upper west-side
had really thick walls, granted,
but somehow certain things got
through, and not everyone had 
the luxury of a fancy and large 
apartment. My friend Jeff Gordon, 
(deceased now) along with his 
wife Juanita, on w87th Street,
had a beauty of an apartment  -
wide and thin\ck and expansive, 
and grandfather'd in for rent-control, 
at some purely ridiculous, nay 
miraculous monthly price. All 
very old-world, while, by contrast, 
Paul usually ran from one studio 
apartment to the next, rickety, 
cheap, ground-level or one level 
down (we often saw pedestrian 
feet walking by, at head height).
I always figured the below the
ground location would help
alleviate the typewriter noise,
but it never did seem to.
-
Those Russian guys had it 
50 times worse, at least, and 
a good portion of them died 
for it. The best way in and 
out was paper and pencil, 
and probably still remains 
so. That's about as basic as 
you can get, and easiest to 
hide too. Everything past 
that point just gets complicated  
- phones and telegraph and all 
that fails miserably. Memorization 
too was useful. There's a book 
now, from about 1980 or so, 
called 'The Memory Palace 
of Matteo Ricci,' I think it is, 
about a man in extreme 
situations who memorizes
things by keying them to 
visual memories of chairs 
and furnishings and all. 
Fairly complicated, but 
he was able to 'scan' an 
imaginary room he'd 
created in his mind, and 
every item he looked upon 
conjured up, by his 
memorized 'key,' a 
different object or set 
of objects or words 
and phrases, for him. 
was pretty cool, and 
these old Medieval 
and pre-medieval guys 
were really, really good 
at it  -  compensating, 
as they were, for the 
utter primitiveness of 
all other available 
communication. Which
when you think about it is 
pretty down-right amazing,
seeing what  a mess we 
made of even that 
(communications) in
those 1950's days. The
idea than was that all people
were at heart cheery and easy
and comfortable. Which is the
opposite of the way things are,
but that was part of the dumb
illusion of that time. I've never
been a phone person, and don't
use one. I guess I don't ever
for any marketers profiles, of
 anything, except maybe for
jerk pills or 'bad-attitude'
syrup or something. But, that's
another story entirely  -  how
people get me so wrong.
I'm a goofball, basically, a
happy, cheerful guy  -  but
everyone things I'm a dark
block, a true negative. They
should know me  - all I ask 
for comfort is the Truth, and
maybe a toothbrush. Both are
carry-on luggage; real easy.
But, back to the 1950's, the
question had to be 'how are we
going to get people interested in
having phones  -  not just phones,
but more than one phone. Household
phones  - one for Mom in the
kitchen, maybe a Princess phone 
each, upstairs in the bedrooms,
for Dawn and Stella. They even
named them 'Princess Phones.'
how crazy. Never before, by
the way, did people have to pay
for talking. Imagine that! It
was another barrier to figure
out to break. Just more work
for the merchandisers. Phones
later got as weird as society did  - 
20 foot chords, I can recall
mother having, so she could
almost be three rooms away
and still keep that darn call
gong.
-
One last thing on this, (it
started out, remember, about
those brave and mortally
endangered Russian dissident
guys way back). It's that whole
man-up thing : you see when I
see a guy on  a phone, first
thought that crosses my mind 
is, 'hmmm, I wonder he he 
also wears a bra.' Sorry, fellas,
but phones are for girls. Strictly
female  - the first time a guy,
including Alexander Graham 
Bell  -  picked u a telephone, 
and got in that horrible habit 
of babble, that was the end of
the world as I knew it, or 
wanted to. Face it, boys, there's
NO news to relate, and neither
are there any real issues of phone
concern that should be of interest
to you. So, as soon as you're done
with the call, put the phone down,
stand up and walk out of the
manicurist's chair, and quit looking
at boyly magazines that tell you
how to take care of your skin.
(If 'girly' mags, why not 'boyly?').
About as archaic as a dinosauer 
egg. And j-u-s-t  l-i-k-e ME.
Signed, R. Chaic.

Saturday, April 28, 2018

10,773. MALADROIT

MALADROIT
Drop the ditch and run; your fine 
acclaim makes little matter now.
The way they've laid these explosives
down, this whole place can blow in
a minute. Let's not be in it.

10,772. RUDIMENTS, pt. 299

RUDIMENTS, pt. 299
Making Cars
The thing about life is that most
people never see the half of it.
My mother, for instance, was always
worried about what things would
look like to others. As if, for goodness
sake, they were even watching, or
cared. I grant you, the kind of folks
we lived amongst were a cheap and
a nosy bunch, and it's still like that
around here  -  judging from what
I see  -  but no one really cared, and
when you came right down to it, no
actually noticed. Everyone had their
own stream of quirks and problems.
It was a basket case of addled people.
Old Jim Yacullo, with his big Buicks
and his Betty Boop wife. I remember
she always always looked hot and
we just used to figure they screwed
like crazy people every night. For a
living. For a way to make anything
have any sense. She had a pink and
cream '55 Chevy all her own. She 
cradled that car like it was a dead
Jesus and she was the Virgin Mary.
Yeah, right. The thing about cars,
and people too, I guess, is that after
about ten years or so they both 
begin looking like crap. Chrome
fades, and bumpers sag. At least
back then  -  now the bumpers are
plastic and are integrated into the
car design and thus cannot sag.
Who'd have thought?
-
I used to always think there'd 
be a way for me to find a real
meaning in life and end up doing
just that one meaningful task, to
my own liking, all the time. Like
a true dedication of purpose that
would just become all-consuming.
It never turned out that way, no.
My life mostly has been spent - or

had been spent up until five years
or so back - doing the bidding  of 
others. The way you have to, for
money, as a job, to stay alive and
remain in place. I've never had a
knack for anything - some guys 
I've known, they could spin a 
dime instantly from a thought 
or a dream. Some women could
do that too. Whether it was a sense
of power, a forceful personality, 
or an ease and a complacency 
about being glib, they'd never
look back, and were usually on
their way to the bank. Anything
I ever got from them was the 
shavings of what they'd leave 
behind. Wages. Boring, old, 
deadening work. I hated it but 
always just stayed with it. I even
reached the point where I got to 
telling other people to 'stick with 
it.' I'd go on about how what 
counts, over time, is the longevity
of what they were doing; no matter
how miserable it seemed, it would
be better for them to not be jumping
around from job to job and instead
show themselves as steady and 
dependable. I have no idea what I
was thinking - reflecting my own
stupidities, I guess. My average job
time was maybe 12 years, maybe 
15, on a job. I once knew a girl,
she's in Tucson now for many years,
who held strictly to the 'seven-years
and out' rule. Mary Kay would leave
a job in the seventh year, no matter
what - she said past that point it 
was all tiresome, and there was 
nothing more to invigorate her 
or keep her there, money included. 
She stuck to her guns on that too.
-
Mary Kay lived in Elmira with us, 
on the other end of town. Having 
grown up there - her father was 
a tool and die maker, had been, 
in Elmira's postwar industrial 
heydays - she stayed. She
was a cool kid, my age, very 
opinionated, militaristic 
'feminist' in those 1971 early 
days of the women's movement.
She lived with a girl she called 
'Kiki'. At first they living in a
place  called Bentley Creek. That
was in  Pennsylvania, about ten
miles below Elmira. That was  my
first experience there with girls living
together in some 1970's way of 'girl's
solidarity' or whatever was going on
then. They may have been lovers too;
I didn't know nor care. And then every
so often Mary would get hooked up 
again with some guy or another, 
for short periods of time, and 
then it would crumble and 
she'd be back. More militant 
than ever. I remember being 
glad it was never me on the
receiving end of her venom -
though, to be frank, I would 
have never minded that one. I
always was gainfully enough
attracted to her. One time she 
moved to Syracuse, taking up 
with some surprisingly boring,
divorced guy with two kids. That
didn't work, maybe two months,
and she was back again. She wasn't
the family kind, not the care-giver
kind either. I figured she would
have known that. Guess not. Her
and Kiki (I used to hate that name),
then moved to Corning, and for a
while they a nice apartment in a big 
old house that had been broken up
into apartments. She had a new 1972
Datsun B210, I think it was called - 
the original Datsun import car, the
one that made their name here (now 
they are no longer 'Datsun', and use
'Nissan' instead). She drove that car
to death and she drove it forever. 
Over their bed, in Corning, or her 
bed, or whatever, she kept a calorie 
chart. I guess it was some sort of 
woman's movement, or MS Magazine 
joke - a large poster that illustrated 
about 20 varied sexual positions, 
and the calorie count for calorie 
burn-off, of each sexual position. 
Then, the rest were listed, with 
numbers, instead of being illustrated. 
Big whoop. Every time we'd visit 
there, she had Elton John blaring
on the stereo, the album 'Tumbleweed
Connection,' I think it was, and 
the cut 'Burn Down the Mission,' 
because she said it always reminded 
her of me. Big whoop #2, I guess. 
(zero calories). Funny thing was,
Kiki was chubby. Mary was thin.
If they were lovers, one of them
was, apparently, doing all the work..
-
Living in Elmira was like living in a 
grim, sad, mining town, after the 
mines had closed, the seams had been
exhausted, and people walked around
thinking they had memories about 
something that once was good times, 
but they can't quite fully recall. It
always seemed to get dark early 
there; I guess the little hills around 
it shut the sun out early. Maybe. 
Even when it was light though, it 
was lonely, like you knew you were 
far away from anything useful or
that mattered or was 'alive.' A dot 
on Rt. 17 somewhere, that's where 
you were. Funny thing was, we 
were always told - as if it had 
some real self-importance - that 
because of the big IBM plant over
in Waverly, about 12 miles east, 
the entire area was on the list of 
first places the Soviets would send 
their nuclear-tipped missiles to take 
out (IBM had some defense and 
tracking systems headquartered there 
in Waverly). No one ever really found 
out what was true and what wasn't, 
but I wouldn't put it past anyone - 
the dumb corporate and defense 
bastards would not have cared 
less about what places or people 
they'd get obliterated. 'Collateral 
Damage' that's called today. A
guy I worked with, Rod Reynolds,
of Waverly, his father worked at 
that IBM location, in some mid-level
capacity, and it was Rod who first
told me about it. Rod was a real quiet,
sedate guy, always praying. I mean
that literally. We worked at Whitehall 
Printing, on e.1st Street, downtown
Elmira, and whenever we were on
break, or at lunch, or whatever, he'd 
start praying. Saying grace, reciting
prayers, the whole bit. I never knew
what that was about, but I just always
kept away from it, and no one else
ever said anything - just made fun
of him when he wasn't around. One 
day, he left at lunch, and came back 
about 2 hours later saying his wife 
had just had a baby, his 2nd or 3rd, 
I forget, at home, at lunchtime. She'd 
called, and he'd gone home to assist 
at the birth. And then he just came 
back. Didn't talk much. I guess he
had midwifery and all that, almost
like Amish stuff. We went to visit 
him one evening when he'd invited 
us to a quick cook-out. It was his 
father's big house, and they all lived 
there too. It was OK, we ate some, 
and then the 'boys' (Rod's two younger 
brothers and Rod and myself) had to 
go out on the adjoining field, and play 
catch for like a half-hour, baseball-stuff, 
just throwing back and forth, before 
we could leave. Pretty weird Summer
night. Rod drove a pretty nice, V-8 '67
Chevelle. Not hot-rodded or anything,
just a nicely kept, large engined, probably
fast and furious, car. I wasn't even ever
sure if he knew what he had.
-
I never much judged - I mean others 
or people and their ways. It never much 
mattered to me the fabric of the lives of 
others. Anyway, I'd had enough of all
that living with my father in his house
all those years. I kind of knew what I 
was and wanted, and how greatly it 
differed from other people's wants 
and desires, so I just kept quiet. My
wife was enough like that too. We
knew each other's general themes. 
Other people would start talking 
about money or trips or vacations 
or their fancy dining and stuff and 
we - used enough as we were to 
poverty-line stuff and none of that -
just pretended to listen well, feign
interest, or show concern. None of
that was ever for us. Their dollars 
were our dimes. But we got on. I
always figured to be dedicated to
my work and my craft, and the rest be
damned, as it were - I know I had no 
time for niceties, and, besides, I was
always ready for the big changes to 
come. That never came, but whatever.
I guess, when you came right down to
it, Mary Kay Hickey (her full name) had
me pegged rightly - a real 'Burn Down
the Mission' kind of guy.