10,721. RUDIMENTS, pt. 282

RUDIMENTS, pt. 282

Making Cars

I never knew what to extol -

everyone was always 'extolling'

something or someone. It all

sounded like junk to me. Once

I got to NYC, I'd see all these

downtown guys with briefcases

pushing this or that new stock

or advancing some new issue,

valuing some supposed breakthrough

by which investors  -  if in quickly  -

could make grand returns. It took

me about two weeks to realize

that the entire stock market thing

was a huge trading game. Just

like down on lower Broadway

where you'd see tabletop card

game, 3-card-monte guys plying

their trade to the unwitting. There'd

be a shill of some sort out front

along the curb trying to pull some

nitwits in, and then there'd be a

dummy character too (one of the

insiders) playing this (fake) game

and winning some couple of times,

demonstratively getting the purse.

It was all fake  -  the rube who

watched this and then jumped in

himself didn't stand a chance.

He'd fallen for the fake game

with a fake winner. People fell

for this all the time  -  one time

I watched some half-retarded guy,

whatever that partially dumb/partially

stumbling oversized-person disease

thing is. With the overly-sized facial
 features and the big, thick hands. They 
stand out, and usually have others
walking them or with them. Guides 
from the home or whatever. For this
episode, it was Christmas time, the

crowds were out, he was walking

around with a fist-full of money,

poor schmuck, probably eighty or

a hundred bucks, and he got started.

Losing. Aghast. Going for more.

Losing more. Never winning, and

finally cleaned out, he snapped. A

real roar, and a sorrowful No! of

fear and anguish over, I guessed,

just having lost his little fistful of

Christmas shopping money out on

the raw streets of the big, bad town.

I really felt bad for the guy, but

was not about to make it my 

problem. The scene became soon

disgruntled enough that the guys

folded up their tables and quickly

walked off.

-

The stock market itself wasn't 

really that different. Probably 

shills, some winners, fake or not, 

and lots of unwary losers  - the 

supply of which always needed 

replenishing. I never knew the

end result of any of it, except 

that the only ones really sure to

be making money were the

dealers  - the stock guys pushing

for the buys and sells  -  You get

charged when you buy, yeah,

and then they charge again where

you sell. Your panic one way or the

other results in a fistful of continual

dollars for them, whichever way.

In 1967, everything was still

primitive  -  today there's a lot 

more, hands-on, do-it yourself-

from-home e-trading going on 

and much of it is now way down

to seven dollars a trade or so. Janney, 

Montgomery, and Scott, an old-line

trading firm back then, was like 

sixty-five dollars a trade. It was

called 'Commission.' 

-

So, to 'extol' the bad, it appeared,

was just as valid as extolling the 

good. Values and things were a 

lot different then, and surely 

screwed up too. Just as today's 

'values'  -  debased, sick, perverted, 

mis-used and gross  -  are mostly

considered good. Somewhere in

between those decades things got

sky-high screwed up. The normal

run of things back then was that 

men held a job, went to work, came

home in the evening, to the dinner

or whatever a wife had cooked.

House, home, family, etc. All

things ran a fairly rigorously

made route. At first glance anyway.

Behind the scenes, always, all

sorts of things were happening. I'd

learned that long before  -  at the

seminary. Seeing parents come in,

in family units  -  kids having sisters

and brothers at home. I could just

tell some of the Dad's were a little

off-center, maybe things were a 

tad warped. It never mattered to 

me much because mostly I just 

enjoyed seeing the sisters. I was,

say 12-16, and every now and

then someone would have a sister

visiting who was a complete dream,

at 15 or 17. The sisters' ages I

never knew, of course, but there

was this feeling that came through.

In my mind, I'd often 'extol'any

one of these after-images for a

long time.

-

My life itself bore little resemblance 

to anything I'd read before. At age

14, with my first read of 'Portrait of

the Artist As a Young Man,' I saw

that James Joyce had made the very

best effort of it all I'd ever seen, or

need to see  -  but, with the modern

world pressing all around me, that 

one just seemed a little to weak, too

pious, and too Irish too. But, as I read

it I knew I had it within me to out-do

it too, to put forth my own version

of some of that same material. The

presented feelings were the same,

the school-chums, the kids and the

environment, yet it still was somehow

broken off from the more modern 

days of the 'now.' I didn't care.

I knew that it was in me, somewhere,

to write my own versions of this 

sort of thing. I'm still trying.

-

Once I'd set out to do things, my way,

I stayed that course. I liked angles and

twists and turns. I like writing about the

unexpected  -  but not like mystery tomes

or suspense novels, I mean rather the

sort of unexpected psychological things 

and connections that tie everything up 

with something else. I felt that, before

we each get started, it's all played out

for us. We're just walking, as it were,

in those snow-ghost footprints already

out in front of us. I believed that for 

each one of us there's some quizzical

'number' that we reach  -  by some

 combination of things arrayed for

our experiencing, a 'totality' of some 

sort  -  and once we reach that ideal

quotient, we're done. We die. And

it begins anew as we then undertake

the answer for the next equation to

be presented. Which is addressed 

and experienced by ALL of those

accumulating (always) things that

we think and do and implement and

undertake through a multiplicity of

concurrent lifetimes (ALL at once).

Everyone calls it something different :

religion, karma, salvation, destiny

and fate. But call it what you will,

there it is, to be extolled within you.