RUDIMENTS, pt. 290
Making Cars
Sometimes all it takes is empathy.
I guess that's what all that 'I feel
your pain' stuff was about back
in the 1990's; typically trivialized,
by the way, and said by the very
worst people in the world. But I
could understand what was meant.
A lot of my own time was spent
being sad. I often got sad about
things around me, whether they
had much to do with me or not.
That becomes a danger after a
while, because it takes a real
lot to learn to say 'no,' as it goes,
and just walk away from trouble.
It sticks to some people, and you
can just tell. But then I'd get all
sad about the abandonment and
about having to be the one who's
spliced out on someone. To me,
it was all trouble. Just the other
day, I was sitting in my car, waiting
for someone; reading a book actually,
as I sat there. This guy comes to
my window and immediately starts
the super-friendly routine, dog-stuff,
how are you, nice day and all that.
Then he smoothly slides into the
'you wouldn't be a smoker, would
you?' routine, asking for a cigarette.
I replied no and he deftly then slid
right into, 'do you have seventy-five
cents you can give me?' Not a
demand, just a smooth question
asked pleasantly. Then I got to hear
about home, wife, life, dreams,
kid, his wish for a dog, but a big
dog, like mine, not the only little
dog that his wife will allow. I gave
him a dollar. The person I was
waiting for arrived, with a
cigarette, so he got one of those
too. All was well. The guy got
what he'd bargained for, and an
extra quarter too. I forgot to
mention here, I was reading a
music book, and he added 'do
you play? I play guitar.' Then he
walked off as we were leaving,
and got into his car, which appeared
to be maybe a 15-year old Chevy
something or other, in pretty rough
shape, but running.
-
There was no satisfaction in this
at all for me. I was sad - and this
was the present. It's never gone,
this whole cosmic sadness thing.
It's as if I carry it on my back
at all times. When I was kid and
I saw a cripple, or one of those
polio kids with the metal
leg-braces, I'd get instantly sad,
nearly distraught. Then I'd begin
hating myself for walking, being
able to run, all that. What's up
with any of that? What sort of
twisted self-reflection is any of
this? Why do we even live if
everything is out of our touch and
and control. I just never get it.
-
And now, everything that's behind
me, everything of me that ever was,
is pretty much over. It's out back
there, uselessly waiting. My next
appointment anywhere only needs
a one-way ticket, and I know that,
and I know that the portion of my
own life that may be left is this little,
sticking-out, tag-end that no longer
represents anything at all - no sale,
no possibility. I've earned nothing.
I probably could have given that guy
forty dollars, had I pulled that much
out of my pocket, and it wouldn't
have made a hill's worth of beans
difference to him OR to me. I
still would have been miserable.
My 'help' (what a screwed-up
word there) would have been
and was completely negligible.
Whatever the make-up of this guy
was, it ends up having nothing
to do with me. We're both in the
same dead rush to get to our own
funerals, and, well, whoever gets
there first gets to go first. He
wants a dog. I want to live.
wants a dog. I want to live.
Big whoop.
-
That guy at the car, I have to
admit, he had the entire empathy
routine down pat, and to his benefit,
to a weakling like me. I'm reading
a book (I'm surprised he didn't
jump on that 'Reading? Oh I love
to read too...') on music; he plays
guitar. Dog? He's always wanted
one, just like that one! Cigarettes -
he did a little health riff about
how it was probably bad for him
but it made him happy and that
was good for him, right, and so
it probably balanced out the bad
for him. I'm meaning to say, he
was pretty good; though if I was
stuck in a car with him, driving
out to West Virginia or such, I'd
probably have thrown him out
to the highway by Harrisburg -
and then been sad about all that
too. My damn life's been a
rolling wreck.
-
I used to wish, to wonder to
wish anyway, back when the
prison farm was in my backyard;
the actual 'farm' the prisoners
ran - corn and crops, and animals
and stuff and the prison guys out
in the fields and on tractors, with
armed guards all around them,
holding rifles and just keeping a
steady eye - if and how I could
enter one of those corn-plant teepees
they used to make after harvesting
was over. I've been around farms
and corn fields and corn-crops a
lot - even worked farms for a
few years and did the plowing
of the fields, the seeding, the
trimming and then harvesting
and cutting, back when I had
my place in Pennsylvania (see
earlier chapters) - but I never
anywhere saw the teepee things
these prison guys would leave.
The stalks of the corn plants,
nothing valuable, but they'd take
a bunch of them and stand them
fanned out upright and crossed at
the top, looking like a teepee, a
field of teepees actually,and
then strung or tied or something
into place. These things would
remain all Winter, maybe one
every fifty feet. I do wish I had
a photo, but I never took one,
of any of that. It was BC for
me (before cameras). I said I
never knew what they were for,
but I'd always had a fertile
imagination, and had taken
in lots of influences and ideas.
I was convinced there had to be
one or more of these that, if I
found, I could enter and just
disappear - to wander through
and into other dimensions and
realms, see the different entities
of life and being which existed
or whatever the word would be,
just off from the end of the
stupid string of reality I'd been
given to hold. Man, I was aching.
I was a man o'war, a mental frigate
ready for sail and ready for battle.
-
I guess even then, early on, that's
where my clinical sadness (I said
'sadness', not 'madness') stemmed
from. I never achieved or got the
breakthrough I wished for or sought.
That kinds of absence twisted my
way up. I had faith. Faith in all
sort of things - the spiritual and
the natural, impulses all, but
nothing doctrinaire or even as
we know 'religious' in that sense
of rigor or doctrine. That never
stuck to me. All that ever did
stick, or try to, were the 'channels'
through which others tried to corral
all my impulses. That of 'religious'
tenor, of course had to be dumped
into a church format. Fun and
happiness couldn't just be, some
jerk always wanted it put a league,
play with benefit for others, all
that 'no 'I' in teamwork' crap and
all the rest. Once I began hearing
that everywhere, I turned off the
radio and made sure I smashed
the bullhorn.
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