RUDIMENTS, pt. 336
Making Cars
I used to like to learn about
writers, which is really the
last thing you should do.
Their lives are seldom
exemplary and, by definition
all that counts is their output,
so why would one bother
about their personal stories,
lives, loves or personalities?
And half of it was crap anyway.
Some were queer; not so odd
now, in a day of gayness, in
which the word 'queer' isn't
even used, but others were
drunken wife-beaters, serial
betrayers, sulkers or reclusives.
It all comes out in their works
anyway - as does any one of
a hundred proclivities that the
'literary world' industry then
takes and picks through, sorting
this or that fact or conjecture
Mr. or Ms. Writer Monster.
It went the same way for artists.
For some reason, probably booze
too, most of these people turned
out also to have been terrible
drivers - wrapping themselves
around trees or abutments, or
dying at high speed. Losing
control of their car, half the time,
was just the symbol of them
having lost control of their lives,
long before that last infraction.
I could get deeply into either -
and I never made the distinction
between the writer or what
they've written. A lot of that
'literary' crowd still fights over
this and takes sides, variously
engulfing each other with the
fury and venom that only an
academic idiocy could produce.
The 'man or the work,' seems
hardly a choice for a sensible
and interested person. One is
what the other is, or one is
what the other is not. And
who cares. Martha Gellhorn's
story as third wife would never
match the first wife's telling of
the same Hemingway story (as
a for instance) anyway; nor
would the precious forebodings
of Joyce Maynard looking back
affect in any way a view of
Salinger. So, you just must
throw it all up into the air. All
of it, a crapshoot. You are what
others say you are, while you
pretend you are not. Yes, it's
some pretty deep gunk.
-
When I stayed down the lower
west side, there was enough
material there for me to write a
sad book twice over. My mind
always was trying to sort and
pack away everything I'd see,
for the someday when I could
bring it out. Maybe that day is
now, and I guess it should be,
because I sure do know the clock
is ticking down. I'd like to tell
kids that numbers change : Not
that anyone has ever asked me,
and they wouldn't understand what
I was saying anyway, being as
it is that everything has gone awry
and the only kids I ever see now
are stupid kids. The number 2, or
5 - any number really, but how
do you say this - by the time
you age well, is no longer the
light, little number you thought
it was as a kid. They get heavier
and heavier as you move along
in that stream of time you're part
of. A very weird phenomenon.
It's the way of illusion, the magical
gradient that runs everything down.
Some entropy of the brain that
sets in and makes everything
heavier and heavier. I think
that's what aging is all about.
Old people all weigh like a
million pounds by the time
they're done. As I said, the
numbers just get heavier
and heavier, until you can
no longer carry them. You get
old, fuzzy, grainy, befuddled,
talking to walls and spectres.
And then you die. Whew.
-
I used to see grizzled old guys,
sucking down cigarettes, with
their old, wrinkled and tired,
hands in terribly worn gloves
and fingerless messy wraps.
They'd be standing down there,
at any of the various corners,
12th and Washington, the end
of 14th, Little W12th Street, all
along the area, then (it's all
fancy and famous now). They'd
be congregating around their
fire barrels, wordlessly communing,
speaking by nods and grunts -
sad, old stories and sorrows, the
regrets of a hundred ages of
nothing, glum, lackluster, each
almost dead but standing. You
maybe can still find people
like that around, but they don't
do the same sorts of things any
more. It's all changed, because
they've not come out of those
same requisite rigors - you
need the busted disappointment
of Depression and World War
to see it with their lens - a war,
of family, a lost wive, some
undetermined kids, and some
squandered, lost careers. They
never had wives, these guys;
they were always alone by that
stage - wive gone, widower,
adrift, lost or forgotten. It was
all remorse. Some of these guys
I'd see enough, over and over, for
the nod, a cigarette, and an open
allowance too to stand at their
barrel fire. Boy I used to love
that - you don't see barrel fires
or open burning anymore. It
really did used to be a way of
life, especially down there -
the Winter really brought it out :
Blazing chunks of wood, from
construction sites or wherever,
even, for certain times, old
Christmas trees, taken from curbs;
they'd just make everything sadder
because they went up in a fury,
blazed quickly, and just threw,
along with a quick heat, a coating
of sadness, inasmuch as it was
sad to feel for these guys in the
reflected red light of a season of
joy and supposedly, (it never was),
torching itself out in front of their
nothing lives and faces. I used
to get bummed out.
-
They always had a bottle or two
also. I hated hard liquor, almost
still do. It's taken a long time to
get the taste for even the best of
them - burning, fiery liquid that
just never even seems like it's
something you should be drinking.
That would get slowly passed
around, a glug or two and on
to the next. A funny thing is,
about 2007, 40 years later, when
I was working at Princeton, with
the bookstore stuff, every Thursday
and Friday, the boss guy would
spend working with us, in the
area where we did our assigned
stuff, and he'd break out the
bottle of bourbon - Knobb
Creek, sometimes Maker's Mark.
He was one of those guys who
could just constantly sip and still
work. Talk, babble, conversation,
phone calls, etc. To me, and the
rest of us, it all had to be done
sparingly, because in about an
hour, no matter how distasteful
the taste (?), the tops of our
heads began to seem definitely
disconnected to the bottom of
our heads. Two days of this,
each week; it became a real
goof after a while I remember,
for one of my birthdays there,
being given the magnum size
bottle of Knob Creek as a gift.
It was really large. We got maybe
two or three inches into it, and
one day it disappeared - into the
conference room where the boss
guy and Cornel West and some
other person were having a
meeting or confab - a few hour's
worth. I never saw that bottle again.
It had become their refreshment.
But that was a good memory,
not a sad one.
.
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