10,966. RUDIMENTS, pt. 372

RUDIMENTS, pt. 372

(avenel academy, stella, and jack)

I was born weird. I grew up

weird, and I thought weird too,

from the very beginning. There

wasn't ever enough 'space' for me,

so I kept up dreaming more. (For

the sticklers among you, 'weirdly'

works here too, though in this case

it doesn't cover the same ground

as 'weird'). Being born 'weirdly,'

would mean like with maybe a

crane or a jack-hammer (adverb).

But, no, I was born, in that respect,

quite normally, up at Bayonne.

General Hospital, home of 

'half-price Tuesdays.' OK, just

kidding. The world never suited

my flavor, and my 'flavor' never

made the list of the world's

ingredients anyway. It took me

a fairly long time to learn that

and to navigate the distance, but

I finally managed the mesh.

-

Do you want to know how I 

know the world is ugly  -  and,

let me add, mean and distasteful?

The ancient Greeks said that for

something to be beautiful it must

also be sensible. Well, there you

have it. There's nothing sensible

around here.

-

It was Sandy Werfel (previous

chapter) who one day showed me

what he called the archaic basis

of lettering. It was part of one of

those 'visits' I was telling about,

when we'd apt to be talking about

anything at all  -  as he put it, per

the ancient Romans, with all their

numerals and 'C''s and 'X's. He

said, if I could visualize, say, the

word, 'carnival'  -  chosen randomly.

Note the difference between the

letter-spacing of the a to the r, and

then, say, the i to the v. The average

Joe, in laying out that word, would

have it all mis-spaced and almost

looking like car niv al by the 

mis-spacing inherent. In the

view of an old Roman stonecutter,

if you were to take paint and paint

between the letters, as properly laid

out it should take the same 'volume' of

paint to fill the space between each

of the letters. That would elongate

the word a bit, to accommodate that

space between the i to the v, and

the tightness of the r to the n. None

of which should be  -  it should all

look as one, evenly spaced composite;

nothing jammed together, nor wide

apart either. The 'eye' makes that

leap for itself, and the artist, through

an innate sense of, perhaps, balance 

or tension, runs parallel with it.

-

That was a lot of granular information

to take in on 'Avenel' Street, for sure;

but it was darned sure some magnificent

transfer of knowledge, a great way

of learning.  It too was almost archaic 

to me, a school of thought and logic 

presented in a roving format. I always

wished for  -  right across the street  -  

at the festering wreck in its long,

slow decline, of the General 

Dynamics building and campus, for

someone who was not a nitwit to

have deemed it equally important,

once it first closed up, instead of 

letting it go derelict and crumble, 

and fester for 30 years, and then

fall to their devious machinations of

corruption, payoff, circular contracts,

and sleaze, to have had instead the

testicular fortitude (we get little of

that either, in Town Hall) to have

investigated the wonderful possibilities

inherent in that campus-format, with 

its tower and buildings, for a small

college or school of higher learning

from which 'Avenel' would grow its

small seed as a learning center, 

instead of as a base only for the

most crass and most limiting

commercial factors. We had the

spot, the physical plant, and a great

opportunity for an Academy. All

these cretins out to make their stolen 

buck, they could have stolen it from

a project like that just the same, but

at least they would have then been

advancing a 'cause'  -  the same

cause they now only pretend to 

be advancing with their riotous

superfluity over foolish ideas of

kiddie-art, festival and stage

illusions. Trouble is, as I put it,

they hadn't neither the wisdom

nor the balls to do something

outlandish. Looking down the

magic tunnel, from 1985, at

Sanford Werfel studios, right 

across the street, I had a good

feel for what I envisioned. I'd 

even gotten my artist friend 

Dave McGrath a job there  -  

at Werfel's  -  just by interceding

for him. It was the beginning of

a great idea, but none of us had

resources. Do you know how

it's said 'you can't get blood

from a turnip'  -  well, as baffling

as that crazy phrase always was

to me, I knew at the same time

that you can't get it from a

mercenary either.

-

All my time at St. George Press

showed me how this town was

run by mercenaries, and only

by  -  men out to make a buck,

bury something beneath a false

platitude, so they could take it

when no one was looking. All

the time I had that job, I heard

so much dirt and corrupt

information, and from all sorts 

of different people doing the

telling too  -  Fire Chief Dwyer

and all those installation programs

each year, before he retired away

to Port St. Lucie, or Port Richie,

whichever it was, in Florida. The

ridiculous shenanigans of Mayor,

after being Sheriff, DeMarino

- basic insider slug - and my best

friend of all, Larry Campion, at 

the Independent Leader, over in

Woodbridge by where the Quick 

Chek is now  -  a grand, proud

building, torn down like the rest.

For a parking lot, now a shit-hole.

I'm telling you, again, Larry knew

where every body was buried, even

the ones then still living. But, there

was little room either for learning,

good thought, or reflection. They

lived and lied, and lied as they

lived; and they still do. It was 

Montaigne (anyone know who 

that is? He kept an office at

the Rahway Avenue end of 

Avenel Street, right next to

Stella & Jack's), who said :

"Lying is an accursed vice. It

is only our words which bind us

together and make us human. If

we realize the horror and weight

of lying, we would see that it is

more worthy of the stake than

other crimes....Once let the

tongue acquire the habit of

lying and it is astonishing how

impossible it is to make it 

give it up."
-
So, if maybe you can get an inkling
of how I felt, even back in '67,
finally leaving that God-forsaken
reverse Robin-Hood woods to
land on my feet in New York City
than perhaps you'll also get the feel
 for the space and happiness that
 knowledge and and real learning
meant.  There was little in common
between the two places, and that
was just the way I liked it. I had
so many things to square away and
get straight in my head that it almost
took those 12 years or so to get me
back to Avenel Street again so as
to see what I'd been missing. 
You start learning how to paint 
a portrait, and it becomes the 
strangest thing in the world  -  
you just continually keep
painting that same portrait,
of yourself, over and over 
and more.