11,123. MY LIFE IS A GUARDIAN PENCIL

MY LIFE IS A GUARDIAN PENCIL

I may have kept you down, a notch or

two anyway, walking along these streets,

small pouches of nothing, at Dartmouth

and Cornell. Of other things I cannot

speak  -  nor do I even know why I

am here. Remiss in my retelling, I'd

surely be leaving certain things out.

-

Surely this is the dumbest place in the

world, yet all these streets are named

for colleges, selfsame. Lewd lingerers

and lawn-man maniacs are all I see.

'Tuesdays With Morrie' is a heavy read.

Down at the end of the street, the new

corn-king paralytic burns his ventless

grill with meat from gristled steers.

Or is that bum? How's it all go?

11,122. RUDIMENTS, pt. 425

RUDIMENTS, pt. 425

(avenel by name)

There were times I felt good.

Having everything in order, sort

of, or near to, being on top of

my game. Usually, just when

I'd get to that point, something

would go wrong, something to

foul it all up  -  even if just the

reappearance of some useless

character I thought I'd shaken,

or some other, unforeseen

complication. Much like a

disease that you can catch

just by breathing, their

heaviness would then latch

on to me, and make for

a doleful mess.

-

I've a few friends turn into suicides

on me. And I've had a few just

die, way young, way too early; or

I'd think. Part of it was the kind

of crowd I hung with : I don't

mean the biker stuff. Those people

often were results of their own

failings, and went down for the

count after having willingly

entered the ring. No. I mean the

writerly, art and creative types I

spent my days with : the sorts of

deeply alienated people fighting

demons, writing or painting

themselves down into personal

infamies while singeing themselves

in the flames of oblivion. Long,

twisty country roads. Shaggy and

desolate dead ends. Personal deaths,

not public ones.

-

Sometime around 1963, give or take,

I ran across the book 'Nine Stories,'

by J. D. Salinger. A punch in the

young face that was  -  yes, yes,

everyone else knows 'The Catcher

In the Rye,' and so what and big

deal. That's media-crap stuff; a

regular person, back then, had

no way of avoiding that book  -

the usual teacher and media

entrapment by the same foul

mouths who'd tell you Tom

Sawyer was a better book and

person than Huck Finn. Reason

for that self-serving crap was

that he was easily-corrallable

for the sort of junk they wished

to fill your heads with. A

sentimentalist and a slower,

but by-the-rules, guy. By

contrast, Huck Finn would

have told them to go to Hell.

The book 'Nine Stories,' really

got to me. Irksome but still

tolerable, it held a few lessons

for me about writing; things

were pretty transparent  -  the

little set-ups for each story, and

the closed scenes and dialogues.

The first story, especially, 'A

Perfect Day For Bananafish,' was

specious. It did me little good.

The entire story is a set-up for

nothing, and it ends with the two

last lines : 'He cocked the piece.

Then he went and sat down on

the unoccupied twin bed, looked

at the girl, aimed the pistol, and

fired a bullet through his right

temple.' Probably, right off the

bat, I already know of two people,

dead, brains blown out, to whom

this story meant a great deal. I've

read countless little facile pieces

written over it, purporting to

explain great meanings and

motives to it. More crap. To

these dead guys, it was more

a recipe or a cookbook than

it was a story : two tablespoons

of despair, a pinch of hopelessness,

a little bit of waiting, add the gun,

cocked, barrel to temple, and fire!'

Death is complicated, but suicide

is infantile.

-

When I was growing through

my toughest years, even then,

I admit the thought never crossed

my mind. It held no majesty;

the idea of taking one's own

life seemed simply useless,

a waste. Yukio Mishima, the

'great' Japanese writer guy,

whenever that was, leading

his followers into witnessing

his own ritual disembowelment,

in the form of some ancient,

Asian, ritual, death-rite stuff  -

it just seemed old and pathetic.

My dead friends, by the same

token, may 'perhaps' have been

brave  -  or seen as such  -  for

doing what they did but at the

same time they were each a

man-child, acting out a tantrum.

Home-baked chocolate-chip

cookies, I know for a fact,

would have made one of them

happy for life. They sought only

Mother, and comfort. And the

other was a big, screaming baby.

There was nothing high-minded

or elevated about them really.

-

So when Salinger, with this

book, touching NINE times on

these sorts of vaguely-fringe

characters, out for nothing

except some version of being

spoiled and self-possessed,

came through swinging, it

-  yes  -  piqued my interest,

but annoyed me too, or made

some sort of stronger character

out of me. Hardened in my

righteousness anger by the

very sort of possession he

thought he was writing

against. It was all the

equivalent of baby-talk,

and I'd had enough of that.

There were places, open

and easy to find, right there

in Avenel, where I could

have blown my own brains

out, or hung myself, or slit

my wrists and died  -  only

maybe to be found in a

week by the next asshole

there trying for the same

thing : empty, open boxcars,

sitting for weeks at Monarch

Cabinet Company's siding;

Abbe Lumber's back piles of

old wood and siding; the off-rail

side tracks of the prison and/or

General Dynamics. Those fields

were open wide for death. Hell,

right above the bridge trestle

at the underpass, next to and

alongside the train station,

there were four little and

easily-accessed areas within

the grid work even with the

tracks; I'd go in there and sit,

people would pass beneath me

along the underpass, and never

even look up to realize I was

up above them. Dead.

-

Small town; big city : nowhere

could I find the distinction

to be right, I guess, until I left.

Once I left, I had to start all over,

make up a story-line, an identity.

Everything but a new name  - 

and most of the others did that

too. I didn't wish to go that far;

I wanted to at least keep some

of my identity so that, later,

when I did get the bastards by

the neck, I wanted them to

know who it was about to rip

out their Adam's Apple. You

lose a lot when you lose

your name.

-

At about the same time,

whenever it was, '65, '66,

this Greenwich Village

folksinger fellow and local

ringleader  -  Dave van Ronk  -

came out with an album on

which was this wonderful cut

entitled, 'Zen Koans Gonna

Rise Again.' Now that skinned

me alive, crossed all my 't's

and dotted all my i's. That was

it for me; my direction was set.

Here it is, words anyway, in its

entirety : -- " Zen Koans Gonna Rise Again" --

In the alleys and doorways of old Greenwich Village

You can see the lames walking the streets up and down

From your tenement top you can drop down your garbage

And a Clyde or a cop will fall dead to the ground

You'll see bodies a-burning and faces on fire

Wearing death on their backs like a John wears a coat

For this is Satori, the end of desire

To O.D. in the gutter with a cure in your throat

Some are in slams and some are still scuffling

With nothing to keep but a twenty-cent jones

Jiving and boosting while their chicks are out hustling

While the ache in their veins whispers death to their bones

In the alleys and doorways of old Greenwich Village

You can see the lames walking the streets up and down

From your tenement top you can drop down your garbage

And a Clyde or a cop will fall dead to the ground.

-------

It never had been as if I was falling,

or failing. It was that there just had

never been anything to stand on or

alongside of. I've always been the sort

of person that takes validation from

helping others  -  as stupid and as

troublesome as that sometimes gets  -  

so it was more that these verses,

those little words about destitute and

fallen people, instantly meant something

to me and I had to explore it all, see

it, learn more about it. The entire,

widening chasm was opening out

before me, beckoning, and calling

me forth.

11,121, DOMENICO SCARLATTI AS THE THE FULLER BRUSH MAN

DOMENICO SCARLATTI 

AS THE THE 

FULLER BRUSH MAN

From Portugal and Spain they used

to know my name, and all across the

Naples Bay as well. I prospered swell :

This tinctured sound of music, fairly

scripted and all resounding. Here the

hallowed lands : boom-boom blast. the

Kingdom's soldiers plodded on.

-

If second lives these batteries have,

I lived another in the altogether. I

knocked on doors while whistling

tunes  -  it was all I could do in this

much more sluggish age. Now, the

radios play ''classical' music, and I

walk, wondering, if everyone in 

London who had heard the air-raid 

sirens of WWII is not now already 
dead. Hear the hollowed land : 
boom, boom, blast.

11,120. HOW THE RIVER RUNS PAST THE BAY

HOW THE RIVER 

RUNS PAST THE BAY

I cannot bring you back : 

memory to me. The solid 

air of Saturday is over, and

I am back to my Jupiter anew.

Who tied these shackles so

tightly is a mystery now to me;

the gate here runs not with hinges

but with ancient pieces of rope.

Frayed. Burrowed into wood with

both age and use. Like the fire-ants

once in my brain  - who were to

take the world by storm but never

did. I guess. That's over now. How

soon the world forgets things.

11,119. RUDIMENTS, pt. 424

RUDIMENTS, pt. 424

(home town blues?)

I always liked to write about

art. As far as writing goes, it's

about the most inconsequential

form of it that can be done. It's

neither actually Art or Writing.

In Avenel, there used to be a

small office used by a dentist,

Dr. Chrobat. I guess, in my

era, he did just about everyone's

teeth. His appointments and

office secretary, and dental

assistant, come to think of it,

was a neighbor of ours, on

Inman Avenue, Joan Ferrara

- (names here are changed).

She was a small, (quite small),

yappy lady who seemed to

always be talking, almost never

shut up. That was OK, it was

just her manner. For a while

she'd walk back and forth to

work, and then one day she

got a brand-new pink 1959

Ford Galaxie. (I never knew,

as a kid, why it was 'Galaxie,'

and not 'Galaxy.' That sort of

stuff always baffled me). Like

Art, and the writing about it,

the entire scene of the neighbor

lady and the local dentist at the

end of the block, and her pink

car, and his weird little office;

kids, the glass-brick front  -

(which I absolutely hated; you

couldn't see out, you couldn't

see in. The idea was 'at least

you get the light.' What were

adults thinking!) was all like

Art to me, or at least I made

it into my own little living

life-vignette, and so, here

I am, writing about it (?).

-

They were a cool family; two

boys. Both older than me, and

I won't get into that except to

say Anthony was a bit nuts,

and Tim, the older, was a bit

staid  -  he ended up working

on Wall Street, which was my

first commanding look into

that other world. I knew, of

course, nothing about it, but

he'd come home with 'tips' for

his father's investing. I guess

it was a sort of insider trading,

yet at the same no one seemed

too concerned over that and,

even then, at age 9, I could

sense  that the system was

corrupt. One very cool thing

was that, a few years later,

the dental lady, Rose, and

the husband, Joe, divorced.

I guess it was, as they say,

'acrimonious.' The odd thing

was, he and the boys all

stayed there, and she

disappeared forever, even

from the dentist job. They'd

had a built-in swimming

pool in their yard (pretty

high-toned for those days

on Inman Ave) and this

Joe guy, the husband  -  get

this now  -  he had all her

stuff, the big metal items,

etc., washer, dryer, stove,

and the rest, metal, wood,

and whatever, taken out of

the house (though I can't

remember what 'crew' did

this, or would do that) and

dumped into the emptied

pool area and then filled

all in with dirt, and then

it grew just like regular

grass and stuff later on, as

a regular back-yard. It used

to make me wonder, how

she just disappeared, (I

assume she relocated

herself somewhere) but

I used to worry too that

she was in the emptied-

out pool, along with her

washer, dryer and

stove. Whooey!

-

Anyway, I myself disappeared

not too long after, so what do

I know. The younger of the

boys, Anthony was truly a pip.

He was bold and loud. He'd tend

to hang around the rear area of

our house, on nights when he'd

find out we were eating something

he'd like (like, eggplant parmigiana

sandwiches; nothing special at all

to me, hated 'em -   but to him they

were gold. Another of his favorite

dishes was some crud they called

'chicken cacciatorie.' It was some

lousy concoction of chicken pieces

in red sauce), and my parents

would invite him in to eat with

us. Yeah, it was weird. He'd

have a way of asking my mother

what she was cooking that night,

about 4 o'clock, beforehand.

He was pretty smooth like that.

Everyone fell for his ways;

there's a word somewhere for

what he was, 'smarmy,' I think

it is. 'Excessively ingratiating,

or insincerely earnest,' is what

the dictionary says. That's about

right, though it's still a weird

word. So, he'd come over to eat

with us  -  just occasionally, don't

get me wrong. Older than me

by maybe 2 or 3 years, he was

just on that 'verge' of being like

a 'family member' though he

wasn't. My father took to him;

loud, strong, brash, and playfully

Italian too. Those were all big

pluses in my father's book.

(It didn't have many pages).

For my mother, she just felt

motherly towards him, and

it was fine. As long as he

ate her food, that made her

happy. The whole scene

was a bit weird for me,

(and I here better preface

this, forewarning you that

it's about to get gross  - 

true life, yes, but gross).

So, I'll say it once, here

and be done with it : for

the kids on the block in

my circle, Anthony taught

us about 'sex' or worse.

I have no idea how other

kids got to these points,

but, with the junkyard,

empty box trucks, and

sitting there as a captive

audience, we deftly learned

a few things. A spurting

good time, let's say. (OK,

advisory over). I suppose

everyone has someone

from their own youth who

lives on yet in infamy.

Old Tim was ours.

-

I'm not about to belabor any of

these points, because I spent

most of my younger days in

a willful state of suspense. I

was always waiting for something

more horrible than the present

to befall me, so that all kept me

pretty quiet. You get creamed

by a train when you're 8, and

the rest of the years which

directly follow are mostly

spent still processing that

information  -  even if you

and others may pretend

that's not the case. I walked

around with Doom UNDER

my umbrella, never even

realizing it was supposed

to be on the outside of that

umbrella. Always somehow

waiting for the other shoe to

drop; that was me. In looking

back on the location of these

earlier days, I can't say much

(though I always end up doing 

so)  -  and as if I were writing 

about as art, it would merely

end up as a lame review of

some living tableaux somewhere.

Hell, everyone's got one of

those, and I bet the pieces are

interchangeable and that the

names are probably the same 

too. Like some really bad

creche out front of St. Andrew's,

you end up wondering why the

cow has that weird expression,

why Joseph looks so ugly, why

why Mary's expression is more

quizzical than anything else, 
and why the goat seems bored
to death. Art for Art's sake?
I don't think so...

11,118. ENTOURAGE

ENTOURAGE

I have an entourage of trouble;

it follows me in dust and travels

with me wherever I may go. It

speaks a number of different

languages, though I myself end

up only using signals by hand.

Enough's enough, I often say.

-

Slavish dedication to the roots of

all evil? Well, yes, maybe that's

what this world is all about.

11,117. MIKE IS NAMED MICKEY

MIKE IS NAMED MICKEY

When you are someone like me,

no one ever thinks you're busy when

you really always are. They just want

to sit around. Which, oddly enough, is

what they assume I'm doing. How 

strange is that? One should never

presume? George Washington, in

his Farewell Address, said 'Avoid

foreign entanglements.' Yeah man,

I sure do know what he meant. 

11,116. FATES

FATES

Like gargoyles hanging in dim space;

peppered with their own fragmentations,

these can sometimes be cruel. I shall

die before I move away from here.

-

No longer reading a card, I mix my

pantomime  -  of part deceit, part truth,

part story, and part glory. The coast

along Mount Tenebrae is no different.

-

Someone left an old shack behind. Maybe

I can dwell in there, without a key and

without a mind. Just later, please, much

later than this time right now.

11,115. RUDIMENTS, pt. 423

RUDIMENTS, pt. 423

(avenel - here is not there, two)

One of the most fascinating

aspects of me resuscitating

my own life was Ithaca NY,

and Cornell. As I've pointed

out, it was a clearly different

time and place and filled with

a different gist. The place

was still burning and hot.

Francis Fukuyama was a

senior in 1974; Harold

Bloom had left some time

before that. Me? I was

still looking for Nabokov.

Every sort of heavily and

be-principled academic tyro

mainliner could be found.

Telluride House, or the

decrepit student slums

along Stewart, Eddy or

Quarry streets, and any

huffing walk up Seneca

Street could bring to you

the roughs and the readies

of cramped, off-campus

living. I loved all that

stuff. For a mountain

village of a very scholarly

but indeterminate quality,

the place sure had drive.

It always revved me up,

no matter who was around.

The location of ideas was

still smoldering  -  riots of

a few years back - police and

shutdown, all that violence

stuff, and the war, still

burgeoning  -  kept Ithaca

well-fueled and fired up.

To my mind there wasn't

any other place around like

it. I'd think of Elmira, and

then I'd think of Avenel too.

My family and parents would

occasionally come for visits,

stay a few days or a week,

and it was all untranslatable.

I couldn't fill them in on a

thing, because the thought-

languages were completely

different. Elmira was nearby,

geographically, so at least they

got that. Ithaca was another

matter. It was as far away as

now is, say, Avenel from

reason. The words and the

skinny-dippers from Avenel,

right now, make me sick. It

was about like that then too,

but what has grown now is

ineffable goon-sound of

ignorance. People hiding

behind others have always

made me retch. The missing

factor, of course, is that of

intellectualism. In Ithaca,

it all runs over the falls in

torrents (I'm speaking here

figuratively, Avenelites and

Gregorians; this isn't the back

of a cereal box you're reading).

Intellectual matter is like grist

in the mill of constancy. I'd

begun living that. In Avenel.

you'd need a knuckle-sandwich

every 4 minutes to bring sense

to anyone; the two didn't mesh,

and couldn't take. (I resign myself

to nothing except the most horrid

aspects of everything). I had

a hill-home in Ithaca, a place

for my aching head. Thorstein

Veblen himself had walked

these hills and streets, back

when land-grant colleges of

this sort were just beginning

(when America made some

sense, had some feel for itself,

instead of just feeling itself,

like Gregorians in ultramarine

drag on fake city-sound stages).

I could only wish for tham all

to become Ellen Jamesians.

(Look it up).

-

Have you ever been anywhere

that you feel is a perfect, at that

moment, reflection of you? I 

have; more than once  - because

the 'I' of me kept changing. 

Like a hurricane, OK? Ithaca

was it for a long time. But I

was not remaining stable. It

was Thomas Wolfe, with his

whole 'you can't go home 

again' jive, who got it right, 

or meant to, or came closest. 

All he meant is that the flux 

of Life keeps all things in 

turmoil, and change. You

can't go home again because

it's not there, and neither are

you. Flux is everywhere. 

The sooner that is learned, 

in a real way, the better 

the individual can be. So,

you ride that wave, and

you better yourself, you

go somewhere, and learn

something; applying 

yourself. That's why I 

was in Ithaca, haunting 

bookshops and spending

hours in places with Tom

Rapp on the overhead, a

distant and dismal sort of

daze-music, on sometimes

long and fierce, cold, 

wintry Saturdays. It all

became my life, and that 

of my little family too. 

The problem today, by

contrast, is ignorance;

a hand-held and ignoble

ignorance based on local

corruption. It's that simple, 

and it's not being called 

crime because people no 

longer seek to face things

off. They let the indentured

servants of miserly minds

hold them in thrall. In 

Ithaca, they'd be dead.
-
There was also  -  and I've
covered this before  -  a sort of
zen Buddhist rehab or dry-out
group home, up along the 
highway on the way into town.
We'd stop there often enough,
often for the food  -  officious, 
nearly free, and wholesome, 
in the 'zen and grain' way that
is much more ordinary now but
was a rarity then. They also
sold, as often happens, their
own stuff : pies, cookies, breads, 
grains and vegetables. Clothing 
too. It was pretty weird to see
people in robes and shaved heads 
and such, doing ordinary but
high-minded business as a venture,
in 1972. I guess the hare-krishna
dudes and all that were around, at
airports and things, but I never
much saw them. Anyway, to me,
and because it was Ithaca, this
all came as high-minded, blissfully
pure and good-intentioned. It's
funny how, sometimes, ideology can
become a stumbling block in one
undertaking, but a prime-mover
in others.

-

I'd never faced black-power

before; the incendiary attitude

of the sort of righteousness that

went with that ideology. But 

they ended up being right, 

though it brought them 

nothing. Today we let the

creeps and the criminals 

have the best chairs of 

honor.  In 1971, handling 

firepower was the way it 

was done, especially in the 

back hills of Tompkins 

County. They used to stand 

around the open-pit fires

at pig-roasts and ideology

picnics and say, 'There's

nothing better than smoking

a pig.' Man, that threw me.

Here now, when I hear a

local jerk, with his fireworks,

I jump. (And from 60 yards off!).
-
Mostly, I've found, ignorance weaves
its faulty quilt with a mighty needle.