11,073. RUDIMENTS, pt. 409

RUDIMENTS, pt. 409

(avenel  -  soiled again)

I've got to admit to being a

pretty hermetic guy. I've got

no friends to speak of, no going

around with, sitting in bars

or dining out. No sports, no

adjuncts of clubs, networks

or organizations. So, when I

do get called out for being that

way, it's all so wrong as to be

laughable, pretty much showing

the ignorance of the accuser. All

I've got is my life, my past, my

brain, and my changeable reality.

Anyone not happy with that, well,

pretty much they can go screw

their little jolly-Roger self (See,

I didn't really even use the f-word,

though it deserves it) in their

fire-wagons. There's a few of

them around here; voracious

meat-eaters with big and large

mouths. Long-gone, the

miller's son. Now living

off the taxman's dollar.

-

Sometime back  -   when, I forget  -

I ran straight smack into an old,

ancient writer guy named Vico.

Yeah, you can look him up, I'll

get to it too, later. He was from

like 1680 or something, and had

all those usual old and strange

references of which people know

little today : jurist, philosopher,

scribe, etc. Anyway, out of the

Avenel-exiting good life, once

I was gone, there he was. My

train took me right to him,

somehow. I guess I never did

look at the ticket, though I knew

the conductor : Eddie Leiner, a

guy from Elizabeth, well, North

Elizabeth actually, which is one

tiny stop above Elizabeth, less than

a mile or two I'd bet, added on later,

maybe in the 1928 era, for that

wealthier, business-oriented, other

end of Elizabeth when all the large

factories were really humming  -

Boorum & Pease, and other large,

busy companies. Right out of

NYC, it was almost a business

and sales stop, or a bedroom stop

for the big guys with the large

stone homes. Eddie of course

would not have known anything

about Vico either  -  unless it was

the name of some beer-brew at

Nugent's tavern, right across the

way, but whatever. His train took

me right to Vico.

-

Coming like a ring-ding outta'

Avenel, it didn't take much to

storm me over  -  lots of times

people from sorts of little-ass

places like that are really parochial

and only know what they get from

the media and the talk-show clown

circuit. And it all happifies them,

so whatever. I wasn't like that all.

You know how the ego-guys suck

their own pipe, well it wasn't ever

like that for me. I was afraid of

my shadow. Up at the Avenel

train station, I'd sit in that old

wooden shed they used to have

up their for the NY bound side

and just wait and look things

over. I used to read Lawrence

Ferlinghetti up there too  -  'A

Coney Island Of the Mind,' the

book was called. And then

another one called 'Her.' They

were both killer. It was Winter '66,

I hated most everything, the nitwits

at Woodbridge High were not

yet aware they would be dealing

with me in a few months. I was

'rambloid'* and in exile. Not a

clear fried in the world. Avenel

was blitzkrieg to me. I'd go

over to that Metro guy's little

place; he was nice enough to let

me stand around. We'd talk about

stuff. He had this scratchy wife

with a weird little head of hair,

like the Wicked Witch of the

West, I always thought. They

didn't have a cash register, per

se. Not one that did the cumulative

addition anyway. She'd write all

these numbers down  -  of the

items the people bought, 6, 8

or 10 things (that was a lot

for there), and she'd do this

aloud-quick addition on a flat

bag, which them became the

bag for their goods; carrying

all the little numbers over and

all, and then entering a total

and stating it aloud. She was

pretty ditzy, like from Mars,

an old Mars, like Ike Godsie's

wife in the old Walton's Mountain

thing. Metro's was best in an

evening or late night snowstorm.

That was when it was at its

coziest, let's say, and the warmth

sweated the windows too. That's

all gone now, they covered

everything over and made yet

another damned day-care bullshit

place out of it; like ripping the

soul right out of an eggshell.

-

Once you lose something, it's

gone. On the other hand, once

you crash into something new,

you're right there : Like this

Vico thing. It seemed custom

made for me. Like me, too, back

then he was a tortured hunk of

Man, sort of a tortured 'genius'

before his time, as it gets put.

I had a friend (dead now) you

told me that I was the most

haunted person he'd ever met,

that I, in his eyes, was held out

singularly, by forces far greater

than me, who controlled my

thoughts and deeds. That

always sounded right to me.

Vico struggled all his life

(1668-1744) to express a

handful of revolutionary

ideas, for his day  -  which

must be imagined; the limits

and the constraints were ALL

different. 'He was probably

the first thinker to formulate

explicitly that there is no

universal, immutable, human

nature; he revived the ancient

doctrine that men truly only

understand what they themselves

have made, and gave it a

revolutionary twist by applying

it to history.' The gist was :

We 'understand' history, which

everywhere bears the stamp of

human will, etc., in  a way that

we cannot understand the senseless

and external operations of Nature,

which we did not ourselves make.

And then he virtually created the

concept of a culture, all the activities

of which bear a distinctive mark

and a common pattern. He said

that 'culture' progresses through

an intelligible progression of

phases of development which are

not connected with each other

by mechainical cause, but are

interrelated as expressions of

the continuously evolving

purposive activities of man.

[Here's the catching crux]:

HE SAW HUMAN ACTIVITIES

as being in the first place forms

of self-expression, conveying a

total vision of the world. And then,

one step more alone, he created the

notion of a new type of knowledge,

the 'reconstructive imagination,'

or 'fantasia'   - which is the knowledge

we acquire of others at other times

and places by entering into their

general outlooks, their ways of

seeing themselves and their goals.

'A form of knowledge which is

neither  wholly contingent nor

deducible 'a priori.'

-

Now, I know that sounds like

a lot, but its actually pretty

simple. Take this town, for

instance, and reposition it

somehow into the lower

middle ages. Evince yourself

of a few really jerky, loudmouth,

ball-clutching know-nothings,

and then try to see the world,

and history, through their gouged

and blinkered eyes. Kind of gives

blindness a good name, no?

-

That old Metro guy was pretty

good with his stuff, as Ferlinghetti

was with his, and I am with mine.

I work at it hard. I make both the

clay, AND the formations from

the clay. I know people who make

nothing; who don't know the clay;

and who don't know what 'forms'

are. It's like that old joke about

scientists thinking they'd gotten

one over on God. They say, 'Oh,

we can make an Adam, no problem.

Just give us some dirt and......'

God buts in, "Ah! No, no. 

Make your own dirt.
-
*RAMBLOID - (my neologism)  -  the condition of being nascent, 
about to bloom, ready to break out as mature and finished. 
A condition of new aggressiveness.