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.