RUDIMENTS, pt. 417
('how do you solve a problem like Maria?')
I was brought up kind of loose,
never taught much about finer
things, how to advance, what
to learn. I had to learn all that
on my own; direction, purpose,
etc. Sometimes I felt like
Abe Lincoln, doing all that
long, solitary walking, as his
youth-myth went, to return
library books on time. The
only thing ever actually valued
as being good in my house
was vocational stuff : having
a trade, working responsibly
with your hands, making things,
working for a set wage. Myself,
or my father, for that matter, had
never (and I know this because
he told me) reached the stage
of even sticking up for ourselves
- by asking for more money, or
by demanding a raise. My father's
tack was that you just took what
they gave and stayed happy and
grateful for that. It was a taught
passivity, a roll-over capacity
for nothing special. This sort of
thinking has bedeviled me my
entire life. In fact, it ghosted
me. I once worked for a set of
people for 7 years without ever
getting a change from the agreed
upon rate I started with. Unheard
of that anyone would tolerate that;
what does one do then, steal from
them to make it back? And these
were supposedly enlightened, in
fact, haughtily self-proclaimed, NY
'Marxists' with their doctorates and
dissertations. They could talk
the fastest game in the world but
it was all crap. I laughed through
it all, but still all while working
my dumb ass off for so little.
What was most galling about it
all was, in early mornings, when
they'd come strolling in, and
remarking positively on the
amassed work they'd see I'd
done; and then they'd buy
me a coffee. Yep, a coffee.
7 years of. It always seemed
that my father's way sort of
welcomed me to nothing but
another form of low, white
slavery. Gutter slaves whom
the revolution had somehow
missed. Every revolution.
The Wiegers guy I once
worked for, the same cat who
was worried about me in front
of the 'Town Fathers' (about
20 chapters back), called me a
radical, more than once, and
wondered why. In turn, he sort
of took offense once when, in
something I'd written and had
been published, I called him a
Fat Cat. He thought it had
something to do with weight;
just goes to show. The fat cat
I'd mentioned was the old-line
version of the gilded age proto-
industrialist business tycoon,
but, no matter, why figure for
any one of them to even
understand me. I'd rather be
underwater with Sylvia. (That's
a completely meaningless phrase
I just made up, but I threw it in
here to exemplify the same sort
of befuddlement that Fat Cat
probably caused him. And
for fun, too. I'm like that).
-
Sometime around 1969, I can't
exactly recall, there was a song
that went, 'It's getting to the
point, that I'm no fun any
more...' David Crosby wrote
it. It caught my ear; I liked
it. I liked the sentiment, the
approach, the self-confessional
stance, the weariness and the
puzzlement too. I stayed with
it a while. Then I studied the
album cover and got bummed.
(I was living at the time of the
album-cover study high and then
hidden in the wilds of Pennsylvania
and the furtive trips to Ithaca from
Elmira too). The point was, and
the album itself was already a
few years old, that I got pissed
over the way these three guys
had treated their drummer (a
guy named Dallas Taylor). Big
deals that they were, they shunted
him off as if he didn't exist. In
fact, he'd been photo-manipulated,
back then, in, after the fact, to a
little window at the back of the
album's gate-fold. At first glance
you really couldn't even see
him. Sure, no big deal, but
it really annoyed me. Rock
royalty already juicing up its
own stupid bones. Yeah, I saw
what was happening really
quickly. The bloody world was
falling back into its same old
patterns of deceit and favorites.
Two friends came up to visit
and stay awhile, and they
brought with them, among
other things, a new-breaking
album by a two-man band
(I'm not sure at all about
their drummer) calling itself
'America.' Everyone thought
it was Neil Young, which
apparently was why they
loved it. It kind of had that
'Harvest' feel. They came
across, otherwise, as just
a mystery duo. Sort of like
in '66 when the Bee Gees
and their 'New York Mining
Disaster 1941' song was
taken as a mystery song
by the Beatles. Or Stealer's
Wheel, 'Stuck In the Middle
With You,' (Gerry Rafferty),
being taken as a Bob Dylan
song. Everyone fell for those
too. I was trying to get a
feel for that whole world,
but couldn't. It was more
like, if and when you
established a name (or
a 'brand,' as they say
now), anyone else
could start to trade
off it - not that it was
important. It just kept
me interested in the
way things went.
-
Based on my more
malingering aspects of
self, I felt cursed, more
or less. My parents I was
sure, had made a major
mistake by ever coming to
Avenel - leaving any vestige
of an urban place; which
I'd always thought I'd been
born for. I'm not sure I ever
forgave them for that. Part
of the problem - the problem
of me anyway - eternally on
the dissolve between reality
and its opposite. Not the
figmented opposite of the
psychotics I'd occasionally
run into - who'd insist they'd
introduce every subject, and
then control and command it.
For those people, the whole
world had to stop so you
could accept their blemish.
That got really tiring, really
fast. I learned to see right
through all that. The opposite
of reality, as I meant it, and
with the context of a paltry
Avenel version of it, was that
everyone had failed me. The
'Reality' which had been
presented to me was,
without fail, ALL wrong.
I knew that and all my
polestars knew it too.
What still baffles me to
this day is how I got
backpedaled into all those
years of normality, trying
as I did to fit in and work
and prosper, in a dank and
crummy world I didn't
believe in. What a waste. I
know I'm going to Hell, if
for nothing else than for
squandering my life, hiding
the candle under a bushel, so
to speak, biblically, about it.
-
Previous to this, in the
last chapter, I made mention
of that little movie-house
in Woodbridge, being next
to, as it was, Town Hall (the
old one). That town hall had
columns, a long flight of
half-grand steps to get up
to it, and was made of some
tone of brick, not red, but
brick. Across from it was
some War Monument in a
little road triangle (still there)
and a Gulf station now long
gone, and Klein's Farm and
Garden Center. I can identify
all the things, yes, but even
with all that, there no sense
of place offered up. To my
mind, even at that young point,
I could feel the lack. There was
no focus, no centered place
of space that would extend the
idea of Being somewhere.
I was there, but around me it
all was dead, dull, stupid -
and how do you solve a
problem like that?
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