11,156. RUDIMENTS, pt. 440

RUDIMENTS, pt. 440

(the winding road to home)

'Two he made them,

male and female.' Well,

right off the bat I was

troubled. You see, I had

always been pureblind

yet spirited. I've only

seen things the way I

see them. I've always

harbored within me an

intense religiosity, but one

that had nothing to do with

this world at all. I'm at a

disadvantage here because

I find it hard to write about

myself in these (rather

ridiculous) terms, nor do

I know if others ever realized

that about me; if  they 'saw'

it or not. It's a problem. When

I would meet someone, there

would be a flash and a pop

within me. I knew them

before; they carried both

presence and meaning, as

if my own life was in a big

rewind. Everything was 'from

before.' One time I saw a

10-year on a neighbor's lawn,

when I was maybe 17, and

the hit was so hard it hurt.

I'd known that person before.

I realized all of life was a

timeless connection. Our

single task for redemption

is to notice it, and we're

home free. THAT was the

Savior's message, and I

rode the bus with it all,

from Runnemede right

through Berlin. New

Jersey, that is. Go look

at a map.

-

How do you explain, then,

what an echo is to others

who've never entered a cave?

Besides taking them to a

canyon instead, the only

answer is through creative

magic  -  and believe you me,

that's not an easy task. I never

walked alone, even when I

walked alone. I had hundreds

with me and I still do. Those

bus-rides home, to the tawdry

mistakeness of the old New

Brunswick station were the

best. Before the present day

New Brunswick downtown,

all those pathetic, white

Johnson and Johnson towers

(they sold the town away

in about 1966, to corporate

interests, in the same fashion

as is still done today  -  the

usual political shits are

always at work. The same

bunch : they get toilet-trained,

and they're off  -  ruining

everything for everyone

else. You can already tell

who they are, in 6th grade.

Nothing ever changes for

them : Blackboots. Hussars).

There used to be a long and

rambling and dirty downtown;

rows of pizza places, bars and

skeevy stores worth little. It's

all been swiped away now,

replaced with 40-dollar a

sitting faux-fancy restaurants

that still think of New Brunswick.

No matter, the same idiots are

made happy by it. Like Avenel.

They go home and stick that

black boot up their mate's butt.

It's all the same to them.

-

The dark of early Winter's light

hung on these little towns like

black velvet. I saw the black,

and I was  -  at the same time  -

seeing the beautiful pearls on

that velvet. I'd bet enough to

say that I was never more

powerful a human being than

I was in those years. There are

a few adolescent years when it's

said that a girl can light a fire

with her eyes. I always believed

that. In the same way, at age 13

through 18, whatever those other

troublesome traits may have been,

I was Caesar. I was Atlas. I was

Alexander the Great. I ruled my

own world as I was forming it.

And there can't be anything

better than that.

-

What I'm left with now is

aftermath. Like the Rolling

Stone's album of that name,

in about 1966, whatever. I

never did get the connection

to anything except maybe as

a holding pattern; it was a lot,

though, like life  -  circular

and singular. I had a friend

back then, inconsequential,

but he said a lot of strange

things. Many of  them came

true. Others, of course, didn't.

About that time, too, Winter,

'67, I guess, the singer

Donovan Leitch was in

NYC, staying or touring or

whatever, I forget, but my

friend Judy knew him and

spent time with him, as he

did with her, hanging here

and there. He'd just then had

a completed double album as

I recall, with some horrendous

title, 'A Gift From a Flower To

A Garden,' if you can believe

that; pure hippie drivel, all

the colors and flowers and

drug stuff. Big deal  -  there

was never anything worse for

me than to see how so many

guys went that whole hippie

route and got all weak and

transformed  -  just rolled
over into things like that  -
pretty flowers, psychedelia,

and all that gibberish. I wanted

to swat the guy. Just like girls; but
I always tried remembering, 'two
he made them.' Leitch was fairly

useless anyway, but whatever.

I was trying to assert something

completely other than that, and

at that period of time the whole

world seemed to be betraying

my thought. I said to him, 'Why

are you doing this crap?'

-

It had only been a year or two

since those magnificent bus-rides

and that magnificent portion of

my life where all the new pages

given to me were blank and I had

the gift of a pen. Forget that

flower to a garden crap. I felt

way more like Tolstoy than

Stalin. My feelings leaned

to Trotsky, not  Stalin anyway.

The problem with Stalin, and

that whole over-achieving

murderer thing (he'd made that

name up  -  Stalin means 'steel'

in Russian. His real name was

Alexandervich something. Well,

actually Iosif Vissarionovich 

Dzhugashvili. We call him

Joe. Problem was, he too was

an ex-seminarian). Trouble

always brews. So, I'd get back to

Avenel and I'd have to figure

out what and where it really

was. Did it have a place in

my scheme of things? Did

absolutely anything of it

matter or even exist. No. It

was a squib. It was on no

one's bus route, least of

all mine. Well, whatever;
maybe in another life I was
you, and you were me.