RUDIMENTS, pt. 455
(mistletoe and redwing)
My God may have made me
an entity, I'll admit, but the
burden of responsibility was
for me to, or not to, pick up
the mantle given to me. My
situation was whatever it
was : Goodbye Bayonne
harborlands, early. Hello
Avenel. Rhymed with
'What the Hell,' so I took
the young-boy cudgel. And
now here I am. The message
I've taken up of late is in
the finishing of the story,
however it goes. I may gag
on a tuna sandwich tomorrow.
My heart might stop here - !
!! - in mid-sentence (ha ha
fooled you). Or I may have
12 more years some some
sanctimonious pussyfooting
yet to do. I used to tease my
Mother endlessly, in two
ways, as a young guy. She
was very impressionable,
and naive. I'd tell her I
was going to die, and that
I knew it, at age 42. She'd
gasp, and get all upset.
One day I awoke, and I
was 42. 'Oh damn,' I said
to myself, 'now I've done
it.' At least she was glad I
was surviving. And the other
thing was, I'd be talking to
her, or standing around, and
I'd just fall over dead. (It was
an acting trick picked in the
Drama Dept.). Playing dead
was the easiest thing in the
world. And then one day,
waiting for the Princeton
train, at the Dinky Station,
I was reading the Meditations
of Marcus Aurelius and I ran
across that quote I'd forgotten
about; some version of 'Live
your life as if you were already
dead.' That hit me hard, woke
me right up from a dream.
So, since then, I have.
-
Now, as I mentioned, it's
end-game - as I enter those
final scenes deep in the last
act, it's all good. I thrive.
But I have still to write an
ending. Hard parts coming
up, a big plural, one after
the other. All the things
once established in the early
parts of the play are long
gone. There's a line in old
theater-writing training,
that says something like,
(I poorly approximate here),
'The gun that's introduced
in Act 1 must go off by
Act 3.' That makes sense
and means nothing
'superfluous' should be
entered in, scene-wise,
if it's not to play a role.
Trouble here is (hello
real life) everything put
up in those early scenes
is all gone, torn apart and
asunder. Try getting out
of this mess, you creep.
It's now a complete re-write.
-
No one has ever claimed
that I'm clear, but why
should I be - this life
itself is a mad jumble,
and things get scrambled
up and mixed around right
before your eyes. It's a
giant with whom we all
must wrestle. Nothing
really stands on its own
two feet - there are flows
and currents always running
beneath, alongside, and
over things, They two
must be reckoned with.
Only rhetoric wins the day :
Well, I'm not sure what I
mean by that, but I'll let
it stay. Is all this comic?
Or is it pathetic? The sort
of thing this all is a bit like
a mystery volume you win
at a fair. Some strange and
oddly alluringly young lady
hands you your prize : A
book with no ending, one
that refuses to tell you the
end of its story, and which
also won't let you in on what
the author thinks might be
the best end for the story.
Like Avenel, it makes
absolutely no difference
whether you laugh or do
not laugh. Here you are,
either way. The mythic
proportions abound. Those
here, as I am, who say the
place is a dismal horse's ass
of a wreck, and the ones here
who say it's the most wonderful
horse's ass they've ever seen.
And they love it. Then you
have all those faraways who,
given five dollars, pipe in :
It's a dungheap; I'm so glad
I got away. And the others
who say, I grew up there, I
miss the place, my best
memories were there. They're
blockheaded enough to act
as if that place still existed.
Jesus, where's the gun from
Act One? Give it to me.
-
I never transformed? I never
returned? I thought I'd done
both. One time, at the old
library location when it was
n Rahway Ave., my girlfriend
worked there and I had been
teaching her to drive, my '62
VW. She got the hang of the
stick-shift pretty well, but had
some trouble with the push-down
sequence needed to get the
lever into reverse. Well, she
missed this one and started
out in reverse, except it was
first. Right into the building
at about 5 mph. The metal
bumper took a hit, but no
big deal. And she probably
woke up a few nappers inside.
(I told here there was a book
in there, by a guy named R. U.
Napping, called, 'Sleepers
Awake!' There wasn't really,
I made it up). But in like 1984
or so, there really was a book
called 'Sleepers, Wake!' I was
15 years ahead of the curve.
My gun went off too early.
(Hey! I think that's how I
became a father too).
-
Mistletoe and Redwing?
You're probably wondering.
That's the title of a play I
wrote, in Avenel, while sitting
night after night at that dingy
library or Rahway Avenue,
(it's Woodbridge really, but who
cares. I claim it for Avenel).
Redwing is a prison in
Minnesota, a large, boys'
reformatory (a big place, not
fat guys). It was about love
and caring (thus the mistletoe),
in the miserable life of kids
who've gone wrong. Yep, I
wrote it, it was pretty cool,
and I've never seen it since.
I put it somewhere, and there
it's stayed. Like a gun in
Act One that never went off.
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