RUDIMENTS, pt. 460
(robert hall's again)
I never kept pace with
the things that made a
'place' a place. When I
got to the seminary it was
all just pine trees, small
roads, and sand. I'd seen
beach sand before, plenty,
but this was different. It
was sand as soil, or dirt,
or the make-up of what
you lived upon. Sand is the
floor of the Pine Barrens.
It's like dirt, and they treat
it as such. No more, no less.
I must say, it was different.
The trees, as they were, were
combinations of dwarf pines,
mixed with conifers and
others firs. Nothing like a
deep, hardwood forest, but
in their own way the pine
forests were even eerier or
at least more strange. There
were straight, sand, roads,
mostly about the size of
car paths, ranging through.
If another car came in the
other direction (seldom) you
just scrunched way over, off
the tire track trail, and let
it pass. A nod and a wave
sufficed. Isolated as it all
was, it got even stranger
deep in - cinder-block
houses, occasional large,
old, wooden manor-type
homes, really meaning
business, or some more of
the type of run-down hovel
like you'd see about 1964
in those Appalachia
documentaries about
America's deep pockets
of rural poverty. It was
all very quiet, and left to be.
There'd be cars and old
things strewn about. A bit
of the same sort of rural
poverty as here greeted me
as well in the hinterlands
of high, rural Pennsylvania
when I got to Columbia
Crossroads in the 70's.
Except there it was the
dirt, rock, and forest
isolation that this wasn't.
Out in these sandy woods
there'd be families - kids
of different ages. Gamy,
weird kids, with gamy,
weird families. I don't
know what Blackwood's
(I guess it was) school
district was comprised of,
back in '62, but I don't much
think these kids saw the
inside of a classroom. They
were probably original
home-schoolers - if that
meant skinning and cooking
to eat squirrels and raccoons
maybe. I never knew much
what else they did. When I
ever did see these people, it
was in the middle of doing
something else, some seminary
truck chore, going to the
dumps, or anything, and
there was little contact. I
always liked seeing girls
who lived out like this. They
always seemed feral. One
of the guys, in my fist year or
two - Leo Benjamin, from
Bangor, Maine - we came
up with this idea of 'running
track.' Which team existed, but
we weren't really a part of it:
he and I would just often take
our two-hour free time and
just run. Just like that in our
stupid gym clothes. (It wasn't
like today, with all that special
running clothes and garb and
a million kinds of sneakers
and sweats. We just ran off,
all along these weird lanes
and roads - more to just
break out, get away, run
free. It was great stuff, the
way the land smelled and the
fir and forest trees. We got
to know where things were,
some of the distant houses
in the wooded forests. We
always had great times,
and we brought others
along too.
-
That was really the only
means I had of ascertaining
'place.' A person has to situate
their 'self' somewhere, by one
means or another, in order
to meet the sort of personal
equilibrium needed to live
with and by. To give 'identity'
as it were, to their 'being.'
It's a very ancient and a
tribal kind of thing, and
the bones feel it, from
the inside out. If you skip
that step, your life never
quite settles itself : turmoil
and anger instead take over.
I think that's what the writers
and storytellers of the world
have always been after - to
portray that arrival, that
settlement with oneself, in
the guise of their written
characters and story lines.
It's all pretty magical, and
important too, when done
right. It's a kind of good an
final self-examination, like
the guy at the end of his life,
just before he's dying, looking
into a mirror and saying, 'I
guess I won't be seeing you
anymore.'
-
No, no, no, no, and no.
That was nothing I ever
got from Avenel. Leastways
I could never find it. There
were memories, and there
were places, but they were
under constant interdiction,
getting completely gobbled
up as I lived it. Tar and
macadam and building and
roadway. House and lumber
and construction and 'new.'
Even the people somehow
missed to mark. My settlement
became the Pines, where most
of my early mind matured :
teen years and all.
-
I had removed myself. It was
all done by me. Each step of
the way, I had fabricated both
the mean and the reasons. This
whole priest thing, for me, was
never about that at all - wasn't
about religion or missionary work
or none of that. It was a quest,
an odyssey. I was off, marking
my own time and seeking some
better place of the heart, or for
the mind, that I simply KNEW
existed. In a few more years -
though no part of me knew it
then - even all of this would
be replaced by New York City
in the same sort of 'quest' with
merely another change of scene,
and attitude too. I was trying
things on like suits of clothes,
back then, at Robert Hall's
Clothiers at the Green
Street Circle.
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