11,310. RUDIMENTS, pt. 499

RUDIMENTS, pt. 499

(the flugelhorn for the dumb man)

A lot of things happened
along the way. Half of
them, I don't even know
what they were. One time,
right outside of that 1001

place, I had hopped in the

car, while visiting home one

Saturday, and went there

with my father. I never even

got out of the car, just said,

'Go ahead, you go in, I'll

wait.' It was very weird but

I'd been overtaken  -  this

may sound stupid  -  by the

song on the radio, (little 

tinny usual AM car-crap).

It was already late in the 

game, but Creedence

Clearwater Revival was

the band and 'Proud Mary'
was the song) and that tune

was enough to drag me

down, stop me dead, and

shut me up. It had, in 

reality, nothing to do with 

me, or NYC, was more 

tethered to the Delta and 

to the Mississippi, but the

drive of the music and the

'job in the city, working for

the man every night and day' 

stuff  -  at that  moment  -

was like an encyclopedic

summation of the 'anti' of

all I was about. I said to 

myself, listening, 'Whatever

am I doing here?' I again

realized, clear as silk on a

a carpet, that I was simply

out of place. I had nothing

in common with my father, 

nor any of those men on

their ways in or out of the

car place. I hardly knew,

right then, why even had I

been born among Men. No

longer cold I fathom what

they thought about. 
-
It was a crossroads, of sorts.

And never again was I able

to even listen to that song

without the treble-bells

of worldly distaste ringing

in my head. It's still like

that. If I was ever born 

with a script-in-hand, I 

know for sure that it
got lost or altered too
many times. Things
gone down through
the years to haunt, 
or to mesmerize me.
I was always getting
thrown or sidetracked.
Like this 'mesmerized'

thing; there was actually a

guy named Franz Mesmer,

who came up with the 

concept and they named 

it after him. He was a

scientist, and he came

up with this 'animal

magnetism' concept, 

about 1850. I didn't 

know much about 

science, nor even care 

to, but I knew right off

what this guy was up to,

or talking about. Energy

transference between 

animate and inanimate 

objects. Yes, as if the 

world was one large

transfer-bowl between

consciousness and reality,

which I already knew it

was. The result was our

own manifested world.

Underway, and always

changing. With no fixed

points. Today called, oddly

enough, 'Quantum Physics.'

How I'd arrived there, 50

years ago and without any

education, was beyond me.

It seemed to hit right home,

in the face of all the other

'life-is-a-boring-string-of

ordinary-events' stuff they

tried teaching us. I don't 

think - to put it bluntly - 

that any of my ostensible 

'teachers' had ever come

up against a kid like me

before. I wasn't game for

their parody of human 

events. And I could see 

right through them. What

it came down to was 

something they'd never 

even considered, and a 

something which would 

have shattered all their 

complacent, crap approaches 

to 'teaching' and all that. 

I had been dead, and had 

come back to life (that

train wreck, remember) -

no, dragged back, (it wasn't

quite my idea), returned 

from that version of 'dead' 

reading and seeing a 

completely new light and 

reference-compass. It, truly, 

truly, did not include them.
-

It truly, truly, did not include

a lot of things - family and

home 'included.' (Avenel, you

were my bad tattoo, my poorly

inked prison-version of a

shoulder-blot marked by

hand. I never did have it

removed, and it sure has 

faded some but it's always

there. (But like that Greg

guy from Avenel often says,

when he can get the Twinkie

out of his mouth, 'Blessed 

are the poor in spirit for 

they shall inherit the Earth'  -
(and they can HAVE it, I
always added)  -  and starting

with him, gagging on his
macadam in his pestilential

jerk-boy way, while learning,

finally to read and write his

Mesmerized shit. Transfixed

inducement.  Miasmic detail.

Robotic  mis-alignment. It's

all they deserve). Voices have 

always  spoken to me, guiding 

me, and projecting a version of 

me forward. I mean real voices,

not idiots. And I was always

a card-reader, and each 'card'

presented to me represented

another working mentality, 

another developed level of all

consciousness waiting for work.

-
Everything in life

anyway is a mere symbolic

push for the truer reality

represented. Like those

monthly unemployment

statistics put out by the

government, by which 

so much policy is made,

and then - after policy 

is implemented - get 

altered anyway. 'Revised

statistics for last month's

unemployment report', it's

called. So bogus and so

transparent - life is a 

floating, fluid, situation,

always being read, mis-read,

revised, and changed. I

already knew all that. It

was just that, all my life, 

there have been clowns

trying to instruct (for pay;

they're hired hands for

lying), so that my life is

a fixed and well-boxed 

scene. All the cards

presented to me had 

memory-levels of their 

own. Were symbolic. And

were given to me in a

sort of dream-time, a time

of halves in which I found

myself living, What was valid,

and was what not? I was 

never quite sure, just worked 

the card. But as if in a vast 

castle in a vaster kingdom, 

each was a door in a corridor, 

and each door brought me to 

more and other doors, each

one richer than the one before 

it. As I grew up, and out, in the 

same way, symbolically, as

in some aberrant Avenel,

grew into a small Shop-Rite,

still in town, then a larger

Shop-Rite, with improvements

and still on the same damned 

Avenel Street, now a place of

nothing at all, and then out

to the highway, a better and

larger stream of things and 

traffic passing by, constantly. 

The original location now

dead. The new, large place,

replete with shimmering

crowds, a parking lot filled

with things passing, abandoned 

cars and wrecked motors, yet

made 'valid' by all that too.

Expansion, of something.

-

I always had difficulty 

justifying myself, yes

but mainly because I

never really knew from 

where anything was coming. 

Or who I even was. No

one ever understood that

about me : not friends, not

bosses, not teachers, not

parents. I belonged to

no one. I wasn't even here.

Some people just always

have made me sick.

-

It's a piecemeal dichotomy

that we get to live. The sources 

of our dreams are lives, and  -

funny as it is  -  the sources 

of our lives are dreams. It's a

constant push/pull dichotomy,

and something you'd never

figure any asshole would 

understand. It just goes on

in its psychic web of growth,

spreading  -  goodness, balm,

or defamation. The difference

lies in knowing the difference.

It doesn't lie in advancing the

lie. Back in NYC, I ran like 

the dickens to get the foul

flame of a off-center source

of place like Woodbridge and

Avenel off the flames consuming

my coat. Art and creativity were

to be my masters; I'd enlisted

and re-up'd for sure and Amen!
-
Every 'ville' has its villain, and
here in Woodbridge, we've got
hundreds of them  - all as empty
in the shiny head as a ping-pong
ball is to air. Light, bouncy,
and stupid as all get-out. And
  -  oh  -  that Creedence stuff, it
was all fake. Those guys played at
bayou, but they were middle-class
dolts from San Franciso, just
playing at their own version
of the Delta snakecharm.
(Goes to show  -  don't believe
what you don't know.