RUDIMENTS, pt. 563
(help, no brakes)
One thing is to learn how to
have a voice; I don't mean
glee-club singing or any of
that. I mean a voice, as in
you've got something to say.
My life has been all that and
now that I'm kind of getting
cornered into the edge of my
envelope of time, I use mine.
No one ever teaches you how
to say stuff. And then one
day you're over, and no more
chance to say anything. Well,
nice going - you'd think -
but usually there's no one
around really to say even that.
You're just another blot with
just another stone bearing your
name. These days, half the time,
those things aren't any longer
even in the ground. You get
to spend eternity now 7 tiers
up in a drawer as ashes in a
building dedicated to just that.
And plastic flowers because
there ain't no sun. Sonny.
-
Silence is golden. That's a
bunch of crap. Speak now or
forever hold your peace. Or
piece. You know how people
run right over you? That's what
your silence gets you. I found
somewhat - especially in these
dumb, suburban areas - that
it's the crazies who go around
calling you crazy. That's the
defensive-accusatory stance
they have to have in order to
cover and keep concealed
their own misdeeds. Simple.
-
Skepticism says 'Truth is out
of reach.' That was always kind
of the reason - trying to break
that thought anyway - that I
spent so much time in bookstores
and libraries and places like that,
just trying to search and find
my own conclusions. I was
attempting to 'find' what most
others never sought to search
out. It was just quirky; and it
always got me somewhat into
odd situations. Like one time, I
went into the city with (in) my car,
to meet some other people, and
wherever it was, I parked; up in
the west 80's somewhere - I
can't remember right now - and
I couldn't rightly remember then
either, so when, later, some one
of them asked me where I had
parked, I said I wasn't precisely
sure, but knew the area, a street
or two either way, that I could
search out. And then I said, 'All
I know is that I parked next to a
vertical.' They went nuts. 'What!
A vertical? You parked next to a
fucking vertical! This whole city's
verticals, and you expect to find
your car. What are you, nuts?'
To me it was all crystal clear; I
knew exactly what I meant, the
sort of sign stanchion right there,
and I knew for sure the way I
could easily, and by simple
deduction, re-find my car. To
them, it was the biggest and
most nerve-wracking thing in
the world. Of course this was
the same girl, a bawdy she,
born and raised in NYC, who
had - quite incredibly to me
but probably very logical to
her - once asked of me, about
living in the 'suburbs' that,
'You mean when you open
the front door, right there, is
the outside? How can you live
like that?' Now, I ask you,
which is weirder, or perhaps
they're equally strange. To
be fearful of not having
endless hallways at your
door to protect you from
the 'outside' - or to say,
'I parked next to a vertical.'
-
With the cosmos staring you down,
right outside your - well - window,
instead of another hallway, I guess
life can take on scary characteristics.
Who's to know the difference? We
here worry about muggers and
knives. She worried about the
(otherwise) great outdoors. I did
usually just roll with the punches.
One time, up again in that Nyack
and Sloatsburg corridor I was just
starting the trip back home when
my Jeep Cherokee lost its brakes.
Right to the floor, squishy. The
master cylinder had blown out and
I'd lost all the fluid and it wouldn't
hold any more, if I even had it, which
I didn't. It would have just leaked
right back out. So we pulled over. It
was getting chilly out, late afternoon
of a Winter's Sunday. I figured I could
make it home OK, with care, which
I did, by selecting major roads to
get me back into Jersey, where I
could get either 287 or the Parkway.
The car had a mechanical brake,
referred to as the 'emergency' brake.
It was a handle pull on my right,
at the console. It gave me cable
braking to the rear anyway. Better
than nothing. Cars now, with the
foot-press brake thing, I don't think
it would have worked with. All the
way home I tried to drive steady;
moderate speed in the open
right lane; as best I could avoiding
braking situations. It worked.
I was pretty tickled with myself.
It was, again, a question of a sort
of speaking out. Biting the bullet.
Sweating the nut.
-
That was the same car I'd been
using to go back and forth to
Millwood too, but I had another
so I was able to switch off for the
needed repair. It all worked out.
It's still, however, unbelievable to
me the sorts of things people put
themselves through, based on
reactions to precursors of reality,
not Reality itself. In this case, as
in so many others, just the doing
was the voice, the voicing. I never
knew how else to validate living
than by actually 'living,' and to
Hell with the rest of it all.
-
Those two drunken guys I mentioned
a chapter or two back, who came up
from the bottom of nowhere to help
out with my 'Jagwire,' what I think
I liked about them, and what I
recall now, was that they operated
on an impulsive determinate to only
themselves - it may have been
pleasure, it may have been intuition;
but the end result was that they
prodded themselves along intuitively,
and ended up doing what they wanted,
and took their pleasure from that.
As unique and as singular a pleasure
as they wanted. There was no 'profit'
motive involved; they didn't need to
balance loss against gain to proceed.
Their 'language' - in that peculiar and
localized voice they'd grown up with -
was the way they spoke to the world
around them. And it worked.
Just like that; it worked.
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