11,478. RUDIMENTS, pt 567

RUDIMENTS, pt. 567

(thanks for so much)

There was a time (fairyland, 

wonderland, all the glories of 

of expectation) when, listening

to people  -  as you have to do 

when you're a kid  -  taking all

that to heart, all those ways and

stories about what life is going 

to be about, when I'd guess it's

right to say I got so full of the

expectations and the ideas of

righteousness and all things

turning out right for me later

on, that I just sort of shut

down and let it, maybe, run

on automatic pilot. Which is 

when I lost the thread. The

thread of whatever it was

supposed to be anyway. I 

found my own, started anew, 

and just let it go at that. There

was no use explaining. Landing

feet first, the double quadrant

circus-leap from Bayonne to

'Avenel' was too much. I think

I first went crazy, at age 4.

-

If the page, once written, is like

a heart attack, if it strikes that
harshly and that seriously, I hope 
it's only so for the reader, not the 

writer. I take various insurances 

out on myself by writing this 

material  -  funny in a way  -  

because  'insurance' is about 

risk, and I take lots of them. 

All writers do. But, actually

I'm not insured at all. Insurance

people, over time, have been 

allowed to flip, by process, the

entire means (buying off and

lobbying politicians; a very

strong Insurance Industry

lobby throws lots of money

around) of insuring things  -

but they no longer want risk. 

They have forcibly mandated

that you must just have certain

insurances, which idea used to

be that you'd pay them money

every so often, and they'd

accept the risk  -  that a tree

won't fall on your yard, house,

or car; that your awning or

deck won't collapse and

injure people, etc. Now they

send people around, first, 

before they renew, township 

policies and commercial and

homeowner policies too. I've 

seen it with my own eyes, and

heard it with my own ears  - and

it's no longer right, or even

American. It's all pussy-whipped

stuff now, and the she-men these

days get away with it. 'We will

not renew, unless the following

notifications are met...that tree,

and this limb, and that lean-to,

etc, must come down before

we'll renew you.' And they have

the power to refuse you! Funny

how I thought the whole idea 

was about risk, and the 

risk-amortization, that goes

with the 'Insurance' racket.

Have you ever looked at, say,

Avenel? The beauty of trees on

a lunar landscape is a scarcity.

Something stinks in Denmark.

-

I always considered things 

like insurance and permits and 

inspections to be crap, real 

mass-man stuff. I'd sworn

off, early-on, anything to do

with being mass-man. My entire

philosophy of life  -  and, once I 

made it to NYC, all those around 

me as well  -  treasured their own

personal moments and thoughts

and lives, and had nothing to do

with the common run of the

mass-man surroundings. Even,

mostly, the rich kids; they may 

have come from money, but

in listening to them talk, you'd

fully expect them to kill their

parents as they slept. In fact,

the rich ones were probably the

worst  -  the craziest, stick-anything

-anywhere girls were the wealthy

ones. It was amazing. There

weren't too many 'tender' loving

stories coming out of those families.

I think art corrupts the brain a bit,

so probably this was a stilted

sampling of the rich. Art world

people, art-school brains.

-

I was just a piece of crap brat, I

knew that, but I detested my parents

as well, for ever leaving Bayonne,

which  -  for sure  -  was a piece 

of crap example of 'urban' but it at 

least was urban. By age 4 I'd just

began settling in to that sort of

environment, and they mucked it

up by dragging my youthful butt 

18 miles down the river of no return,

to 'Avenel.' Or, as I liked called it,

'a venal place.' There wasn't, after

that, much to go on but blind

memory. It was a scar, a wound,

and it wouldn't go away. I still

wanted all those tugboats and

the river traffic of freighters and

tankers crawling along the Kill Van

Kull for NY Harbor. I was but 4

years old and I already knew I 

was missing that  -  the air 

hummed with a kind of mix there

of oil, diesel, grime saltwater,

and work. The guys were tough

and rugged harbormen. No crap

was allowed. You want insurance,

you say? Insure this! And a

knuckle sandwich was yours at

the nearby Frankie Fist Waterfront

Diner. That's how I wanted to live,

and I already knew it. Those

immediate post-WWII years

were a treasure  -  people were

still having nightmares, and night

sweats, about it all. They assuaged

their preponderant anxieties by

walking the waterfront, or slumming

at Uncle Milty's  -  a weird, waterfront

amusement-strip right outside our

windows. Men, and women, (and

yeah, they were separate breeds

back then) were different. Booze

and cigarettes went with the

territory  -  love, life and lust

too, most probably, though

at 4 years old I never got that

aspect, obviously. 

-

I'd watch, carefully, what adults

did and were. Summer men, with

rolled up shirt cuffs on his sleeves,

maybe with a cigarette pack somehow

woven into the twist. Many times,

a toothpick graced the mouth. I

never caught the real gist of that.

My father was a Camel-smoker,

back then. He eventually gave

it up, weaning himself with

a hundred packs of 'Chiclets'

gum a month  -  a weird, hard

candy coated gum that never 

seemed worth much to me. But 

the packs had this cool little

clear cellophane window that I

always liked, and the candy-gum

was packed in two rows of, I

think maybe 8 each, making 16,

and when the window no longer

showed 'gum' you knew you

were down to the last 2. I suppose

that was the idea. Anyway, it

got him off cigarettes, after a

long time (in Avenel by then).

Back then, too, it was really

unfair  -  the Army, or any of the

armed services, would force-feed

soldiers cigarettes, to counter the

tension and anxiety, just handing

out free packs everywhere, and all

these guys came back cancer-addicted

for sure. That was the later 1940's.

By the year 1960, smoking-related

cancer deaths had become an

epidemic, as it finally caught up to

all these moronic guys, what they'd

been trained to do  -  slowly kill

themselves, for Uncle Sam, who'd

kill them swiftly in battle first, if it

came to that. People back then

were always dying from smoking-

in-bed fires, another cause celebre

you hear nothing of anymore. That

Uncle Sam asshole was a precious

dude. He really ought be thanked.

-

I realized that I was born among

a people, an entire nation, that was

still stunned and delirious. The

spiritual and soulful feeling I

had  -  I have to admit  -  was that

I had little to do with any of this,

had been among these people

before, and in other situations and

places (reincarnational-wave stuff), 

and that my own exceptionalism

had been granted to me for purposes

of drawing out, and assisting, these

people. It was a sore and sorry world,

and Uncle Milty's was, for me, a

front seat for viewing the oblivion

express as it rolled along, by me.

The Bayonne Bridge was off to my

right  -  at such a closeness that I

could touch it. The sights and the

sounds of the harbor were a constant.

Mysterious nighttime lights  -  of tankers

and tugs, of Uncle Milty's arcades and

custard stands and beer tents and

trysting places; all the noise as

it amounted to one thing and one

thing alone   --  Hammer-thrower God,

ruling the streets. That's what Life

was about.
-
When people talk, they mostly only
talk about the good : that's all they
want and that's all they concern 
themselves with. Here's an example,
just one, out of a hat; the kind of
mishmash small-talk crap that people
do when visiting each other or
sitting around : toilet paper, paper
towels, tissues, napkins. Paper
production is one of the most
insidious and befouling processes
you can come up with  -  run-off,
residues, dyes, softeners, toxins, etc.
It ruins waterways. Its runoff befouls
creeks and rivers, etc. I kills wildlife
and vegetation. So, what do people then
set out, in their small-mind way, to
talk about? The wonders of their
new find! How they love those new,
scented, thick rolls towels by
Proctor and Gamble, or the new
super soft-absorbent 'Wipees'
by International Paper. Yes, they
actually talk about this crap and
totally leave out the death and 
destruction which comes from having
88 kinds of paper-towel rolls in
a supermarket aisle, for sale.
55 sorts of scented toilet paper.
Restaurant-sized napkins that
almost seem like cloth! Nothing
about the pollution, run-off, waste
and odor of the production process.
It's ecological warfare on a dying
planet, where the corporations making
all this redundant sludge prosper,
and the responsibility for preserving
the dying planet is, by edict, somehow
foisted onto the little man at his
garbage can to take care of. It's a
travesty, and I think any of those
dead-now Bayonne guys, with their
toothpicks and cigarettes, could have
wiped the planet clean with one
broad swipe. But they failed. And
they're all gone. And now what we're 
left with is the crap they started, and 
they accepted,  and all which led to this.
That's a real heritage for you.