11,498. RUDIMENTS, pt. 578

RUDIMENTS, pt. 578

(starting out forceful)

I never started out to be

forceful, though I did

become that eventually.

It was all about 'Authority,'

which I hated. Still do  -  it

comes from the swankiest

little bunch of low-lives

I can think. Even now, right

here, in this town. We've

got a mis-matched Mayor

with a mix-up somehow

having been done between

his ass and his face and with

neither of them holding a

mind. Of course, I've a

notion to keep my distance,

but nothing ever comes from

separation  -  unless you're

a lawyer or a judge. I'm

neither. But I play one on

TV. Like we have here : a

councilman who keeps no

counsel. Betrays his fellow

townspeople at very turn,

lives off their tax dollars,

and lies. Whose tongue is

like iron and whose mind is

an empty void. I pity the poor

immigrant, who's no-mind has
been toyed. In James Joyce's

'Ulysses,'page 239, there is talk
of payoffs and 'palmoil' (the 
greasing of inspectors' hands for 
passage of faulty conditions,
in reference to the General 
Slocum disaster, in NYC. Here's
what it says about 'America' in
answer to 'why' that happens: 
"Palmoil! Without a doubt. Well
now look at that. And America
they say is the land of the free. I 
thought we were bad here." I
smiled at him. "America," I said
quietly, just like that. "What is it?
The sweepings of every country
including our own. Isn't that true?"
"That's a fact. Graft, my dear sir.
Well of course, where there's
money going there's always
someone to pick it up"
-

There were lots of times when

I just had to get away. That's the

Lord's work  -  taking to the

highway and proselytizing my

own Freedom in the face of

all the other straitjackets

I kept seeing. One cold and

iced over January day I jumped

in my Jaguar and simply took

off, told no one, was just gone.

Pointed north, even got stuck

in all the (usual, I guess) sorts

of northbound Rt. One traffic,

(I didn't ever do toll roads back

then : State Police). Early morning

rush hour stuff, drones, the people

kind, dragging off to work in their

Falcons and Comets and Thunderbirds

and Skylarks. Where do they come

up with those names, and why?

I wasn't at all sure how far my

Jaguar would take me -  usually

about every 80 miles it needed a

new investment of some kind;

every expensive malfunction

you can think of, I had, over

time. But this day, dreamlike,

it took me right up to where I

was headed. Bennington, Vermont.

Not one problem, in the whole

driving world. I used to love

Bennington, and the Bennington

Hotel. Much like the Troy Hotel

I made mention of way back, it was

one of those outrageous, rambling,

Victorian era home hotels, built

all very seriously, room after room.

levels, porches, sitting rooms, a

vast lobby, and a taproom  - like

it was 1882 and the stage and the

rail were due in soon. Each little

landing on the interior stairways

had an oil painting of their own;

so out of time, as if 'Modern Art'

had never existed  -  perfectly

crafted cows and farms and and

barn scenes, Vermont snow scenes,

half buried fences, layers of blown

and drifted snow, animals with

steaming nostrils. There were

farmhouses in quaint clearings,

old implements, farm-harvest

machines, ancient wagons and

plows, gingham ladies, weird-

looking kids. Staring at them

each, there was a whole

education to be had, some

communal idea to be taken

away and accepted from it all,

as if 'Vermont' was making

itself up as it rolled along; in

slow time, in muddy time, deep

and deliberate. All this time,

I thought, to what had I been

fleeing, the Past? Or some Future

I still had no inkling of  -  or were

they not both meaningless and

of no different import at all?

Ethan Allen and his Green

Mountain  Boys weren't going

to be of any but theoretical help.

but, still, here I was again in

their kingdom.

-

Unlike the local lying magistrates and

fire-king peons hereabouts, getting

away for me meant getting strange;

the opposite of getting pleasant. I

wanted nothing to do with pleasant

at all. I hated pleasant. It killed.

Pleasant lied and double-spoke,

couldn't look you in the face and

tell the truth even about a blade

of grass. From which it would

probably want money first. There

are such things as men-whores

too. Up there somehow in

Bennington, the world was more

pure  -  crossing that border along

from the highways of New York

State, it all changed. The sky

was, immediately, a different

hue of blue, a real, strong blue

that took no prisoners. You

entered that kingdom at your

own peril  -  it tolerated no one

of bad intention, it suffered no

fools. Right across from the hotel,

and down about half a block, was

 -  unbelievably  -  a W.T Grant's

that appeared to have stepped

right out of a 1946 guidebook to

sedate social-services. You could

eat like a madman for a buck-twenty-

five. Tuesday night was 'Turkey Night.'

Friday was, of course, 'Fish Night.'

I took advantage of that scrap heap.

The inside of the place, the store and

the dining art, which actually also

had its own entrance, from the street,

for those who didn't come for the 

shopping. High-class food-dump,

for sure, but those gluttonous 

Vermont farm-folk near around

Bennington seemed to like it.

They were always packing around 

to dine in their flannels. It being

mid-January, I don't recall any

local thermometers topping 12

degrees, above zero that is, in the

daylight, while to every night

12 below was an old friend.

There was a supposed fancy-ass

girls' college in Bennington, famed

already for its poets and essayists

and lesbian writers. but all I ever

saw were horny maidens peeking

around corners. It was fun though,

and the guy at the hotel, who did

eventually become a chum, had an

indentation in his forehead (yes,

I've covered this before too) the

size of maybe being beaned,

flat-on, by a speeding baseball

or maybe a golf ball, at speed. it

was just a huge depression in the

middle of his forehead. You could

probably have taken a ping-pong

ball and, with some pressure, 

wedged it in there to stay. I

guessed it was a birth defect. It

couldn't have been a forceps pull,

I figured, at birth, because there

wasn't a matching one in the back

of his head. He stayed around

there much of each day; suit and

tie, fairly formal, managing to

keep going an old slightly gone

to seed but still mighty impressive,

grand old hotel  -  in the old style:

mail calls, bell-service, attendants.

I do forget if there was an elevator;

I never used one, luxuriating 

instead in those grand stairs and 

landings. I was not used to what

'massive' was, to these interiors 

of these old places. Modern motels

and all, they try maybe to come

close to the pretense of long

hallways and numbered doors,

but it's all missed  -  especially 

with the usual puke-fest now 

of card-entry and touch-pad 

doorways instead of the old

wooden doors and doorknobs 

and keys. What a waste. It's

like comparing some old Senator

Calhoun to the usual shits we

get now in town halls and

governmental palaces. Aces

with their centers burned out,

by comparison'

-

You could sit around, in a leather

armchair, all night, like a king, 

next to a roaring lobby fireplace.

Reading or writing. Or just sitting

there to watch the comings and 

goings - of salesmen from St. Louis

or Akron, for their quarterly visits

to the hardware or cutlery merchants,

to take new orders for the upcoming

season, and report and turn in sales

factors and numbers. Everything was

tangible, in paper ledger books, with

pens and notes. Men talked back and

forth; the world was real. Nothing

like now, with Vaseline-lubed 

eunuchs pretending to stick it to

each other in towns of nothingness

and filth. The world is a fallen

place. Wars, and rumors of war.