11,576. RUDIMENTS, pt. 610

RUDIMENTS, pt. 610

(the long and the short of it)

So just imagine the distance

all of this made up, to me.

The new day of 1972 had

me erasing all of these

startling experiences I'd

just lived through. In the

city, and  -  in another

format  -  I had to make

anew yet another version

of myself that would sling

through all this 'Ruritania

hijinks' aspect of my 'new'

life. By God, it wasn't an

easy task. In between the

various portions of my

sundered life, there had

to be something I could

latch onto. 'Occam's Razor'

was a fairly well-known

philosophical assumption

about simpler solutions

being 'more likely to be

successful' than complex

ones. I was never even sure,

I admit, if I'd understood

that in any way, but intuitively

it seemed I was headed in the

opposite direction and fighting

it. In the years I'm speaking

of, as the 1960's passed into

oblivion (representing gross

simplicity) the 1970's had

entered into a new passage

of tired and groggy, and

absolute, deadness. Now, I

had hated the comic simplicity

of all that preceding hippie

stuff, and tried to refute the

partaking of it  -  all that

beads  and body-color and

sandals crap. None of that

was ever for me. For some

reason, people had always

assumed it was me, and I

don't know how that ever

got started. But, on the other

hand, as all that died off,

things began getting all

complex and multi-layered.

Endless rock n' roll geeks,

for instance, delving deeper

into arty-bullshit rock music,

multi-layered infusions of

synthetic and techno sound,

long boring, crazed and

faux-classical solos and

passages  -  even jazz had

by this time started messing

with fusion. The 'simplicity'

of, say, 1968's or whatever

it, was John Wesley Harding

anti-bombast, peeled the skin

from people's faces, they were

so shocked. Everything had

somehow gotten adrift,

aimless, floating off on

man-made islands.

-

One of my friends from

art-school, he upped and quit.

Threw out all his books, and

just heaved them and said he

was done with reading forever.

He called reading deadening,

anti-human, and without any

productive value. All he

wished to do was go far away

and dig holes. Yep; shovels

and holes. Metaphorically,

I guess. You can't just go

around digging real holes

in people's property. That

was his reaction to the

advancing neo-complexity

of all the crap we were

getting into. Maybe he was

on to something; I never

knew, but it seemed annoyingly

wasteful to me, and I'd missed

out too on those books. The

creep. He's dead now anyhow.

His solution was pretty simple

too, I suppose. A gun. Nothing

too complicated about that.

I never got to that position; life

had never made me that intense

or depressed. I managed to

cope. One time a guy said to

me that of all the people he

knew, among our group, he

always thought I'd be the first

to go; by my own hand and

choice. I said, 'Hell no, I

want to see how this thing

ends up.' Besides, I was

probably just too chicken.

-

Sure, sometimes I was so lost

I couldn't even talk to my wife

and kid. They all seemed part

of another world. Kid-stuff. I

was never much for any of

that Dr. Seuss and Lorax crap.

Nor did I ever understand how

or why anyone would be.

The supposed blessed logic,

or lack of it, in a kid, maybe

that was part-possessed of that

childlike simplicity and charm

that was all supposed to be so

good. But it never was to me.

Kids were demanding. Kids

only saw one thing. And kids

were boring as hell. I'd be lost

in some over-serviced idea,

hardly able to talk or acknowledge,

some days for hours. I want to

say days, but it wouldn't be true.

Wordplay. Deep thoughts. Light

thoughts. Paradoxes. Puzzles.

You name it, I was there: 'Only

those of note go to high-toned

Eton.' That was a good one, but

how to you put that across to

some farm bumpkin who doesn't

know Eton from atone. I was

'askance at my stance.' That

was another one. 'SN is tin to

chemists in a snit.' That too was

one, but you had to know the

Periodic Table of the Elements

to get it. Yep. Sometimes I felt

like a dwarf in a suit of armor.

But, I could never figure, was

that simplicity, or complexity?

Which was I living? The artist's

life is a complicated thing. I

always thought, artistically, say,

that the farmer I worked farm

for, his wife Barbara, otherwise

fine looking, had a big ass. Just

too big, and it ruined everything.

Is that a simple observation? Or

a complex one? I didn't know, but

I knew enough not to discuss

it. Life was funny like that.

Simple or not, it's funny. One

time one of the visitors to our

house asked something about

how long cows should be milked.

I said, 'Oh about the same as

short cows; and that's the long

and short of it too.' It did then

seem simple enough to me.

-

It was always when the city folk,

not these country people, started

getting intense that everything

got complicated, with layers of

reason and logic eventually going

way past and subsuming the

original premise or idea, so that

they just began arguing in a way,

about arguing  -  as if they were

with one eye watching themselves

perform and being pleased by that.

You'd end up with like white, 'Jewy'

guys (that's their word, not mine),

defending the black power

movement; and they'd do that

by strenuously acting black,

but never realizing it came off

as the stupidest thing in the

world. Or, the other version of

this was, back in the days of the

'Sandinistas' and Nicaragua and

Bishop Ortega and all that junk,

these skinny university and college

cafe types strutting around like

Hispanic militants, crazed, intense

revolutionaries, like they just came

down from the hills where they'd

been holed up for 40 days with

nothing to eat or drink but banana

leaves and goat's milk. With a

machine gun, no less. To me, that

was complex. That was putting the

horse (or the 'big ass') of complication

before the cart of simplicity. I

guessed everyone had to live

by what their vision of living was.

Even I did it some, probably; but

my vision of me was always

changing and undergoing an

alteration. To hell with that 'wild,

mercury sound.' I was the mercury.

-

Which brings me back to the 

Periodic Table of the Elements. 

HG is Mercury. I used to love 

those symbols, letters, etc, that 

make up the Periodic Table, 

and for many years I was 

totally enraptured by it.

It was totally without any

literary or artistic merit; in 

fact, in those respects it was 

endlessly meaningless. Yet, I

was convinced it was the key,

or a key, to something. It was 

magical. Some things were

metals. Some were gases.

Life itself was made up of all

those differences  -  as were 

the parts of experience I'd 

been going through. It all

seemed fair, and it all seemed

equal too  -  the simple and 

the profound, and I (we) were

making it all as we gorged our

ways through it. Society, AND

Being, was just a big ball of flux.

-

I go around now, to places that

I drive to, upstate or far off, and I

find myself constantly searching,

for, and sometimes still finding,

my world; remnants and parts of

it, left behind. Not around here

presently, of course  -  that's all

been flubbed up and worked 

over now. The chemists and 

the list-makers are all in the

ascendancy here, and have

taken over. But farther out, in

those out-of-the-way places 

I can still find, sections of my

old life and thought can be

located, turned over, found.

I just have to be open, and

attentive, and wise, about 

the whole stupid mess of

things. What is, and what

isn't. Simple, or complex.

More on all that, next.

11,575. THIS SHORTAGE OF ENERGY

THIS SHORTAGE OF ENERGY 

For sure my breathing is affected by 

the stamina of the wind and rain. It

seems heavy, sometimes, the air,

like something I'd not want to take 

in. (You can break my back with

the bric-a-brak cat but I'll not go

running to tell). One time, way 

back in school, we were made 

to play tether-ball. What a stupid 

sort is that as it defies all meaning:

having a ball, usually free to roll

and roam, tethered and roped to,

a lame captive, like that. 'Are they

trying to tell us something?' I 

thought, as only a kid can think.

My lesson for the day : 'Get me

out of here; get me out of here.'

11,574. ONE OLD MENTHOLATED MAN

ONE OLD MENTHOLATED MAN

At 4 Sand Pond Road. I stood.

And I knew you too, Sylvia Wood.

As I knew I should. The waterfall

was running, from heavy rains, into

the bog. Sand Pond I guess they 

meant. When it happens like that,

suddenly all things are clear.

-

How do you rent your garment,

if it's already torn and you've 

owned it already for quite some

time? Perhaps you can see what

I mean. But, still,a s much as

can be, only later does it really

become clear.

11,573. THE RESTAURANT WITH A SEXTON

THE RESTAURANT 

WITH A SEXTON

'You should order economy first, forget the

slab and the seasonings and get a nice wine

on the side. Mix that with some braised meat,

whatever you like, and it should be good.'

With that, he put down the shaker that he'd

been carrying and pulled out his pen and

pad. He looked down again, 'Do you have

any trouble with your teeth? Sometimes

this can get rough to chew.'

-

I thought about that for a minute and

decided I'd keep planning. 'For now just

bring me a double single malt scotch

and a tumbler. We'll do the wine later,

OK?' He nodded and walked away.

11,572. RUDIMENTS, pt. 609

RUDIMENTS, pt. 609
('moneybags go home')
I probably never got the distinction
right between 'law' and 'order.'
 Yes, they both existed, maybe at a
cross-purpose with each other, but
nonetheless there they were, together,
at the same time. I always felt that
the same people (cops and criminals)
were attracted to either one, and
kept, really, little distinction in their
mind between them. Cops. Criminals.
Law. Order. All the same crap, and
the people were exactly the same.
In 1967, the best advice I ever got
came from a criminal.
-
“Hold it up, pal, stop right there."

That  was all I heard and all I

really had to – the guy was a 

sailor of some sort a stevedore 

maybe or a deck-hand all cocked 

up and rippled with muscle and 

bravado – and what he had just

just then mistakenly assumed was 

that I was someone he should be

chasing down for taking something

from the deck of  the ship – which 

of course I had but could never 

tell him or let on about – so I 

turned and simply said back,

as quickly as I kept moving, ‘It’s 

for Ed Trenery and he wanted 

it brought down to him right

away– you’ll have to take it up 

with him,' which was some form 

of the truth in the fact that, yes,

there really was an Ed Trenery 

down on the wharf but he was

in no way concerned with

me, nor what was in my hands.

It apparently worked as an 

excuse or at least forestalled 

any further pursuit, at that 

instant, of me and of the two

large brown envelopes in my

hands – and which were stuffed 

with cash and had been sought

immediately by three men a

strange black car out along

West Street who – I’d noticed -

were still awaiting my arrival,

and, that arrival being made,

(at least long enough for  me to

get away) I dove into the opened

door and the car simply, and with

great ease, I might add, sped 

away into the early dusk of any

Tuesday evening, and if  I was

pursued I had been pursued 

fruitlessly I’d guessed - since no 

one seemed to be following 

and the apparent ease of the 

‘heist’ –  if that was what it was – 

in and of itself, was alarming 

for me : I’d been promised a  

clean 75 bucks to do what was 

needed – which I’d just done -

and that amount of money-as-pay 

had just been handed over to 

me. “Nice going how you went 

about that, kid – took nerves and 

balls too to just walk up there,

and you did it with both –  Good. 

Now beat it and stay close, 

so’s we can catch up to you

again when needed, awright?” - 

I nodded my assent and scrambled 

out of the black Cadillac stretch,

somewhere I noticed just north 

of the US Postal building on Eighth 

Avenue, and everything else – 

me and them included of course – 

just merged with traffic  -  me 

on foot in a half-rush and 

them in their black car tooling 

along pretty much like all the 

rest except longer and headed 

towards uptown and not across 
town and it felt good to have 
succeeded first time like that 
and I knew I’d see them again 
soon – once the taste of this 
gets in your mouth you just 
generally want more – but for 
the moment what interested 
me was in going over all of 
what had occurred, in my head : 
the envelopes had seemed to have 
had hundreds no thousands of 
dollars in them and the bills were 
all aligned and crisp and banded 
– so it wasn’t just some day’s 
receipts kind of thing or anything 
like that – they seemed perfect and 
clean and new and counted and 
separated – all that stuff just like
a bank does –so I figured they were
either bank-stuff already stolen or
new bills just – shall we say – 'mass
produced’ and I don’t mean a church
collection – I mean real solid-gold 
class A counterfeit money like ‘if it 
fits under the counter we take it!’ 
kind of dough : however what it
was doing on board that little cargo 
ship and why these malfeasant 
knuckleheads too had an interest 
in it was beyond me AND why 
it was pretty much just left there 
untended and allowed to disappear 
as it did still rankled me but I had 
done what was asked and gotten 
already my 75 bucks plus the good 
notion that I could work well and 
could do more for them sometime 
soon – I almost looked 
forward to the day. 

-

It was only later much later after 
I’d done this sort of thing 3 or 4
 times that I found out what was
was really happening – and because 
of finding that out I stopped doing it 
(at probably a greater risk to my own
life and limb) : the guy's name was, I
was told anyway, Antonio Dapienza 
and he was from somewhere 
around Sullivan Street. I forget 
but what came down was that one 
day we were somehow just talking 
and he was asking me a lot of
questions about my interests and 
what I wanted to do and what 
I was doing all this stuff for – 
all of that sort of talk – and I
began telling him about my interests 
in art and writing and learning
and literature and all of that, and
of course it was like telling him I 
was interested in translating the 
Septuagint back into a new form
of Greek; and he just stopped dead
in his tracks and ceased talking to 
stare me down and say – “get the 
fuck out kid and get the fuck out 
now ! this shit’s gonna ruin you 
for life – you’ll never live it down 
and sooner or later you’re gonna'
take a fall – y’unerstandin me?” – 
I had at that moment no clue 
as to what he was alluding so 
he explained it all for me pretty 
much as follows: ‘everybody ‘cept 
you is in on this heist – this is 
counterfeit money in a constant 
stream coming in from somewhere 
and everyone knows about it – 
the guy who leaves it laying around 
the guy who never chases you 
down though he sees you taking 
it the twerps in the car who 
drive you away and pay you their 
measly hundred bucks or whatever 
it is – the people on the boat the 
whole bunch of them they 
KNOW this is all going on – HUGE 
amounts of counterfeit money 
being brought in and distributed – 
tens of thousands shit hundreds of 
thousands eventually of money – 
and the only one right now in real 
jeopardy is YOU you dumb 
son-of-a-bitch – you’re a nobody 
and you’re the ONLY one they all 
know enough to finger if they’re 
poked – you’re the stooge the fall 
guy the whatever and if they DIDN’T 
want you to take those envelopes 
believe me they’d have shot 
you dead the first night and 
right now each and every time 
you’re brought back in your 
getting closer to big big trouble 
and screw all your dreams of 
painting or writing or whatever 
the fuck you’re talking about  -  
now take this money and get 
as far the hell away from me 
NOW as you can – I do NOT 
wish  to see your sorry ass ‘
around here again!”
-

All in all the weaving of the 
web was something akin to 
maintaining the fiction of always 
having fun or being exciting  -  
like Life Magazine covering yet 
another Edie Sedgewick sighting – 
it was all bullshit and story for 
effect and the idea was simply to 
promote promote something keep 
the ship afloat and moving forward 
allow each person to remain busy 
and distracted enough so as to 
not ever have the moment needed 
to view the real situation  -  the
great fiction that was hip reality
happening now the scene where
it’s at and all that crap and beneath 
it all was a New York coyness a  
criminal vacancy something which 
was slowly creeping into the fabric 
of the society and which would 
(and has) eventually destroy(ed) 
it, like a shadow of Jack Ruby 
moving forward with a gun taking 
that slow time needed to fall 
between the cracks of time  -  
all of that was still vivid in 
everyone’s mind and the country 
had snapped as craziness became 
the order of the day but an ordered 
craziness one still with lines and 
procedures for it was all put forth 
as something without challenge or 
danger and in that manner it was 
better able to seep seep slowly into 
the same fabric of time through 
which Ruby and his ilk had crawled 
and everywhere one looked there was
something a'foot  -  nascent industry 
of couture and clothing and 
faux-music and styling and 
posture and ‘journalism’ too.

11,571. RUDIMENTS, pt. 608

RUDIMENTS, pt. 608

(camptown races, doo dah, doo dah)

I might have tried twenty

different things, but I kept

getting stuck on one. The

one that I stayed with was

mostly in line with George

Washington's farewell

address : 'Keep away from

foreign entanglements.' It

was as good as anything

else I'd ever heard.

-

And up there, it sure was

easy  -  seeing as how I'd

blown in from another land

entirely : The hide-bound

attainment of the isle of the

Manhattoes. Where everyone

wanted a piece of you, or at

least wished to sleep with you.

I'd never been exposed to that

before (I was really a sheltered

soul) and found it exhilarating

to see in action. Everyone in

NY was always underway with

something  -  an angle, a copious

alliance to some underhanded

deal or connection. Besides

envelopes of counterfeit

hundreds, I'd been asked to

run guns, and steal groceries

to work in a theft/delivery

ring, which was more really

just a way to get inside people's

apartments and spec out the

spaces and entries. In both

those last cases, I declined,

but I did run hundreds for a

trip or three until I got warned

off by someone else higher in

the ring. I'll relate the story

later.

-

I never knew better which

was the more 'real' American

simplicity of which we were

supposed to be descended

and allied. The raw, push-push

squib of the New York City

business and pressure type,

or the faraway and hands-off

singular individuality of those

northeastern PA mountain

dwellers. They both had and

held bedrock values, but they

were so adamantly different

too; both the people and the

values espoused. What

bothered  me more than a

little at first was that I could

see myself favoring both.

Or either. Or one, and the

other too. That left me

nowhere; was I supposed

to just jettison one at the

expense of the other? That

seemed too absolute, and

too much like the either/or

of religion.

-

The great Free-Soiler David

Wilmot was from, and was

celebrated in, Towanda. Not

much else ever came out of

or happened in Towanda, yet

it had an interesting visual

attraction. It was, otherwise,

just a sleepy, old burg out

along Rt. 6. I got interested,

by it, in Wilmot, abolition,

the slavery issue as it played

out through these hills, the

factions and the sides during

the Civil War. The Free Soilers

were all about Missouri, and

keeping things unfettered (yes,

including people). There was

another guy too, Redpath or

Redfern, I forget, who was

actually from Missouri and

heavily involved with the

Free Soil movement. So I

often imagined him there,

strolling through Towanda

and past some of those grand,

old homes. The Athens Institute

was not car off either  -  that

was a music school run by the

brother of Stephen Foster, who

also had a presence all over

these hills. Foster wrote many

of his songs and tunes right

there, and was celebrated along

the roadways with signs and

plaques. Camptown Races was

the most famous of all these,

with a big sign and location of

the old racetrack, etc., along

the high rocks of Wyalusing.

Between these three guys, and

with Twain in Elmira and all

the rest, I felt pretty rich. What

I felt was  -  sort of in the air  -

a strain of all this past that was

still running around. But, like

the New York City aspect of

that too, that old, less fevered

and more eerie and odd OLD

America was gone. Long gone.

It had been killed off somewhere

between the Sullivan Expedition

of murdering all those hundreds

of thousands, and electricity. It

was in between there somewhere

that we'd lost everything. I could

sense it. The people up there, of

course, they themselves knew

little of it; had no clue. Their 

own lives were clustered in 

the present, with lights and 

labor-saving devices, cars and 

pumps and electric washing 

machines and dryers too. 

Anything that could be done 

or used to steer towards 

alleviating the 'burden' 

of that old farm life, they 

bit at, chomped, and ran 

with. The old was dead 

and forgotten. The only 

thing the hills held was 

a  tired, old leftover echo 

that maybe, every once in 

a while, some freaky soul 

like me would claim to be 

hearing still. 
-
Now, I'm going to be taking a
moment here to set you up for the
next chapter, since I only feel
it's right to let you know ahead of
time, and to clear my own name too,
that the adventure submitted here
is a complete telling of the truth
though a name or two have been 
changed. It's a long time ago, but
I'd still like to die a natural death
and any one of these guys could
still be lurking. Not that they'd
read this, necessarily, nor be able to
come at me from their wheelchair
oxygen tank set-up; but, still. The
story's in the story, yes, but it needs
some back-up. As you'll see, one of
the perps here warned me, right up 
front, to get out, and get out then
and quick and right there, because
sooner or later it would get me nailed 
or killed. OK. So I never went back.
There was a time when the distribution
of counterfeit one-hundred dollar
bills was one of the largest and
most nefarious and wide-spread of
of the Soviet Union's (then, now
'Russia's again) operations to
undermine the USA. In fact, it got
so bad and so widespread that it
became the reason, back in the 
early 1990's for all the changed
designs of the paper currency. The 
fake Russian 100's were perfect, 
and  widespread. In fact, again, the 
design  of 100's was changed a 
SECOND time  about 15 or 20 years 
later again, because they once more 
had to  protect the currency (security 
bars, and holograms) because
the Russky's had bested them 
again. Paper money designs and
re-tools are not done lightly, nor
for frivolous reasons. One of the best
best, and attainable, ways to ruin a
country is to successfully degenerate
its useful currency. This operation
was a simple infiltration, in small
batches, maybe 2000-3000 100's
at a time, to have money (the fake
money) entered and brought into
the light commerce of the piers and
dock districts of lower Manhattan.
That's what the story recounts.