11,510. RUDIMENTS, pt. 583

RUDIMENTS, pt 583

(ghosts are part of our discourse)

That flood changed many things.

It blew in and blew out. I used

to chuckle, thinking of it as a

'curt flood,' the way it blew in

and briskly left; because there

used to be a St. Louis Cardinals' 

pitcher, in the later 1960's, named

Curt Flood. Pretty cool. Elmira

itself had a minor-league baseball

team, called the Elmira Pioneers.

We'd occasionally go out to see

a game here and there. I forget 

who, but there were one or two 

players who later made the big

time, in the majors; a manager

too, name forgotten.

-

 Anyway, that Agnes storm and 

flood battered Elmira nearly to 

death. Staggered it but good. Any

of the stores along Water Street  -

the main shops and business street  -

if they did come back, took a real

long time. I had a friend, an old

Jewish guy, Marvin, who ran a 
news and magazine, stationery 
and office supplies kind of dive  -  
great for writer's stuff. It was old 
and dark dingy; he was oftentimes

very cantankerous too. But we got

on well and often talked. One 

year I was gifted with a really

nice, fully leather, shoulder bag

satchel type thing, with English

schoolboy straps, etc. It's a beauty,

and I still have, and do occasionally

use it too. It's a great reminder of

old Rubin. The store was called

Rubin's Stationers. The flood

really wiped the old guy out, but

struggle back he did, and, last 

Winter when I was there, the 

only still-recognizable business

name I saw on that street was,

yep, 'Rubin's'. It's run now by

his son, in pretty much the same

sloppy way too  -  I would have

thought Staples or Office Depot,

or whatever, would long ago have

killed them. That's 45+ years.

-

It's fair to say water and paper

don't mix. It's also fair to say

that, when it's raging, water

really doesn't mix well with

anything, especially when the 

raging water is in places it

shouldn't be. One weird thing

I noticed, and it stayed with 

me, was how wood acts in

those situations. Back then

there was a writer named Eric 

Sloane, some years back, I don't 

exactly know. He wrote about 

a lot of old America stuff, and

and one of his books  -  I have

it here  -  was called 'Reverence

For Wood.' It was about just

what it said it was. He had this

really high opinion of WOOD 

and all the beautiful traces and

remnants of it that were quickly

fading as the 'old' America was

being killed off. He wrote like

a poet about wood; really 

gracious stuff. Anyway, in all

this flood stuff, you'd see sheds

and little buildings and things,

rolling down the river, even

tumbling about, in that way 

that large, floating objects 

get when they're tossed and 

propelled by fierce water. And,

eventually they get tossed out

and find a place to rest and

they just stay there. Or they

get snagged on something, 

and take further battering.

Mostly what I was intrigued by

was the way in which the

wood never gave up on itself

and seldom broke up. The

'rectangle' shape of, say, a

shed, may have turned into

a parallelogram instead, but

it still held together, the seams

never broke or shattered, and 

in that crazy, new shape they'd 

be seen floating along, rising 

and falling and tumbling as 

the water tossed them. Wood

held to its own integrity. The

entire, original, meaning of 

'plastic' originally meant 

something that could be 

altered, and which changed 

its shape. Only later and by 

use did we make a noun of 

it and just call things plastic. 

Wood, you see, was never 

plastic. The stupid flood 

taught me that, as dumb 

as it may seem; but it was 

a good reflection.

-
At some point, just east, by
twenty miles or so, the Chemung
ran into its merge with the
Susquehanna  -  the two rivers
joining their waters and running 
down  into the much more regal
and legendary Susquehanna
on its run through Pennsylvania.
That river got all the glory; the
Chemung was definitely a lesser,
far-secondary, river. It didn't
really matter, as they both get

their allotted work done.
-
Both the river, and the reflections
on it that I made, in thinking, were

not just good, they were poetic too.

It brought me to another place.

I think there's a 'veiled' waterway

within each of us. Yes. Running

quietly, or perhaps raging. But

it's ours and ours alone, and we

cling, each, to our own shapes

through it all  -  until, for some

of us, something breaks it and

we shatter. Others can twist and

alter, but retain their intrinsic

form of self. That's poetry too. 

Can such poetry live in a mystery?

Can it reside, also mysteriously,

in each our souls? We may run

from fate and situation, but it

too is a river, flowing, and it

surrounds us and eventually

takes us over.

-

The whole of Elmira was 

changed by that flood. The

small city itself was and had

always been unique, because

of the river in its middle, and

also because of Mark Twain,

who married here, lived here,

and wrote a lot of stuff here at

Quarry Farm. I always made

the connection between him,

his writing, the Chemung, 

and the Mississippi  - that 

scene in Huck Finn where

Huck and Jim are rolling 

down the river, foundering,

and they come across this 

floating wreck. They board

it, and Jim finds a dead body,

and  -  because he realizes it's

Huck's own abusive 'Pappy'  -
the father, just called 'Pap'
in the story  -   he won't let 
Huck see it, and just calls it 
something else and changes
subjects. On the Chemung,
the very river running along

before my eyes, watching

things float by, I always felt

as if I was right there, with

them, tying up to some old

wreck of twisted-up wood.

-

A lot of the grand, old, wooden

riverside homes in Elmira got

destroyed in that flooding. And

with them went a lot of the 1890's

and 1920's industrial-remnant

evidences of a once much more

thriving town. The past just got

swept away. Like ghosts, each

escaping through some cosmic 

crack. I thought about all those

big old homes, in sorrow. Walter

Benjamin, a writer in the 1930's

era, wrote once that, "There used

to be no house, hardly a room,

in which someone had not died.'

(he was talking about the late

1800's). That was before the 

'funeral industry' had grown into

the all-devouring monster it is

today. No one dies at home

much anymore, and, for sure,

very few are 'funeraled' out

from home either. Maybe it's

all just ghosts. Ghosts are part

of our discourse here.