RUDIMENTS, pt. 586
('you're on your own')
You know the thing about
sacred music and all that
chorale stuff and Gregorian
chant and all the the rest -
I think what it was about
was the simple majesty of
so many voices together,
a sort of unison, as one,
striving to a finish. The
vocal striving sometimes
seemed so strenuous and
reaching, that its small
private stress drew you
in. Up above Elmira, in
some hillside over at
what was called Pine City,
just a small ways off from
Elmira, there was a place
called Mount Saviour
Monastery - it was a group
of Benedictine monks, some
in hermitage, living solitary
in small cabins and the like.
Completely a very strange
place; odd in its commitment
and total dedication, in its
silences, and atmospheres.
BUT, they did have a chapel
and church-services area, open
to visitors, etc. (Weird factoid:
it's still there and in operation,
though it also now advertises
itself as a bed & breakfast).
They would have the chanting
services, I guess it was always
on Sundays. We'd occasionally
attend, more for the feeling it
gave than anything else. All
these monks in unison, the
chants and prayers, the
isolation. The monks, of
course, who were in their
hermitage stages, one year
or many, we never saw. It
was like Tibet or something,
just as strange - to be up
in that location and aware of
all that had transpired from
the flood and the river and all
the ruination, and to think that
these people were untouched
yet pouring their souls out to
'God' for the repair of all the
hurt and damage which had
just gone down. I guess it
was good, though I could
never quite figure. Would it
have been more powerful for
them to have quit their isolation
right then and come down with
their prayers and intentions to
walk among and work with
the people in need? Not as a
prayer-image, but as real and
tangible people and problems.
Religion's always been a strange
tactic to me, mixed up as it is
with the conflicts, always, of
idealism up against getting
your hands dirty. How real
does cloistering get?
-
The whole thing about Elmira
was historic. It was always easy
for me, because I walked in
history - and I still do now.
As I walk down a street, even
this one right here where I'm
living now, 'Dartmouth Avenue,'
I'm not walking the present day.
My house is along the end of a
dirt pathway that winds through
woods and shrubs, things growing
all around it, an isolated cottage
at the end of a path, on a meadow'd
flat, at the end of a trail. There's
nothing else around it, and I can
take direction from the stars and
moon and sun as I walk. It was
the same for me in Elmira - the
Civil War era cemetery out behind
the Sears Store in town was perhaps
my most vital and alive spot in
the town-center. As I've said
previously, 100 years before
this, the Union sentiment was
strong in Elmira. Northern fire,
all those impassioned boys in
this or that Regiment, NYState
Volunteers, whatever - they'd
died and been brought back home,
most anyway, and buried in their
graves marked with words I hardly
understood - Antietam, Manassas.
Chancellorsville, Wilderness, Bull
Run, Gettysburg, Spotsylvania. All
that power and fury, and here they
rested, now, forever. The water
came pretty close to these guys,
but they stayed dry and in-place.
When I walked along there, I was
gone. Far up the hill, Woodlawn
Cemetery, where Twain and others
were buried, was probably, no
guessing, 150 times as large as
this one-block sized graveyard,
but even it didn't quite have the
life-force and power that this
held. Or held over me anyway.
I could still hear the creaks and
the moans.
-
Watching the river blast through,
and all its aftermath, was like a real
reality check, a wake-up call for the
formidable realization of the many
of the obstacles of everyday life.
Beware the unexpected; don't
become complacent. Most every
things that had previously been
well-defined in Elmira was gone.
My friend Jane Roberts, a writer,
and her husband, Rob (Butts), an
artist, lived in an large kind of
roofing/apartment home at the
river and Walnut Street (one
of the doomed bridges). They
were up high enough, not at
ground level, for their studio
and living spaces to not have
been ruined, though the lower
portions of the building were.
They did move, later, to a
much better situation - a
somewhat isolated single-family
home, small grounds, upland
of everything. But the experience
marred them too, as much as the
move itself proved beneficial.
We visited with them a few times.
Jane was something of a 'legendary'
and other-worldy writer - deep,
cosmic-identity stuff that almost
had to be experienced more than
merely read, but I always got a
chuckle out of the surroundings
inside the house : supermarket
tabloids, scandal magazines,
TV Guides, all that weird stuff
just piled up. After the flood,
in the new place, it hit me one
day why she was like that, or
made me wonder of it anyway.
To my mind, front and center
to me was always my own
other-worldliness, yes, being
able to leave and enter time and
other time-periods. In all of that,
I was affected by most everything.
As I've mentioned, and all those
places of time and the dead. I
asked Jane about it all once, I
said, 'You surprise me, doing
all this writing, with very little
to show for it visually, I mean,
in here (the house) - you've got
nothing much around - TV stuff
and Hollywood scandal sheets.'
She - taking no offense - just
laughed me off, saying something
to the effect that 'That's me. I'm
just me; any writing I do isn't really
'me,' it all just comes through me
as and when it hits.' That was a
bit unsettling for me, I guess only
because I tend to go head-over-
heels with stuff I deem important,
and to me every living second was
immersed in the experience of
what I was living and creating.
But, I sort of knew what she
meant. Remember, after all,
she had the Prentice-Hall
agent (Tom Mossman) and
the publishing contract and
the printed books. I didn't.
-
Even so, and in light of
the flood, it bugged me. She
apparently paid it little mind,
a minor irritant; while to me
it had become a new dividing
line, a demarcation point to
mark another aspect of my
life. Everything I did WAS
me; no two ways about it,
I never saw Elmira the same
me; no two ways about it,
I never saw Elmira the same
again. All those Langdons
and Beecehers, and Twains,
and the college and the Arnots
and Ogdens, and the rest;
Twain's Quarry Farm and his
writing shed, etc., it was all
somehow seen by me as now
betrayed by the cosmic
elements, and the pain of
it was that I had to realize
that Life or God or whatever
that wrinkle in the ether is
that pumps our hearts and
fires our minds, directed
by God or not - it didn't
give a shit about the elemental
aspects of what I considered
important to myself. I had
been way mistaken, and this
calamity suddenly brought
it home. 'You're on your own.'
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