11,533. RUDIMENTS pt. 592

RUDIMENTS, pt. 592

('hi, I'd like to order ten cliches')

Ah well, as it is I can never

often speak for others, but

I can always speak for myself. 

That's what's carried me through

this life  -  and in fact it's that

which, a few times, cooked me

good. Woe betide. Bygones be

bygones. And all that.

-

In 'Ulysses' by James Joyce,

my favorite scene, or chapter, has

been the taxi-stand, or 'cabman's

shelter' near Butt Bridge. Second

favorite, maybe is the cockle-

picker's scene, way before it.

Or the Gerty McDowell scene.

Of course, cannot overlook 

the Dignam funeral chapter. 

These are each the fine 

compatriots  of thought in a 

way that thought is no longer

thought of. We're dealing with

a different age, one when things

were done differently and before

any of the present day's claptrap

had stepped in and, now, taken

over. I am always reminded of

the two drunks who, coming to

see the grave of Terence Mulcahy,

criticize the statue of the Savior

over it as being 'a bad likeness

of the deceased.'

-

There are various versions of

silence  -  there's the silence of

Death, the silence of the quiet,

the silence of no one quite 

knowing what to say anyway.

Bright people are often silent;

the messier the mind, the noisier

the kind; in the same way as the

loose wheel gets all the oil  -  

oh, however that goes. Rattle.

Noise. Squeaky wheel gets the

grease. I never understood a lot 

of those things  - they often just

seemed like a waste of words. 

Too much of nothing. It is what

it is. What is is what it is. Now, 

now, just come off it all.

-

Elmira was a dainty shore, on a

mostly dainty river. Go to find

out, that huge 1972 flood had an

antecedent  -  if one delved into

local History [stupid is as stupid

doesn't do] in 1889 when pretty

much the exact same thing had

occurred, on the exact same 

streets and places, and in much 

the same way. Goes to show. 

Devil gets the hindmost. 

Things ain't what they seem. 

He had blood coming out of 

him like water. So many holes 

in him the gun had melted. If

anyone knew about that other,

previous,  flood, anyone wasn't

saying. Or, perhaps, anyone

was talking to no one?

-

I found myself unable to stop my

own growth. Obviously, I'm not

talking 'physical' growth  - this 

was an internal and evidentiary

thing that I felt and walked with.

It allowed me to savor the hills

and valleys of Elmira, the towns

around it, the crossover at the

border by Wellsburg into the

strange and odd atmosphere of

the old and run down Northern

Pennsylvania wilderness that

was there and still bore all the

rotting presences of 1924. You

can look high and look low now

for any of it and it's all gone.

Something took over, everywhere.

Post-flood or not, some sort of

revivalism that took rumination

and rose it all back up  -  into

siding, new windows, new fences,

yards cleaned out of all their old

crap, which is these cases meant

refrigerators and washing machines, 
often out on the porches too,

working or not, and of whatever

vintage. Ancient cars, with seat

stuffing hanging out and age-frosted

glass windshields and doors that

wouldn't close. If I had given you

a scavenger map and said 'go find

these things,' everything I would

have put on such a list would no 

longer be there. I used to wonder

about the people too, had they

themselves altered or been 

changed to the same degree?

What in the heck was going on?

Having to ride home and, on the

radio, (maybe three stations in

the hills) hearing a 9-year old

black kid named Michael Jackson,

in front of his pet-Negro brothers

singing 'ABC, it's easy as 1-2-3,'

was offensive. So was having to

hear Marc Bolan as T-Rex and

his 'All the Young Dudes' claptrap.

I could escape, I found, nothing

at all except were I to go into

a deep and complete silence, like

some Trappist Monk (even the

Trappist monk Thomas Merton

couldn't escape. After years of

his own pious silence, he was

electrocuted in his room by

his own tabletop cooling fan.

All things were slavery, and 

even that singing black family 

was willingly falling right

back into it. No escape.

No rest for the weary.

Cat got your tongue?

-
When I first came out this way,
long back, my initial destination
was to purchase a place I'd seen in
a house catalogue (Strout Realty),
the house being in a location called
'Bentley Creek.' That's also where
the sales agent was, Jankowsky or
someone, who covered the entire,
large, surrounding area as well.
So though Bentley Creek turned
out to be not to my liking, he was
able to take me around to numerous
other locations. Nothing to do with
Elmira, which was a few years
in my future  -  rather I wanted
deep-country, in the higher lands
if I could get it. Which I did. That
lasted a few good years  -  total
isolation, singular living, dirt roads,
no one bothering me at all, and,
most importantly, my invisibility
was not blown. I had things to be
running from, and so I did. I needed
to recreate myself, and so I did. I 
may still have been there, but so
much of my stupid life has been
about compromise and bending
to the wills of others, that, wife 
and little kid, complaints about
conditions and location, finally
cut me down. Elmira, and its
college and small urban area,
here I come...(Subtitle,
'this awkward life').
-

The Chemung River usually was

just a big, silent river, in the 

manner that rivers are  -  the

water runs, churns upward at

the same time it is rolling

downstream. It was holy, in

its watery way. Eventually,

and not that far off at all, it ran 

into the Susquehanna, which

ran (a quite larger river), with a

much larger bed. There's one

spot, east of Elmira, over by

Waverly, where the twisting

course of the Susquehanna is

such that (I used to love this)

the highway, in about probably

less than four miles, in its 

straight line way, brings you over

the Susquehanna three times. 
(Heraclitus it was who famously
philosophized, about life's
changing conditions, 'You can't
cross the same stream twice.'

The same river  -  you're crossing

it three times. That's how 'S'

got invented. Ask the local native

Indians. White man speaketh 

with forked tongue. (Did you ever

wonder why and how the American

Indian ever picked up Old  English,

I mean, to speaketh?)...

-

'Because children grow up, we

think a child's purpose is to grow

up. But a child's purpose is to

be a child. Nature doesn't disdain

what only lives for a day. It pours

the whole of itself into each

moment. Life's bounty is in its

flow. Later is too late.'

- 

I wouldn't be able to say with

any precision what portion of

my life has been spent in any

particular place. For me, nothing

has ever been chronological  -  I've

skipped and jumped all sorts of

phases and places, and not always

with perfect correspondences either.

Consistency is the hobgoblin of little

minds. One thought, alone, has

a snowball's chance in Hell to

survive. The fat is in the fire. 

I wandered like a cloud, a child,

even, in a new land of wonder to 

me : eyes and ears, all senses and 

all sights. St. Augustine it was who 

said something like 'Evil does not 

exist, as a thing. It is merely the 

absence of Good.' It was here I
got to see the workings of Nature :

the wild land, the raging river. 

Nature abhors a vacuum; the mad

waters go rushing in. Thank you,

Augustine. Muchibus thankibus

and muchaas grassyass too. Be
careful what you say  -  you never
know who you're talking to.