11,539. RUDIMENTS. pt. 594

RUDIMENTS, pt. 594

('a strength, not a shortcoming')

In Elmira I found myself with

plenty of time to study. Which

was good. The Elmira College

research and Library rooms were

right down the end of my block,

an easy walk, three minutes,

maybe, past the Women's Medical

kiosk  -  which was like a small

building once built for the local

needs of the girls lodging in this

girl's only 1880's seminary school,

right up through the 1960's. That

entryway area has since been

closed off and a small road put

in, so the idea of that 'walk'

would need to  be different

now, by a block or so. Though

the medical facility is still

there, I guess they no longer

make a distinction between

sexes; or just maybe there is

none any more. Heck, the world

is afraid of a tongue depressor

these days.

-

All this was long before

computers. The library and

research facility, like any of

today's 'offices,' had a section

made up of 'cubicles,' where

one could sit, type, as it was

needed, write, read, etc., in

a conducive isolation. The

rest of it all was open space,

reading rooms, files and shelves

and catalogs; like most any

larger library back in those

days. Learning was different  -

you had to actually dig for

and look for things, find

and ferret out information,

references, and cross-references

too. Now it's all done for them,

and if a college kid doesn't like

it he or she can just claim a

discrimination and start a riot.

-

Even in a place like Elmira, a

kind of halfway-house for me,

as it turned out, I was able to

stay on task. Some were the

times when I'd be brutally worn

out and tired, yet I rattled on or

or tried best to. I had my trusty

Schwinn, believe it or not,

and Elmira was the sort of

place where all was negotiable

to get to, without an automobile,

unless you were getting out of

town some or going away. But

much of our local life was on

bicycle and on foot. Years later,

about 2006, in Princeton, I had

co-worker who was a Princeton

Theological guy, married to the

Chaplain or whatever she was

of the university itself, and he

always remarked, simply because

took two trains and walked

to get to work and back each

day, about how I had such a

magnificently small 'carbon

footprint'  -  confusing, but it

had to do with the sort of things

those types were liable to swoon

over  -  decreasing one's 'fossil

fuel' blemishes. He should only

have known me in Elmira. The

whole thing was such gibberish

anyway, and I was disappointed

in fact that someone of his

supposed stature (he soon had

his own parish in a very tony

part of Philadelphia) would

fall for that prattle. As if the

trains themselves ran on air

and not electrical energy

generated by something. Coal.

Nuclear power. All those Godly

and unloving things. Some

people really are soft in the

head, an easy touch. Carbon  
footprint indeed. I used to think
a dinosaur had stepped on his
brain. Now that's a footprint.

The world's problem is, at base,

one of 'too many people.'

There's no solving that as

long as every cultural diatribe

accedes to leading its people

into further fornication to

produce still more people,

exponentially. Apparently

everyone demands the right

to have offspring, and the

problem thus expands. Try

telling that to a Minister.

No one will ever speak Truth.

-

That's how different the world

of today is from the world of

then. The couple of large churches

there were in Elmira all had storied

histories of preachers and missions,

abolitionists and rallies, famed

ministers speaking their ways to

glory. Runaway slaves slipping

through, being harbored, etc.

I swore sometimes there was a

wartime smoke in the air, still

redolent of all those weird

battles and quarrels of the Civil

War  -  a strange and unspeakable

war that somehow stayed lodged

in people's minds and thoughts in

places like this  -  the out of the

way rural towns and cities where

issues like that lingered. As I

recently wrote, Time was slow

here. It kept a different pace. In

those ensuing, post-Civil War

years, much of the rest of the

'country' got caught up in all

the new mercantilism and

industrial growth. The only

thing places like this, at first,

got were the railroads and

depots and grand churches

and the religions not so much

of NY urban-immigrant

Catholicism, as, instead, some

other millennial, 'time is to be

soon ending' revivalism that

fed off of all this old stuff.

It was pretty vivid, and could

also be pretty stern; or just be

ignored. People did both.

-

Nobody in Elmira had much

a care about things that didn't

concern them. It seemed anyway.

The college was the college, and

stayed that way, and the downtown

was that too  -  just a ringed up

bunch of old stores and things

leftover and brought back to life

selling second-hand clothes,

shoes, hardware items, what

passed for fashion, two or three

old hotels, and a bunch of churches,

some large, some not, bubbling up

around the town square center, where

that was a foolish plaque attesting

to what was NOT there. At the

site of some really miserable,

angled-to-the-street, strip of

stores (supermarket (small), a

paint store, shoes, a small but

old-line bookstore, a pizza place,

etc.), the plaque read as to

how this had been the site of

Mark Twain's and Olivia

Langdon's home. They left out

the part that read 'We never gave

a damn about that stuff anyway

and so we tore it down so the

realtors could rent and the

builders could build this great

little plaza dedicated to nothing

at all except some more cheap

and shoddy commerce. And

anyway, Mark Twain's real

big and beautiful and touristy

end-of-life house was in

Hartford, Connecticut. Called

Nook Farm. We just have him

buried here, that's all.' Yep, you

sure do miss out on some real

possibilities sometimes. His

other place, in Elmira, 'Quarry

Farm.' still stands on the bluff

out of town. That's a visitor's

stop too.

-

Before there was 'this' America,

the one we've got today, there

was the 'old, weird' America of

lore  -  before highways and real

roads and railroads. (Wordplay

there). Everything in these old,

interior, country towns, from

the periods of the first and 

second Great Awakenings

(religious fervors that swept 

the countryside) used to hug

rivers  -  those were the highways

of then. Freight, cargo, people,

waste, lumber, crops, everything

coursed along the riverways and

the canals, which were built right

alongside the rivers usually,

for a better-guided commerce.

All that grand river stuff did

disappear once the big changes 

came, what we call the 'Modern'

day, and with it we all lost much 

of that old America. We'd not 

recognize it today anyway, and

to most people it would just

scare the shit out of them if

they did see it. When I say

weird, I mean weird  - the

beliefs and the practices of 

an old, absurd world that's

unrecognizable to us now  -  

even if it popped up, here,

'right in front of us. You can

have all your horn-swaggle

bullshit internet-telephone

connection babble and all the

cubicle thinking it brings, and

you can shove it all too, right

up where the sun, your sun 

anyway, don't shine. I don't

live in the 'Now'  -  whatever

functional control I have over

myself, I'm back there with all

them : eccentric, cognitive,

magicians extraordinaire, living

in another world of words and 

power the likes of which your

own timetable and table-clock

world aint'a never seen. And 

won't either. That's why people

are odd. That's why the wild

river flows, and sometimes 

breaks its banks and does 

what it does. That's the power

of a psychic offense, which is

a strength, not a shortcoming.

-

You put that sluice pipe in here,

I swear I'll kill ya'.