11,648. RUDIMENTS, pt. 641

RUDIMENTS, pt. 641

('arms first, people second')

My time-worn alliance with

all things is now quickly running

out. In order to compensate, I

bury myself with over-reaction

and by making undue claims

on all things. I'm still thinking

that washing a car is a ridiculous

endeavor. Walking through the

world of this current day, I'd

rather be pulling my teeth out

with pliers.

-

In late 1967, when we were

stealing whatever we could

from the usual and likely

sources, there was a ready-market

for the sorts of things we'd get.

One source was a record store.

Any of those dumb-ass LP's, as

they came out, could be dropped

onto a blanket at Astor Place

and there'd be for sure some idiot

within 20 minutes picking through

whatever there was. The same

with books  -  grubby, tattered,

dog-eared, used texts. (Same way

the two Riggio guys for their

start for Barnes & Noble. Selling

collected NYU textbooks right

back to the twits who's peers

sold them. You never wanted

to mess with hard-goods. Hitting

up a truckload, say, of hardware

store goods would bring trouble.

They could kill or at least badly

beat you, because at that point 

you were getting closer to the 

organized and union-bound 

craft workers and their livelihoods. 

That stuff was all locked up, and 

in-place. Not that they wouldn't

buy cheap, but rather they just 

didn't like someone else messing 

with their trade. You just learn 

this stuff. Uptown now, at the 

east 50's by DeWitt Clinton Park, 

there are still one or two industrial 

plumbing and sheetrock/building 

trades kind of places; they have 

the same deal they always did.

In the early morning hours, the

contractors and union-work guys

show up for tools and needed 

supplies, their tanks of propane

and all that,  etc., and you'd not 

want to be caught trying to 

undersell the same goods

at curbside. Woe betide!

-

The framework for everything, you

need to understand, already exists

when you arrive there. Newcomers

always make the same horrible

mistakes  -  like the guy who, in

a storm of thought, buys himself

a hot-dog cart and then just decides

to start selling, here, or there. Good

luck. That street corner or side of a

ark location is bought with blood,

guts, and money, (and connections

and memories too) and 'ain't no

outsider' moving in with a huge

hassle and a bagful of trouble.

Around me, all of a sudden (and

I already wanted out) had grown

a sort of network of 11th street

small-time crime. Right across

the street was a car-shop/body 

shop  -  repairs and bodywork

combined, which mostly also

meant stripping and dismantling

whatever would be 'dragged' in.

There were many times when total

value of a car as 'parts' was greater

than as a 'car' itself. So, such

dismantling was a bona-fide

walking money endeavor. Once

behind the closed garage-doors

at streetside, all real work ensued.

Law enforcement was at a complete

minimum at this level of things.

The mostly Spanish people all

around us didn't much have even

a clue as to what went on, or if they

did their better parts of valor were

to keep quiet about everything, since

one or more of the dismantlers, etc.,

probably had something to do with

their family or extended kinship.

It all worked out, and skilled 'body

men' for such work were easy

to find. They abounded, like

vocational-school kids.

-

In old New York, kids used to die

from drinking, or being given, what

was called 'swill milk.' It was called

swill milk because cows were fed 'swill'

which was the leftover mash and crud

from local distilleries; the mash still,

it was said, had nutrients. The pale

liquid was whitened with plaster of

Paris, thickened with starch and

eggs, and 'hued' with molasses.

Long about 1860 or so, same era

as the Civil War Draft Riots, the

breakouts of insurrection and

hangings citywide, and the great

fires and smallpox breakouts here

and there, finally forced the hands

of the 'Authorities' (there were none

really, nothing was yet regulated or

controlled), to do something. What

did they do? I'll let you think about

that for a few minutes while I write

on, and I'll get back to it  -  because

it's NOT what you think.

-

By the 1960's, from what I could tell

then, most all of that clean regulation

stuff was shot to hell. Things were

everywhere shoddy, stores were

filthy and hot, air-conditioning was

still a not-always used option. Some

of the places were viciously hot, and

I mean the Summertime interior 

temperatures that would melt a 

popsicle STICK! The couple of 

dumps I got to work in were awful. 

The Studio School was hot too; I

don't recall what they ever did 

about the AC deal; no memory of

that. The First and Second Avenues

4th to 12th street areas I was in

were rife with rundown, ancient

housing, decrepit from years of

immigrant overuse, sagging and 

weary. The interiors were usually

rank and falling apart; plumbing

was horrible, water service was

often deplorable. If there could 

have been a swill-milk distribution 

center somewhere there, believe

me the usual money-creeps would

have tried it. Oh, and what was the

response of authority back then to

the breakouts of insurrection,

riots, and swill-milk diseases and

death? Besides occasional health

inspections and the institution of

what were then called 'Sanitary

Commissions,' their organized

answers were to build a series of

armories, citywide, to protect and

muster their defensive forces and

armaments against any further

breakouts. Wonderful idea.

Arms first. People second.

-

The one guy who worked the deep

nights with me was a Mexican or

Aztec or Peruvian or something

I never got straight, and he was

hiding out, like so many others,

from what he said was a situation

in Colorado which had involved

killing his own wife. Oh boy. Most

Mexicans I'd ever before seen were

small people, but this guy was big.

Like six-two big, maybe, and hulking,

with long black hair. He more to me

resembled a held-in-check American

Indian, just off the reservation and

not sure yet if he wished to go mar

or just shape up. Whatever he'd 

done, it was done. Eventually I

 just disappeared, walking from 

the job and losing all touch with 

him or his story. And, lastly, if

he'd gotten caught, I didn't want 

to anywhere within five miles of

him, for fear of being suspected

of snitching or giving him up.

Some people just walk into 

trouble. Not me.

11,647. GENERALLY, GERTIE

GENERALLY, GERTIE

Generally, Gertie, you bust my chops,

but now I'll sing a new song for you. I

have the fever that brings down trees, 

that cuts the flowers, that brings you

home. But I've run out of ideas as well.

Is it OK, are you sure, if I stand here

idly by? There's a popsicle man at

Little 12th street, holding a carbine

in his frozen hands. Going deep, 

everyday, into the freezer-chest he

pushes about : looking for parks

and playgrounds and all those tired

kids screeching 'lemon and cherry' 

ice. He's already told me it gets

really tiresome; but evenso I 

never thought he'd crack, 

or I never thought he'd 

crack like this. And

generally, Gertie, I

can make a good

guess.

11,646. NEFERTITI'S GOT THE ROOM

NEFERTITI'S GOT THE ROOM

...And let her have it too; who else

needs all that space and things to

fill it with? I'm already tired of 

scarabs and asps. I was translating

the tomb, all those marks on the

walls, and it said : 'Benny the Barber

looked at me, passed out tickets,

cautiously, to see the burning of

the soup, down at Lucy's Chicken

Coop.' That was OK by me, and

I already liked the water. Here and

there, occasionally and by the by, I

think of going places, but I never

leave home. Without it. Or why? 

Knowing what I mean, every man 

is already a dulcimer hammer and 

I'm their erstwhile friend. But 

Nefertiti's got the room, so I'm 

probably going back there again.

11,645. RUDIMENTS, pt. 640

RUDIMENTS, pt. 640

(everything is a crock)

As the lion said to the tiger :

Let us prey! Based on that

previous chapter, my mostly

cumbersome interaction needs

some follow-up : Saints and

Saviors, and the conditions

of life on Earth. It's a strange

and long story. I'll try it.

-

'Genesis 22. Abraham, an old

man who was waiting all his

life for the birth of his son and

heir, is suddenly commanded

by God to take Isaac to a

mountaintop to kill him.

Abraham immediately follows

the instruction, making no

protest as he leads Isaac up

to the mountaintop. Only at

the last moment, when Isaac

is bound on the altar and

Abraham has his knife raised,

does an angel appear and call

off the sacrifice, saying 'For

now I know that thou fearest

God, seeing thou hast not

withheld they son, thine only

son, from me,' the angel tells

the patriarch. A ram appears

nearby and is offered in Isaac's

stead, and everything ends

happily.' (Except, I always

thought, for the ram. I could

never figure this animal-

sacrifice stuff out).

-

To what lengths does any of

this claptrap - (my opinion) -

perfect-strength idea go, in

'obedience' to God? And what

possible meaning could any of it

have for our present day states

of living? And  -  back to those

aborted babies at the driveway  -

what differences exist, to make

one a 'sacrifice' and another a

murder? All Life is the same long

line, a continuity, which draws

its strength from all the shared

definitions we dwell amidst.

Including this situation. If you

do this to lose everything so as

to show obedience to God, then,

as well, what was the big deal

about Job not just accepting all

his problems, giving it up to God,

and being done with it? There

are way too many finely split

hairs here, and I'm still glad

I'm not a ram, goat, or chicken;

talk about monstrous deaths

for no good reason at all except

that Man is a killer animal, long

out of control and worth only

extinction.

-

There's currently a guy name

Martin Hagglund who has written

of this scene and come up with an

'escape hatch' of sorts for what

Abraham had, apparently, been

willing to do  -  kill his own son,

albeit for God, yes. Hagglund's

escape hatch is that if Abraham

had perfect faith in God, then he

believed without a doubt that

that the killing of Isaac did not

mean the loss of Isaac. Rather,

a slain Isaac would be with God,

and so Abraham could hope to

find him again after death. For

all the difficulty and grief that

killing his son would cause him,

Abraham never actually puts

Isaac, or himself, at risk. Thus,

'Faith' cancels out true loss. As

long as you keep religious faith

you cannot be defeated by loss.

-

That sure is some convoluted and

convenient reasoning  -  I'd say.

It reeks of entrapment, in that

the systems that develop around

it first already KNOW where they

want to be and where they want

their arguments to end up, so they

build and construct their entire

framework around that conclusion,

and conveniently get there! That's

as immaterial as it is dishonest. It's

all, frankly, calculated crap, first

thought up, and then ended at.

As I said, I never understood,

nor did I have any interest in,

all this ancient sacrifice stuff :

completely nonsensical to me

and way outside the mainstream

of my personal thought structure.
Tribal stuff was never my kin.

-

Early on, I began coming to certain

conclusions. One being that the

art world sucked. I began noticing

the dollar signs on things getting

larger and larger  -  paintings that

previously would have been salable

at two thousand dollars  -  a price

that would have made artist and 

agent as well quite happy  -  were

slowly rolling upwards of a

hundred thousand dollars and still

more. Certainly a whole other

threshold of money. Reason was?

Business. Agents. Gallery Directors.

Collectors, and, of course, a new

tax law in effect by about 1950,

looking back, that had changed 

everything. By the purposing 

of that law, changing the tax 

code meant that art collectors 

could take a deduction on art

purchased with the intention

of one day, even posthumously,

donating the works to a museum. 

The bureaucratic change then

immediately invigorated a market:

buyers and wealthy individuals 

had an incentive, beyond just the

love of art or its acquisition as

status symbol, to buy art; now 

purchasing art on the advice of 

a small number of 'experts' who

directed them toward the art most

likely to be accepted by a museum.

The entire operation was thus

changed, into something as

hermetically sealed and closed

as insiders could keep it. Prices

began a slow, steady rise, right

up to today's absolutely bizarre

numbers at auction. Museums,

and galleries, thrived, but the 

life slowly began falling away

from the works themselves. It

all became a system. And I

hated systems.

-

Once I realized things, I knew

that  -  in my own rather low way  -

I had to, and would, keep at it, but

I was not in any way personable 

enough, public enough, polite

enough, or caring enough, to

take part in the social-circuit

and psycho-babble necessary

to get through show openings,

chatter, drinks and rambling.

Insider talk, phrases and code

words of extreme meaningless.

And that's how it went for me, so 

that now, at life's soggy end, I'm

cloistered with paintings, drawings,

lines, words, and doctrines, all of

my own doing, which have gone 

nowhere except the royal 'Here.'

And good riddance to all that;

they're all a bunch of shits.

-

Everything's been taken up now

anyway by the gold-wave of the

wandering tribe, much as it's always

been  -  those seeking and sucking

money from hype and air. They say

you can't get blood from a turnip; 

and they'd be the ones to know,

having even tried that.

-

Just today, in fact, as if to prove

my point, I was paging through an

old Look Magazine, of all things,

from Sept. 21, 1965. The cover said,

in bold letters with a horrific-looking

urban-dangerous photo, 'Our Sick

Cities'  -  and in smaller type, 'and

how they can be cured.' My immediate

thought (I'd picked up a number of

these at some junk sale for like 25 cents

each) was 'That's not a Conclusion!

That's an opinion!' Even in good

old 1965 they were well underway

with that bible-premised obfuscation

that has taken us from Abraham and

Isaac right to the present day at

the local abortion mill and its 

constant protesters. [And, by the

way, another obvious problem with

this is collusion between church and

state here  -  in that the real perfidy 

is the town hall assholes who allow

this stuff. Were I to appear each day,

with placards and stands, and signs,

at the roadway, outside of Town Hall

proclaiming them as agents of Evil,

crooks thieves, liars and fruitless

bums besides, I'd be hauled off by

the local constabulary immediately].

The guys at Look Magazine, back

in 1965, I can see them now, had

their CONCLUSIONS  ready first.

'Let's do a story on how rotten our

cities are. Make the facts and the

findings fit only that. We'll get some

photos of the usual crud to make the

point, and go at every angle we can 

make, to have this fit our lead line

and premise. Go at it, you have 

two months, for a cover-date of

late September.' Everything is

a crock, and everything is fixed.
Facts don't exist and this
life's a premise.
-
Those editors around the big table,
they take the place, in a way now, of
God in forming what we know of
as our universe. Everyone bows, 
 'the accepting of the acceptance as
the accepted acceptance.' Problem is, 
nothing is as it seems, and it's ALL
a ringed circle around a dead-man's
neck. Given the right incentive, I
could produce a story too, with photos,
of this as a wonderful, thriving and
positive world, refuting theirs  -  and 
against  their lowly premised, dated, 
stupidities of 1965, because it's all in 
the presentation of the continuities 
and what's selected to be exposed. I
drive the tractor. I make the corn rows.
I plant the seeds. I harvest the corn.

11,644. FORMAT : FOAM MAT

FORMAT : FOAM MAT

All on the floor. Just like that.

Timbuktu or Alcatraz, ,much

the same occurs. Chinese lanterns.

Bring me a hat. You can't go out.

Looking. Like. That.

11,643. RUDIMENTS, pt. 639

RUDIMENTS, pt. 639

(save somebody, even if it's not yourself)

I was most often a crazy fool

about writing. I'd hunker down

and find a place to do it, just as

an exercise in thought management.

One time, to a friend in California,

I was writing a long piece that I

made up as I went along. I guess

it was in about 1974, or whenever

President Carter imposed 55mph

speed limits, in the name of energy

efficiency and all that crap. It was 

all a sham, as if it were to make any

difference. I'd written a long essay

sort of diatribe about the end of the

American expansionist dream; 

actually I had called it the true end

of Manifest Destiny. President

Madison's idea that the USA had

the sovereign right as a young

nation to expand from coast to 

coast, and no one should get in

the way of that progress, meaning 

mostly Spain and France, England

having already been spent. What

Carter and the 1970's had to face, 

and without causing riots, was 

telling the people that we were 

done, there was nowhere else to 

go, Alaska and Hawaii pretty much 

having exhausted our reach, and

Cuba and Puerto Rico being places

no one wanted anyway. So, to avoid

insurrection and unrest, Carter 

lowered the speed limits, under 

the foul pretense of conservation,

so that (put simply) it would take

longer for people to get anywhere,

thus presenting the illusion still

of space and room and growth. 

Those people setting out NY to 

California, or Pittsburgh or Akron

or Colorado, would simply have

a longer, by time only, trip ahead

of them. Sort of a particularized

conspiracy theory that no one

believed anyway. BUT, my friend

Ed, here, in this case, took this

paper and presented it before one

of his groups  -  some San Francisco

university setting or another, and,

after the paper was read out, he said

it proved wildly popular and was

copied and re-submitted and passed

around, causing quite a stir.

-

And then, another time, say 1975, I

was visiting a friend at work, for her

lunch break  -  she worked at some

big, downtown advertising agency, I

believe M. W. Ayres or something, as

their research librarian  -  yes, hard to

believe that dimwits at ad agencies

have research libraries  -  and during 

that time I got a 75 dollar parking

ticket for illegal parking in some

zone or other in the financial district.

At this time, New York City was broke

and going nowhere except foully

downward. They had had some sort

of Municipal Bonds, sold for years,

with Lebenthal Co., called 'First

Obligation Bonds'  -  often bought by

fixed-income retirees, elderly, who

relied on such reliable small dividends

and incomes. The idea was, no matter

how bad things got, NYC would first

and foremost honor their obligations

to these bondholders, and never default

on them. Well, lo and behold, with the

city being broke, what did they do? 

They, yes, defaulted on these First

Obligation Bonds. A no no. SO, in

light of my ticket, I wrote a long

screed to some agency I now forget,

saying that I myself would  -  since

NYC had turned its back like that

on its ow obligations  -  in turn also

not recognize my obligation to pay

them their fine, seeing an equivalency

in their abrupt dismissal of responsibility

and my resultant refusal to pay. I

expected nothing but a scolding. In

any case, and amazingly, months later

I received in the mail an official letter

from the City Of New York, dismissing

my ticket  -  and along with that was

a note from some Law student or 

something who had been clerk-interning

their, saw my letter, thought it was a

marvelous idea, and, as a project for

his law-study, taken up my argument

before a judge-in-session, argued for

it and won dismissal! So cool, that was.

Somewhere around here, long lost

and probably long buried and boxed

in something, I have the note. 

-

Just goes to show how a little bit of

crazy intensity and a show of effort

can sometimes bring remarkable results.

I've never stopped, since then, being

a writerly thorn in lots of sides, and

with some cool results. Still waiting

for my big breakthrough though.

Never expecting much anyway.

-

I've always figured my best way out

of here was in a simple, pine box, with

as few mourners as possible. I hate

all that other stuff  -  drained and

stinkless corpses, looking like tissue

paper versions of what they used to

be, being gawked at and slobbered

over by people who actually probably

couldn't care less. On the third day

He arose again from the dead. Yeah,

sure, that'll work. There's no two

ways around the fact that earthly

existence rots the brain and ain't

worth spittle. But I still can't figure

any of it out. With all the tremor and

activity that NYC used to bring, there

isn't that much time by the ordinary

rube for all that thought about the

different points of philosophy and

illogic. The slobbering mass of

Humankind just swarms the street

like a bunch of Dumkopfs and gets

their feeble work done. That was

the cool thing about the Studio

School and the people and position

I'd gotten myself into. It was an

assured level of anarchy, with

little interference. At about this

time, 1967 and on, there were new

groups of people, all of a sudden

like weeds, everywhere. I've always

respected the past, my past, the

literary and artistic past, the legacy

values and the precursors and

forerunners of all that we needed

to know to make our contemporary

art, writing and world references

have value, but these new weed-kids

had very little of that. It was more

just a general rebelliousness born 

from restlessness and an empty tub

of no real values at all. Not that I 

minded  -  the girls were oftentimes

quite beautiful and stunning. About

this time too there was a fabric

or whatever it's called, that girls

were wearing, hippie type girls

anyway  -  it was thin, pretty near to

a sheer fabric, colored lightly and

made with prints and patterns; a

real modern garb. Lots of girls 

wore it and they all wore it well  -  

very sexual, almost erotic, seeing

that stuff on the streets, walking 

along, it seemed there wasn't a

care in the world for these grand

creatures; nothing that NYC

could interfere with or stop. It 

was a sort of free-form assault

on all previous assumptions, and

it worked wonders. Guys had 

nothing really equal to that   -

what were they going to do,

sideburns and new hair? What

I'm saying is that it had become

totally easy to do nothing at all.

No one there was 'forced' to

think deeply, scour through the

world of philosophy, reason and

logic, pick through history, make

a worldview of their own. People

drooped instead of growing.

Too bad.

-

That new world a'borning allowed

a person, through ignorance or

laziness, to just waste away, do

nothing, and just 'keep on keeping

on', as the stupid saying went. I

felt that if a person was ready to

settle for that crap, they might as

well die. I never went passive. In

fact, I hated. My hate was good hate.

-

I passed a place today that I pass

often enough -  it was certainly

nothing new  -  and, as usual there

were the one or two people there

with their placards and  handouts.

It's a medical facility, and an

abortion mill as well, and these 

picketers are most often there, 

with placards and large photos

of fetuses and babies, and all that.

I guess a girl driving in for an

abortion is supposed to feel bad, 

turn around, change her mind, etc.

Today the placards read 'Adoption

Is a Loving Alternative.' It's all

Knights of Columbus stuff, and

the church and the Knights Hall

is right up the street two blocks 

or so. The whole thing, from all

sides is equally stupid and ridiculous,

and there's really no right or wrong.

Sorry. Adoption into a dastardly

situation, abuse, poverty, disrespect,

and further psychological abandonment

is always a possibility anyway, but 

these idiots don't possess the depth 

of thought to carry themselves that

far. Anyway, the Catholic Church

should talk! (Or at least outlaw

aborting boy babies. Ha!). I

never get their point  -  if this 

world is the den of decrepitude

they make it out to be, fallen and 

sinful, with everyone tainted at 

birth by original sign and in

desperate need of Salvation, which

of course (?) can only come through

them, as Holy, Apostolic Bullshit

Catholic Church, why in the heck

bring a poor, suckered kid into

this world? What exactly is so 

wrong about cutting them out of

this miserable loop at the last

moment anyway, especially as

they're obviously already seen

as excess and unwanted. It just

make no sense to me. Isn't that

the same, in essence, as saving

a soul, by not bringing it here

in the first place? I'd think that 

would be a good thing; and if

you're about saying 'Only God

can make that determination,' 

yeah, well, he or she ain't been

doing too good a job from what

I can tell.