RUDIMENTS, pt. 632
(an adjective, if you stretch it)
I trembled a lot, just thinking
about things, and it often seemed
that at every turn I was running
smack into another problem. My
worries weren't much about money.
It was miraculous, (almost), in
a loaves and fishes way, how even
though I had none, there was always
somehow enough. I could never
figure that out. There was even a
bank, believe it or not, along Sixth
Avenue there, towards Sheridan,
that I actually kept a small deposit
account in. I cannot remember
doing that - the initial sign-up,
the paperwork, the passbook, and
all that, but I guess I did. Years
later, after I was gone, I'd always
look at that lists they used to
print every so often, in the
newspapers, of names and
amounts, and banks, of abandoned
monies and accounts. They don't
do that anymore, but I used to
always scan them for my bank
or name, just in case I'd forgotten
that too. The bank building is still
there, at the subway entrance, but
the cool, old time and temperature
thing that used to be lit up at the
top corner is long-dead. It's funny
how things are - that clock sign
became a homing image for me,
and whenever I saw it I again felt
safe. I didn't realize at first, but
that site had also been the home
of the Golden Swan - a famed,
hog-house of a bar back in the
days of the writers and playwrights
of the old village, Eugene O'Neil,
John Reed, etc. Once I found that
out, I was in my Seventh Heaven.
Heck, I'd stand in line just to make
a small deposit so as to stand in
the place where it all once was.
I remember that bank very well,
and used to be mesmerized there -
the velvet rope line, inside, twisting
around, and all the varied New
York types - amazing and
wise or crazy and wild. Anyone
inside, once they entered, just
became passive and mute, dimly
staring out, waiting in line, moving
in lockstep. My jaw used to drop
over the changes in the people
who'd come in from outside. There
were vendors and black guys selling
incense sticks and perfumes and
oils, others selling scarves and bits
of clothing, any old object, or books
and magazines, even concert tapes
and bootlegs. It was the nuttiest street
right there, all along. People in their
radical outfits, costumes, stoned or
not, bums and freaks nodding out
on the ground around the subway
entrance, hands out for nickels and
dimes. Old, weary men sucking on
booze and cigarettes, and then,
always, always, someone crazy,
screaming and out of line about
something, would be ranting by or
accosting others - in your face
missteps, real nasty crap. But anyone
who entered the bank, even if, outside,
they'd been like a ranting bull in a
china shop, once inside this dumb
little bank, there was no longer any
rancor. No wildness. Everyone was
like back in school. I think the
history of where the feet were
standing took over - there was a
real NY aura in there, spirits still
flew. One could pick up on all
that. It used to surprise me how
easy it was to go from the mundane
to the miraculous - like my whole
money and loaves and fishes thing.
Yes. Miracles abounded there.
Just a little ways off and across the
street there was a movie theater.
I think it just finally now, after a
zillion years, closed up, but
anyway I went there with a
friend once - out of character
for me, I don't like films
and having to sit just to be
cinematically manipulated.
And in the dark, no less. I always
felt I had better things I could be
doing. Anyway, this guy was
a Euro-history buff, and this
film was about Napoleon. OK.
So I paid up and went. The stupid
room was not the main theater,
like you'd think, but a small,
stinky, screening room off to the
right It was about 15 feet square,
maybe, with 10 or so folding
chairs. Like a jail cell in a
submarine, and the damned
movie turned out to be four
hours long. I was going to
scream, or just strangle him
and leave no evidence of myself
behind - but the projectionist
would probably have seen me.
Another time I went somewhere
with him to sit through some other
field-warrior film, called 'The Battle
of Cullodden' - about the Scottish
Highlands and liberation and all
that crap. Another real wheezer;
(or reel wheezer?)....
-
I never saw the world like any of
that. Nor like anything of the way
I guess, he saw it - the history guy.
He believed, or wanted to believe,
in everything. I believed in nothing
at all. Four hours of convincing
about some midget war monger's
viewpoint was about three hours
and fifteen minutes too much.
-
I had a lot of things in my head,
through the Studio School and
Eighth Street, and the old locations
I haunted. Pretty much without a care
I was hounding the past - and I
discovered it there, realizing all
of a sudden, one morning bright
and early, that I was able still to
tap into and bring forth of all that
which had been there. Just by the
presence of my being. My being
there and 'aware' of it. My Being!
That was the incendiary difference
I was living - I'd found a way to
peel back the coating of time which
we assume is solid and always
there. It's not, and we merely allow
it to be there - mass mind, in
pure delusion, accepting and then
winnowing each others lies and
misrepresentations. It gets called
Reality, picked up as so by parents
and schools and everything else, and
before you know it the entire world
around you is screwed up. I wasn't
anything, but I just was. One time
I was sitting around, Philip Guston
was in the room, and someone came
in, making reference to something,
a gallery maybe, and said to him,
'I enjoyed your show.' Just matter
of factly, like that, and even Guston
just accepted it as the words relaying
the information that this guy had
gone to wherever it was that these
paintings were and seen them,
liked them, and commented back.
It all seemed so simple to me,
wrongly simple. The assumptions
were all wrong. He'd merely and
glibly used the word 'show' not
as a verb, but as a noun. OK, I
figured, that's the sort of thing it's
come down to? You do all this work
and it gets to a gallery, to be a
'show'. You 'show' your 'Art.' So
then what's Art? Something this
sort of person looks at because you
'show' it, and he gets to call it a
show that he's seen, and better yet,
'liked?' How crazy was any of
this, and where did it lead? The
end-zone of anything was word
and concept, and that was it. I
said to Philip, after the guy was
gone, 'Well, was it worth it? What
did you think of that? He liked
your show!' Recently, not so
long before that, Buckminster
Fuller had been around talking
about how his God was a Verb,
not a Noun. A 'Doer'. That made
a little more sense. But it still
hadn't broken through for me, my
own ideas of things hadn't quite
yet congealed, but I was on my
way. (I could start it right here,
right now, and who knows, I
might, but if I really got rolling
I think I'd lose you along the way
and I don't want that, yet).
-
At one of those Buckminster Fuller
lectures, by the way, I'd had an
Avenel friend of mine in, for the
lecture.He had been in San Francisco
for a few years, but had returned,
licking wounds like we all do, to
his parents' house for a while. He
drove in , in some older International
Scout that he had, and we spent the
wee hours half in the bag from the
post-lecture reception - awesome -
driving around in what was then the
cordoned off construction area for
15 or so blocks all around downtown
that had been taken over, razed and
barricaded with timbers, for the
ongoing construction of the Twin
Towers project. We managed to
move a few blockages - believe
it or not - and get onto a sort of
construction vehicle road/trench
that was used by trucks and heavy
equipment, right into the guts of
the whole site. It was about 3am
and it was awesome. No security,
I guess, no nothing. Never caught
up to us; we had the run of this
huge construction ghetto; there
was stuff everywhere. High up,
maybe there were workers, but
it didn't seem so, curtained lights
and floodlit platforms, eerie and
skeletal steel segments, and gigantic,
and I mean gigantic, trenches for
what tried to pass as a roadway.
We went bump-crazy, deep high
and deep low, everything rattled,
the whole vehicle we were in was
shaking and peeling. Like nothing
I'd ever seen before, half drunk or
not, I was seeing the somehow
innards of a city, from the gutted
insides out, and before it was even
completed. Like the control room
for a dream of Oz. Craziest ever.
-
I'd never seen an Avenel kid so
bizarrely enjoying himself, hell,
probably wetting himself too.
This was, really, a transformational
moment. We then got gobbled up
by a few nasty ditches, the Scout
nearly gave it up, we were pitched
and thrust around. My friend was
ecstatic. Finally, we got out of
there in one piece. The vehicle,
however, had been severely
compromised, we noticed at a
stop we made somewhere along
the deserted streets for an all-night
coffee and donut joint. When we
backed out there was a serious
puddle, still growing, beneath
the rear of the Scout. The rear?
What could that be?, I asked.
My ultra cool friend began going
on, quite calmly, about the rear
differential, 4-wheel drive
something or other into which
he'd switched, and - after a
look-see in the flashlight glimmer
of real time, he announced the
casing was cracked. 'Oh. That's
nothing! The casing is cracked!
How cool!' (That was my Scout-
is-a-verb reaction to a very
automotive moment. I guess).
No big deal - he figured, 4am.
24 quick miles, no traffic, we
could beat the leak, then, home.
So I went with him, we made
it OK, the leaking had continued,
and the next Avenel mid-morning
presented us quite a puddle of
something beneath the vehicle.
I took the train, and returned to
Eighth Street. As a noun. As a
verb. Probably even as an
adjective, if you stretched it.
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