11,673. RUDIMENTS, pt. 650

RUDIMENTS, pt. 650

('leaves more to mess around with')

I'm going to be brutally

honest here and take a

real heave : Life isn't

worth the doing. At the

time I was letting myself

be driven around by this

Jim Jankowsky guy, in

his Oldsmobile Vista

Cruiser (probably one of

the larger, more workaholic

but showy weird cars I was

ever in) my mind was

already made up that

Bentley Creek wasn't for

me. I set out, when all this

began, for mystery and for

darkness, to be getting

somewhere secretive and

hidden. All of Jim, all he

said and did, was the once-

and-for-all-immediate opposite

of that. Bentley Creek itself

was nothing more than a

little suburbia, in the country,

yes, but thriving on its

nearness to the border and to

the work and 'good' life that

a job in Elmira provided. It

irked me that people had

 swimming pools! Just like

Avenel. I always hated those

round, above-ground and

circular, balloony things,

and here they were too :

yard fences, decks and

diving boards, all that crap

arrayed alongside a roadway,

just a zip right up to Elmira.

And everyone was happy;

dumb-happy. Like Jim,

they'd beam and smile over

the cloud of cream in a cup

of coffee! Jim was all bright

and smiles, like about everything,

and, to boot, he got on with

my father like instant old mates.

Deer-heads mounted on his

walls. Taxidermed raccoons

and weird ground animals.

Everything dead and gone

except for Jim, who couldn't

be. It was enough to make

me nervous. I've already

explained the story here a

time or two, but the place

I did originally get my heart

set upon  -  a dark, damp and

dreary hovel, owned by a

stone-cutter about a hundred

years old, these two clunkers

pretty much ganged up on me

and decided it was unlivable

and NOT to be bought by me.

Even Jim, who would have

probably sold a corpse roller

skates if there was money in it,

sided with my father.

-

I never got too riled over that,

letting them have their way,

but I sure steered clear of

Bentley Creek for living in.

That's how I ended up with

the place I eventually did take.

It was still cheap, larger, with

lots of space, stuff and room.

It was, yeah, run-down some,

but I never let any of that

bother me. If I'd have even

taken old Jim back with me to

the lower east side he would

have known exactly what I

meant by saying it wasn't so

bad. Times later, I'd ride

through Bentley Creek, and

wonder just what it was that

threw me so off about the

place. And then, for a while

too, I had a co-worker and her

friend, both girls, who lived

there, before they moved

once  or twice more. I still

always did figure it was the

fact that I defined myself by

'rural runaway' and this small

town defined itself, in the other

direction, by pretending to be a

pleasant, dreary, suburbia. No

dead animals, and pools and

deck-chairs abounding.

-

What the heck any of that 

was about, I never knew. I'd

come out there for country,

and that was all I wanted. Yet,

at the same time, (as usual) I

was conflicted. All those New

York people with whom I'd just

had my dealings, they were

all about getting away too, but

for them it was all lined with

money : the Hamptons, or

Skowhegan, Maine, where 

there was a large Summer

art colony, or Fire Island or

the Pines  - all sorts of other

places I could have been.

Why I chose the path I chose

I couldn't specifically say.

The area of Woodstock and

Phoenicia attracts me now,

but back then didn't at all.

I always figured Catskill

stuff as junk enough for

Henny Youngman and 

his  brood. Now I know 

differently, of course  -  

long and deep history there,

and lots of mysterious places. 

But then, I didn't. It's kind

of, when you're at the stage

I was at, or just not at any

longer, like you take things

at face value, you accept all

what people tell you, which 

is what they want anyway,

and you end up being what

you're not. Your soul knows

that immediately, and slowly

starts fighting back, from 

within  -  the sorts of situations

that get stirred up to detour, or

delay, or even derail you  -

illness, cancers, really bad

stuff; throws the train right

of the track. That's your world-

being-soul screaming right back

at you. A symbolic version of

the loud voicing yelling:

'Repent!!' Gotta' listen.

-

All through my days, there have

always been things that threw me off;

like that one about the human tongue,

one part of it tasting sensitive for

sweet, and the other for bitter,

front vs. back, or however it goes.

Or like dogs and things, other

animals, seeing only black and

white, or in infrared tints; all

that crazy stuff used to throw

me, totally. So bad I had to

leave it alone for its deniability

by me. I never for one moment 

believed any of that crap, yet, 

over and over I heard it. Some

science guy would start harping

on  -  stupid stuff  -  like about

the moon or a planet, one side

always facing the sun and a

zillion degrees because of it, and 

the other side, freezing way cold,
so you couldn't live on either side.

OK, sure on that, but if the globe

of the thing is round, or spherical,

anything like that is going to

happen gradual  -  so, in some

gray-zone area, for some small

zone the temperature has got to

be OK, not real hot, hot real cold.

Anyhow, that's not your real

problem if there's no water or

air; so who really cares. I saw all

things differently : Nature doesn't

work like that  -  there are no, 

'zones'; there are no places where

black turns to white, in an instant.

We all live in a form of gray.

The people who know it all, by

their own insistence of course,

are basically full of it, and always

have been. No ship has ever fallen

off the end of the end of the Earth,

being flat. Look at Galileo and the

assholes in the church hierarchy.

The only thing that's flat about

any claims to a flat-Earth idea is

the flatness of people's perception.

Most people really DO live in  a 

flat, flat plane of linear projection, 

and that sucks. That's why cancer 

wards are full-up, and that's why

psychiatrists have customers, and

that's why the biggie-wiggies don't

shop thrift stores. Because they're

stuck! Flat-out, stuck!

-

That's OK with me; it leaves more

for us creative types to mess around

with and screw up their heads.

-

By the way, shopping like that for real

estate is very voyeuristic -  with Jim

Jankowsky, we drove endlessly,

and it took two days in a row,

through all sorts of his local

lands and places, up hills and

down valleys, looking at things,

seeing other peoples' homes, stepping

into places where I felt like an

interloper. He talked incessantly,

and he drove way too fast for my

comfort. He'd talk about cows and

sheep and pigs and plows and

tractors, barns, silos and silage too.

This was all way before the days of

cell phones and computers and all, 

so there was no stopping him,  and

no interruptions. Many of these

people he'd seen before, if it was a

place that was still inhabited, and

the game was sort of like, 'Here's

Jim, with another looker, hi how

are you, where ya' from? Jersey,

you say, oh wow, my great uncle

lives there.' With atmospherics like

that  -  I felt  -  there really wasn't

too much you could accomplish.

I liked Jim, but I saw the way he

operated, and I realized he 

represented, to me, everything that 

was wrong. Like Glen Campbell, that 

guitar guy and singer. He was a pretty 

masterful guitar player, a session man, 

part of what was called 'The Wrecking 

Crew,' which was a tight bunch of 

studio musicians who are on hundreds 

of records by what you think of as stars  -  

from the Monkees to the Byrds, The Beach

Boys,  Simon and Garfunkle, Herb Alpert,

and many more  -  who weren't worth

spit with their instruments and who,

for recording purposes, called in these 

guitar men, drum guys, and piano and

keyboard men, to make their actual

records. They themselves would just

go out onto concert stages and fake

it all. Anyway, I hated Glen Campbell,

but only after I saw a Life Magazine

spread, about 1970 or whatever, about 

him  -  all that guitar stuff and Wichita

Lineman and all that  -  was belied by

what I saw. He was the most normal, 

boring, 1960's family guy your ever 

imagine. His home and cars were

pure hokum; his tastes stunk; all he

wanted was pleasure, and his wife and

family looked like it too. A big zero,

but people put up with him for what

 he did. That's what Jim was like,

for me. I guess now I just

call it 'inauthentic.'