11,728. RUDIMENTS, pt. 672

RUDIMENTS, pt. 672

(i'd heard of the burnng bush)

I like to impart knowledge,

and ideas. It was never

enough for me to just list

things; catalogers abound.

They are without color.

I intend always on going

past that : places that breath

and live on, way past their

own dates. I'll leave all that

to others. It was often quite

difficult for me to get myself

through to others. I seemed

often misaligned. This still

goes on, and it has its funny

moments too. Just tonight,

as a for instance, I was sitting

in a gallery reception for a

local art show, idly wiling

away the hour and a half

allotted to the  public's

'meet the artists' kind of

thing. Sitting nearby to

one of my show paintings;

people passing, the occasional

murmurings or short conversations

about who I was or which was

mine, etc. From where I sat

I could discreetly observe the

people passing a large work

of mine hanging there. Sixty

percent of the rest of the show was

probably the usual conservative

'Art' stuff : birds, seascapes,

portrait heads, photos of spires

and waterscapes and Fall scenes.

Interesting all, and skilled too.

A woman comes back to me, older

than I was, by a bit, and says 'You

didn't tell me this was yours on my

first time I passed.' I said, 'Yes, it is.'

She said, 'The experimental one!

It's very nice,' and she lingered,

looking closely at it. Then she

said, 'That's the kind of thing I

would do, if I was in any way

creative' I thanked her, and as

she walked away I tried thinking

about what she'd said, putting it

into some sort of context. I had

none. To me, it was the most

natural form of communicating

an image and idea as possible

yet she'd just transformed it

into some screwy form of an

outlier artistry  -  beyond ken 

and beyond meaning. Help me 

Rhonda, thought I  -  or, at least, 

help her. And they don't even

serve wine any more at these

local things. How do people

stand themselves, I wondered.

For a moment there 'I wondered

as I wandered', so to speak. Was

I that far around the bend that

some old, American suburbanite

can only defend me by calling

my work 'experimental?' Who

ever heard of that in the context 

of art anyway, as if it were some

new-fangled six-wheeled vehicle

for skimming on water.

-

Ah. Whatever; none of this matters.

There was a short story once  -  I've

read it twenty times I'm sure. It's

called 'A Perfect Day for Bananfish'

by J. D. Salinger  -  one of those 

strange, half-twisted tales of his

that rotate around young girls and

an older man, but in their own

peculiar way  -  not perverted or

sexual unless you read it that way

with all your own baggage. It's

experimental! It's actually almost

boring and old now  -  stereotypes

of Jewish preoccupations too, I

guess you could say  -  the shrink,

the nosing mother, the married

daughter, weird kid, beach, travel,  

idle time  -  and of course the

protagonist, of sorts, at whose

climatic ending the story itself

ends. Giving nothing away; let's

just say it ends. When I first read 

it, it seemed way more magical 

than it seems now. I was younger

and the words and characters

had a different representation. Now

it reads as stillborn  -  cliched and

predictable, and with quiet words.

And I still hate precocious kids.

But, Salinger wrote out of wartime.

Horror, loss and shame, all mixed.

Funny, too, all the horrors of the

war and memory he went through,

he was brought up on Park Avenue,

where, one after the other, the

psychiatrist offices are all lined up,

and now a neighborhood person

probably gets some preferential 

treatment and rate to partake

of the process. Lots of talking

going on around there. He ends

up writing about nutcases anyway.

-

I used to know this guy, a pretty 

disgruntled old guy, into his late 70's,

always ragging on about one thing

or another  -  blacks, Jews, etc.  - 

he hated them all. Sour on the 

world, he was; he had a daughter,

far off somewhere, Texas or so.
Probably hated Texans too. He
used to take the bus, go to NYC,

and then get on a city bus, and just 

ride all day. It was kind of cool,

he'd just stay on the bus and ride

the circuit, however it went. I

suppose he knew where he was 

headed, but maybe not either. He

said it would take him everywhere

and he'd get to see the sights, the

city, and all those people he was

always grumbling about. Fair deal,

I guess, if that was what you were

after. Pretty experimental form of

sight-seeing too. The difference was,

I figured, this guy grumbled.

Salinger at least wrote it, and

worked it all out that way.

-

All in all, what the hell. Would I 

be wrong to say that old Hildegard

represented quite by accident one 

of the more magisterial ways of living

a life  -  to me. Like going to the fish

market down at Fulton Street; that was

something people 'did,' but it really

amounted to nothing, reached no

further than the ends of their arms 

(hoping they always catch the flung

fish), changed nothing except for

someone's meal or some dumb

restaurant's daily bill of fare. I've

never seen 'bruised fish' on a menu,

so I guess those guys caught them all.

(Nor have I ever seen a 'Bananafish.'

Just goes to show, I suppose, about

experimentation). Hildegard though,

she saw everything just the way

she wanted, and made no bones

about it. That meant so much to

me, and I used to wonder how in

the world did I come by her? I'd

never heard her name before, they

claim she's a 'saint' too, but in

those seminary meal days when

some Piety Pete was up there

reading from the 'Lives of the 

Saints' book, I never heard any

no-tell about any Saint Hildegard

of the Magic, Flaming, Brush.

(I said brush; even though there

was a burning bush I'd heard of).