11,746. RUDIMENTS, pt. 680

RUDIMENTS, pt. 680
(on the good ship lollipop)
The thing about modern life

was that it sucked. But I'd

gotten stuck in in : house,

family, kid, job, car. Each

of them was a steady poker

in the eye that I'd never

banked on. But I was never

a runner,  and I stayed with

it all. Damn. The French

surrealist writer Lautreamont

said, 'On the day you decide

to marry, the first stranger

that crosses your path would

make as good a match as any

well-thought-out choice.' Ha!

My story, by my choice, and, I

guess, as you have seen, begins

without all that. Why? Well, for

me, I see it as probably unable

to be told. Not tellable. Life is

sex, and a lot of sex is life. Stuff

happens, and the consequences

of that 'stuff' are yours to take

or leave. I took, agreed to. But

it never colored my life or

changed my somewhat perverse

and oddball ways of thinking,

doing, and perceiving. I was a

creative soul since the first day

I pissed my diaper. Better even

than that, I was told that one

of the first things I did, on a

changing  table, was to piss

in my father's eye.

-

I think when you're growing up

and you hear these stories about

yourself when young, or really

young, you have no other thing to

do but believe them. It's nothing

you can remember yourself  - 

but at the same time I've always

noticed that any of these stories

run true to type : another thing

you can do nothing about. If the

teller believes you to be a sniveler,

so too the young you will show

that tendency in the story. Or, a

brat. Or, a brawler; on and on. 

It's all out of your control. And I 

guess it runs in the same way that

everyone's kid is a 'genius.' My

father-in-law always used to say

he could remember as early as

age 5. I never quarreled over

that, and others just never

brought that stuff up. I have

always admitted to, and moreso

now as I age, being able to  -

by senses of sell or touch or

just evocative moments in

memory  -  remember things

much earlier than that, say 3

or 4 maybe earlier. There are

other people  -  the singer Joan

Baez being one  -  who claim to

be able to recall being birthed

and instantly-early memories.

Who knows what we weave?

And anyway, who'd really want

to know that stuff? Why?

-

Part of it all, for me, was that

the idea of having limits and

boundaries always bothered

me. It wasn't like I was a

wild-man or anything; I just

didn't like being reined in.

Even if I had no intention of

stretching to the far limits,

I still always wanted that

option, to be there, the

possibility of it all. Strange,

how it went. One of those guys,

Paul Goodman I think it was  -

he was a 1960's softie-writer

about civil society and the

organizational figuring of

career and alienation and the

rest of all that  -  he wrote,

'The aware self does not

have fixed boundaries.' I

guess  -  if your boundaries

aren't broken, why fix them?

No, that's just a jerk joke, of

mine. What he meant was that

any particular self-awareness,

of the sort that he claimed

Society and Education no

longer offered its youth,

would simply catapult a

real 'individual' experiencing

selfhood in wanting nothing

to be there to tie them down.

The whole of living is the

totality of experience it affords 

us, or offers us. Take it while

it's coming, so to speak. Paul

Goodman, in his way, had it

in for 1950's society, and its

resultant blather in the 1960's,

and he meant to state his feelings.

And did so. 'Growing Up Absurd'

is one of the hardest, most poorly

written and densely 'dullified'

things of that nature to read,

but if you can slice through it

with your own mental machete,

it's rewarding. Paul Goodman

was a trouser-chaser of the

tallest order, but we shan't

hold that against him. Too 

many, by far, of the best are.

-

I often too did find that nothing 

isn't ever what it seems, (putting 

a country spin on the language 

there), or even what  its purported 

to be. Now none of these conclusions 

might be the nicest things in the 

world, but they're true and it 

was what I've experienced and

I've decided here only to go by 

my experience. Like all those

country people and their preachers

and all their do-right stuff. I've

seen with my own eyes how all

that gets put away pretty quickly

when zippers and hooks are 

involved. They may be saying 

one thing, these folks, but as

soon as you turn your back

they're out there in the fields 

and hollows rutting and 

grunting like wild boars.

All those 'boundaries' and

'limitations' get put away real

quickly when the ripe-apple

of opportunity begins to be

a'knocking; Heaven forbid, 

but let the angels in! You're

best off not to be believing 

anything of appearances. 

-

As I grew up I began to realize

that I was beginning to resemble,

by nose and chin and all that,

some local Avenel guy whose

looks I never liked. That irked 

me. He had the aquiline nose

business that I hated  -  the 

profile of a Roman Centurian 

or something. Exactly like me.

The chin I'd developed was

gross, with one of those plugs

in it that people called a clef.

I detested that  -  it seem anything

but manly, made me look perverse,

and I hated it too when other kid's

mothers would point it out, along

with dimples, to say what 'nice'

features I had. Boy, if that was

the case, I'd think, where's the 

surgical knife? Technically, I

was a basket case of bad clay.

I never liked myself, and I guess

to this day all I do is hide all

that now aged, discolored,

and floundering stuff behind

madman hordes of hair. We're
stuck with the design of what we're
given  -  family and lineage draw
from all that too, so if for nothing
else it's at least worth knowing about.
Whether you end up having Uncle
Aldo's chin or eyes like Grandma
Caldicutti, you're in one the mix
for free. The other thing I hated
having? Thin lips.
-
There's a threshold of age when 
you begin having a notice or a 
concern about things of that 
Nature  -  I guess it's that nervous 
trounce of adolescence, when 
all the Heebsters out there begin
deciding that your 'age group'
is a marketable bunch of pithy
people they can sell to. I can
remember being in supermarket
lines and things in the early or
mid sixties when the idea first
started getting pumped that the
baby-boomer crowd was about to
enter the age when millions of
pennies and dollars could be pumped
out of them if they were only able to
be convinced that their privates smell,
their pimples were legion, all needs 
could be met, and the only way to
the top of the class was to push and 
peddle personal perfection. Through
items, of course, that had to be
'purchased'. Hello Beach Boys,
and hello pop culture, and we
peddle it like Hell, here on
the Good Ship Lollipop.