Tuesday, June 4, 2019

11,811. RUDIMENTS, pt. 706

RUDIMENTS, pt. 706
(bananas)
I was always a crazy guy.
I knew it, but it never 
bothered me. You need
proof? I hated forks. I
hated the way things 
always rolled off them
and then the way there
was always some adult 
ready to tell you 'Peas
aren't the kind of food
you eat with the fork.'
Huh? Say that again?
In fact, besides just plain
disliking eating  -  as I
still do, the dislike, not
the eat  -  I hated eating
in public. I would do most
anything not to have people
see me eating, or be around
me when I ate. Grade-school
of course kills that immediately.
Everything they have you
doing is communal, from the
first day, when you have to put
your kindergarten heads down
as one and all rest together.
The freaking Commies could
not have better infiltrated kids'
head back then, in the 1950's.
We were used. Hiding from
atomic bombs by going 'under'
our desks so as to be safe there
from flying glass? What moronic
cretinous teacher ever dreamed
that one up? Maybe they should
just have had us DRINK molten
glass instead, as practice, before
we were dematerialized. No more
as consumers of Fruit Loops. Too
bad; just Fruit Loops as teachers
were left.
-
I can't remember the first time
I met the priests and all from 
St. Andrew's Church, but I do 
remember it as a small church 
right on Avenel Street, with 
the nice, white rectory there 
too, and large, arching trees.
There was a phone booth, on 
the curb out front too. You could
phone in your confession to the
fast-talking Father Egan. (OK, 
that last bit's not true). Anyway, 
those guys eventually ended 
up playing a real lousy part 
in my life, screwing it up
pretty well. Oddly enough,
I remember when I got creamed 
by that train, all those months 
in the hospital, none of them 
ever came around. Probably 
just as well. I'd already been 
given attendant last rites, I 
was told, twice. Both times
the magic failed, and I stayed 
alive, little sinning bastard 
that I was. I guess. I needed 
all that? What the heck did 
they think I'd been up to?
-
You spend all that time comatose
and when you do finally wake 
back up (it takes a long time 
and the whole re-entry thing is 
pretty fogged up and strange. 
Voices. Lights. Things that 
resonate and then go fast and 
then go slow), nothing's the 
same, and you sense that it 
can't ever be. I remember
coming back to it and the 
first thing I somehow checked 
was the language, seeing if I 
could still communicate and
that the words were still the 
same. That's pretty weird, isn't 
it? I sure thought it was, and 
it showed to me the oddball 
nature of words and how they 
go into shaping our very world. 
Like, say, 'Moonlight.' What 
the heck is that? Why do we
even call it that. The Moon 
has no light. It's a premise; 
just a reflected off-glow from 
some other object, and that 
object we, in turn, claim
to call as the 'originator' of 
that light. Man that's a lot 
of work for just words to 
get across  -  so think how
much of the invisible work
is NOT done by the words  -  
which are jest 'suggesting'  -  
but more done by our almost 
unlimited power of building 
things from the merest 
suggestion. Like our whole
world! Every word we use 
has tons of suggested baggage 
dragging all along behind it. 
Like crazy Lego blocks 
of construction.
-
Anyway, there were all these
priest guys  -  old names, some
dead or sick one they kept asking
us to pray for, who used to be
around but was no longer. I guess
he died, because they stopped
asking about him or making
mention. Some priests came and
went; young guys, Pedata, new
priests, ladies swooning over
these nice young men. Give
me a break, as it turned out  - if
they were groping the altar boys
they were chasing these newly
married war-wives up and down
Avenel Street and Madison Ave.
It's pretty disgusting how no one
ever owns up to the way things 
really go. My neighbor, a girl
named Linda, was a year younger
than me, say 10, and this Pedata
guy, at the church fair that year
(it used to be held on the grass 
at the rectory, on Avenel Street),
I remember he spent the entire
time singing sweetly to her,
some stupid 50's song about,
'When I go to sleep I don't go to
sleep, I go and dream deep, about
Linda.' Yeah, really. That was a
song sometime back then, and this
creep was singing this crap to a
10-year old girl. Day after day.
heard the shit with my own ears.
-
I've said before the entire 
societal world is a crock. If 
that's not a prove-my-point 
indicator then I don't know 
what is. They soon enough
abandoned that little church
and erected a nasty-looking 
hulk of 'modern' church on 
the back lot; it's still there. 
The only thing churches 
seem ever really to provide
for, forget the souls and the 
preaching - which is all turned
over to gibberish now anyway -
is ample parking and good tar. 
The whole world is a crock. 
Have I mentioned that?
-
My Avenel home-life represented
nothing to me. It just was. I mostly
hung around to see what sorts
of things were going to develop.
I kept mum about my real ideas
and intentions. There wasn't too
much that made a whole lot of
sense. I'd sit around eating cereal,
and slicing little banana slices to
put on it; but then I'd start thinking
about the banana peel instead, 
wondering why people were
always saying they were going to 
'slip' on one, and to 'watch out'
you don't slip on one, etc. They 
never seemed slippery to me at all.
I couldn't get that. In fact, more
than a lot of things, they seemed
really primitive, like a throwback
to really early Earth-time, when
foods and things had to grow
protective covers around them,
to prevent what? And that vague
mix of yellow, and the inside turn
to a whitish ore than a yellowish
creamy tone. And the way they
ripened, from a sot of odd but
telling form of green. Together
with that weird shape  -  really
strange thing, that banana is.
What was the God story on
that one? Linda?




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