RUDIMENTS, pt. 715
(future so bright)
The lion tamer tames like
the drunk drinks, I always
figured. At the seminary
the only person ever suspected
of drinking was the Spanish
guy who ran the cooking staff;
who was the main 'Chef.' I
have to admit, I never saw
him reeling drunk, and it
never much mattered to me.
The odder thing, as I saw it,
within the context of the
seminary itself, was that
neither he nor any of the
cooking staff ever acted
religious, nor did they ever
show up for any of the
church and chapel stuff we
were always doing. Kind of
odd. I'd have figured all that
to have been a stipulation of
working there. Admittedly,
there was a lot of mystery
there and it remained so -
how those priests and brothers
all lived together, what they did
with their time, or even if, (as
some rumor went) they tippled
and had their own slew of
cocktails in there - the big
house they all lived in. The
seminary, a hundred years back,
had been a buffalo farm. Yes,
bison. There was a round farm
building right near too there.
And out on the side acreage
there was the regular cow barn
and the rest, run as a regular
farm set up by that Brother
Sebastian guy, or maybe it
was Brother Cornelius, I do
forget. He had a large, white
beard, yellow around the
mouth, from food and tobacco
and stuff. A small guy, he
always reminded me of the
hermit we had living in the
nearby thicket by the Krug
mansion (we called it). Monica
Court was built there too, on
the overlap of properties, and
there was, within the now and
greatly reduced Krug acreage
( brewery family from Newark),
I think it was Krug, maybe Kruger,
I don't know any more. For some
reason, they had a hermit who
they allowed to live in that small
shack. Maybe he was once their
groundskeeper or something; but
no matter, he too was small and
had a large white beard, yellowed
around the mouth. Poor guy, we
used to torment him relentlessly.
Eventually he took to having at
us with a salt-pellet gun, just
to blast us away from the area.
He never stepped outside the
fenced area that I ever saw. No
words were ever spoken other.
One day, he was just gone and
that was that. They built Ronnie
Suter's house on the spot where
his hut used to be.
-
The memory of the hermit always
meshed for me with the farmer-
Brother there at the cemetery.
I felt closer to that scene than
most any of the others at first,
and then once I got rolling with
the drama department and the rest
of that, the farm-side of things
faded for me. In the very beginning,
I got involved with the daily slop
for feeding the pigs - they had
their own pig-pasture-pen about
a quarter-mile off from the barn;
they'd flop around and wallow
in the mud and muck. It was
always pretty wet, with running
water and mud. We had a few carts,
like really large wheelbarrows,
which would get filled with food,
cast-offs, extras, etc., and when
they got filled up they were rolled
along and we'd tip them into the
feeding-trough area. The pigs
would all be milling about,
grunting and bumping into each
other, crowding to the feeders.
They were almost always, it
seemed to me, smiling - a sort
of pig-smile hard to describe,
especially seeing as pigs don't
really have the sort of face and
jaw that would make a smile.
They live amidst such misery
anyway that they'd normally
not dare to smile. Unlike
humans, who have a face a
jaw made for smiles but who,
instead, always find ways to
make themselves so miserable
that smiles never happen - and
who, unlike pigs too, can go to
a butcher shop and walk out
again. Go figure.
-
It's a tasty life, I guess. Or,
most of the time it is - on
the other hand, it's not often
tasteful. There's a difference,
you know.
-
For me, the time I'd spend with
those pigs, and in their very
nice spot - wooded, farm-fenced,
a pasture-glade sort of location -
was among the best moments
I'd get. I'd never before experienced
anything like that. It was a sort
of oneness with the world, its
animals and trees and Nature,
all at once. Everyone else would
be up at the campus and running
about with their small-time games,
tennis, the softball, and sports.
I mostly could not have cared
less about that stuff; it was all
out of the loop for me. Heck,
even today, all the rest of Life
is out of the loop for me - it's
a real shame how we've gotten
things strapped enough that the
needs for money and prestige
and place somehow have
become paramount and taken
precedence over all other things.
It's not wonder life is a big,
stinking mess.
-
I used to end up with funny
thoughts. Here's a for instance:
If a person really and truly had
a belief in God, why would they
wear sunglasses? If the God they
profess believing in was all that
they claimed, why would they
lose that faith and think that
God would make things too
bright for them?
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