11,947. RUDIMENTS, pt. 760

RUDIMENTS, pt. 760

(justice and cause and crazy violence too)

There never was any sort of

bolt of lightning or anything

like that  -  unless maybe you

count getting hit by a train.

That can do it. In any case,

most of my conscious life 

has been just a steady off-kilter.

I'm often thinking I'm all set

to go with something, and

then it's gone and I need to

start all over. My mind holds

lots, but lots is fleeting too.

Numerous times I've been 

to Philadelphia, when I

wander around to this

statue they have of Benjamin

Franklin; he's got a kite

going, on a string (it's all

metal sculpture suggestion),

wearing his funny breeches

and those colonial shoes and

even some sort of hat, I think,

with his funny hair. The place

where the statue is, now just

a tiny park in the middle of

rows of row-houses, typical

Philadelphia, quaint and real

nice, was once the outer rim

of countryside between the

Schuylkill River and the city 

itself  -  now it's all been

absorbed in as one. But this

they've left, and memorialized,

so that, of course, each time 

I come across it my mind 

starts reeling and soaring in

those different places we get

between the worlds we live 

and those we don't. Americans

tend to forget everything, just

thrashing what was in the past,

beating it up so it can then

fit their present purposes, and

then trashing it too. Thrashing

to trashing in one fell swoop.

Not for nothing did Gore Vidal

call this the 'United States

of Amnesia.'

-

It was always strange for me to

walk between two worlds like

that, and I was always getting 

lost. Philadelphia, New York

City, Elmira, Columbia Cross 

Roads; every pattern of my life 

was always putting me on roads 

that led out, away from it, away 

from the present, and even away

from the future. Why is that? I

recognized it all, but, to others,

I could hardly even speak of what

was going on. My 'reality' had

been transformed really, and more

consisted of all that old stuff. No

one computes that; to them it was

foreign land, and I was some jerk

from Oz. 'In forgetting lies the

liquefaction of time.' I never

forgot a thing, because it was all

still present. 'Bad remembering

causes time to clot; can be an

error of content (we remember,

but for wrong reasons). Time is,

or ought to be, fluid, and the be

fluent in time, we must let a

lot of life drop away. Every 

act of memory is also an act

of forgetting.' There you have

my dilemma. But I managed.

-

Regular people forgot everything;

thought nothing of the loss, and

simply consigned the past to the

past and screw that. (To consign

something to oblivion is not to be

oblivious about it). How's that

for being lost in the stars  -  here's

Benjamin Franklin and all his

story  -  (He's buried, at the

other end of Philadelphia, in a

large, corner grave at Christchurch,

and, for whatever it's worth and

for whatever useless people now

remember or make of it, the wide,

flat, lettered grave stone is littered,

always with pennies, dimes and 

quarters like a manna from some 

coin-Heaven. Is that, I wondered,

remembering, or forgetting? E.M. 

Forster is quoted as having said,

'To forget its Creator is one of

the functions of a Creation.'

-

So, in the same way as I range

the strange ridge of early America

and think and walk with an imagined

Ben Franklin present and at my

side, I did, as well, in Elmira, get

lost and transformed everywhere

by a deep addiction to the remnants

of the Civil War. No matter how

northern a town it may have been

(and it was far more 'northern' in

its loyalty to the Union cause than

was Philadelphia, or even New York

City), Elmira was quite connected

to that war. By necessity  -  there

was a constant traffic by rail and

wagon and walking, of bedraggled,

injured, lame, or sick Confederate

prisoners, thrown as they were into

their barrels of incarceration atop

the sometimes cold and bitterly

frozen highlands of Elmira. The

icy river ran, not so far away too.

All these men died, suffered, cried

or withstood this all, for years.

And for those that died, the

descendant burial, with but the

most meager rights, was just

downhill, along the flats, of the

lower lands of town. In all of

that, yet unspoken, there was

justice and cause and crazy

violence too. In the middle of
town as well  -  right adjacent to
what was a large Sears parking lot
(which by the mid seventies, and
after the flood, was lucky to even
see 12 cars) was another Civil War
graveyard. This was a much more
traditional one, with the local boys
and their local regiments and
squads and all that  -  numbers and
names listed, places of origin, battles
fought, and where each individual
was killed  - name of battle, location
date. Lots of tall obelisks, carved
wreaths and broken rifles and
renderings of hats and horns and
all that. It was one of the saddest
places I'd ever been  -  in that it had
really lost all context. In a place
like Elmira, without any texture
by then. Sort of abandoned and lost,
it all just sat there; un-kept mostly,
grasses growing, small breezes
blowing. That sort of death is
a real thing, and in a place like
that, it lingers, stays around, and
haunts those who remain. Even if
they are no longer conscious of any
of it. I'd look around and gag.
Sears. McDonald's. The P.C.
Market. (With my young son,
we always called it PC Margaret;
and got our groceries there).
-
I myself often felt like a bad
astronaut  -  out in deep space, just
floating around, untethered, no
longer with any real connection to
the mother ship, or to home. To
Elmira and its denizens of old,
THAT was the local war, and
the only one that counted.