RUDIMENTS, pt. 796
(not magic; just magical)
Tucked away in my little
corner of nowhere, there at
RD 2 Columbia Crossroads,
PA, on some nameless dirt
road at the time (I kept
naming it, changing the
every two weeks at will,
all meaningless and making
reference to no one), I did
manage well enough. Half
the adventures I can remember
are fully untold, and the ones
I've told are half remembered.
If I knew back then that all
this would occur, I'd have
called the road 'Hold Onto
Memories Lane;' well.
perhaps. As it is, it's more
like 'Make a left at Don't
Blank Out Road.'
-
There came a time, March
1st or so (the beginning of
March has always been a
portentous, breakout, time
for me. I never know why),
whichever year it was; not
sure. I just got that feeling
again of needing to fly, start
something over. Thank God for
Ithaca. It right then became a
refuge; it was half a trip, maybe
40 miles, 21 up from Elmira
and another 20 down into
Pennsylvania. In any case,
by this time I'd gotten by
post-flood job back up in
Elmira, I'd stopped working
with Warren, and the farm
stuff, my local school job
was done; I'd kind of just
chucked everything as was
almost ready to move on.
Elmira - to which place
we did eventually move,
again was stopgap. It became
a fairly regular thing, that
Spring and Summer, to make
the trip to Ithaca - it was,
all of a sudden, like making
up for lost time. The Johnson
Art Museum had just opened,
and it was pretty much a showcase
of Art, or at least a place, a real
place, where I could dip back
in. At the time, the building
and its architecture was
considered groundbreaking,
even though now it comes
off as dated and little much,
for its 'modernity' - like a
bad rocket ship or something.
Looking at it now, all that
poured concrete leaves me
cold. No matter, because
I'm not there.
-
Ithaca had a bottom section -
a regular town, stores, shops,
sidewalks. All the usual. And
then, after a long incline, as
one drove or walked the old
clusters of hill hugging homes
and streets, frat houses, rooming
houses, and the two colleges
(Ithaca College, and Cornell
University, much larger). It
was a place unto itself, down
and dirty, ramps and paths, not
all paved; shortcuts between
homes, things were still hippie
like, the remnants of the takeover
and black-power turmoil and all
the campus fighting and Vietnam
War stuff, was all yet around.
Smoke had not yet cleared, and
it was as if the words still hung
in the air. Talk about sanctuary
cities, this place was one even
way back then. There was little
rule. Suicides off the cliffs were
not uncommon, at exam time,
during the long course or Winter
and school, whatever. (It's all
been netted off now and is held
in place by chained and secured
mesh nets, over and along the
gorges an rocks and ledges.
Stupid to look at, but, I guess,
needed too. Personally? I think
it could be argued either way.
Let 'em jump. As Scrooge said,
reduce the excess population).
Anyway, what's the use of letting
people hang on who want to use
their free will? I never got that
stuff at all, the idea that people
talk out of both sides of their
mouth is obvious; which is why
there's a high, and a low. That
kind of dichotomy is part of
Life's make-up. We praise our
freedoms and freedom of
choice, but actually allow
so little of it.
-
All I ever mostly did at this
point was study. I was a bit
crazy over that. Maybe some
people are born mad, but I
certainly was developing in
that direction - not having
been born like that : Mad in
the sense of one, undying
devotion to a single task.
On the other hand, that
doesn't ever make for a
well-rounded or complete
life. Believe it or not, by
letters at first, later in
person, I became friends
with an older guy attached
to Cornell, doing some sort
of work. Raul Manglapus. It
was a letter to the editor, by
him, in the NYTimes, to which
I responded to his Cornell
address, and he answered. It
then went back and forth a
few times, and we finally met.
Interesting stuff. Marcos, about
1972, had exiled him, so he
was running, as it were, an
opposition movement for a
government-in-exile, against
the Marcos family regime and
kleptocracy. Maybe you remember
Imelda Marcos, with her 6,000
pairs of shoes. His family had
a long struggle to sneak out of
the Philippines and also get to
America. Manglapus thus tended
to be a little furtive, figuring, as
he did, that probably someone
was out to get him. Shoot him
poison him, etc. He stayed very
active in his national political
issues. But what was cool about
him, was that he was also pretty
hip; like a jazz-music guy, a
writer and a musician. He had
some music of his own he
wrote and worked with too.
Once Marcos was gone,
Corazin Aquino, I think it
was, got him back into the
country and into the government,
maybe even back into his old
foreign minister position. I
forget, and I never heard
from him again - until I
later heard when he died -
regular death, disease or
cancer. No foul play.
-
I did used to think how cool
it was, and by whatever
accidental means it had
occurred, that I had made
that connection. It was, of
course a purely symbolic
one - I was nothing to him,
in his political and exile scheme
of things; I represented no great
'part' of America, of which his
music and writing used to parody
or sort of poke fun at too. But,
I'd broken through some sort
of personal barrier, and I was
proud of that, in my way - in
the same manner, and almost
exactly, as the way I'd become
friendly, at Elmira College,
with Gandy Brody, the artist,
before he died. It was all a
little strangely-magical, because,
by rights, all of what I'd been
doing should have had no
paths-crossing with these
guys. It was weird, because they
each represented something I'd
just previously been involved
with. Gandy Brody, along with
his visiting friend once or twice,
poet Kenneth Koch, brought to
me the living, breathing remnants
of 1950's beat-bohemia in ways
that I'd otherwise only read about;
and Manglapus, and his jazzy
music-set stuff, along with his
famed political role and situation,
became like, to me, a living
History icon and the living
representative of deeds and
actions in that sphere.
-
Rather than running mad and
blindly out of control, I was
managing to make each little
chit of my time and learning
fit a format of the living
panorama of all that was
around me. Much the same
as, about 2010, when I picked
up the phone and there was
Joyce Maynard on the other
end, wondering if I'd show
my house to her son, who'd
be in NYC from California.
I did, we met, he came over
to the house, and the rest,
to the house, and the rest,
well, maybe I'll write about
sometime too.
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