12,109. RUDIMENTS, pt .810

RUDIMENTS, pt. 810

(hand me that skylamp; or is that the moon?)

I sometimes used to feel

only betrayal; that I'd done

it to myself, and only that.

I had no one else to forgive

or blame. A sort of roving,

cylindrical betrayal machine.

Reason for that was just by

evidences : I never really

seemed to effect others. Not

that I could see. Perhaps it

was all mysterious and hidden,

the effects, but that was cheap

And I'd gotten tired of that

angle too. I needed reality,

but in a particular sort of

dose that was only good

for me. Most else, I was

done with. I had a friend

about that time too, out in

California, who said he

was about to give up

everything  -  I knew he

didn't mean it because he

was way too attached, as I

was too, sort of, to the

tangible aspects of life. His

silly point was that he was

never going to read a book

ever again, was going to

unload all he had, and live

in the desert like a hermit,

in his yurt, whatever that

was. (I had to look it up).

All he wanted to do was dig

a hole. He said it was the

only thing no that made any

sense to him. I said, 'Yeah, OK.

Have you ever tried digging a

hole in the sand? It fills right

back up.' I was truly in earnest,

making a philosophical point

about life and time and our

circumstances, but he took

it all the wrong way, as if I

was belittling him, or his

idea. I didn't help the matter

either when I added, 'Digging

a hole? Big deal; that's all we

end up doing in life anyway,

isn't it?' He got all angry,

letter-angry anyway, and we

had this big silly tiff going

for a while. You know what

though? That battle was crap.

He's dead  -  ended up that way

by his own hand. I'm still here,

(at least now, as I sit here typing

this. At this stage there's no way

to guarantee even my own

tomorrow. I wonder if that too

is a betrayal of some sort?)...

-

This was in the Studio School,

even before this country stuff.

My friend Ed Rudolph, the other

guy from San Francisco, was

still with me in New York, as

was Jim Tomberg, from the

Art Institute there. That made

three jugglings with California

people. It was rough, and each 

one of them was far different 

than the other  -  I was learning

on my feet. Actually, as I now

think about this, I also recall

a guy and girl hippie couple

showing up from California too. 

They were entirely different,

I guess because of what they

were  -  not artists or not even

thinkers. Just fey hippies, in

all those whoopy aspects. He

was as wispy as a feather; she

was enticing, but what do you

do with 98 pounds of blond?

I never got sense from them.

Have you ever carried on  a 

letter feud with someone 

across the country? Let alone

about whether to read books

or dig a hole? It's so stupid

sometimes what 'philosophy'

and those outlooks drive

people too. 

-

You may remember the

episode I wrote of with the

Ed Rudolph fellow in it. 

The one with my 55mph 

speed-limit law theory 

about Manifest Destiny. 

He had taken my idea on 

this one and presented

it before some California

bunch of college people 

and it had become a big 

talk-circuit hit among that

crowd. Same guy. The

theory went something like

'Americans suddenly faced

with land-limits and the

complete absorption of the

coast-to-coast, and more,

growth and end of new

possibilities, have reached

now reached what even

President Carter has called

'malaise.' The nation is ailing.

To solve the problem, the

rulers mandate a lessening

of the speed limit to 55, so

that it takes longer for people

to get anywhere when traveling

longer distances, thus negating

their nauseous feel of living 

in closed and fully utilized

spaces and the limits of 

growth. Simply by 'slowing 

everything down,' at least 

by those evidences, people

begin to feel better.' Yeah,

you had to be there  -  it was

akin to saying that, having

reached the moon, people

now felt closed in, so the

country moved the moon

farther away. I'm a real

genius. Agreed?

-

Up in the country, those few

years later, I used to think 

about all that stuff and what 

had transpired to me. I sure

stuck myself in the eye with

a pencil; as I saw it. Talk of

tangibles, and betrayals too.

I had a mortgage, a house, 

12 acres of crap to worry 

about, literally, new people 

everywhere to kow-tow to, 

or at least pretend so, distant 

parents and such to deal with, 

jobs to keep, work to do, 

cows to tend, and 50 other 

things I never sought. The

one thing that irked  -  using

my father as an example  -  

was how I realized that by

doing any one of these 

mostly compromising things, 

someone like him took it as

the move to show that I was

now ready to accept ALL 

those other detestable things

I'd always hated and raged

against. I realized that the

one step backward had now

marked me as a willing

compromiser ready to be 

saddled with all the rest

of the junk that rode the

same bad wagon train. It

was, as I saw it, a possibly

fatal error. I had to get

defensive, immediately.
-
Getting defensive? First I had
to figure out what that meant:
Head for the exits? Push back?
It was all of everything and 
something, and sometimes the
best defense is an offense  -  even
tough I think that's mostly said the
other way around, but I'm not even
sure of that. How in the world an
offense can be a defense is beyond
my scope. I simply can't think like
that, in those military, Sun-Tzu terms.
The best defense is blowing up the
whole god-damned mess; but
that's pretty offensive? No? I
took it all under momentary
advisement; which of course
even further limited my scope.
A little jerk from Avenel now 
trying to figure out Class-A
countryside warfare.