12,214. RUDIMENTS, pt. 844

RUDIMENTS, pt. 844

(a lucky break for me)

If I had to put together a

list of the very ordinary things

which happened to me alongside

a list of the more odd and the

quirky, I'm sure it would be

lopsided for the latter. My

normal moments were fewer

by far. One center of my

activity was Tompkins

Square, and its park. There

really is no 'Square' it's just

more a park and I'm not

sure how the designation

of 'Square' got mixed in.

All I know are the rows of

geezers that used to be

sitting about waiting to

expire. Heavy cloth coats,

canes, squints, chilled

stares and glances, big shoes.

A conglomeration of all the

Euro and postwar old-world

stuff of books and cliche you'd

ever imagine. I'd imagine, and

to be sure, they're all dead now.

Whatever the lives of memory

and fear they were living are

all over now, and all their kids

and grandkids probably people

Long Island. Little trace is left

there now  -  blacks and Puerto

Ricans, at first, back then, peopled

the park, almost forcing these

oldsters aside, yet they lingered.

It's was a poor people's Versailles.

Now there's a very active Charlie

Parker Jazz Fest there, or was

last I knew anyway, each Summer,

for a big weekend. I went once or

twice, and its was disgruntlement,

noise, bad amplification, beggars,

cranks, and what used to be called

'undesirables' at liberty for their

day out of cages. Crack kids and

AIDS babies too. Slowly now,

like an infusion of serum, the

gentrification trickles in.

-

The poor oldsters were stupified,

living in their minds their Europe

of old : tattoo'd numbers on forearms

(saw enough of that), concentrations

of the concentration camp remnants.

All of that, and then this! Part of

imprisonment is the imprisoning of

the mind, and  -  sadly  -  for many

of these folk, I don't think they

were ever able to leave their

nightmare; like an old film,

replaying and recurring in

their brain. Tick. Tock. Tick.

Hours running on. As I saw it,

there wasn't any way into these

people's minds unless you'd already

known them beforehand or if they

were family members. Somehow, by
1967, this lower east side had been

peppered with survivors. Behind

them, where they sat, was another

memorial pillar to another disaster,

the General Slocum fire and sinking,

which boat and disaster had killed
so many of the locals and kids, and

destroyed then the older German

community which once had been

here, and which had then fled, in

its own grief, almost en masse,

up to the new German community

in the Yorkville section, east 90's.

Weirdly enough, and I do mean

that, 45 years later all these sad

immigrant Jews sat around in the

same community of benches and

trees which had once housed all

those Germans, who had just

destroyed them! If life is a nice,

sweet orange, it sure has some

wicked skin to peel.

-

Needless to say, once I added all

this up, I was again stunned. What

sort of oddball divine justice did

this all come down too? In no

different a way than embracing a

Creator who would create a

million beautiful things, flora,

fauna, and Humans too, and then,

in a fit of pique, destroy it all,

whether by some bizarre cosmic

collision at the expense of

dinosaurs and global life....and

then, even more incredibly, begin

it all anew with no changing of

the original, evidently faulty,

design, and walk away, for the

blemishes of Evil and Greed to

take over, and then to dip back in

and send a 'Son' to die inhumanely

human, to redeem and salvage,

supposedly the same cruddy

mess again, so too these poor

folk sat in the same blood-mess

of the old German ghetto, after

being tortured and shredded, by

these very people! I was surely

ready for the booby hatch myself.

-

Thankfully, after a while a person

just stops thinking and instead

goes with the moment he or she

is in. My first few nights in that

park involved sleeping on the grass

and playing bongos along with

whatever group of Spanish guys

would be jamming on the grass or

at the bandshell. No one ever said

for me to get lost, beat it (no pun

there, but it coulda' been so). I was

just taken in like another fly on

an old piece of fruit. I'd say it was

pretty much at that moment that

I re-defined myself into a newer

variation of one-life-to-live. All

that had been presented before

me as life and meaning and the

'way' of doing things just fell

off, over, to the wayside. My

new Baptism, right then, was of

a Spanish accented embroidery

that took in, incredibly, levels

of freedom and action which

no longer bore referential paths

back to what I'd been before. 

Island living always bears a

completely different feel, and 

these were island people,

Puerto Rico, Hispaniola, or 

Manhattan;  take your pick. They

just lived it all differently. This

was a brief, shining moment,

perhaps 3 weeks at the most,

before the more normal regularity

of reality set in  -  where I was

and what I was going to have 

to do. In retrospect, now, all these

years later, I can clearly see how

such a 'moment' in time is much

the same, in such situations, for

everyone : the newly transplanted

wonder of somewhere new and

somewhere else, the expectations

that come with all the brash 

newness, and the balancing of

what one sees against what one

had expected. It's a very heightened

time of bright light, and as if

almost nothing can go wrong.

Until.

-

As tired and beleaguered as the

old people seemed, those Spanish

guys seemed seemed totally festive

and energetic and without end.

Stand-up drums, Santana-like

solos, fearsome guitar riffs, wild

and pounding refrains and all

the fire of the pounding other

world seemed concentrated into

the very vivid park pulse, and it

all just went on forever. I never

said a word, and by the end of

the first long afternoon, from

the edges of the bongo drums, 

my fingers and fingertips were 

raw, even bloody, and tender 

and red. It was the craziest thing.

It was even crazier that, with 

the paltry collection nothing 

I'd brought with me for this 

new life, those silly drums were

among my park possessions.

A lucky break, somehow, for me.