Saturday, November 30, 2019

12,341. I HEARD THE HARLEQUIN

I HEARD THE HARLEQUIN
These aren't water balloons you're
dropping over Linden you know.
I've seen the Wood Avenue shoppers
go flying with each impact. That
Santa Claus guy was laughing
at the sky.
-
It's not really much of a place;
I stayed there once, in the 1960's,
when there was a hotel in the
center of town : train station,
diners and restaurants; a full
liquor store too.
-
Now it's barber shops, Polish 
food-stores, dollar stores, nail
places, and the usual convenience 
store connivances to get you to
part with your money. The Father
and Son Hot Dog place is long 
gone too. I remember first finding
it, in 1966, and I thought it was
some oddball religious eatery.
-
I saw a dollar store today. The
sign in the window said, 'Everything
99 cents! Less, or More.' Me? I
didn't know whether to laugh or 
cry; more or less. OK, back to the
moment  -  keep flying around, I'll
drop more to the ground.

12,340. HARDLY PERMIS

HARDLY PERMIS
'The road runs down here,
crosses the creek and slides
off to the little town we call
Oblivion. It's really just a
tavern where the local guys
hang out.' 
-
Old glass panes have that
great ripple, and often too
have small bubbles of air
that were captured in the
glass before it cooled. Makes
me wonder, always, how all
that was done.
-
I'm a mole marker for the
patterns of chance left upon
all things. Life itself seems a
random fossil, not yet caught
in the deep, dense rock.

12,339. RUDIMENTS, pt. 885

RUDIMENTS, pt. 885
(watching a plane fly over a golden loom)
I early on learned never to
feed any angry animal. They
are just waiting for that and,
Zap!, there goes your hand.
So I just ignore the anger,
though it makes me sad for
them. For not being me.
I guess. In order to make
due compensation for
shortcomings, some people
really bend the twig.
-
I always like to visit the
Philadelphia Navy Yard. Like
the one in Brooklyn, the actual
'Navy' glory days of it are over,
but remnants abound, as well
as do an assortment of old
mothballed ships and parts of
some old fleet. The remnants
of everything just sit about
in the water; nothing doing
much of anything. There are
cool things around, like the
Commander's house and officers'
housing, an old chapel, and
a bell tower that used to peal
for deaths and funerals. And
messages too. Trouble at sea.
People lost. Disasters, or
arrivals. There's also a
mariner's church like that
in lower Manhattan, on the
fringe now of Chinatown, by
Municipal Hall, and you can
see the huge old bell that once
used to peal for incoming and
docking ship-arrivals. Men
home to port after months,
or a year, at sea  -  the old
freighters from Liverpool
or Marseilles. None of that
goes on anymore, so pretty
much we just don't know
about it. The entirety of the
Philadelphia place now, the
working parts of it anyway,
is now turned over to a clean,
official, corporate use  -. new
buildings rimming the property,
the little clutch of lunchtime
office workers strolling the
waterfront, old guys sitting
around fishing while they stare
out, across the water, to jersey
and environs.  We live now in
the aftermath of a million things
we'll never get to experience.
-
The Brooklyn Navy Yard,
grittier and a bit more harsh,
has too, in its way, been turned
over to that sort of art and artisan
kind of place  -  studios and
galleries, jewelry makers and
artisan bakers. There too, history
and its ghosts abound, but it's all
kept pretty silent, except for the
usual plaques and legends. It's
kept busy with trucks and
loading docks, which doesn't
happen in the Philadelphia one.
I winder often what the present
day communication is between
them, if any, against how, I'd
imagine, the sort of tight and
steady communication they
once must have kept. It seems
as if it would have been
imperative; different world
and all that. That difference
is encapsulated fairly well
at the Philadelphia location 
too, so near the airport which,
in so many ways, has supplanted
it and all it once represented.
Now a viewer can stand there,
all afternoon, near the gigantic
old abandoned ships, and stare
skyward to watch the jets come
and go instead. It's sort of a
map overlap of two different
spatial levels of reality, where
they (almost) intersect as one
covers over the other. Maybe a
'book' against an 'audio-book'
best shows the contrast I'm
meaning. It's a bit like the
older reality of 'what was'  -  
a more quaint society of ships
and silence? "Today we think
of reading as a private, solitary
activity: you have a book and
an electric light. But, in say, 
1855, reading was most often a
communal, semi-public, activity.
Books and lighting were both
costly, and homes were lit by
gas lamps, oil lanterns, or by
candlelight.  For all but the
wealthy, evening reading took
place aloud, from a shared book,
with family members seated
around a shared light source,
at what was called the 'family
table.' Even when people brought
their own books to the shared
lantern or gas lamp, others could
monitor their reading. men of
the nineteenth century were
supposed to control the reading
of women, servants, and minors
who lived with them.' (Naomi
Wolf, 'Outrages'). So, in whichever
pose you which to take this, it's a
soft form of the communal militarism 
that's outdated itself right before our
eyes. Once waterways and harbors
were airtight and ultra-important.
Now, everything travels by
roadway, and nobody cares about
the rest. The commonality of
everything is shot, and the world
has dispersed itself. Monads,
all over again, Mr. Leibniz.
-
I had a discussion today with
someone  -  I'd asked them to
please tell me the story of
Rumpelstiltskin. It went pretty
well, along into the tale, until
she realized that, maybe, she
was mixing it up, and blending
it in with, Rapunzel. A baby,
in utero; if you don't guess my
name the baby becomes mine;
Rumpelstiltskin gets the baby;
puts her to work for life at a
loom weaving gold; I interjected
here about the passage of time;
no answer forthcoming  -  an 
infant leaps time, to be a
proficient weaver, at a golden
loom? Nothing else has 
happened? Rapunzel lets 
down her hair, (?) the baby 
overhears Rumpelstiltskin,
runs and tells the father (still
alive? Not dead from the
passage of all this time?....
And that was it. It seems like 
even fairy tales can dispense 
with the sense of time. We can't. 
All that old stuff, forgotten, mixed
up. unknown. How does time
pass in a fairy tale? Watching 
a plane fly over a golden loom.

Friday, November 29, 2019

12,338. RUDIMENTS, pt. 884

RUDIMENTS, pt. 884
(shooting fish in a barrel)
Hassle-free cops? I wonder. Back
about, oh, I forget the year, I parked
next to a friend's house in Avenel, on
Chase Avenue, to be exact, in front
of the neighbor's house. The kid
that lived in the house, some little
pesky 12-year old, put his bike
down in front of my car, as a
snarky challenge to blocking me
from leaving. Something about
not wanting me in front of the
house. I told the kid if he didn't
move the bike in a few minutes,
I'd simply run over it as I left.
He didn't; I did. Turns out the
kid's father was a not-so-friendly
cop. Boy did I take a go-round
on that one. Just goes to show
the law hides in the most
unlikely places; that's their
game  -  like the cop cars you
see now, 70 feet off the road,
thinking they're actually hidden
from view, just waiting for
scanning as each car rolls by.
Dorks have better chances in a
whorehouse. The other night I
had a cop over to my house. I
didn't even know it. The phone
rings, I answer and the voice on
the other end says, 'Sir, this is
Dispatch. You called a little
while back; could you please
step out of your house, I have an
officer there wishing to talk with
you.' I said, 'Huh?' So she repeated
it. Twenty minutes previous I had
called in (it was like 10pm) and
said, with annoyance, that for the
4th night in a row there were what
sounded like gunshots outside, in
the fields, or what's left, at the
new apartments they built, and
the fragmented woods that run
over to the prison.  I said it was an
annoyance, my dog was bothered,
it didn't sound like the geese-cannon
they occasionally use to scatter the
flocks (there are none now), and it
certainly wasn't firecrackers. Which
I often hear too. I said it wasn't in
the bargain that I had to now live
with such crap going on and I wanted
it checked out, and/or stopped. Period.
-
So, they sent a cop over. 'Sir, you 
called about gunshots at the prison? 
4 or 5 nights in a row? Can I have
your full name and this address
please.' He's writing down, in his
little pad, all the while. It was dark,
his cop car was at the curb, and 
my front light at the end of the walk 
was on, where we stood. So I had to 
re-explain it all, how I didn't define 
it was; I had not said it was gunshots
at the prison.  The point being I didn't 
know what it was and that was the 
problem. He starts then asking 
questions,  leading questions, I
thought, as if I were an idiot. I said, 
'Look, I know the difference in 
percussions, and so does my dog,
as does my wife (she was there, to
witness this). This is not a fireworks, 
and not a goose cannon. It's from 
over there  - perhaps they're 
shooting at deer (plentiful now, 
with occasional herd-culling)  -  
and then I also had to say how 
the Linden Police Shooting range
is right over there, through
the swamps as the crow flies, 
and though I sometimes hear that 
too, this was not it. Those police
firings were in volleys, as if timed,
maybe 20-30 shots in quick
succession. This was not; rather
these were 2, maybe 3 shots (all
sounding very much like the
sounds of old Pennsylvania
hunting seasons). So, this stalwart
young officer tried to make sense
out of this odd house-call, as did I.
My complaint was about myself,
rather about 'over there'  -  as I
pointed. Curiously enough, even
baffling to me, and oddly-phrased
too, he turned to where I pointed  -
which was apartments and woods  -
and simply said, 'Well, we have do
have a man over there, (meaning a
cop), but I'll put this report out and
we'll keep eyes and ears open.' I had
no clue what that meant either.
And he left...Pretty weird.
-
See, the thing about ignorant people,
which , in this case I hoped I was not,
is how they insist on taking up the
time of others' regardless of the value
of the claim  -  part of their procedure
is to weave you in, bungle you up,
and entrap you after you are drawn
into their web. That's just how it goes,
and how they operate, and it happens
all the time. I sincerely hope this isn't
how I came across, but at that point
I nearly felt as if I was the fool here.
When you're running a town, or a part
of the town, that takes responsibility
for nothing, and owns up to nothing.
nor announces anything publicly, 
what is the average schmuck (like me) 
to do, having no recourse? If I take
up a rifle and stalk the same area of
the noises, I'd be arrested. If I shot
back, randomly, in the direction
of them, I'd get apprehended. I 
went to Paddock Street, with my 
dog, and was told to leave by some
shirt and tie geek  -  it was private
state property, in a white 
mystery-building.
-
When a cop hides out today, with the
scanners and plate readers and all that,
it's pretty much a leisure activity. Take
as an example, the other morning,
Woodbridge car 7  - windows half
down, plumes of vapor smoke wafting
out the windows, parked at the back
end of Merril Park with, maybe, a
park roadway 1000 feet off, with the
small chance of a speeder or violator.
I have no idea who thinks such a thing
is enforcement, and at 70+ bucks an hour
too, but it goes on. The old way of hiding
cops was some stumblebum cop and
car partially concealed behind a 
billboard for 'Sno-Cone Charley's
Chicken and Cream stand, don't miss
it, 3 miles on the right!'  -  no more of
that these days. The hidden agenda of
things now is that YOU, and me, are
the outside agitators, for whom the
deserved 'watching' is never enough,
while apparently, the 'police' now cover
for the local, theft-laden, creepy
business-interests within the town,
be it real-estate, subsidized housing,
graft or pass-along corruption.
How to figure that? I don't know.
I'd rather run over some brat kid's
bicycle, and take my punishment.
-
I think it's all too much, and way past
the point of no-return. Truthfully.
Everything's a slanderous mess, with
crooks and prevaricators everywhere
but no one cross-examines them.


12,337. TREMOLO ACRES

TREMOLO ACRES
These new homes are built of
mud; it's the latest thing now.
Mud doors and mud windows 
too. All in a row, like little
vases in a shop of Mings.

12,336. NOTHING TO GIVE

NOTHING TO GIVE
For having nothing to give
you're a pretty big guy. That
car in the driveway, yours? 
One mighty piece of iron, that
is  -  roadworthy fire-breather
from long ago. I bet you
never go slow.
-
Trolling past the old schoolhouse?
Again with the buddies in tow?
(I guess you guys don't like
using that word. Ha).
-
You're a pretty big guy for nothing
to give. Those photos of girls on
your shelf by the mantle  -  nice.
You know, in the old days they'd
have them on top of the TV, but you
can't do that now; wall-mounted
stuff allows nothing. You see?

12.335. RUDIMENTS, pt. 883

RUDIMENTS, pt. 883
(something I'd like to see)
The thing about what I decided
to do (previous chapter, about
the writing format) was to press
hard at it; but it wasn't easy, nor
meant to be so. Dredging up such
'memories,' let's call it, is the
easy part. What to do with them
after that is what's the difficult
part. There's nothing I dislike
more than having a simple 'label'
slapped down on what I'm doing.
The word 'Nostalgia' being the
worst of them. I've been criticized
by criticizers - one guy in particular,
from the west coast, where so
much  is 'happening,' and things
are much better, for continually
writing on about a dull life, a life
that amounted to nothing, and one
in which nothing happened. I
guess. Not that any great shakes
come out of his salt shaker either.
But, anyway, point is, what matters
is the blend. To be told something
written was 'charming' means a
lot more to me than nostalgic or
meaningful ever would. Charming
means it got through. The other
stuff is just science.
-
In 1972, I think it was, the New York
Knicks were the champions of whatever
competition basketball has to be the
champion of. Playoffs and finals and
all that. I don't know anything about
it, except that I was astounded, in
Ithaca, NY, atop the cloistered hills
of Cornell University  -  where just
off campus was a small collection of
'the radicals.' Where I hung out  -  there
were a few bookstores, some oddball
eating places, hippie stores, black
militant stores and coops (the University
was just then recovering from an almost
lethal turmoil and shutdown from a few
years before, and things were still boiling).
Anyway, amidst all that, when I saw
the staunch and ordinary parochialism
of all the people, all of a sudden, in
their cheers and hollering for a winning
basketball team  -  even if it was from
NY  -  I could almost not believe
it  -  and frankly it diminished my
respect for 'cause' and for their 'militancy.'
I saw them as people seeking the same
stupid comfort levels as the most
ordinary burgher. To me it was
all as much as being about steadfast
and stuck to your task and goal;
the idea of radicalism and 'cause'
as I saw it meant that you disdained
the bourgeois plight of sports and
industry, together. They were both
useless parts of the dead carcass
of the capitalistic world.
-
The hills of Ithaca were cool, and
I always liked them  -  many rocky
breakouts, waterfalls, sudden
precipices and cliffs of a short
nature  -  but rocky falls nonetheless,
that could kill. In fact, the university
itself, then and now, had a big
problem with suicides. When I say
big, I probably mean like 6 or 7
a year, but that's a lot when you're
held responsible for everything.
It's probably even worse now  - 
the huge influx of Asian academic
hounds who reach a complete
and miserable dead end just by
getting a bad or low grade  - 
'humiliation' is deadly for them  -
causes some to jump. Assorted
love affairs and betrayals, and
debt, probably also cause others
to do the same. Add it up; you
wouldn't want to have to answer
for it. Going there now, what
you see is some really serious
steel mesh netting, on the campus
and along the approaches, secured
over and down all the gorges, and
bridges, and jumps, and drops.
They sure make it difficult now.
What's weird about it is that one
can still jump, but end up just
landing like a busted lump stuck
on the netting somewhere some
distance down. I guess that's
considered better. I can see the
job listing now  -  'Wanted:
Body picker, for retrieval off
University netting. Live or dead.
-
Thorstein Veblen  -  one of my
favorite  characters  -  arrived to
the Main Gates of Cornell one day,
long ago, and so determined was
he, for entry, that he barged in to
the Registrar's office and simply
said, 'Hello. My name is Thorstein
Veblen, and I want to go to your
University.' And he did  -  famed
now, among other things, for his
well-founded theory of 'Conspicuous
Consumption.' It's in essence the
idea (economics, and social theory)
of people wishing to be seen doing
or having something. That takes
precedence over the usefulness
or real need of the object in
question. As if 'my neighbor
just got a new Buick. I will
get a new Cadillac.' Being
shown attaining that status
becomes all-important  - and
it's perceived by Veblen as one
of the flawed engine-burners of
the capitalist system. World
without end, Amen.
-
Cornell University, and what
drove Veblen to it, was one of
the 'Land Grant Universities'
of Lincoln's Civil War era
program of agricultural and
agronomy colleges; places of
study y for the hoped-for
burgeoning American empire
of growth and new demand.
That's how they began anyway;
if course, over time, many
other disciplines and courses
of study entered in  -  Cornell
itself being a fine example of
one that prospered. The main 
gates to the University grounds, 
last I saw a few short years ago, 
still had the  plaques and the
storyboards attesting to the
premises by which the
University was founded. I'm
not even sure people any longer
even know the word 'agronomy,'
or what it is or once was. I know
I was ignorant of it upon arriving.
As it turned out, in about 1972
the two newest campus buildings
were the Johnson Art Museum,
AND the Agronomy Building.
That latter building was set off,
by itself, on a waterway, and a 
rocky gorge, a bend in the road;
near to a lake with rentable
canoes  -  affording a great view
of the building. Weird thing was,
and still is, I guess, that the
architectural design of the
building incorporates rust  -  for
color and texture. The building
was designed to rust. I suppose
it's a certain form/idea of bare
metal  -  which may be OK for
now, and was for 1972 also.
But, and it's a big but, what 
happens, say, 200 years from
now, with all that 'Rust Never
Sleeps' stuff going on, seems
a question. Maybe it'll just
become the headquarters of
the 'Crumble Brothers
Demolition Company.'
Which is something I'd
like to see.