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.