RUDIMENTS, pt. 887
(re-entry into the common world)
I guess interesting things
always abounded for me,
and I took advantage of them
instead of just letting them
pass. Sometimes, too, that's
how fortune happens. It's
all a bit of the same way I
ended up in Elmira after all.
None of it was by any great
planning; and in fact I'd never
intended to end up there; didn't
even know the places actually,
except as the crummy, old,
run-down after-death city in
which my 'printshop' job out
there was going to be. I'd never
much heard of the place, didn't
know it from any maps, and
was unfamiliar with that area.
I just allowed the bounce-around
to take me or get me to where
it would, and followed. I figured
I'd have stayed living out there,
as I was, up in the high hills and
way-country outways of Bradford
County, Pennsylvania in my fine
12 acres. BUT, a fool must drink
the poison sometime too, and I had
a wife and a 5-year old kid who
were unhappy with my dictates
about where we'd be living.
So, rather then break up the
bunch, I rolled over. Hello
Elmira. In many ways, a more
fortuitous 'accident' for me
could not have happened. The
place turned out to be perfect.
I've always been attracted to
the run-down, old-stock aspects
of the world around me, and this
was it - the perfect heap of an
old-school, out-of-the-way, dead
old industrial history location
with lesson-learning attached.
And the crazy people around there
kept to no inklings of what they
had. Totally, freaking, 1974
ignorant about place. I could
list a bunch : Mark Twain, the
Clemens family, house, farm,
his writing octagon, Elmira
College, Sullivan's Monument,
all those battle locations and
death-dealers along the Sullivan's
March route, wiping out countless
Indian locals, settlements, tribes
and encampments. Without
conscience. And then there
were settlers, small enclaves,
ruined villages, the Civil War
Prison, where thousands of
Confederates POW's were
dragged to and suffered and
died and were buried too, in
squalor, disease and horror.
Harris Hill. The Schweizer
Soar Plane industry. I could go
on. Right in the middle of the
old downtown were the abolitionist
churches, John Ward Beecher's
preachings, (Harriet Beecher
Stowe's kin). I'd struck an
accidental gold right along
the Chemung River. There
would be no turning back.
-
I'd soon be lost in yet another
layer of world. It seemed I was
upturning another overlay,
a sheet of Reality that was
peelable back and off what
was atop it, and I was able to
delve back deeper, and by that,
enter back further, each layer
and strata of historical time
and thought I'd bring forth.
It was pretty amazing and I
was beginning to look less and
less like myself. Others told
me that. Some would say I
looked taller, or somehow
more worn, or tired, and just
different. I hesitated from
ever mentioned the stress
of re-entry to them, and
instead just stayed mute.
The silence was good for
them too, and went with
the new, strange, character
they claimed to be seeing. I
was still me, but they didn't
need to know that.
-
After running away from
Hannibal, Missouri, the still
young Sam Clemens at 18,
famously talked his way onto
Horace Bixby's steamboat
and became a cub-polite at
age twenty-one, and then he
memorized 'twelve or thirteen
hundred miles' of the Mississippi
over two years, and earned his
pilot's license. He joined the
Confederate Army in 1861, as
a Lieutenant in a band of
volunteer rangers. That lasted
three, after which he deserted.
After their first skirmish he
had had to kill an unarmed
civilian, and that was enough
for him. He headed west, to
California, got a newspaper
job, and, finally, his first, true
'writing' job in Virginia City,
Nevada. He adopted the name
Mark Twain, (using Mississippi
Riverboat pilot jargon), began
work at some San Francisco
papers, and stayed there,
escaping a duel challenge
back in Nevada. Then, in 1905,
dodging a fraudulent bond, he
ended up holed up in the
Sierra Nevadas, in a place
called Jackass Hill. The
experience afforded him his
first, national, writing success:
'The Celebrated Jumping Frog
of Calaveras County.' The
rest is history. His history.
-
It's one of the mysteries of
personal destiny (or is that
'fate?') that things like this
happen. To me, this form of
're-entry' into the common
world done in the most
natural and gradual fashion;
and all as part of my appointed
task of daily living, and
without betraying anything
or anyone. I wasn't about to just
walk away from responsibilities
and those who rightfully had
claim on me. I owed it to them
to pull through. Everyone has
their own form of crisis moments,
but they never validify the
screwing up of the lives of
others. That was one thing I
was sure of, and in my studies
back through time, history, and
recent events of those days, it was
always the psychotic freaked-out
types, be it Hitler, Genghis Khan,
Napoleon or Senator McCarthy
whose own failings muck things
up for others. They should all
get over themselves. I found too
that, much like Mark Twain, in my
writerly way I was able to be
a violator of social norms but
in a quiet and not-harmful way.
I was learning how to go for
the jugular, but only through
the brain. I realized too that
I had, between New York City,
the Pennsylvania hide-out,
and throw in the train wreck
too, already at age 24, a wealth
of raw, unfiltered material
to work with, and through. I
was ready to go to town.
-
"Mark Twain made sure it was
hard to tell if he was only
playing. Until he was married,
he dressed to affront. He'd
show up in editorial offices, in
Congressional rooms, in travel
offices, in a battered old slouch
hat, a coat covered in dust or
a seedy suit, a frazzled old
cigar protruding from the
corner of his mouth, or his
breath coated, as if for the
occasion, in whiskey. He was
scary on bad days, merely
disarming on good. He was
known as a deadbeat, and
as an alcoholic."
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