RUDIMENTS , pt. 927
(now I see you, now I don't)
There's a weird thing with SLR
cameras. It's called the Parallax
View. I first ran across it in
James Joyce, 'Ulysses.' there's
some go-round over it as Bloom
is walking along, musing over
things. Then, in about 1973,
there was a movie called that
too, some sort of thriller or
murder thing, about a guy who
(I think, memory) witnesses
a murder - or thinks he does -
and in the recounting of it
the displacement of location
that the parallax view causes
makes some conflict over what
he actually did or did not see.
Strange idea - it has to do with
the viewpoint and the mirrors
used in those older film cameras.
If you recall, 35mm SLR's used
to have a snappy sound when
the shutter operated - noisy,
and mechanical - which is
what it was : The movement
of the mirrors inside the
camera shifting the reflected
image of what the photographer
was (or thought) he was seeing.
Mostly, it never mattered, but
what you 'got' was never actually
what you saw. Everything was off
by a reflected bit. It was, in its
way, the equivalent of that idea
that what we, as humans, SEE
is actually not there. We view
everything, raw, upside down
and only later (instant later)
does the retinal and brain
process flip into into a type
of representational reality by
which we live. Weird stuff, not
much thought of as we move
along our simple lives assuming
all our fictions are facts. (I'd assume
Heaven (or Hell) are filled, if that's
the case, with lots of surprised folk.
Today's digital cameras, I guess, just
go direct? I don't even know, except
I do not that you can get your camera
to mimic that old sound, per click,
if you like. Typically, of today:
Sound effects optional. Like those
jerks you catch on the train, with
their phones ringing some old
desk-top telephone bells sound,
while they go rushing to get the
call, wit their tattoo'd arms and
'I can see up your skirt' clothes.
Girls, anyway - well, not even.
-
Anyway how like visual displacement,
I wonder, is mental displacement? Just
today, this morning, I was sitting in a
lobby and some old geezer comes in.
(Unfortunately, from his 1960's
references he was younger than me).
A big guy, fleshy, loud, wearing one
of those USS ship jackets and old
military service locations on the back.
He was going on to the person next
to him about parking and never
leaving his keys in the car - and
then he started - 'I live in Perth
Amboy, I don't trust nobody. Just
last week, at Christmas, my neighbor
had her car robbed - cell phones,
gifts, the whole thing. It used to be
a nice town, and I was proud of it,
but not now. Every God-damned
excuse for a person is let in and they
right away come to Perth Amboy.
The food stinks; hell, they stink,
and they're slobs too. I might offend
some, but I served the Constitution
of my country for 8 years in the
service, and I've got the right to
say whatever the hell I want!'
Oh, boy, live-cracker alert; every
minute, full-bore. I sat there, half
invisible I hoped, with my head
back on the wall, hoping this
wasn't real, and biting my tongue
too, real hard, to keep myself
from jumping up and jamming
this caetpillar's fat-ass head
(must be a body part?) deep
into the nearby cash register
and slamming it shut a few
times, probably only to register
'NO SALE.' Then I said to myself,
I gotta' go home and write this
one down, and quick. And then, like
a flash, all this old parallax stuff
hit me as I realized the stupid guy's
probably (right or not) looking through
a 1960's lens (he'd mentioned those
years), and viewing his just-off-the-
mark rendering of reality by means
of some parallax, conclusion-oriented
viewpoint. Judging him by what he
presented, I figured his entire adult
life, since his 1960's Perth Amboy
youth - 'when it was a good place,
when the high school was downtown,
and it had grass and lawn too,' (his
words), had painfully passed him
by in an instant - an instant he was
still painfully trying to re-discover.
-
I really couldn't tell how guys like
that got manufactured, in the same
time and culture anyway that had
given us Cracker Jacks, Good n' Plenty,
Hopalong Cassidy, and Alpha-Bits.
It was all way past my understanding,
but I sort of took a half-intellectual
offence at the way such a moron
conflated his 'time' in the service,
(probably a Vietnam Draft victim,
or otherwise he shouldn't talk, since
he chose) with constitutional marks
and principals (if he even knew what
they were other than allowing offence
against others to take precedence. A
person just needs to slow that stuff
down, stop in his or her tracks, and
re-group. I catch myself all the time
in somewhat the same manner, except
mine is from a Humanistic point of
view, not some cock-eyed premise
of constitutional principles - which,
by the way, eventually valued blacks
as 2/3 worth of whites. Take that as
equality and shove it up your ass, Mr.
Vietnam).
-
I really do get tired of all I see today.
Back in the old days, I'd sit in the Olde
Towne Tavern on 18th or wherever it
was, behind the Union Square Barnes
& Noble, and down beer after beer,
cheaply, since I knew the owner's kid,
and just take in the wonderful airs
of the girl from Belgium who was
most often a barmaid there. Talk
about your parallax view; I was
straight-looking from America and
yet somehow getting this ricocheted
angle-view of Belgium. I didn't
know crap about Belgium, but she'd
always gladly fill me in. He'd come
over to, and we'd sit there. He'd
get blindingly drunk, which was
weird, for an owner's kid. Oftentimes,
later on the same day, I see him near
to midnight, at some other bar wherever
around, and he'd had moved his
drunkenness a few notches advanced,
but was still clicking. A perfect gentleman
in most all respects (him, not me), he
never hit a wrong note; just drank too
much. That was all soooo long ago!
I'm sure the girl from Belgium's
probably 75 by now, the guy's Dad
is dead, and he's in charge and making
it work, since it's still there. (I do see
him now and then actually, around
the bar as I pass. He doesn't recognize
me from Adam. I think our two views,
each slightly jiggered and a bit off,
probably look right past each other).
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