RUDIMENTS, pt. 989
(the killing fields)
There weren't any 'accoutrements'
to my life. I didn't even know what
they were. Who the heck would. The
priests and the brothers all wore their
clothings; nothing optional about
that. Just seeing any one of those
guys in regular street clothes was
enough to shock - patterned shirts
and loafers! No beads, no cross,
no cassock or wide belt. Like
seeing the local barber out of
his barbershop, strolling through
the market. I never knew where
these guys went, but sometimes
they were seen headed out - in
one of the few assigned seminary
cars. No matter what, it just
never looked right, something
was always off - yet at the same
time I kept reading stuff about the
worker-priest movement in France,
in which these rugged, gruff fellows
worked the docks, or the poorest
areas, and mingled feely, with the
locals. I decided that would be
pretty cool. Banlieues? I don't
know if certain slums had that
name yet, but that would have
been it for me, except for the
language, of which I only had
the poorest, vaguest, two-year
knowledge of. My dreams of
breakaway at that point included
hopping a freighter, stowing on,
to Marseilles or somewhere, and,
when discovered, working my way
across the sea on board the ship.
Problem was, at 14 it was and 'iffy'
proposition. I didn't care.
-
The worker-priest movement never
unsettled me, I was attracted to its
grit and truthfulness and had already
had it up to 'there' with all the smarmy
church-protocol stuff. Ritual and
magic; candles and holy water; the
blessings and the sacraments done in
strict concordances and in ritual proper
chambers (the chapel). Screw all that. My
religion wanted anarchic sacraments;
street-masses, in both senses. All
else, I had no patience for and my
anger was bubbling. At this point,
oddly enough, I'd never even given
a thought to the idea of warfare,
combat, Vietnam, army crap and
my own resistance to that too. That
was brewing, but in the early 60's
no one knew enough about anything
to care. That scene didn't begin
intruding on me until a few years later,
and, as told here, once I got to NYC
the hounds were already on my trail.
It was a real difference of opinion.
-
So right off the bat I was faced, by
1967, with the conflict between what
I'd already instilled in myself as hopes
and goals, and a vainglorious Military
operation already trying to kill me;
entice me into their Godless
murder-routine, for bogus, false,
and illicit reasons. I would have
none of that either. Blood sacrifice
had never attracted me. Right now
all that crap has been made honorable,
somehow. Idiots, right on the street,
I have seen, going up to a uniform,
like a slave to a master, saying, 'Thank
you for your service.' WTF is that.
Service? Service at what? Tennis?
-
I guess everyone comes with their own
'accoutrements.' The fly-fisherman has
his hooks and vests and pins and
needles. The sports dudes have all
their stylized equipments; and the
fans, thanking them too, I guess, for
their 'service' wear the appropriate
tee-shirts, hats, and insignias. Social
conditioning these days takes many
forms. In old-time France, even Toulouse
Lautrec was identifiable by his smock
and palette and painter's cap? None
of this stuff was current with me until
I began seeing it all - even Mike
painted in a smock. I thought that was
cool. I never had one, ever, myself, but
did like to hang about, in other years,
in a filthy, old, painted-up, gray sweat
shirt. No buttons to mess with, easy
fit, and it was, apparently, ugly to boot.
-
At the seminary, also, and one thing I
always missed, there was never anything
to root around in. Institutional places
are always like that - ordered, catalogued,
everything in its place, nothing gets left
around. For a kid to have to grow up in
such an environment - think about it -
is another form of mental deprivation.
It's like a prophetic gloom whereby
anything random or out of the ordinary
is seen as a disaster or at least a threat.
In the real world, some idiot cop will
write you a ticket for an infraction. In
an institution, they just, instead, keep
everything away from you. For a kid to
miss out on all that is a tragedy. The only
thing that kept me alive in that dump
was the time I spent, in search of
randomness and disorder, at the barn
with that old Brother Isadore guy, the
farmer, and his pigs, which I used to
slop a few times a week, down in their
pig-sty area; and the previously mentioned
Drama and stage area, and the things
connected to that, which included Mike
Bartholomew. Keeping me sane.
-
Along the lounge-room hallway, each
year's class had their own 'lounge.' That
was where the TV's were. It was a rather
despicable environment, to my taste; but
it was something, which is said to be
better than nothing, which I doubt. On
that little TV screen, three things most
memorable remain, four, if I count
some cartoon I remember seeing;
Fractured Fairy Tales or something.
It was about A-bomb testing, and the
cartoon images were of small islands,
bombs going off, babes on the beach,
etc. The real location, in history, was
'Bikini Atoll.' In the cartoon, the signs
and the voiceover referred to it as
'No Bikini Atoll.' I thought that was
funny. Anyway, on this TV I saw
Jack Ruby kill Lee Harvey Oswald,
in grainy black and white, just as it
happened, a live-feed the day after
the assassination (JFK) in some Dallas
Police Headquarters basement. To this
day, I say, from what I saw occur, it
was fixed and pre-arranged, and
Jack Ruby had been let in and allowed
to do that follow-up slaying. Dead men
can't talk. The second thing was seeing
Malcolm X's assassination, on stage,
at the Audubon Ballroom, in upper NYC.
Another shocker. And the last, verging
on comedy, was Pope Paul's visit to
NYC. In all its disgusting pomp and
supposed high-dignity - some pontifical
strange looking guy in his wizard hats
and conical mitre and Pope garb, being
treated by the mob-elite AND the
rabble of the city as the second
coming of old JC himself.
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