12,746. RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,030

RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,030

(I should be getting over all that)

I was always pretty vulnerable;

some'd  say weak, or too sensitive.

not too much of that ever factored

into my everyday life; I ended

up doing what I wanted anyway,

but a lot of the time it was in

a pained way. Again, there was

always something of a 'waiting

for the other shoe to drop' feel

to most of my hours. Even now,

just peering into a mailbox to

see what's arrived freaks me.

That's not to say I didn't enjoy

some things. There were times. I

had a friend over along Tompkins

Square Park who had a nice,

ground-level apartment, right

over near the Peace Eye Bookstore,

and some Buddhist or Zen place

was there too. Peace Eye was a

cool place, Ed Sanders, I think,

was the owner, maybe with

Allen Ginsberg too. I'm not

sure, but they were around

often enough. Two things

about this friend and his place:

His name was Todd, and I'd never

known a Todd before and to me it

seemed a California name. I

never knew why, but it conjured

up a Beach Boy feel or idea.

That was the complete opposite,

of course, of a New York feel,

which was all grit, and soil.

The pure opposite of the Beach

Boys' sound, in fact would

have had to be the music of

the Fugs, which was a band Ed

Sanders and some other guy,

Tuli, were running. Kupferberg

was the last name, as I remember.

They were drawn and jagged, the

music was pretty foul, and they

drove it home with lots of very

weird hippie titles. 'After We Ball,

I Hope That Won't Be All,' for

instance. Where do you go with

stuff like that? Todd, on the other

hand, was just a regular, happy

kind of nice guy. East Village

student stuff. I'm not sure what

he was studying or anything, but

he was always going on about

Milton, Rilke, Heinrich Heine.

What little I knew I just went

along with. What was cool about

his whole scene, and to me what

represented his having 'made' it,

was the fact of his nice apartment

being ground floor. I know it

probably doesn't sound like much,

or anything special, but it used to

fascinate me. Just the fact of

being at 'ground' level, as people

walked by and with the view out the

window being right there with

what people saw, walking along,

or what you yourself entered to

as you stepped out, that alone was

striking. None of those dirtied

stairways, stinking halls, etc. It

bespoke success. Somehow. Todd

didn't know that of course; it was

all in my reading of it. I had another

friend later, with a studio apartment,

just a long, narrow, white-painted,

long room, up in the w8os, and that

was a few steps down, by contrast.

It too was cool, but the people

passing by outside  -  which too

was a little disconcerting, were

like head high to you. It was eerie

because it felt dream-like, with

people's feet going by as they

were unawares of you. A really

different view of the world.

Maybe like being in a WWI

foxhole, but no one had bullets or

guns or anything flying around.

Mostly it was silence, and that

was crazy too.

-

These were all the kinds of

things I used to notice, and,

like I mentioned, they weren't

the sorts of things you could

bring up to others and begin

talking about. How to get any

of that across, mainly to others

who wouldn't really have cared

about that, was difficult. It

would be like, when a cop pulls

you over, and then says 'Do

you know why I pulled you

over?' (that in itself is always

pretty weird, and about the

dumbest cop thing I've ever

had to hear), and you start

saying, 'Yes, because of the

time/space factors within the

velocity theory of an ovoid

Einsteinian elliptical osmosis

working in parallel to the

resistance force of one Ohm.'

And the cop shrugs and just

says, 'Oh, OK then; don't

do it again; I'll let you go

this time.'

-

The actual occurrence of any

happening like that would have

been enough to destroy my peace

of mind, in line with that earlier

vulnerability I mentioned. But.

back to Todd. On the other

corner from him, 10 or 15

buildings down, and PAST the

Peace Eye bookstore headed

west, was the Psychedelicatessan.

I never got the spelling of it

right, and it wasn't in any was

a delicatessant in the NY meats

and bagels sense. It as sort of a

strange, often black-lit hippie

storefront, with spacey music

and weird people, and weirder

girls than that, which was just a

few open, empty rooms, with a

few things to be sitting on, while

you were tripping. Yep. LSD

and the neural-valve lower-level

spectrum of the 1967 pharmaceutical

industry. I think there sometimes

was sex going on too, judging from

the girls I'd see. There's a book

somewhere, a terrible, badly-written

book, by Ed Sanders, somewhere,

about all this, if you can call it that

(I just called it this, so whatever),

called 'Tales of Beatnik Glory.'

I shouldn't say badly written.

It gets the job done, but it's not

really in any way memorable  -

which is, or should be, the point

of writing. If you read something

and two days, or even two years,

later you can remember nothing

about it, something's wrong. For

this book, these years later, all I

really remember is how he goes on

and on about some secret-recipe

beatnik soup or gruel that was 

always being cooked to feed 

everyone with, for free.

-

The Kupferberg stuff is, at the

least, a little more vivid. Zany

and off the wall, too, but that's

how it went back then. Hell,

back then people still shifted

their own cars; now you've got

little punk Mexicali kids driving

90 in their automatic Imprezas,

or whatever those little shit cars

are called. You someone just

the other day told me that today

makes a small car called a Yaris.

I see them around. He then said

that no one knows it but that 

means 'Vagina' in Japanese. I

know, it can't be true, but he

told me. That same guy always

calls me a hillbilly, and he makes

moonshine too, in his basement,

and gives me some; two different

kinds. I'm not so much, really,

for either, but I get by. He saw

me today, just as usual, after about

5 days, and first thing out of his

mouth was, 'You look like you're

going to a funeral? Someone die?'

I had no idea what he was talking

about, because I looked just as I 

always do. And that never changes

much. Kind of shocked me. I

figured he must have really good

psychic radar, in addition to being

my personal moonshiner. He said,

another time, I looked like John

Belushi, to him. I don't look

anything like John Belushi, so

I don't know where that came 

from. Everything gets so weird.

 He said to me once, 'What are

you, a hillbilly, or an old hippie?

I tell my friends about you, and

I never know what to say you are.'

That too was pretty crazy. I just

said, 'Like Popeye said, I yam

what I yam.' He laughed. But

now he calls me Popeye.
-
I figure, if I was so vulnerable,
all that should have hurt, or
made me feel bad. But it
didn't. Maybe I'm finally
getting over all that.