12,758. RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,034

RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,034

(save me a seat then, ok?)

It has always been, for me,

as if I get pictures. From my

mind, they are produced in

response to most anything.

It's a little strange, and I

can never truly clarify or

vouch for them, or their

truthfulness or perhaps

just the way they 'suggest'

things. I later find out, but

acclaiming the original

image is difficult because

I can never really put them

side by side  -  one being,

of course, image, and the

other, real. And there have

been other times when I've

been able to, and the results

were wrong. Like one time,

many years back, before any

of my NY stuff started, a

friend of mine, another kid,

with a penchant for blowhard

status, begins describing to

me the walkway section of

the Brooklyn Bridge; how it

runs up, beneath the cables

and all that great vista and

commensurate expanse and

views. And meanwhile I'm

building this 'picture' from

what he's describing, and

he gets to the top, what he

calls it (as if it were a height

to climb, or a mountain,) and

I ask if it was still a narrow

wooden walk, and he says,

"No! You could play baseball

up there! It's wide and open,

plenty of room.' OK, so goes

my picture of the place at age

whatever it was. Then I get

there myself, a few years later,

and make the walk, the first

of many times and very little

bears any relationship in reality

to what he'd described, and you

couldn't play baseball up there

if you tried, And then I further

realized the essential mind-set

difference too  -  playing baseball?

Up there? With all that romantic,

old, writerly history and strong,

poetic space? Why would he

have even thought of this in

terms of baseball? I found

it was a very substantial gap

in the thought processes we

each possessed. That explained

everything, and it certainly

explained my alienated place

in that scheme of reality of

which he lived.

-

Another time, with my friend

Frank, in a 1960 Plymouth Fury,

we're on our way up to Woodstock,

and he says we should stop in and

see Bob Dylan. His claim was that

Zimmy was front-porch friendly

with everyone who wandered by;

that we'd be able to sit and talk,

hang out a bit on his porch, and

all that. A whole 'Meet the Folks'

kind of happiness. All the while,

from his description, I'm building

a picture of this cabin in the woods,

all green and moist and thick with

trees and solace and happiness; a

regular ultra-dimensional Walden

in the Overlook Mountain woods.

As it turned out, he knew very little

of what he spoke, we got lost, and

never even found the place. My

'imaged' location  -  I found out

only years later when I myself

went there, was perfect in all

respects except size. It was all

larger than I imagined, and,

actually, there were two such

locations. (They moved higher

and a bit more distant after the

big times hit). My visions in

that case were pretty good,

BUT only later too I found

out, he was hating ALL of it.

The drop-ins, the stupid kids

finding their ways to his

houses and places, and, had

we arrived there anyway, it

probably would have gone

real bad. The poetically

imagined graciousness was,

in reality, a regularly set-up

Jewish guy trying to raise a

large and growing family

while dealing with all that

other stuff too.

-

And now don't get me wrong,

none of this was real important

to me anyway. I found myself

turning out sometimes to be the

kind of guy who, if the person I

was with liked 'nutmeg ice cream,'
then so did I; kind of a Stockholm

Syndrome all its own, that. That's
a terrible way to be, and it took

a long time for me to realize the

specious waste of things I was

making by being that way. But,

in so many respects, I never

did really correct that trait.

And yes, it has sometimes

caused me problems. I was

never an idol chaser, as Frank

here was. Bob Dylan, or

Zimmerman, or whatever

the hell we were chasing there,

could fall off the moon and

I wouldn't really care. 

As in 'Care.'

-

So what is it we are chasing

in this life? Images and ideas?

Or realities? I spent lots of

time thinking tht one over

in this miserable life of mine, 

and all I got as an answer was

the inclination to work harder

at what's given to me, because

it comes with its own demands,

and to flee. That last one is the

most interesting  -  To flee!

Man, if that isn't the story of

my life; but I did nothing to

effect that. I was always trying

to fudge my way through

circumstances in an  almost

cowardly fashion. There are

some hundred people, I'd bet,

that I should have just told to

go to hell and walked, but

instead I stayed and played

their game. Wasting my time

and theirs. I almost made it,

here and there, but it just 

never fully translated through.

Normally, the patter has it that

you go to Hell for hiding your

light. Save me a seat then, OK?
-
I'd have to imagine everything in 
this life is what we imagine. (Weird 
sentence that is. A life sentence, in
fact!)...But where does any of that 
end and how far are we to take it? 
Every time I begin to tell something
of that 'other' time, I always manage
to end up in the present anyway.
Where I was going when I was
going up there, to Woodstock, I'll
never quite fathom because none
of it really materialized., and here I
am, reliving my future. Now?
Or is it then?