12,790. RUDIMENTS, pt.1,046

RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,046

(pick the hanging fruit)

My imagination was never

the problem. I could mostly

go anywhere with it. Once

I hit the streets of NYC that

came in handy, because there

were plenty of times when I

sort of had to make things

up on the fly  -  what people

now call 'backstories.' I

had to always keep in

mind that I was nothing

and had come from nowhere.

Sometimes that was good,

and sometimes it wasn't.

As a writer soon enough

learns, in order to fully

get something across, you

have to flesh out the details;

you can't just say something

and them drop it. It needs to

be detailed and added to; if

it means a specific episode or

detail needs to be brought

in, then you do it. It was

like that for me.

-

In addition, and after NYC,

when I hit in with those

cow-punchers in Pennsylvania

a little bit later, I had to be

mindful of all that but in the

opposite direction, weirdly

enough. I've told these tales

here before; it was all acting  
-  I had to take on whatever

characteristics I could muster

of being a country hick, a rube

straight out of L'il Abner.

Any slip-up there could have

screwed up that entire episode.

Had I ever really been found as a
castaway NYC agitator outsider, 

fighting some crazy system

they'd never understand, any
sort of problem could have arisen.

One of the funnier things, even

when I first staked out to there

for looking at properties and

places, no one ever asked

about my past, or present, or

who I was or was coming

from. They took it all on

the face value of what I

presented. The presence of

my father, whom I'd brought

along for the real estate details

and his strange bargaining

power (what he loved calling,

'horse trading'), was very helpful;

for his version of me, and one he

was always happy and willing to

put forth, was some sort of dream

story of his crazy, suburban son

who wanted to get away and live

rough, get back to nature and

not be 'suburban.' He fortunately

left out any of the ragged tail-ends

of NYC, my and his running

conflicts, my activities and

contrarian opinions, etc. So, at

least on that front I was given

free passage  - but I didn't want

to sacrifice that, once I lived

there, with any negatives or

opposition to status-quo boring

and ordinary stuff; let alone the

Vietnam War, for which prime

and hearty farm boys took their

first steps at about age 15. This

was gung-ho warrior country. I

wasn't about to stand in anyone's

way. I heard too many stories up

there, in a short first few months,

of the venomous things that

happened  -  interpersonal stuff,

between guys, over wives or

women; being tarred, feathered,

greased and burned seemed the

most likely end for me if my

story veered wrongly.

-

As I said, that was the opposite

of the NYC version of things.

To them, my suburban upbringing

mostly represented stupidity,

enclosure, mental confinement,

parochialism, and the like. I

sometimes wanted to find myself

punching right back, berating

their chauvanism, their New York

centric effete bullshit, their equally

dumb ethnic confines, traditional

heritages of Jewish and Italian,

Greek, Slovakian, Asian and the

rest, strict cultures. What was

so enlightening about any of that

that made it better than the

crude-lines of mixtures and

mutts along Inman Avenue,

where I'd been brought up? I

knew I could match them, one to

one, on any matter of the stupid

and the traditional, the ethnic and

the strict. At least in New Jersey

the bloodlines and ethnicities had

been entirely mixed, as any of the

local streets of town could attest.

Here, where they lived, much of it

was still separate, with ethnic 

enclaves ghettoized. What was so

great about any of that, I wondered.

The only way, I'd admit, that NY had

it bested  -  and by a long shot  -

was culturally: Arts; learning;

educational venues, cultural

things, museums, recitals, and

that sort of rich-blood crud

that we just had not had. As it

went, any of the real New Yorkers

I'd meet never realized how they

too looked to outsiders. It went

both ways. They seemed sequestered,

coarse, without any real references to

how things actually 'were' out in the

world of travel, parking lots, lawns

and houses, single-story schools

and green fields. Don't get me

wrong, I grasped their point, but, 

yes, at the same time, I knew that

their own, myopic, pride about

themselves made them somewhat

annoying in their self-representation.

Tiresome and encumbering too.

I owed them nothing.

-

Difficult tasks, all this. I was in a sort

of urban subsistence living, for me

without much of a hope, and without

any promise, of better things to come.

That was, in many ways, the big

difference between myself and the

Studio School I was amongst. They

all had better endings already in

the cards : the legacy-family

endowments, the trickle of old

money, the ease of richness and

better living. Those were the

enticements I never possessed and

with which they lived. The upper

east side was a curious trek, for me.

For so many of them, it was another

home call; perhaps along with their

family's New Hampshire Summer 

cottage. Good fortune, always 

dangling before them. Like with a

biblical fig tree, all they had to do

was reach and pick the hanging fruit.

-

To any of that, I tried paying as

little attention as I could. But my

handicap was in the lack of any

of those-such graces. Wendy 

Spinner, at the Studio School, and her

boyfriend, Peter Serkin, represented

riches and wonder to me. We'd sit

around and I'd just be captivated.

(Sad to say, within this last  year,

pianist Peter Serkin, son of famed

Rudolph Serkin, and equally 

famous in his own career, died).

These were the days of Peter's

long, blondish, straight, 1960's

hair. I remember how, as we'd be

sitting around in the front lobby,

he'd sit on the floor, waiting for,

or with, Wendy, and his straight,

piano-recital posture back, would

be right up against the wall. No

slouch indeed. The two of them,

together were great. I knew them,

yes, but wished now I'd known

them better. New York
or not NY.