RUDIMENTS, pt. 1048
(the long walk back)
I've put a lot of rather
eccentric experience under
my belt; notched my gun
as it were, with hand-hewn
cutters. (ed. note:'You're
getting far afield with these
references and metaphors.'
Pull it back. Use specifics.) -
An editorial presence is a
true annoyance. There seems
always to be someone around
ready to jack-the-hammer
down on genuine exuberance,
mainly because they neither
have it, nor understand it. It's a
dilemma, for sure. In the same
way as the life I led, I did, and
wrote and undertook, mostly
without guidelines or limits,
that which I chose to do. I
was never the type to first
look up the refences regarding
the right or the wrong of the
matter. Those things are
learned by the doing.
-
Everywhere I went, it was
the wild, wild west. All
things blazing; even if unseen,
the guns and ammo lurked.
The material of a lifetime
was always lurking about in
Hell's Kitchen. There were
there, a few long rows , of
brownstones, the old kind,
with lots of steps up the front,
from the sidewalk. I guess
now they'd be called walk-ups,
but now they're gone. A walk-up
was pretty much a real-estate
name for a building with access
only by stairs. Front stairs and
maybe some external winding
set of stairs outside, along the
rear or whatever. No internal
lifts or elevators. Just 'walk-up,'
like the man said. 5 or 6 floors,
mostly and usually, though that
too varied. Sometimes they could
be a real huff and a puff. I know;
I cleaned one a few times a week
down on 1st street at First Ave.,
and it was just like that but it was
dirt poor, Spanish, and had tiled
hallways that seemed to hold
every food and cooking smell that
ever existed, and it also was home
to about 10,000 kids, ages 5-12.
It seemed. But, anyway that was
the lower east side, a whole other
animal. I'm here talking Hell's
Kitchen (which was a name I
never liked. Hell had no kitchen,
and I always thought everything
was burned). It ran from like west
40th street, maybe up through the
west 50's. Right on up the 59th.
in any case, it was the toughest,
most dangerous area you'd get.
Maybe. Dockworkers, Irish drunks
and killers, Crime bosses, thieves
and robbers. Anything bad was
made in place, and every doorway
had a story. At the far west end of
42nd, (it's all gone now, replaced
and modern, with weird things
like Theater Row, in full-dress
regalia) there were lines of these.
Each had maybe 10 steps to get
up to the entrance, and often, on
those steps, inhabitants sat, just
wiling away the time. It was
funny. Each building had its
own specialty, and often people
knew exactly where to go: this
one had a few drug guys, that one
had 2 active prostitution operations,
this one sold guns, that one was
stolen goods. That sort of 'crime'
was behind every curtain. Irish
hoodlums, rough waterfront guys,
trucks and haulers; it was all still
as if some film noir 1930's and
1940's world. Busy, grimy, frank,
and limited. When I say limited, I'm
meaning that like a knotted fist it
all was concentrated into this one
small area of activity that was all
interconnected. Even the varied
crimes that took place often
overlapped, from one domain to
the other - so that one person
always knew of the other person's
deed. Very weird; Irish Catholic
confessionals had nothing on that.
-
I sometimes find myself - relating
back to that 'editing' comment in
the beginning - saying to myself,
'You're writing crazy again.' Isn't
that odd? I've almost (actually)
developed a self-editing ghost-factor.
The thing is, it's NOT crazy, and I do
want to write crazy when I am faced
with the plain orthodoxy of that which
passes for fact and calm everywhere
else. The mechanisms by which I am
viewing the world encompass too
much other matter to simply keep
me corralled within approved opinion.
Here's a very simple (and bad) example:
Jennifer Weiner. She's a two-bit,
slag-heap of a particular type of
Jewish lady writer, with the usual
phalanx of borderline Romance
and soft-humor 'isn't this world
something' kind of girl-books. A
large-sized lady, filled with nothing. I
saw her once at the Princeton Library,
for some reason giving an 'author's
appearance and book-signing' thing.
She was vapid and smelly (perfume).
Bad clothing, bad jewelry, and nothing
worth anything about her. Someone,
another lady, in line, complimented
her on her necklace, and she responded
in her pretend-secret voice, 'Thank you.
Don't tell anybody. Eight Dollars at
Target!' Anyway, now she's a weekly
opinion-piece writer at the New York
Times. Considered as 'prevailing
social opinion.' No writing crazy
there! Just plain, old, milquetoast
left-o-rama opinion mongering.
If that's now the center, I want
w-a-y off the edge.
-
So. my views remain as excess, and
if that too is what my writing comes
across as, all the better, I say. You
can have your complacency and stick
it up your butt. ('Shhh. Tell no one.
It's free! Comes with the equipment').
-
My sense of balance took some tending,
especially in these places I've mentioned.
There was a time, before NYC got all
prideful and effete ('Weinerish', let's call
it) when that all was a much more common
way of living. I was privileged, by arriving
there when I did, to be able to catch it
just as it began fading away. I held, in
my mind, categories for the things I
was seeing: 'This' was very Long island;
'that' was very uptown-east. Everything
for a while had its own category. The
New Jersey category remained quite
peculiar, even by the very identifiable
cars. The New Jersey person was always
easy to spot, and such an awareness
of visual kept me certain of avoiding
that blasé giveaway. It was a certain
mix of color and fabric, clothing and
style - and the way those factors
were mixed. Of course, with that
went the general posture and bearing.
It seemed to be the sort of stuff the
'New York' person just wouldn't do,
even the worst of them. Even the
thugs and killers of the waterfront
still wore slacks and hats, if not
fedoras. The slouch and the gait was
of a much finer element. That sounds
very weird too (where's that damned
editor now?), but in its day it was
rock-solid evidence of another
level to life and living.
No comments:
Post a Comment