RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,068
(as vividly boring as hell might be - pt. 1)
Scintillating. Yet Myopic.
Self-focused, yet shooting
all over the place. Heretofore
fairly silent, not making a
lot of noise. Disjointed. And
abstracted, stolen, honed, and
polished to a point : 'In the
midst of a continual program of
demolition and reconstruction,
we noticed, one summer, that
our city had begun to replicate,
via its infrastructure, the
prohibitions of the mind. There
were roadworks constricting
almost every thoroughfare.
Buses were regularly terminated
sort of their destination, or treated
passengers halfway through their
journey to the wearying and
ominous automated announcement,
'This bus is on diversion.' Yes, then,
how mind-like were the closed
streets and clogged and shuttered
by-ways; where none could go,
where all commerce ceased.
The matter all became what only
was as good as what was allowed.
Hollow. Infractions....'On my route
I passed buildings still standing
that had been ripped half to pieces
by bulldozers, looking desolate,
bombed (though they had not of
course been bombed, it had
been arranged for all the bombing
to happen elsewhere), their insides
were on show, like wrecked dolls'
houses atop a trash heap. Which is
what they were, in a manner of
speaking, to the forces of money
that powered this city and destroyed
it every day, except that they had
not been cherished as a doll's house
is often cherished, they had been
blighted and abandoned even as
they stood intact. Torn-off wiring
stuck out all over these blasted
buildings....' In my premise, the
inclusion of such visual material
worked perfectly as I walked.
Here, the alley, where the most
rats congregated, the rear-entry
garbage-bag heaps of the financial
district's restaurants - a place broken
only by sewer grates and fencing
where even, to the bystander, the
many black, heavy-plastic garbage
bags showed the eerie movements
of the rats within them. Gorging.
Those places could stay, because
they made money. No matter the
story of what went here in 1740.
No matter the place of land and
history too.
-
Everything of the past was eventually
taken over by things of the present,
which then too became, soon enough,
another past; another layer, as things
were trampled over and yet again
redone. I could show you streets
that did no exist when others
right there did exist, and before
them the paths and lanes that
even Stuyvesant walked. Did you
know that Charles Dickens was
once here too? He said of it:
“Perfectly whirlwindish . . .
a promiscuous assemblage
of bipeds that covered the
dock as barnacles a ship’s
bottom.” A "confused heap
of buildings. The hum and
buzz, the clinking of capstans,
the ringing of bells, the
barking of dogs, the
clattering of wheels.”
-
In a Russian 'banya' there is
a wooden steam room called
a 'parilka,' which is the heart
of each one of them. A stove
heats a pile of stones; when the
stones are red-hot, water is
thrown onto them, raising
billows of light steam. Then,
reclining or standing on
wooden benches, bathers
sweat and whip themselves
with 'veniki,' which are
switches of leafy twigs.
When they are hot enough
or too hot, the bathers leave
the parilka to cool off by then
plunging into rivers, ponds,
barrels, or marble-tiled
pools, pouring tubs of
icy water over their heads,
or rolling naked in the snow.
No, I never experienced
this, it's all just information,
but along St. Mark's Place
there were two such, famed
establishments. 'Russian
Baths.' I would have loved
to have seen them, inside.
Each was in an old, 1880's
building, fitting the street
front and looking not much
different from anything else.
They'd already garnered a
broad reputation as gay-places,
frequented usually for picking
up other men, or simply
consummating the whole
practice - and with the
practiced pick-up - right
there. So much for that. I
wondered about the steam
rooms within - how they
were tiled, what format the
open spaces took, the heat and
the fires, the steams and waters.
It was all pretty fascinating.
The St. Marks Baths were by
then already a legend. I never
did see any 'young' men at
these places anyway - they
all seemed like old, broadly
built, squat Eastern European
types, used to the old ways,
and thriving. It wasn't until
those later 1960's that lots
of those veterans of those
war days began swiftly passing
away - and with them their
legends and tales and travails
of their their wartime horrors.
An entire chapter of world
history, right down the NYC
drain. There were plenty of
the old women of that day too,
outlasting their men, often
enough. They were always
a sight to behold. Dressed in
outdated rags and dark coats,
usually quite bedraggled,
looking lost and leftover too.
Everything else was falling
apart around them, why too
shouldn't they?
-
'Give me something new.' I
used to say that. 'I'm tired
of all your old, bullshit stories,
cavalcades and dull crusades,
famines and pestilences and
dread.' My History teacher
never answered my attacks :
he'd just hand out more of the
inky-hand-staining New York
1967 Times, proclaiming Israel
the best and the greatest. And,
just as we were done, the Six
Day War breaks out. It simply
then became an end of the year
Jeff Gutman slugfest to have
to sit and listen to endless
reflection by pandering tribals
about the greatness of their
cause. It was then when I
resolved to leave, and
immediately upon completing
whatever slop-drivel pretend
education these cartoon
characters were handing out.
Woodbridge High School
indeed: more like a shithole
bug-house mugging. So I get
to the lower east side and
what do I do - sit right into
the middle of a thousand-a-day
crowd of sorrowful and leftover
Israelis-to-be's who'd survived
the war but were now too old
and too leftover for anything.
The benches everywhere were
filled with them. A holding
pen of well-described literates.
It was so sad I couldn't talk.
-
A funny guy named Max Weber
wrote a cool series of lectures,
with a good twist in titles.
'Scholarship as a Vocation,' and
'Politics as a Vocation.' In that
last one mentioned he speaks
with disdain about 'the revolution,'
and he warns that in the coming
decade they should expect an
era of darkness and political
reaction. The modern state is
little more than a machine, he
says, a vast bureaucratic entity
that has gained a monopoly on
the legitimate use of violence. And
managed by a class of unimpressive
political professionals. Well, hell,
all those survivors may be dead,
but I think we've certainly
reached Max Weber's point.
-
Tap-tap-tap I go on the doorway
to old Pfaff's, which takes me then
beneath the sidewalk at Bleecker
and Broadway, where I meet
those denizens of 'then.' The
daily crowd of writers and talkers
and poets and freaks. And then
Walt Whitman comes in, pealing
his high assault for the American
everyman of whom he never did
have the foresight or vision or
the faintest idea of. He's looking
like a freaky straw-man, and gay
as a fruitcake too. Some people
just wear all too much on their
outer sleeve, about themselves,
things we just don't wish to know.
The exhibition of examination is a
paltry thing, and as vividly boring
as Hell might be.
-
'Our illusion of control,
fundamental to whatever
fragmentary sense of
well-being we could cling to,
became even more illusory
until it vanished completely...
anyone could see that the
pursuit of perpetual growth
was maniacal, but it went
on all the same.'
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