12,780. RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,042

RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,042

('I break'a your hands!')

Well I never saw the Els

going up, and I never saw

them going down. I guess

I was in that curious middle

time of nothing, when their

usefulness was already gone,

and 90 percent of them were

already down, except for the

uptown sections, which I did

see, and even rode a little.

But there was a very curious,

industrial-power era of NYC,

including all the Els (elevated

railways, for those in the dark

(pun)), that I missed and that

era held all these miraculous

secrets to me; the dark and

the busy secrets of the street.

By the time I arrived there,

most of that has all been

straightened away, rails

underground, and cars and

trucks ruled the roost. That

famed 'blackmail of the city

streets' had taken over, and

we all, each, fell for its lure.

It was a long and tired hand

sometimes, but always a

good hand too play. Constantly

diverted, the mind had always

plenty to do and plenty to learn.

Most everyone, at that level,

had sold out to the street. As

Mark Twain once put it, "A year

ago I didn't have a penny; and

now I owe you a million dollars."

-

I was into a hundred things, very

quickly, and learning on the fly.

None of that organized schooling

for me; the other kids could have

their NYU and Columbia and the

rest. It meant nothing to me. The

very non-rigorous Studio School

atmosphere was perfect for me.

I'd paid for one semester, and

never paid another, and in that

very-beginning of Eighth Street

1967 time, they didn't even know

I was around. Officially anyway.

Old Mr. Rush was pushing me 16

bucks a week to stay there nights,

and I was sleeping in the totally

cool little basement room he let

me use. Or upstairs, in the other

building, on the carpeted library

floor, with all those art books

and things. That was the same

room, too, that I'd be in for

many of the Morton Feldman

talks, and others. All sorts of

guest talkers and people like

Leland Bell going on about the

French artist Andre Derain.

He was so into Derain that I

used to say he was Deranged.

I learned a lot from just the

very detailed listening I did,

detailed in the same way was

as was Leland Bell's critiques

of the work. You don't get that

sort of learning in organized

classes about the 'Aperture Curve

of the Fragmented Populace In

the Economics of Everyday Life.'

Throw my suitcase out the window.

-

I was, for the most part, mad. Not

in the sense of angry; no, I mean

mad like a lunatic taking measure

of the tides on the darkest of nights.

I'd go to the Hudson River, that first

cold Winter, just to hear the huge

chunks of ice flowing down from

upriver, Albany and the rest. All

of it dumping itself right into NY

Harbor in one, clanking floe. Or

flow. However that is with icy 
water. The river would groan and
jangle with its own icy burden. I
never knew why the entire city
didn't stop whatever it was it was
doing, and just listen. People are
oblivious, and that was some
beautiful sound, going unheard.

I'd never seen anything like that

before and was totally taken  - the

harbor lights, off the ice, the

river which flowed north to south

BUT, I noticed, up and down too.

The crazy water surged up, like

little lava flows, swirling and

churning vertically, and the

horizontal current kept it all

running along, I never could

much figure all that out, but I

still see it, and it's great. Interior

eddies, and upward churns. Like

some strange watery dance from

the very cold deep. I realized

soon enough how sheltered my

own stupid life to that point

had been. The kinds of places

I grew up in, the points of

interest like Woodbridge and

Avenel (that's a joke, folks),

taught me nothing. Even the

seminary ended up being

twisted. Environments like

those, they all just keep

throwing shit at you, expecting

you to keep up. They teach you

nothing real and you end up

with old, grizzled idiots in the

Elks and Legion Halls peddling

their stuff at you  -  to go along, to

stay with the program,  to get the

new car. Join here, sign there. Their
dull beliefs, and duller outlooks.

I used to think that if you

jumbled the words 'Dead End'

up, you'd get 'Ended.' Maybe

you do anyway.

-

Perhaps this life is like a crossword

puzzle with nothing but clues and

empty boxes, but no letters or words

to be found. Every clue too hard?

Too much difficulty sourcing the

needed words? Most people just 

give up. I was by this time, as I

said, rambling mad. In viewpoint

and outlook. I remember when

some report or something came

out about the Kennedy Assassination,

some report or commission, I was

pretty baffled, in looking at it; and

then somewhere I read, about 

Oswald, about his societal hostility, 

"His sensibility is metallic; he walks

about, borne down by the iron of

his backward-looking temperament."

Man, I swore, if that was anything

BUT me. I wanted no resemblance

to that at all. Someone wrote that

they even wanted to open that

report with a strange Bible-quote,

which is about the time I realized

this entire assassination thing was

much bigger than anyone realized

and we were getting very little of

the current information. "Many

things the Gods achieve beyond

our judgement. What we thought

is not confirmed, what we thought

not, the gods contrive. And so it

happens in this story." Except, I

found, it wasn't the Bible at all,

but some lines from a play by

Euripides. (Which brings up a

fun point. When I was at Barnes

& Noble, many times the local

high school kids would come

in  -  instead of buying books

it appeared they'd just come 

into the store, plop down in

little groups, and use the

unbought books on the shelves

for what they needed. The Drama

Section was good for that  -  plays

and scripts and Greek tragedies

and all that. Needless to say,

they'd often soil up or dog-ear

the books which we were still

trying to sell. I went over to

them one day, as a number of

them sat around in the Greek

Drama section, and, doing my

best stern-hitman voice, I said

'You rip-a-dese pages, I breaka'

your hands!' (In case you don't 

get that, it's a voice joke about

pronouncing Euripides).