RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,079
(spite for the hammer)
Jubilation on the high and holy
ground, and I sometimes did feel
like just crying out loud. Which I
always meant as a good thing - I
never knew how it turned out to
denote a negative. 'For crying out
loud'? Maybe singing out loud
is better? But then I hate singing.
Always have. One time, it was about
Halloween, or so, just getting chilly
too, I went out to the end of what's
called Little w.12th Street, and there
was a large truck, and a platform,
and a bonfire on the cobblestones,
and two other fires in barrels. The
sort of location this was bore none
of the marks of the everyday world -
it was a bit of an abandoned end
of the 1990-era wholesale meat
district, abandoned and forlorn.
At night there never was much
going on there - other than the
endless parade of strolling trans
people; even back then. Obvious
guys with all the attributes of girls
foisted on. It was, to me, a bit funny,
and you couldn't always tell for sure
what you were looking at. I could
never understand the one, blatant,
contradiction: When men made fun
of women, generally, it was, in those
days, the funny, 1950's and 60's version
of submissive women - red lips, lots
of rouge or make-up, earrings, tacky
jewelry, supposed, and quite predictable,
provocative clothing, heels, pointy bras,
wiggles and struts. Etc. All that was
held up to ridicule. YET, when these
males pretending at females did it, that's
the exact sort of 'feminity' they aped!
I could never understand it; what their
point was, why they had chosen THAT
ideal to mimic. It was like those two
guys in Some Like It Hot, I think it
was, where Jack Lemmon and some
other guy (Tony Randall) try to
pass in an all-girl band but end-up
getting pawed and fingered by some
lecherous guys. Why would these
transvestites even venture there,
especially in the light of an entire
women's movement that was active
and beckoning, in efforts against all
that. In this case, hookers, tramps,
as thieves, as Cher put it - close
anyway, just forget the Gypsies -
walked those streets at night. It was
a fond pleasure, some nights, to see
the real business ladies instead of
the fakers. This night, whether it was
some sort of harvest festival, (it wasn't
a solstice), or a Halloween tie-in,
there was to be a post-midnight,
ceremony which pretty much had
already started. The rat-tat of soft
drumming, the flickering firelight,
some sort of curious background
music, a few seers or shaman-type
people up on the truck, and about
25-30 revelers, and more arriving
all the time. I stayed a while; the
long night drove on, and I found
myself enjoying, internally, a truer
feeling of contentment and peace
than I'd been used to. It had, or felt
to have, something to do with the
darkness, the fires and light, the
sounds and people, and the silvery
light, just off-picture, at the west,
of the Hudson River, which the
Spirit just knew had its own old
and ancient part in all of this. It
was a type of all-night, to sun-up
Druidic rave in the open ar.
-
This was just how I thought; I've
always had a strange bit of ancient
in my spirit. My viewpoints have
never cog-wheeled correctly with
the moderns. I've always felt I
was living 250 years ago and not
now. About the most modern
relevance to me has ever only
been the Hungerfords and the
Grangerfords, in Huckleberry
Finn. Now, that was modern!
-
You look at sorthing like that,
as I did, even in the muddled streets
of some New Durango like New York
City : replete with all those heretofore
nothing Druids and Witches and
Pagans and Ancient Seers and the
worshippers of all sorts of screwed up
Nature in a place that really doesn't
have but a thimble-full of real Nature
anyway and what it does have is an
over-possessed and over-nurtured
propensity to 'value' but never just
'appreciate' anything. That's the
difference it got hung with too.
My doorstop maybe stayed in
place at Mark Twain, and after that
everything from Poe and Whitman
on dawdled in place. It wasn't long
after that that what really ruined
NYC started coming in - that
mis-shapen sense of exceptionalism
that they keep about themselves.
Not the poor and the criminal and
the downtrodden - I'm not meaning
them. I mean the 'elites' who think
this is all theirs, so great and so
special, that they then begin telling
others how to live, what to do and
how to think about everything.
In the face of the worst, rat-infested,
slop-snotted, festering dungheap
of a place, underneath it all. An
old infrastructure surely set to blow.
Foul odors and smells, piles of
food blistering in the sun and
heat, but allowed for no one else,
run-offs pooling in gutters in a
sort of warm, gray water that's
basically indefinable, until
some pain-in-the-ass Uber or
taxi throws it up on you passing.
A good drench of nothing. All
these high-faluting hen-house
fashion plates with their skirts
and dresses and noses (and that's
just the guys!) in the air thinking
it's all theirs and only theirs and
so exalted and fine. They won't
even look to see the hairs growing
out of the old nostrils and ears.
Yep, it's that bad. But you go
back and take some of those
Mark Twain-Huck Finn aspects
of it all and it CAN be made -
not saying it is or isn't - but a
smart person CAN make it into
the last authentic, royal-split
truly American spirit. Which
died shortly after the later,
'Gilded Age' took it all down
and away. That's about when
we first lost it all. You can go
across Pennsylvania or rural
New Jersey today and find
the glimmers of what was an
old local rural grocery, or a
fine-old steepled church -
I can name and show you
5-10 each right off the bat,
starting with Mt. Bethel,
PA, and right on out. They're
all re-used now as local 'history'
collections, catchalls of the this
and that of other days - everything
from candles and candleholders
to baby-buggies and old fireman
hats. It's crazy how reverent the
past gets treated while the present
gets kicked around like it was
horse-manure. In those early
stage-recital days of Mark Twain,
his strange little shows would whip
up a frenzy of excitement and new
viewpoint for the listeners and
viewers, who'd crowd the halls
and recital rooms for just such
events. An authentic world, right
there, for all to see and welcome
for all, between pig-grunts and
horse-farts too. That was a real
world, and maybe, yeah, maybe
it should be sung about and
jubilated over, and life lived
good, by it and because of it.
otherwise now, we've got nothing.
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