12,880. RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,081

RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,081

(don't get caught in the drears)

Mark Twain never said it, and

neither did anyone else that I

know of, but now even the

weather people, I'm told, in

summing up tomorrows, will

says 'It's going to be a dreary

day.' My wife told me that; I

have no real knowledge of it.

BUT, one of my old, pet phrases

has, for a long time, been, 'stay

out of the drears.' Kind of as a

message to myself, mostly, to

try to remain upbeat as best I

could and keep away from my

harsh, bleak, and black moments

for fear of the pistol shot to my

temple. I've always had a problem

with my darker moments, but to

date have always avoided jumping

off bridges or driving at high-speed

into walls. Things wear heavy on

me, and I'm old enough to be now

now well-eroded. If I wasn't still

interested in a lot of things, I

would have jumped long ago.

That's the drears.

-

Homeward bound; you can't go

home again; home is where the

heart is; all that piebald crap just

ends up as some junky Hallmark

sentiment, with the pith and tussle

of a short, pointed, message of

little weight. The greeting card

industry has always made me mad

anyway, being like a frozen comic

strip of inanity for the otherwise

insane. I can remember walking 

into pharmacies, shaking in my

boots, afraid to ask for condoms,

looking for hemorrhoidal creams or

suppositories, any of that junk, and

knowing I'd reached dead-endsville

when I'd see endless rows of greeting

cards, arranged by weird subject

titles and categories; not just birth,

death, marriage, and graduation.

I mean the weird categories they

sometimes came up with. 'The

sex was great! Thanks for a

wonderful night.' or 'Welcome

home! We're all so glad you're

out of prison.' You know what 

I mean, even in my pitiful 

exaggeration. What a trite bunch

of gibberish. Worse than that, what

a cheap and tacky way of making

a living and filling your store  - an

inventory of 10,000 greeting cards

and some nitwit local clerk or

high-school girl in charge of it.

Real career-starter. Resume

builder too. Skills? I was in 

charge of the Greeting Card 

racks at the local 'Fav-Mart 

Pharmacy.' 

-

See, all ths? I'm keeping the

drears away again. My crazy

dog's still ailing and it only drives

ME to want to die, not her. Jeez,

how do I get myself out of this

pot of water before it boils? My

car is sure to break down yet

again. The damned lawn needs

another cut. I'm 20 dollars short

in the fifty dollar line? Not again!

What do I do? I've listened to

myself now a few too many times,

and I know soon I'm going to run

out of luck, and patience, and

time too. I don't want to live,

but I don't want to die. There's

no helping hand anywhere. I

guess I'm on my own. Which is,

once more, what I've feared the

most. There's probably a greeting

card for that too: 'Sorry you're

down in the dumps again. Before

you try slitting your wrists once,

more, did you hear the one about 

the guy who  walks into a bar, 

and says OUCH!!!'

-

Probably the one saving grace for

me has always been girls. Maybe.

As a category. When I was young,

they were pretty cool. The first

few times I saw a naked girl, I

was dumbstruck. It immediately

undermined my whole purpose 

of being. The world became

somehow disordered. Then, 

getting into all that Art stuff, 

it was de rigeur for naked babes 

to always be slouching around 

so people could be drawing them!

How crazy cool was that! I wanted

to know the reasonings, and was

willing to listen. I'd always taken

art to be about my imagined worlds

and places, with all that 'must reflect

reality' stuff relegated to the past.

Hand-eye coordination., and

painting the perfect apple or

still-life. Or castle. Or bridge.

Hell, what cared I for any of that;

it was all in the past and all already

done, but reflecting another time

and place, and reality. Supplanted

by camera and printing. Who cared,

and why retrace old steps? And then, 

(trying to remain aloof from the 

drears, which I always did see 

approaching), one day I was

thinking to determine what may

have been the oldest thing I'd ever

seen   -  design-wise. At first I

thought of trees, or boulders and

rocks. That design is ancient and

unchanged. A good-sized, armored

bug. A bird. Yeah that was old stuff

sure.  And I wasn't counting celestial

stuff. And then it hit me....the human

body! The naked, pure grace of the

female, and, I guess, as the story 

goes, the pathetic, egregiously

designed male was even older, by

some. So, heck, yeah, why not look,

and look, and look some more.

Ancient designs were always

so great! And they sure beat

the drears.
-
I always figured there probably
comes a time in every person's
life when you start losing interest.
The person, I mean, IN that life and
in what's going on and underway.
It's all like a huge building problem,
of strange and psychic designs, as
we roll along and all these images
get created; they need recognition
or nurturing or things go awry.
Behavioral problems and the funny
quirks of a criminal or a jerk. All
the sorts of fixations and tremblings
any adequate shrink would be able to
detect quite swiftly. Over-sensitivity
to imagined stimuli. ("Hmmm, let's
talk....'). That's the coy way they 
begin, tying to approach a back
door where the unsuspecting 
'patient' awash in all of this is
not even aware  -  caught up in
everything else they've constructed
mentally  - is sneaking up on them.
Like the drears  -  always trying to
find a way in. If one door doesn't
work, looking and searching for
a weakness to enter, from
somewhere else.