12,982. RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,120

RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,120

(ignorance on parade)

Years have passed now, and

I've become more enmeshed

with that slow human ritual

of dying than of living. There

are things around me now

that I never thought we'd be

experiencing  -  a human

condition, stateside anyway,

now gone to miserable rot.

I never had much grace with

'technique.' On the piano bench

I was always scolded for slumping

(there's a shady  protocol in the

piano industry that one must

come off as elitist, in a way, with

all the proper comportment of a

rich kid in order to 'perform' at

the keyboard well, or not well.

It often little matters how

marginal the playing, as long

as it's done correctly). In

school, same thing; I wrote

with my head too far down,

and I ought to sit up straight

as I write at the desk. As James

Brown said, 'Be cool, stay in

School!' (He left out the question

mark that I would gladly put in).

-

I guess it was like that everywhere.

In NYCity there were whores, and

there were 'high-class whores.' One

did it just like the other, but it was

in the mannerism, and dress, and

approach where all the difference

was. 'Yeah, we can do that, but please

don't slouch.' I often wondered if

that was the same as 'Stay erect,'

in the messaging department.

-

My aspects of life little concerned

that sort of stuff, in fact I hated all

that. Stupid people, mostly always

concerned with stupid things.

-

There wasn't really too much of that

in that 'classroom' format I made

mention of in the previous chapter.

Back in the 1980's, community colleges

were pretty much without pride, and

certainly without pretension. Anyone

there already knew they were there

by aspects of being either secondary

citizens, economically distressed, or

beleaguered by society in some variable,

other, way. No farm school, let's say,

there, for Princeton or Yale. The Merck

people I'd written of were about the top

of the heap, as far as that goes. At the

least, I figured, my bottom-feeding

would get me people who at the minimum,

could read well, and brightly enough.

This was well before the ghetto-carnage

dumping of today, when supposed 12th

grade level marginal-literates can spout

Jay-Z lyrics to their hearts content but

have no reference to Prufrock, Bloom.

or Kurtz. From my later bookstore

experiences I now know that there

are writers whose claim to fame is the

complete and perfect re-creation of ghetto

talk and lingo, and setting, for the dark

and the black side of things; nothing

enlightening or wise at all, but, like

the buxomy Romance novel genre, this

urban-fiction sex and abuse shtick hits

it all home, and sells too.

-

When, at Barnes & Noble, I first saw

the idea of a Section, entitled 'Urban

Fiction,' going up, I knew the game,

as I'd known it before, was over. When

I first got that job, 1999, it was told to

me that Clark, NJ was white. Period.

It had a reputation of a police town

that enforced whiteness, and gave

very little room for the element of a

black culture to take root. There was

a very quiet program of reinforcing

that underway. By 2003, there was an

urban fiction section and I was often

mailing books to prison inmates. Black

inmates. Their aunts or mothers or 

whatever would come in, with a list

of 3, 4, or 5 books  -  black-oriented,

crime-based, ghetto fiction, to wrap

and ship to Tyrone or Shardel, in

Trenton Prison, or Rahway, or the

County lock-up in Elizabeth. Real

uplifting stuff, to be sure. Crime

begets crime, and it's no mystery 

to me why that was so. There was

no serious pattern of learning, or 

schooling or any pattern of an

intellectual inquisitiveness, outside

of the Bible or some version of it,

which was also often sent, and often

WITH the crime books, in the same

send. It is therefore no surprise to

me now when I see the crud in the

streets, taking over and destroying

our 'culture' - or at least having it

now consciously pander to them.

Ignorance really is on parade.

-
That whole 'Clark is white' lasted
the whole time. I don't know what's
it's like now; neither the bookstore nor
Clark, NJ itself. But, I must say, and
I'm going to, that any real shoplifting
done in that store was done by blacks,
for the most part. And this is true. There
was an organized ring, out of Newark,
somehow, of bookstore thieves. They'd
go from store to store, Borders included
(which was another large bookstore chain
doing pretty much the same thing as
Barnes & Noble); anyway, these guys
would drive from store to store and have
lists of what titles to steal  -  it was
some fairly well-organized book-theft
ring, and they kind of knew what they
were doing. Except, we also knew what
they were doing. One time the guy came,
pulled his 3 or 4 books, and made off.
Got in his car and rolled out. We called
the police, they called their guy out
in the street  -  a nearby intersection
was pretty jammed up and he was
directing the traffic. He got the ID of
the car, which we'd given, hauled the 
jerk over,  stuck in traffic as he was,
and the trunk was filled with books,
as was the back seat some. And the
guy even had his list handy. Charges 
were pressed, etc.; end of crime spree.
For that week anyway. They always
used to tell us, 'don't chase anybody,
don't leave the store, don't jeopardize
yourself by following after anyone.'
In this case, the traffic jam did
it all for us.
-
So, as I began to say, my strong point 

has never been 'technique.' When I see

something to criticize or carp about,

I just go at it. My patterned behavior

has most often been disruption, or at

least some seething anger, by which I

wrestle with the conflict. And there's

plenty of that, BUT in the enclave that

I call my mind I keep, as well, the

dominance of those calm and meaningful

places I once inhabited always at the

forefront, or as much as I can. It

all involves distancing, routine, and

hard work. Good enough for me, 

and I'll take it. (By hard work I don't 

mean digging holes or pounding

nails, but rather a steady and sure

mental acuity and some form of

intellectual digging. 'Nuff said,

for now). There's a guy I have
to chase.