RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,118
(funny how that goes)
There are a lot of interesting things
that I picked up - facts and info, I
mean, not shoplifting - over time.
Some of it has stuck with me, and
other things haven't. Like, the Gold
Rush, in California, that whole
Sutter's thing. There's a small town,
touristy kind of place, on the Jersey
side of the Delaware River, cross
from New Hope, which is on the
Pennsylvania side. As you enter
this town - Lambertville - you
pass the house of this Marshall
guy....who, it turns out, went out
to California, to work with Sutter,
and became the actual person who
found the gold-flakes in the river,
and showed them to Sutter, and it
all started to Gold Rush, at Sutter's
Mill. The rest is Gold Rush History.
He came home once, to visit, well
after that, but after a week or so
his sister threw him out, and he
went back and never returned and
died, later, out there almost a
pauper. The reason she threw him
out? While in that house, in his red
pajamas, he saw a friend walking
by and ran out to greet him! His
sister was so put out, she gave him
the heave-ho, saying 'That might be
OK in California, but we don't do
that here in New Jersey!' One
of the more bizarre and stupid
tidbits I've ever picked up.
-
What is it about stuff like that, I
wonder? What was his sister thinking,
or what was she about right then? It
makes so little sense to me how, at
one time, morality and behavior was
starchy and strict. All of that comes
together too as a defining characteristic
of an entire age now long past. When
I visit cemeteries, to see the old stones
and sayings and etchings on graves
and the columns and obelisks and
wreaths and cherubs - all of that old
Heavenly rest mortuarial statuary I
am struck by so many things). First,
of course, is the lineage of names and
personages - very many of the grand
old names of history's sagas I've seen,
in places as diverse as Laurel Hill in
Philadelphia, to Greenwood Cemetery
in Brooklyn to Woodlawn in the Bronx.
Even to whatever it is in Camden, by
name, wherein lies Walt Whitman.
I revere them all, but the strange and
the still in each of these places inherently
yet holds a serious and meaningful
reverence we no long have. We have
the 'serious' aspect, maybe, but the
meaningful has escaped us.
-
I did come to the conclusion along the
line somewhere that it all amounted to
nothing; that there is no real characteristic
to this life that sets it off from mere
conjecture.. as in, 'I think it may be this
way...' Can you imagine such a creation
as us? Formless matter until formed,
and then developing things like Rayon,
Nylon, and the Atomic Bomb. I remember
some friends, in the early 1980's, taking
me to see a film called 'Eating Raoul,'
which ends up somehow being about
consuming one of their own friends
or a member of their circle, in a very
weird, roundabout, sort of hipster
Los Angeles cannibalism. Something
like that : Point being, we all imagine
the oddest things and then demand
staying with them.
-
Like that Marshall guy, from Lambertville
right over to Sutter's Mill, and then he
stumbles across gold-flakes in the stream.
Shows it to someone else, the crazy force
of an idea takes off, we're stuck with the
Gold Rush, he's stuck with his sister and
miserable poverty. I don't even know where
the guy is buried, but the mortuary factor
memorializing failures, that too must
come into play, miserable sisters or not.
-
Ed Koch was Mayor of New York. Up
by w150th street, there's graveyard, mostly
closed now for burials, but he had selected to
be buried there, and got in. It's an extension,
actually of the Trinity Church Graveyard
down in the Financial District, the famous
spired church you see in all those NYC
downtown photos and vistas. I stumbled
into Ed Koch's uptown branch of it, as it
were, and liked it, even perched a little
oddly as it is. The cool thing about parts
of New York City, like this graveyard
uptown, is that you can here and there
still find places where the old, original
geography is still in place: the higher,
rocky outcroppings, the elevations
above all those cuts they made for
roadways and wagon paths and the
miserable grid of the painfully numeric
streets. In a place like NYC, it's a real
joy and a relief to find things like
that. There are spots with secreted
rock stairways, weird hillsides, and
depths and heights between places
that you'd never think were there.
It's pretty amazing, and can get
engrossing in places like Washington
Heights and all that. I was in there
one day and quite by accident espied
a small grave with some wording to
the effect that it was the grave of
Charles Dickens' son! (That ends up
always coming off as Dickinson, but
it's the 'son of Charles Dickens'). I
was kind of flabbergasted and had to
look it up later (back in the days of
book look-ups, not Google links).
As it turns out (I'm working from old
memory), they had been estranged to
some degree, the son was on a USA
reading his father's work to paid
admissions and in halls and auditoriums
around, and he died while on tour. Dad,
(Mr. Charles Dickens), decided to forego
the return and just have his son buried
there. Another odd tidbit, maybe if
even if by a bit. As far as memorials go,
it's a tiny, little stone, like for an infant's
grave or something of that nature.
Funny how that goes.
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