RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,144
(eminent sensibility)
How amazing is it for me to say
I'm sick and tired of hearing from
the future, when I live in the past?
People's notes to me about being
so far off-kilter, having lost my
way, opining with evil intent,
simply make me make me realize
the strength of my own case. The
softest-head miserable liberals
step forth, claiming to correct me;
which is fine, but they then take
their own, next, proto-totalitarian
step of name-calling, abusing,
and ripping me a new asshole -
because I do NOT subscribe to
their solid thoughts of the present.
Ideological present. Numbed and
mind-controlled present. Locked
room with no-doorway out present.
One girl says I now remind her of
her old father the cop. Ignoring the
fact of her own father-issues,
evidently not yet properly dealt
with, she then projects her own
personal conflicts onto issues of
what she calls 'politics.' Which are
nothing of the sort. What we are
underway with here is psychological
warfare by know-nothings intent
on the destruction of the 'America'
by which our definitions (be they
good or bad) of what we as a people
have defined ourselves by. It's NOT
a TV limbo-land of happy faces,
ethnic side-roads, and miserly
detours into abject Government
presence and dictates. Opting for
one side or the other is a complete
and stupid choice, because they,
neither of them, represent anything
worthwhile and only with a fog-figment
of difference between them anyhow.
-
I early on realized - and had to
realize - that I was not a normal
person; and that was a very odd
and difficult passage for me. It
never has been a question of fitting
or altering - except in the most
basic manner - myself to the
world. Rather it was the other way
around - the world to myself. Or,
as William Blake twistingly put it,
something like: 'I must create my
own systems or be enslaved by
those of other men.' Something
like that anyway; a horse-thief
in the night still gets shot.
-
One time, I was talking with a
goofy guy, called Mickey Folderol
by everyone. He said: 'I thought
Trotsky was stuck in the head. I
thought ice pick as soon as I heard,
but you'll probably disagree and
so we never see eye to eye anyway,
right?' I simply thought, 'Huh?'
He stuttered, and he talked with
a childish laughter, almost as a
punctuation. And often pushed or
rapped the shoulder of the person,
in this case me, to whom he spoke.
Very weird. I said, not really
knowing what else to say or reply
with, 'How'd you know I was
thinking about Russia?' It didn't
actually matter. I'd known this
Mickey guy for a while, He played
the loudest music, and almost all
the time, and to annoyance too.
Right out to the street; 1950's
early rock n' roll, earlier versions
of do-wop, and what used to be
called 'race music,' kind of half
blues/half R&B. I hated the
stuff. Plus, he was nearly blind,
and sometimes blind-drunk too, and
I'd tell him he was overcompensating
for his blindness by bothering the
hell out if everyone with his deafness.
That became our standing joke, as
I'd say 'Charlie, I can see you but I
can't hear you!' - even though his
name was Mickey - and he'd reply,
in some crazy accent, 'I ccccannot see
you BUT I ah'sura cana hear you!!!!'
Well, you had to be there. It was a
sometimes routine. Some people,
some NY art types and edgy cafe
habitues, can always prod and
poke - I do the same thing a lot
of times right here, with my own
writing; it's part of the creative
set-up. But he was ultra at it.
He'd say: 'The five worse things
that never happened? Oh, sure.'
And then he'd go on for at least
ten; just crazy stuff, off the top
of his head: ' Washington Monument
fell onto the Mall; The Spirit of St.
Louis fell from its perch in the
Smithsonian; the short drought
lasted 11 months, five girls were
abducted by aliens, who turned out
to enormous penis impersonators
dressed in costume; the NYC City
subways shorted out and can only
run backwards; Radio City was
found to be only a small town and
not a city at all.' And that was
all just because I'd said to him,
'Mickey, Mickey, these are just
stupid; what the hell are you
doing wasting your time with
them? You can't find anything
better to do? Do you need any
help? Is there anything I can do
for you?' And he said back, ' I
know, I kkknow, I'm jjjust kk
kidding about it, now tell me
what you're ddddoing lately and
what's this about Russia?' Really,
that's how it started, and so I
had to tell him everything about
what I was doing - which at that
time involved draft evaders,
running them to Canada on
our secret underground railway
and the border guards never
caught on and then he brought
up the Trans-Siberian Railroad,
all on his own, with no prodding,
and went on....'The TTTTrans
Hhhighwway, which goes nowhere
really and has a 1,000 mile hole
right in the middle of it, where it
peters out at Lakje Baikal, and it
picks up again later on, to end at
Vladivostok on Russia's far eastern
shore and it then runs out!' He was
almost talking madly, a'frenzied.
'And the Kamchatka Peninsula,
you know, is up north, but did you
know that the Russian word
'bezdorozhye' [I think that's what
it was] means 'place without roads,'
and it's used pretty commonly right
around that area, BUT Russia needs
roads like a person needs air.'
-
Yes, fair to say he'd become his own
run-on sentence, which ad somehow
centered itself on things Russian. I
truly think this was a madman brewing.
-
And then he said 'In 1959 [that was about
the same time as most of his crazy music]
American President Dwight Eisenhower
took Soviet Premier Nikita Kruschev on
a high-speed ride through the Maryland
countryside to show off the nascent
Interstate Highway System - the
largest public works project in history -
and Kruschev was unimpressed, saying
'the engineering, yes, is fine, but to
what end?' In his country, he said, there
was 'little need for this type of road
because the Soviet people live close
together and do not care for automobiles
and have little interest in driving
around the countryside on a Sunday
afternoon and rarely change their
addresses, but in your country people
are always moving from one place to
another, city to city, and no one seems
to like the place where they live and
always want to be on the move to
somewhere else!' So now I ask you,
I ask yyyou now, what kkind of place
is this anway?' Yep. Mickey was
something else indeed.
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