RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,079
(somnambulent tempest)
When I was about 7 or 8, I can
well remember, I was often
transfixed by the large, black
Pontiac which would come
next door - the father's, in that
house parents, from Brooklyn,
often visiting. It was nothing,
really. I was young, the two,
plodding, parents, if not truly
old, seemed so to me. When
you are 'young' like that, it
seems anyway that every person
over 40 is 'old,' so their age
was surely misread by me.
Their cars always had the
New York license plates, in
those years, which were a
strong shade of orange. 'Empire
State' the state motto was, and
the state slogan too was, as I
recall, 'Excelsior,' though back
then none of that was actually
on the plates. In any case, it
was vivid to me - some other
place, indeed, not ours at all.
It was nothing like now, when,
in the course of a normal driving
day, you can probably see plates
from 20 different states within
the course of an hour. Apparently
the state of 'mingling' has been
opened up, and people are
now most everywhere. Let
alone the fact of rentals.
One of the fun parts of renting
a car now is to see what far-off
state will be represented on
the license plates of what you
rent. Such cars are out and about
now, from all over. Back in
Metuchen, funny to say, I once
had a rental car with plates from
some outlying state, a Carolina
or Georgia or somewhere, and
I beeped at some guy who was
nudging out too far in an entry,
at an intersection. The guy took
offense, got slamming crazy over
it, and followed us the few blocks
home - at which point he exited
his car and came screaming over
to ours, ranting all the time about
'Why don't you people go home
and stay out of Jersey.' He'd taken
offense to my presuming he was
about to run the intersection.
Doing my best imitation of nice
guy, I stepped out and said, 'You
stupid, fucking Jersey asshole; we
ARE home. This is a rental car.
Shithead.' Pretty much that was
it. He mumbled, and walked off,
back to his own, pathetic, Jersey
car.
-
It was a funny moment, in that
the modern-day equivalent of
distant 'place' had been turned
on its head and, in this instance,
somehow tried to be used against
me. A homeboy. It does seem,
however, that when a person is
enraged there is no stopping the
escalation of anger from one
subject into another, in an almost
ad infinitum style, until some point
of a personal satisfaction is reached -
way past any point of logic - by
the person doing the raging. In
this case, vast assumptions were
made, on his part, by the simple
evidence of a license plate. When
you are 'wrong,' oftentimes you
are, just, wrong!
-
In my own same way, now, looking
back, I can see how my assumptions
about the neighbor's recurring Pontiac
visitations were used by me for flights
of fancy too. Imaginings. In reality,
I knew nothing of Brooklyn, nor had
I any inkling, in Brooklyn, of where
they might have lived, and how. It
use to seem to be logical to think of
how or why anyone would have ever
wished to leave such a place as that
for the lowered confines of Avenel
and its current Inman Avenue new
development of same-style homes
in every direction. Have you ever
looked at Brooklyn; the real part,
not the Heights or any of the other
streets and sections where the monied
live? Most of Brooklyn, if not the
working class, or labor-class, is
comprised of sameness. Just a
stone's throw from any section can
be found the next - abject poverty,
run-down housing, or immigrants; a
different sort of sameness, probably
closer to hovel-format sameness,
but quite expensive now too. It's
all quite baffling. I always held it
against my parents for deserting
an urban area and moving out
to 'Avenel' and the rest. It seemed
to me like the abandonment of all
principle, and a turning of the back
on any historic richness and alternative
lifestyle-thinking, etc., which was
available there. My own parents,
and the parents of friends and neighbors,
evidently cared little of having missed
all that. The norm was the usual
cookie-cutter house, nearby school
and shopping, and the closeness of
friends and neighbors. The rest be
damned, and none of that was for
them anyway. So, in very many
aspects, it was all quite the same.
-
In many respects, my own premature
reactions to all of this was to have
prepared already, at age 8, for my
own form of non-conforming living.
I was an 8-year old, 1957 Beatnik
by that time already! I was rolling
along mightily, feeling, yes, that
I was onto something, and then the
train wreck waylaid me. After the
long, dreary coma and convalescence,
I re-entered a quite different world
and a quite different me. The cards
in my hand had all changed, and, for
the most part, my imaginary 'Aces'
were no longer ace-high. I was
immediately introduced to at least
3 or 4 new years of preparatory
human drudgery, mostly centered
around turning 11. One small step
for Man, one giant leap for....Nothing.
-
'Why don't you stay home where you belong?'
'Why don't you stay home where you belong?'
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