13,260. RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,098

RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,098

(an hour, not just a moment)

There are nights when I still

get the most detailed dreams

of New York City streets which

no longer exist  -  the old and

the bedraggled corners with the

worn granite facings and broken

down signs, the short-cuts and

alleys between places, the truck

ramps and the overheads, lanes

and turns, out-of-the-way corner

cuts and rumpled, ancient storefronts.

I knew all that by heart, and it

somehow  -  though long gone 

now  - still exists through a

corridor of dream, still peopled

with forms and faces of living

people. 'The names have been

changed to protect the innocent,'

as they used to put it. 

-

I awake in two worlds. Ten minutes

of a pure befuddlement, lost between

the glare of a mirror of no time, and

the 'reality' of right now. I think to

myself, 'Should I put my today-feet

forward and step back into it, or  -

and a part of me wishes for this  -  

should I just stay here so as to find

that great stride backward, and

remain lost in my soup of 'then?''

Somehow, I always get up and 

re-enter this plane of being : the

smell of coffee, the need to pee.

I guess other realms have other

needs and other prompts yet

unknown to me.

-

If I could suddenly appear at the

breakfront of time, for my re-entry,

I'd fit right into the niche made

custom for me  -  as if I was born

and bred to wear that more-miserable

suit of cloth comprising 250 years

ago and its evidences : horse lanes,

smithy shops, the bangings and fires

of hammer-to-metal, wrapped with

aromas and words, crowd scenes

and refuse heaps, piles of ash and

the run-off of tanneries and blight.

One simple footfall before the

other would bring me through the

progress lanes of heat and fire,

horse-stalls and blankets, amidst

the grease and fittings of wagon

wheels, primitive bearings and

springs, dusty travel and freight,

and then, yes, the strange, frightful,

coming of rails and railyards.

-

I can only wonder what my words

would sound like. I certainly would

be unable to retain today's phraseology

or curt manners of reference and name.

Descriptions and explanations would

need to be slower, darker, plodding

and dense. Any sense of immediacy

or 'communication' would have to 

wait, and all things would take their

own time. Slowly, and again, that

next layer of 'change' would be

underway around me  -  rail sheds,

storage yards, piles of trains and

engines, fires for steam and burning.

Wreckages. Overflow. Down

to the harbor, and up from the

harbor  -  that sense would have

it precedence. What didn't run down

would drain away  -  right back to

those very riverfronts I mention.

The cares and concerns would be

different. A population of the

un-sensed, the vivid and real, those

for whom 'Reality' was an hour,

not just a moment.

-

Not just the outside either  -  the

interiors are spot-on perfect, and

seem somehow updated too with

today's sorts of things inside  -  

plastic, light switches, faucets,

but the interior, running, scenes

get eerie  -  with the dead involved

in them, old issues and scenes, and

the raggedy involvements of  old

ideas and once-stereotypical

attitudes and occurrences. On

the whole, broadly, the scenes 

are evocative of entanglements

and mash-up more than anything

else. So strange. So alien.

Yet, so warming too.