RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,103
(the power and the glory)
Something like fluorescent lighting,
which I always hated, needled me
at most all times. If it wasn't that,
it was report cards, or reports
themselves. I couldn't ever
rightly get the connection between
going to school, say, and doing
reports (which were mostly just
bogus collections of facts and
figures gathered from other
sources and tacked together
with some lame commentary
for which one knew one couldn't
really say anything authentic or
even true, because it would
garner an 'F,' which is how most
angry teachers showed their
disapproval of one's stance. Only a
lackey does the best collecting; a
real learner would have to turn
their back on doing such constant
teacher-drawn, agenda'd drivel)...
I think that was - for the most
part - how I first took my turn
to the side of 'poetry,' as it was
called. Through the sneaky
entrance of Kenneth Rexroth,
John Ashbery, and even Robert
Lowell, I found a way to craftily
say what I wanted without some
lump-headed teacher riding herd.
None of them would get the gist;
I could run things right past them.
-
That started me anyway : At age 12
already, I was on the highway to
my own verbosity, a way of working
with words that seemed to be, for
me, malleable enough to set things
'between' other things, between
places, as it were, so as to state my
own observation and get away with
it beneath the rubric of curious,
'creative' writing skills. You don't
look back, once that certain speed
is reached.
-
I've always loved - as I've mentioned
here numerous times - the wordplay
inherent in words: Puns, jokes and all the
rest. Like that famed, philosopher/guitarist,
Carlos Santayana. (Ha! made you look).
-
I always found life to be harsh; that
was then. Now I realize that - in most
every way imaginable - all ideas of
life's harshness have been removed.
I blame TV and film. No one wants
to be constantly reminded that harsh
conditions exist and that, in the end,
we are all dead. (Of course you'd
never know it by seeing the endless
death-schlock they churn out. Misery so
deep there is no container for it. But if
couch the tragic in terms of glee and
expected entertainment, it can be done).
I've seen men, and women, still argue
over whether the universe if flat, or
dimensional. Able then to turn back
upon itself and start us up again right
where we'd already started last time.
Continuously. What do physicists say
that's any different from what I, or any
other writer, CAN say? Event horizons?
Dark Matter? Black Holes? Parallel
Universes? Indeed!
-
'In a universe identified with Absence,
the forbidden territory between man,
woman, and God, has torn love from
the world. Love waits outside, beyond
remembrance or caring.' The masculine
Father demanded obedience without
question? Such domineering demands
for submission, I always learned, were
to be resisted with a something between
'comfort' and 'confidence.'
-
'The hand you stretch me in the Dark,
I put mine in and turn away.' That's
Emily Dickinson; the last person I
ever thought I'd find an attraction to,
but I did. Strange, curious creature,
with a venomous coil, yet entwined
with the Love and the Tender. Hurt
too. My street wander comprised for
me a hundred things she'd never
understand, nor ever even have
experienced, closeted, strange
recluse as she'd been. Notwithstanding
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, she
lived a quiet and a lone life. Parameters
always beseeching something, but
'Modern Poetry' had not yet been
invented. It was, by chance, still
merely a Love Craft (though, no, hot
yet either, an H. P.). 'We knew not
that we were to live, nor when we
are to die. Our ignorance is, our
cuirass* is, we wear Mortality.'
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