RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,234
(in one life, and out the other)
There's never an end to
banishment; when you're
banished, it's as if you're
banished forever. Yes. It's
from everything - life,
emotions, even regrets.
I watched that old lady
bleeding on the sidewalk.
Nothing I could do; not
my problem. I realized I
had not the connection to
impart the emotion.
-
That Eckleburg guy had
been telling me his views
of the country, and I was
already tired of that too. No
clue where he was talking
from, but it didn't affect me
any. He may have been from
another world - all about
how welcoming others in was
OK but now, more than that,
we give away the shop too.
I wanted to say 'so what, and
where were your grandparents
from anyway?' But I didn't. I
just stirred my coffee, thinking
of the color. I met a guy much
like him, years later too, in
NYC. Far more mysterious,
and the scene was all different.
He called himself Marleybourne
Fishbein, and said he was a
'Negotiator for Extra-Terrestrials.'
It was all very thrilling, and was
another one of those guys who
claimed to have picked me out
with their discerning eye. If any
of that was ever true, I never
found out; but Fishbein was
other-worldly and showed me
a clear connection to the cosmos,
via him, and my place in it. I
thought he was going to spirit
me away, but we just sat there
and got drunk. The weird thing
was, he never paid a cent, the
money of the table just kept
growing, and the glasses never
really emptied either. All I ever
did, most of my life, was meet
weirdos.
-
My friend from NYC and I,
we were, back then, way into
Hart Crane. The Bridge; White
Cities; Porphyry in Akron; The
Broke Tower; For the Marriage
of Faustus and Helen. Yeah, it
was all crazy. That led to Harry
Crosby, and his wife, Caresse,
and to the Black Sun Press, and
literary suicides and all those
1920's tales of intrigue and
space-cadet stuff but with a
pen. Yep, people sure did once
know how to live.
-
One thing about living (but only
if looked at in a certain way) -
You never have to pay rent?
-
I always mixed up Eliza Doolittle
and that lady who wrote The New
Colossus, or whatever the poem
thing is on the Statue of Liberty.
It sure would have been funny
if she'd written that. But, alas
it was Emma Lazarus.
-
It used to spit me up into red
fire (I was once a card-carrying
member of the Socialist Worker's
Party too, out of some lame
address in the W20's, NYC),
whenever I'd read all that praise
and glory about Thomas Edison,
nd Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone,
John Burroughs, and even John
Muir, the supposed, great, naturalist.
Just look at those names and wonder.
You have to. The first three of the
names are the men most responsible
for the destruction of the world as
we may have ever known it. And
they are praised and revered?
-
When you come right down to it,
as I did, you realize that the complete
ignorance of America revels in these
sorts of moments. The five men most
publicly representing the natural
destruction of the land they claimed
saving (NO, that's not true either.
Not one of these guys, outside of the
most ignorant and base schemes of
approach, had a creative or elated
moment among them), used to tour
and camp together (in very early,
open-air auto caravans) and praise
the goodness of all they say. Bastards
are made, I guess, never just born.
-
The first Mrs. Edison, that Stilwell
lady? She's buried deep in an old
and eerie cemetery in Newark, NJ,
just of Rt. 1, which roars by her
head. Along with her is buried the
son she bore with Thomas Edison.
A marker attests to all this, with
little editorializing. Back in
Llewellyn Park, at the Edison
Mansion, in West Orange, curiously
enough, Thomas Edison and his
other wife, Myna or somesuch,
are buried right in their yard! Just
off the rear steps of the house, you
can walk right up to the two graves.
-
I never cared pas a certain point
about any of this, all these years.
But now, all of a sudden, here it
comes pouring out of me, with
a slant and a bias, by me, against
the modern day, which I see only
as the evolved development of the
caterwauling indecencies of the
whole mess of them - Tesla, Ford,
Edison, Graham Bell, and the whole,
entire hell-bent load of them. We
live now amongst their shades of
death. Given once as 'gifts' to
the world, perhaps, but now foul,
rank, and accursed too.
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