RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,279
(the babe with the bleeding heart)
The wife was telling her husband,
'You're always pushing me around
and talking behind my back.' It
sounded like trouble, but they
were just out of sight, around
the corridor, so I didn't know.
Then I heard the husband say,
in reply, 'What do you expect,
you're in a wheelchair.' That
solved that, and it was funny.
-
I have always had two sides to
myself - one, embittered, and
the other always ready for a
quick quip or pun or laughter.
I've been told it's psychological,
one of the deep quandaries by
which people defensively enclose
themselves, seeking safety from
the rush-on of others. That's
probably true, or I can feel
that in any case. I don't like
interpersonal. I'd rather it was
all remote; like a hermit in a
cabin, or a kid, hiding in a
washing machine box.
-
Another overheard quote? Is
that what I heard you say you
wanted? Here's one: 'You're
still using your eyes to see the
world, instead of adopting the
proper skewed perspective of
an egomaniac.'
-
I guess my very best years were
those years of stretching out my
time; fleeing, as it were, my
slipshod being and hometown.
Avenel, NJ, for me, never had
represented anything; not even
as a parentheses within which
something 'better' was to have
been put. It was negative space,
a complete nullity. The only
ways I could shake myself
from it, were - first - taking
myself off to Blackwood and
my seminary years, where at
the least I received an education
worth something better than
the paltry snapdragon-throwdown
of the Woodbridge Board of
Education, as presented like
dogbones to the students it made
moves to claim. Then, the real
liberation, for me, was a further
and smart immersion into the
dicier side of 1940's being; the
noir version of life as presented
by NYC from 1967 on. That's
where I expanded and - at the
least - hit my paydirt and my
stride. My make-up is to turn
most things into misery, so I
guess payback really is a bitch.
-
I felt like leaving the world often
enough. You know how, in cheesy
movies or bad TV scenes, the
male and female criminals always
embrace and get weepy right before
their crime of doubtful outcome
is about to get started? They sense
it's to be a failure and probably do
them harm, but they go about it in
any case, doomed from the start.
Their weepy embraces seal the
bad deal for them. That's much
how I felt about life.
-
In the Bible, life in Paradise, oddly
enough, is 'defined by negation.'
That's a really strange concept, how
it's put in negatives like that: 'They
were both naked... and they were
not ashamed.' The negation - no
clothing/no shame - then makes
their 'realization' of that shame to
be somewhat advantageous by its
recognition. They made coverings
of fig leaf aprons, marking the birth
of creativity, resourcefulness, wit,
craft, scientific invention, and
self-ornamentation. After all, from
where would they have learned
these things, these tasks, if not
from an initial self-discovery?
-
Things of this nature always
baffled me and showed me that
I really grasped little of human
understanding - about conditions,
being, fate, and a 'place' on Earth.
I knew so little, yet all around me
were people already claiming to
know it all. Cliches abounded: the
taxi-driver who was also a stand-in
philosopher; the local priest or
parson who acted with the bucolic
country-wisdom, somehow, within
all of the decrepit urban mix; the
wunderkind genius of the parable
streets, parlaying one sentence
read into a five page street sermon;
the babe with a bleeding heart.
-
I read once where 'some things
become firmer and thus more
properly themselves, when
they are preserved, so that they
are improved only insofar as
they are preserved.' Within
Christian doctrine, that's called
'felix culpa' (happy fall), and is
used to bolster an idea that our
salvation in Christ is more
fortunate and more blessed,
thus happier in both senses,
than the continuation of
unfallen existence would have
been' To me, that's always
been - as a working concept -
one step too far over the line,
and an almost twisted and
unacceptable constriction of
the human condition, made
to force everyone, in the same
sense as blackmail or coercion
would, into the inane world
or religion and religious
politics.
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