RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,293
('nothing ever runs out')
I never liked it when people
were wrong about me. There
were lots of times when that
occurred - I guess the private
school/seminary education
thing, going away to schooling
disappearing for those 12-16
year-old-formative years that
often meant the most to young
people, had a lot to do with
it. Hell, I never saw 'Green
Acres,' 'Man From U.N.C.L.E.'
nor 'Beverly Hillbillies' as
original shows...now who can
be American-normal after that?
Fact of the matter was, I was,
for most of my early years, in
recovery mode already. I'd been
hit by a train at early age 8, had
survived that, reawakening as
as mashed-mangle, in traction
and on crutches, after a prolonged
period of being in a coma, and
then faced a lengthy rehab and
re-entry into school, kids, pals,
and all the neighborhood buddies
and doings kids face. Peers were
painful; Hell everything was
painful! Life ain't easy when
you're green? (I don't know,
is that a saying?).
-
I awoke, long and slowly, for
my re-entry into this world; I
guess there's nothing called
'Post-Comatic Stress Syndrome,'
but boy I sure had it. I'd been
somewhere far and distant, and
more real than the most surreal,
and it stayed with me, and there
were words and voices everywhere,
and I really did seem to have new
and special relationships with lots
of things others never noticed. Or
understood (about me). Perhaps
that's were some of this stemmed
from, others misunderstanding me.
I became hesitant and withdrawn,
pulling back in. My Aunt Mae, the
most special character I knew then,
said differently - in later life she
said I was none of that at all, rather
the funniest, quirkiest kids she'd
ever met. Squirrely, even.
-
Seeing a self-image reflected back
is yet another self-image, mirrored
into something else again, entire.
We accept and we absorb, constantly,
both the things we see and imagine.
It was sort of like that for me. My
Father, and his four other siblings,
were Foster Kids, scattered all over
the place, in their youth. He had
people he called 'Mum' this or
'Mum' that - meaning different
families with which he'd been
placed, utilizing then different
names for the 'Mother' parent.
They were never really lodged
together anywhere. My Aunt Mae
had garnered an actual education -
which none of the others actually
had gotten - by being placed in some
Brooklyn Nuns' Home, or school,
or whatever it may have been (all
these stories remained sketchy and
half-told to me during my life, rife
with contradictions, and the differing
accounts of things, and told to me
by each the differing party). Mostly,
their locus was the ragged streets
of old Bayonne - waterfront, Kill
Van Kull, Broadway and Boulevard
streets. Everything was street-urchin
living, for the two boys anyway -
walking the streets with a shoeshine
box, finding his brothers and his
sisters along the way, and sharing
whatever little money he'd made
be shared - that part of his story
always touched me the most. Old
Dad was a fiery and torch-like,
pugilistic man, but at center he
harbored a fierce loyalty, and a
sense of 'family' and kin that never
had left him. I read a book, twice,
entitled 'The Madonna of 115th
Street', which explained a whole
lot of this Italian sensibility to me.
It was an eye-opener, and still is.
Not much else to be said on that
count, if you've not read it.
-
Back to me, I seemed to have been
given, if nothing else, an extended
sense of dread and foreboding, and
about most anything too. It didn't
much matter if someone was talking
about my bicycle tire blowing out,
or WWIII or an atomic bomb - in
the early 1960's, as well, the usual
BS 'journalistic' talk was of the 'new'
generation (1950's too, beatniks and
all that crap) that had to grow up with
the idea of instant annihilation over
their heads and the existential idea
of being vaporized instantaneously
by a nuclear bomb, from the Red
Russkies, or Red Chinese, either
way, both plotting against us. It's
longer much like that - now the
forces of propaganda play by
business rules, financial suspension,
and other forms of interdiction.
It's all still driven into peoples'
heads, by the ways of doing it
are different. I still suffer - at
every turn I find goblins and
omens of (my own, al least)
doom and destruction. Survival
now, for me, does truly become
a game of the fittest; a ledge on
which I sit, and fail (or flail),
miserably.
-
Anyway, my soul, before and
after my re-entry to the living,
was suspended between places;
nicely enough so, I suppose. I
seemed to be able to function, in
the eyes of others, but remained,
at the same time, someone with
a mysterious, if not ominous,
cloud around me. My father-in-
law said I was 'accident-prone'
and often was reluctant to have
me driving his daughter around.
I seemed to worry others, whether
by my impetuosity or gruff and
frontal attack on matters at hand.
I never even addressed this stuff,
just laughed.
-
Personal caution is one thing;
but worrying overtly over the
welfare of others? That just
always seemed too much to me.
My own foundational strictures,
I knew well, were stern and harsh,
yes, but they only extended to me.
I would never harm others. In
my motorcycle days, my friend
Neil, was often berating me for
speeding, or weaving in and out
between cars while in traffic, etc.,
and he'd say 'While you may be
skillfull at it, others aren't, and
they all end up following you.
Someone's going to get hurt.' I'd
agree, and of course, at the next
bar-stop we'd all again proceed
to get poundingly drunk, and
start the whole process again.
I figured, when things run out,
and people say there's no more,
it always ends up there IS more,
and nothing ever runs out.
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