RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,303
(patron saint of nothing, pt. FIVE)
For the moment, I do admit, I
was struck dumb. I figured, yes,
maybe there was something
strange about each and every
person - harboring their own
conceits and predilections like
this. The local postal clerk, the
cab driver, the parish priest, who
knows. Anything like this can
begin seeping out from anywhere.
I was half-alarmed and concerned,
while the other half was just in
a state of shocked interest. That
little reading he so gloated over
was the absolute last thing I would
have ever expected. Swift as an
otter, he didn't even give me a
chance to start maneuvering out.
-
'I can see you're shocked, or maybe
just surprised, by what I just read.
Don't be. I ask you to look at it all
from the other side. Get rid of your
self-presumptions. It's all nothing
but words. That's what most of this
life is anyway.' He was sitting back,
looking serious now, and thoughtful,
cresting one of the dogs with a rub
around the ears with his hand. Quite
comforting, the scene? I guess. What
struck me the most was my thought,
'Is the hillbilly guy gone? Am I now
face to face with a frontier philosopher,
a wise man, of some more bizarre
nature than I'd even imagined?' The
slight hillbilly talk was gone, but
I expected it to surface and break
out at any moment too. 'Words is
what we go by,' he said. 'They're all
we've got, really, because they are
behind all of our logic and conclusions.
The whole entire word we construct
is constructed around words, our only
real ways of communicating. Did you
ever think what the first guy called
'Fire' meant to say. Was it 'Fire' he
was after? Where'd that come from,
in whatever grunt or guttural language
he maybe used. And however long ago
that might have been - yet we still
use the same concept, and, in our
terms, we all call it fire. But we all
know what's meant. Science can break
fire down, tell its constituent units,
explain the atoms and the velocities
and movement away, call things by
all the scientific names and processes,
but it's still fire, but no matter what
crap Science gives you about it, it still
burns your hand, destroys places and
cities, heats, warms, spreads and
transforms things. I throw a log here
onto the fire, and in my little way I
too am like a God - changing matter.
Flames, a solid into a gas, a plume, a
smoke. My log is eventually transformed
into another state, and ends up as ash,
cinder, something we throw off. How's
that go? Maybe that's the root of all
life, the most primitive level of things?
Change and alteration. We die, and we
too transform, become something else.
In this life we're presented with all the
most elemental things, yet we shy away.
Sex ain't nothing, fella, but another
story - a flash of fury, a grunt, a primal
push back towards what we really are
here for. To transform things. It ain't
nothing to shrink from'
-
Words like that, I thought to myself,
could destroy a spaceship. Imaging
being on your way to Mars or the
Moon, and stuck in a capsule with
a person like this. That's what I was
feeling like. This guy had no real
identifying markers, and I was
unable to tell where we was now
coming from. He used the most
natural of terms, but they were all
somehow too schooled; they weren't
just the lines and statements of some
woodsman goon. They seemed to be
coming from somewhere else, some
other, more stable and solid, state
of being. Right next I expected
him to bring out a smoking-gown
and a pipe filled with tobacco, and
a globe and a pointer. Something
was surely up. And it felt amiss.
I guessed it was true, how you
really could never tell about
anyone until you got to know
and hear them a little. It was like
a poker player or something - how
they say they all have a tell, a
quirk you can see about them that
gives their hand away - the eyebrow
that rises, the quick cough, the cigar,
or the snicker, Stuff to watch.
-
Sometimes I get tired of playing
the politics of people - like now.
I didn't really want to delve into
this guy's character, even though it
kept coming out and running at me.
I wasn't really that interested, and the
scope of it all had become, already,
wearisome. Was he 'volunteering'
things just to gauge my reactions?
Maybe he was intent on reading me
out - to make the inner judgement
I was already avoiding. Heck, I
wanted the hillbilly back. It was
far more comforting than was this
jack-stove philosopher before me.
Right then I decided, if this guy
needed a name, that'd be what I
called him, to myself: Jack Stove.
-
Whatever angle people come at you
from, I always figured you needed
to be careful from where they were
coming - always an intention unseen,
the sort of thing which could smite
you or cause later trouble. So I stayed
wary here too. His clothes were OK,
the sorts of work rags that country
people seem to wear, and stay in.
That was another thing I learned here
early on, and for ladies too - there
was little of that civilized and suburban
stuff about worrying how you looked
and always changing your day-to-day
clothes. Most of the people I ever see,
after a while you get to know them by
their clothes - the same five or six
things, maybe, that keep coming out.
Worn over and over, and sometimes
for days in a row too. I know it goes
that way for me and any of my local
work-a-billy friends. Shirts get tears
in 'em from snagging things, walking
with wood wears out the same kind
of places on most everyone's cloth,
guys get to wearing weird suspenders,
a few shirts over shirts get to be used
for the changeable warmth needed.
But, no matter, it was mostly the same
clothes you'd see day after day. It was
all good, and easy. That's what he too
looked as - flannel, old jeans for pants,
two old and dangerous-enough looking
workboots. I liked all that stuff fine and
dandy. Just getting over to the other side
of that bridge there, at the river, that brings
you to the little village of Narrowsburg,
not much of anything 'cept a bit of both
pretension and attitude. (Funny word,
that - 'pre-tension' - like something for
sure was just gonna' go wrong). Over there
it all changes, and quick - the arty types,
the New York City revelers, the weekenders,
the gay cotillion set, they all swarm the
place as if it was Chelsea sometimes. An
entire and different (dispersible and
disposable too) crowd with all their
foibles and certain 'ways.' For sure I
figured they were part of what this guy
was pointing at - all their smug and
wrong attitudes. He'd have a field day.
-
I could tell this was going somewhere,
and any future visits would proof
nothing if not interesting as all get
out. Maybe I was with a wizard, this
guy; a wizard named Jack Stove?
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