10,028. BROUGHT HOME TO CHESTER HAVEN

BROUGHT HOME 

TO CHESTER HAVEN

Well, that smarted. The line of lights 

went into the woods, just some bulbs 

on long insulated wire. Looked fairly 

primitive, yes, it did, but what is light

anyway  -  well, not light, rather 

illumination : What is illumination? 

You're going to try and tell me, I know.

There are fortunes made like this : those

flatbed trucks, for one, that have a light

on the rear, a huge beam which scans the

sky, to announce a grand opening or a sale

or any of those sorts of things. Craziest idea

in the world  -  as annoying as skyplanes

dragging advertising banners. Like they 

own the sky, these guys. Two hours of

this beam-lighting starts at like six hundred 

and fifty bucks. Everyone winds up paying

for it in the end  -  these stores don't give

anything away. Fifteen cents or so more,

added to each item; they get it back.

It's got nothing to do with light.

-

Here in Chester Haven, there's cheap neon;

signs that simply say 'Open' : liquor stores,

candy shops, adult books, one or two places

for a sandwich and coffee, lunch with some

bimbo waitress picking at her place for a three

dollar tip. All he other things are out on the

highway  -  just as if they all moved away.

The furniture shop, and the bicycle store.

With parking lots, like the supermarket

has. There's really nothing left of the 

simple town, except legends of glory 

and the past  when the local Little 

League was sponsored by the local

businesses  -  Kenton Brothers Farm 

and Yard, Lessinger's Home-Center,

Derick's Five & Dime. It's all gone

now, and there's nothing left of glory.

Two Arab guys pump the gas and rent

the bays out for repairs  -  Owen Churey's

kid runs it all  -  called 'Haven Auto Fix-It.'

The hot rod kids come by, except they're

not kids anymore, just old guys running

their Chevelles on memory. Owen mutters:

'Kids don't do that stuff, these days, anymore.'

I love the hesitation in his voice.

10,027. RUDIMENTS, pt. 95

RUDIMENTS, pt. 95

Making Cars

When I was in the seminary, it was all

a disassociative environment for me. I'll

try to be careful here, so bear with me,

but realize, and ask yourself, what sort

of medieval organization would take 12

year old boys, sequester them, enforce

things around them, while claiming as

well to be 'educating' them (an absolute

misnomer), and yet deny the fact of, at

the same time, 'propagandizing' them in

articles of religion, faith and morals. By

all the same-sex blundering standards.

I leave the rest for all of you to read

between the lines if you'd like. Suffice

it to say that these are the very years

when boys' hormones take the most

flight, (frankly and hopefully) in a

heterosexual format (my perspective).

I don't know what exactly went on

in the minds of all the men-adult

priests and brothers who lorded over

us, but from the more normal point

of boys, we took flight just dreaming

about it all. The parting of the Red Sea

could have been no worse, as I used to

put it. We had sundered our lives for this

stupid cause, separated everything  -  all

emotions and boy-lust on once side, and

all the good things and high moral standings

of supposed religious lore, on the other

side, and WE were expected to march

steadfastly right down that dry middle,

hoping all the while that this horrid sea

wouldn't close back in over us. It was a

terribly difficult time. My ordeal, personally,

was made easier by getting heavily into the

theater and drama department, plays and

recitations, and all those intricacies of

the presentation : theater lighting, sound,

scripts, music accompaniment, etc. I admit,

much of the theater work was oriented to

the gay side of things, as much as was our

theater advisor, department head, etc. Wise

and winsome priests and brothers. I don't

recall them ever having us do musicals,

but close enough.

-

When you're a young kid, dutiful about

things, and far from home, everything gets

sensitive. I was never homesick in any way,

but I'd fairly say that my years there, in the

main, pretty much destroyed my character,

ruined me for a later-life, and left me with

a tandem sense of bitterness and cynicism

about many prevailing realities. Have you

ever understood what being 13 and having

nothing good left already, means? I should

have been left unhindered, without the

corrosive and meddling hands of 'authority'

foisting their illusions on me, but I wasn't.

What did I get for my time? Nothing at all

except what I made, and all that I sincerely

and authentically 'made' of my own  -  thoughts

interests and ideas  -  was constantly in jeopardy.

Under threat of being taken from me, after first

being proclaimed wrong and out of line. In

the night hallways of those dark years, we'd

get enforced study halls, until 10pm, with

a priest or a brother patrolling the silent

halls while they paced and read their breviary.

A Breviary is a daily, forced read, by a priest,

of a bible-like book, Catholic doctrine,

meditative material, etc. Also called

'The Divine Office,' it's an enforced Catholic

read, by its clergy, to keep the mind engaged

within the rigors of the Catholic practice

of thought and doctrine. Keeps them in

practice, as it were, and up to snuff. A priest

needs to find time each day to fit this in.

Probably an hour or so, though I'm not sure  -

they'd walk with this little Bible-like book, it

seemed, for a long time. Some guys moved

their lips silently as they read. Others didn't.

Maybe they daydreamed instead. Pictures

of Lily. Maybe the guys whose lips moved

were just those kinds of lip-moving readers,

slow-learners. It was never spoken of, but

by those terms we were kept in place. Patrolled,

we'd do our Latin declensions and read our own

church history version of Charlemagne's days

and all that Holy Roman Empire stuff. Every

Catholic book, by the way, back then anyway,

had on its title page what was called an

'Imprimatur'  -  which was basically a 

formal and official 'approval,' by whichever 

church bigwig (their names and rank/offices

were always provided, along with a date)

did that particular book. It meant that there

was no sludge in there that would mess up

your personal faith, impart false information,

or otherwise discolor the perfect whiteness

of the room wherein your Soul lived. If it

didn't have an Imprimatur, you didn't

read it. So, at one level, we had our own

authority figures being forced to read their

own version of the likes of the church's

version of Chairman Mao's Little Red Book,

while at the same time all we were given to 

read was the tightly controlled, censored and

fully approved material shoveled our way.

That, my friends, was the fess-up of learning.

-

The one saving grace to all of this, the only,

was that it, at least, was an agricultural-format

endeavor. Farm-fields, crops of peppers, a large

barn, pigs and a slop-house and pig-yard, cows,

hay, straw, seed and corn-crop. A few meandering 

miles of dirt paths out, tracks of nice hard-pack

for running and long-distance track events.

Other kids did the sports angle, ball games, etc.

I was never much concerned with that, though

field events that included pole-vaulting were

pretty cool and I got intrigued by that. There

was always the glorious moment of fly-by, 

at the top of the arc, when the pole has bent

just right, you've caught your speed and 

stress-point perfectly, and you can sense that

pole just rolling you over for the big flip down! 

There was nothing else much like that for me.

It was the best. I stayed with the farm angle 

as much as I could. We had two German faculty

Brothers (it was a German Order) named

Brother Isadore, or Brother Sebastian, I kind

of forget which of those two was the farm guy,

but they were both curious creatures, not given

to much communication, maybe even living

in a vow of silence for all I knew. White 

bearded, short, squat guys, always working.

It was the right side of things for me  -  these

two outdoorsy guys were the tough seed I

wanted. Always working, hauling, hammering. 

None of that effete, walking-the-hallways

stuff for them. Seldom seen; I don't know 

where they ate or even where they pissed, but

they were never part of the regular crew  -  the

priests and brothers who sat around pretending

to be our intellectual instructors while really

knowing nothing at all very practical. These

were more to my liking  -  with their work 

and tractors.

-

Religion is good, but it's really got little to

do with the real world. The crux of the 

seminary was their idea of somehow mixing

the two and producing a half-baked implementer

of belief and doctrine, someone able to then go

out into that world and help heal and lift the

souls of others, guide them along and bring 

them the agreed-upon ideas of the afterlife.

Problem again was that this multi-leveled,

backwards facing, afterlife didn't exist at all

in the terms they peddled it. So the entire mix

was blemished. I realized that, after about a

month of this stuff, and just had to swallow

and accept it all for three more years or so, 

if I was going to make a go of it. Nothing

worked out in that manner, so it didn't much

matter, but the lesson had been branded onto

my fleshy mental-ass like a rancher burns a 

steer. There were moments, we had our conflicts,

I took the lash once or twice, got berated in

private meetings a few other times, and  -  

eventually, about 2 years or so down the 

line, in lieu of actually getting the heave-ho, 

of which I'd been forewarned, I left. One long,

dark, cold night, somewhere in 1966, I bid

adieu and got a ride out of that place  -  never

even saying good-bye to the cows and pigs

I'd grown so fond of.

10,026. RUDIMENTS, pt. 94

RUDIMENTS, pt. 94

Making Cars

I always thought the easiest thing to do

was to be glib, go along. I'd see others

do it, and it became something I was

very earnest about not doing. My point

was not to be different for the sake of

being different, just not to get dragged

into junk. Like the South Street seaport,

for instance. When the plans for that first

started getting bandied about, like any

other of those planned and prescribed

'historic' districts, I knew it would stink

worse than any fish would. Yet, the whole

world thought it was the greatest thing, or

would be. People were beside themselves

in proclaiming what a valuable, authentic

and worthy adjunct to NY's heritage it

would be. Bunk. That place was the worse,

noisiest and most grubby form of a sea-tale,

Disneyfied. The ones who liked it the most

and who proclaimed it most authentic and

real and history-worthy, I found, were the

ones who knew the least about it, and about

what they were talking. They were shilling,

they were boosterizing for commercial

purposes. An entire array of taverns and

even chain-named bars popped up, filled

with nothing but revelers and the too-drunk

to know the difference. Landlubbers from

other places, sea-scamps worth nothing

at all. Soon cars and buses. Arrays of

hamburgers, Swatch Watches, jewelry

and higher-end clothing dumps. It was,

in about a week, borderline hideous. I'll

maybe here try to walk you along some

of this, but at the same time I was totally

gladdened when it was all put to rest anyway

by Hurricane Irene, whenever that was.

I was, frankly, never more glad to see

anything flooded out and blown away.

-

I hate fake history, and yet here are thousands

a day who love it. I've seen them, in their

faraway clothings, and funny shorts and

walking-clothes deals, indecorously trodding

their away along as they peer at this and that

which the little signs direct them too : the

categories of their mind take no cover as

they are exposed, (so it says) to the sailors'

bar where betting was done on the dogfights

in the basement, or the four-story house adjacent

to it which was once the busiest and most rich

of the waterfront whorehouses. Ooh they gasp.

'Here we are, Helen; by George ain't this fun!'

And then they'll have an authentic $28.95 lunch

or two oysters and three clams, and pound a few

drinks with it, to get paddy-whacked some more

by vap-rous history.

-

Once there was even a true Fish Market here,

the famed Fulton Fish Market, yes, but once the

South Street seaport clowns got rolling, after a

while they determined that the odoriferous, and

in working order, fish market was just a bit too

authentic. It was shut down and the fish business

moved away. I don't know how these people

think. Those market guys were tough; I'd be

there sometimes  -  watching them, literally

throw whole fishes to each other, right from

the catch, off the boat in at the pier. They'd

sling the fish to each other like it was no

task at all, maybe 15 or 20 feet apart, as

they were, from each other. Scales, hoses,

wash-downs, ice, hooks and cleavers. Burlap

sacks, fish pieces everywhere, gutting and

scaling, pounded, and all this done with

cigars and cigarettes everywhere, aprons

splattered with fish stuff, and blood. No one

talked, inasmuch as everyone yelled. There

were these little worker-bars, fish-soup tables,

windows looking out to sea and harbor, or

if not windows then a half-opened wall that

faced out. Between-shift guys, or breaks and

lunches, (not so much lunches, since this

was all done at the overnight, but I mean

'work-lunch,' by time periods), managers and

bosses with their paperwork, etc. They'd be

sitting around, in the paneled places  -  you

just sensed that everything was old, tilted, had

been used and over-used for years. There wasn't

a teat's worth of glamor to this entire operation.

That's what made it all so cool and so perfect,

but those idiots would never know that. The

seaport people moved in, and took everything

away. The muck and filth of chandler's shops

and rope and twine sellers, the implements of

the trades, hooks, knives, baskets, balings,

all of that was just swept away. Someone was

hired to do a few wall-sized murals of old

ship-days scenes, except those paintings

themselves, portraying the chosen scenes,

really got nothing across at all  -  the blues

were too blue, the yellows too yellow.

It was all obfuscation, a facsimile rendering

of an already awfully artificially-recalled

scene, like from the history book of a

rag-picker or a madman, sedated, and

re-told slowly so as to be cleansed and

filtered before the re-telling. But people

loved it all, they swarmed. Fancy telescope

shops, pretend sea-salts telling about exploits,

astrolabes for 2,000 dollars, chrome and

wood pedestals with telescopes on them.

Fancy globes, and sea-maps. It was crazy.

It was faker then being good.

-

If a man were to disappear, take anther name,

say, and come back, or be apprehended in

the body of another, I used to think, would

he still be he. Or her, her (OK, OK. Jeez!).

Saying then, if our brain were placed in

another body, wouldn't that body with our

brain  -  no matter how it looked  - still be

us as long as it carried our memories and

thought processes? That' what I used to

think about long at these swanks who'd

taken over and walked the planks of their

mental shipboards with all their fakery and

pretense. No one ever really wants the past,

no matter how loudly they seek and proclaim

it. Drinking at Fraunce's Tavern, even with

your hand up under some sea-wench's skirt,

is all an artificial gruel no matter how it's

 presented. Reason being? Because people

are afraid of themselves; nothing more clear

or simple than that. So they just go along.

By the way, none of this is new stuff, and

that makes it more interesting. A long time

back, in his 'Essay Concerning Human 

Understanding,' John Locke wrote : "In

this alone consists personal identity, i.e, the

sameness of a rational being; and as far

as this consciousness can be extended 

backwards to any past action or thought,

so far reaches the identity of that person."

So, even going it alone, it is, I'd guess

true that 'You are what you remember.'

10,025. COMES WITH A SET OF TOOLS

COMES WITH A SET OF TOOLS

I was off the ranch today, roaming.

The salad bar where I rest my shoes, 

they wouldn't let me in at noon. They

just pointed, and said, 'Go away,

pardner, go away. You're giving

me heartburn today.' It was sort

of expected but still a surprise.

-

Is that a contradiction? I couldn't

tell. A guy came running up the

streetside today, yelling out, 'Tom

Petty is dead!' I tripped him, so he'd

stay there and let me talk. I said:

'Did you say dead? or Dad?' One

of those 'Floriday' accents, you see.

So, he screamed, 'Dea-d!'

-

I nodded, and got in his face. 'What 

did he ever do? He stole the E-flat 

sequence from 'Wooly Booly', you

know, to make 'I Won't Back Down.'

Never paid a penny, but he sued

everyone else for stealing his junk.'

-

This I said, 'Good riddance to bad

rubbish, get a grip, man,' and  the
guy hauled off and walloped 
me one but good.

10,024. THE PAST TENSE OF WATER

THE PAST TENSE 

OF WATER

A new soldier has no hands : it's always

the same : follow orders, do nothing. Unless

you're told, either way. Enact. I am holding

a notebook of my own devise. The pages

tun backwards and take me to time. The

land I came from is still a mystery to me : 

the skies were green ammonia, vapor until

something was formed; we animated thought,

but seldom walked away. Our sun was a

crystal light, ongoing, that changed places

constantly with everything else. By glint

of this, there were no 'definite' objects,

like a slow world has. There, all things

were on the move, and constant. Vibration

and frequency and energy. Together as one.

We had no Eden, and we had no God,

because there was no need for one. If, say,

I spoke to you, it was because a thought had

formed a world that we then had to process

between us. An entity we shared. A million 

worlds a moment, constantly underway.

10,023. RUDIMENTS, pt. 93

RUDIMENTS, pt. 93

Making Cars

It always became difficult, at some

point, to get across what I was saying

or thinking. I'll try to make that a bit

clearer (there must be a word or a

concept, for this : exemplifying the

very problem one is trying to explain.

In this case, 'getting something across,'

being both the problem and the attempt).

There were a few years in the 1980's

where I was giving readings. It's pretty

easy, doesn't really mean anything, and

there are a thousand libraries and civic

writing and poetry groups just dying for

'guests' to liven up their paltry sessions.

Reading aloud is a bit of a gimmick. The

emotive flamboyance begins to take

precedence and kill the language. I must

prefer my own stuff read, in singular

silence, by a reader. Forget the show.

I did it a lot, and did it good too; did

my own little publicity, flyers, postal

cards, and chapbook, journals, and

small publications. Being in the printing

business helped a lot. But then I just

gave it up. After all that effort, lists

of people's names and addresses, etc.,

I realized that  -  outside of the effort

and the writing involved (which I'd be

doing anyway) the working idea behind

all this tended too much to resemble

'neediness.' I wasn't. I didn't seek, nor

want, anyone's approval; people were

always coming up saying this or that

was great or effective or came across

so well. Memorable. Can you do that

one again? The feeling was good, but

it was also unwanted. I sought no one's

kinship. And so many wanted to be kin.

I had never had that before, the feeling

and the result of the effort   -   there's

something about it all that's off-putting.

Like free-fall. Back in New York, 15

or so years before that, I'd never even

have given a thought to myself, doing

that, being in that situation. Everything

was solitary and kept to myself. Which

is just the way I liked it  -  the human

situation always somehow draws others

in to it, for completion or for satisfaction,

I never knew. But I was that keen on it.

-

Which is where I got knee deep into that

Ericsson observatory thing. Science is all

organized and programmed now, certainly

the 'madness' is gone from it, if there ever

was a 'mad scientist' aspect. But this person

caught my attention, right off  -  city-centric,

inventor of metal-boats, Civil-War thinking,

scanning the skies from a weird home-built

observatory, and living there like that with a

few servants. It had to be a perfect solitude,

for this guy  -  the last two years of his life,

never even exiting his house. This here was

solitary science -  outside of program, like

setting the world on fire and calling it the

Heavens! I couldn't get past that. Like I

said, often enough on big-moon nights I'd

go down there, just to look up and see it

all from that vantage  - swirling night sky

like a vision, the black river rolling by

reflected and distorted lights and ships.

Trucks and cars, dwindling but still

battling it out for the day's preponderance.

No winners on the Earth; just in the Heavens.

-

I'd somehow know where I was, but not

know too. The concept that gripped me (I

threw it in before) was 'free fall.' I'd look

up at that fat moon and that was all I could

think of  -  free-fall  -   and it somehow just 

as well explained everything for me. The

entire cosmos, the skies, the Heavens, the

worlds, were all in free fall; not a fixed

firmament at all  -  or, rather, if fixed that

all together as one experiencing free-fall

through the deep dark abysses of space.

Could this be? Space expanding then, 

outward, but only as the 'need' for it occurred,

by that very free fall of space, concept, and

object through it? What sort of element is

all this? What formless concept was our

experience? As one? Or all together, and

separate? The moon, the very moon I

supposedly saw before me, I realized as

I concluded, was in its own free-fall, yes,

but attached by gravity to that same free-fall

of the Earth, which gravity was constantly

attempting to pull it into itself. Which

then accounted for the phases of the moon

and its rotation in a circular orbit 'around'

this earth, which was, in consort with all

else involved too in its own falling   - the

only thing it really ever did was keep

moving from the moon, while attracting

it, and causes that same 'crazed' moon, to

wing around it, in a constant and rotational

order. Objects in constant, twirling, fall, pulling

to each other but never reaching each other

because the falling motion between them, 

and of them, kept each from ever getting 

to that sought-after point they were seeking 

and would need for the collision to take place.

Movable targeted objects, on the prowl,

but eluding completion. THAT was the

dynamics of motion and the dynamics of

Reality and Change. That too was what

had brought me to the city, and lost me

within it. The greatest thing in the world

might be not even of the world  - a constant,

circular attraction of all things for each

other, holding the world, and our own

consciousness as we know it, together.

-

Yes, yes, and then things would settle

down again, and I'd be still, and silent,

and solitary once again. Until the next

time, until the next question arose, and

it always, soon did. Is a Man but a man, 

or the memory of being that man?

10,022. THE LONGREFEUR

THE LONGREFEUR

The land I live in is made of strength and

cohesion. Yet it cannot be seen, not sighted.

There is a silent pause, like in those hilly

roads up here in these mountains. One thing

falls, and all else follows. Let me walk you

along Xenia Road : cabins and small homes,

and a long, rambling way.

-

The man with the carbine is called

Uncle Mike. He's been here since 1943.

Right where he was born, that's where he

stayed. His only privilege left is in these 

woods, and everyone lets him be because

he holds all the stories. Do you see that

black Buick, lumping in the yard there?

That was once his father's car, and in it

he ran cash between two valleys.

-

Hard-earned cash, not dirty money. I'm

not meaning that. He logged and lumbered,

when he had to, and other times he sawed

and built. Back then, down this end of the

road, there wasn't much here  -  some rich

Jewish guys from New York City, when these 

parts still held the overflow Catskill's crowd:

all those campers and vacationers, when

something akin to Grossinger's was every

seventh mile, with a small temple and a rabbi 

too. As it all began to wither, all those rock-roll

hippies blew in, turning colors just like trees.

-

Everything passed, like everything does :

all those playboys, hippies, and magic

creatures are gone. And all the resorts

are too. That only leaves me, and this

Uncle Mike. I get by, and live all-right.

But the land still keeps it's strength

and it's cohesion too. I walk on

proud, with my head held high.