RUDIMENTS, pt. 584
('somehow crossing over')
About 1974, my Geology teacher
at Elmira College resigned and
moved his family and himself to
Austin, Texas. That was a big
move, back then - Austin was
only then just starting its little
foray into becoming a 'hip' place,
in the same way as Toronto was
doing at about the same time.
For both places, it worked. They
each became geographic hot-spots
for their respective locations.
I do forget his name, I admit,
but I know his house and
remember his location real
well. (I have some of my
college transcripts here and
probably could look up his
name, were I first able to easily
locate the strongbox. Somewhere
here). He had a small, light-blue
colored sideways bungalow on
the hill-rise of the street that ran
into Woodlawn Cemetery, where
Mark Twain was buried. Which is
how I knew where he lived, having
seen him at 'home' on a few of our
numerous Woodlawn Cemetery
visits. The floodwaters never
affected him, being high-up as
he was and way out of reach of
the waters. As was the college,
way down below, although at
points there the waters did come
close. I've dreamt of that college
street (College Avenue, actually,
it was called), probably 50 times
in the years since, and they each
vividly yet differently reconstruct
for me all of what was going on,
symbolically, as dreams do. In
'reflecting' reality, a dream sort
of gets it all across but changes
the incidentals while bolstering
the essence of whatever that
particular instance is. In this
case, it places, right adjacent to
the roadway, most every time,
a glass-walled library in which
were 50 or so heads, at long
tables, doing library stuff (such
a library at that location never
existed and was not there) while
traffic went by and I crossed.
The fact that I 'crossed' was
always symbolic to me for I
was nowhere else seen, and, each
time, I awoke with the realization
that the 'crossing' was the salient
point I was meant to take from the
dream. Though I was 'there' and
in the mix, my presence always
remained just outside of any
central action, and I remained
a peripheral character to the scene.
To all of which was connected his
house, though it was a mile or two
off from the real site. That was yet
another 'crossing' in these dreams,
passing the imagined 'house' in order
to make the passage to the Twain
gravesite without anyone looking
up or seeing me. Though I always
ended up feeling that they did, in
the dreams everyone stayed to their
places and pre-occupied. It was a
little weird, plus that fact that it
recurred. [Note to writer : Do not,
DON'T, try and relate dream or
dream imagery, sequence, or time
aspects in your writing. It always
will fail, is boring, and never
comes across well].
-
One of his pet things was always
going on at length about geographic
phenomena, so of course the recent
Agnes storm and flood and all the
rest was like bonus field work in
real-time for him. He did go on. We
scaled walls and scraped mud, and
talked endlessly over what we found,
in the river mud, on over-turned
things, rocks, stones, boulders. We
scraped and paw the ground to
uncover silted objects that may
have been exposed, only because
of flood-currents and raging waters.
We found old and buried things and
talked about them, sediments and
layers, rocks with fossils. It was
maddening. At that point every class
with him started becoming like a
National Geographic Special. And
the other thing about him was, for
whatever reason, he was anti-coffee.
He had a coffee pot up front, always
going, and for free, and you could
have all you wanted, BUT it wasn't
coffee. His substitute - a constant -
was some crud called Postum, of
which too he sometimes went on
about as if he was their pitchman.
Instead of coffee beans and oil
and the caffeine, etc., that goes
with it, Postum was made from,
like oats or wheat or something.
It was pretty terrible and I really
disliked the stuff, even for free.
Bummer. I don't even know if
they still make that stuff, but,
take it from me, pass on it.
-
My point to a guy like him,
digger, mudslinger, hard-talker
about rocks and soil and grit, was
that if, in spite of all that, he
couldn't take it upon himself to
OD on some real coffee then he
was a wuss and good luck to
Austin, Texas for taking him in.
-
Everything in Elmira was soiled
and rotten for a long time. The
raging waters had cut a lot of
waterways and things, in its
fury, like shortcuts, and many
of these, after they all got dried
out and solidified, became paths.
It was pretty cool to sort of
having given Nature free rein
to barge in and rearrange things
for you and show you better
efficiencies between places. It
was like some mystical cosmic
hand had come down and made
some adjustments and new
arrangements of the old ways
of old Man. Oftentimes too, the
really large panes of storefront
glass that had broken just stayed
broken on these now-abandoned
and horrible hulks of old and
soaked buildings. Some of them
stood for years. One or two, in
fact, got paths right through
them. It was like going through
an old railroad trestle or tunnel,
all smelly and damp, cooler than
the outside air, and darker too.
There was very little crime, no
real graffiti, everyone was for a
long time in shock. It took the
wheels of commerce a long time
to get rolling again, and a lot
just remained dead. Cities die
in different ways; this one was
spectacularly unique.
-
Also funny, and this goes for the
whole time - I really don't
remember any cops in Elmira.
in itself, that's curious because
I'm usually very cop-conscious;
so perhaps I've just blocked it out.
But I remember nothing of the
police presence at road crossings
and intersections and blocked
off bridges and collapsed things.
There must have been, and for
a long time, but I remember none.
I can vividly place the old City Hall,
courthouse, chambers and all. (It
was a spectacular, Civil War vintage
castle-like complex). I (think) I
can recall the police headquarters,
but I'm not sure of that - I remember
the bail-places, and lawyers in a row,
so it must be correct to recollect.
In any case, right there is about
where the flood waters stopped.
The old grocery-mart there, Mohawk
Market, got trounced and ruined
on the one side of the street, but.
higher, other side beginning the
incline was spared : Arnot Art
Museum, the aforementioned
court house, etc. The huge,
granite post office got wrecked,
bus terminal, and some theaters,
but above all that it stayed okay.
BUT, the poor people lived at
Southside, the other side of the
river, the lowlands, to which
the three bridges had fallen,
with only one back as usable,
they were in deep trouble for
a long time. I fully expected
the plague to break out. Pretty
much, and for the longest time,
that area just stayed there as it
had died - rubble, destruction,
poor people, indigents new and
old, the American LaFrance
fire truck plant, as well as the
Kennedy Valve factory (fire
hydrants and connectors) - each
ruined and needing to be started
over. People with no jobs lost
their jobs anyway. It was horrible.
People stayed lethargic, and the
only real thing I remember from
this, people-wise, was how some
just started sleeping around. I
knew a married girl on the nice,
north end of town, a few blocks
from ours, who just took up with
this strangely mysterious and
marginal guy from the Southside.
No matter that she was married.
The both of them, her and her
husband, went after new mates,
and stayed married nonetheless.
It wasn't but a year or so later,
anyhow, that the southside guy
died. I'd read like where, in
desperate wartime, Paris and
liberation and WWII and all, it
was like that - all rules and
morals thrown aside, desperation
and panic step in, and human
relations become far more random,
with a lot of morals and values
just getting thrown asunder. I
figured it to be a coping mechanism,
and just let it be. They did get
back together again anyway.
