11,877. RUDIMENTS pt. 734

RUDIMENTS, pt 734

(smudge pots)

Sometimes a person has an

implacable foe; other times

merely a foe. There's a true

difference there, not just a

similarity. The implacable 

foe is never going to be 

beaten. It wins, hands down.

It most often ends up being

one's own self! You never

know that  -  only until after

it's all too late, when it 

dawns on you....'You know

what? I did all that to myself!'

-

That's the small firestorm at 

the center of everything. It's

what gives us our dreams and

aspirations. In the mid 1990's

I had a car-guy friend. He was

wild-crazy about 1933 Plymouths

and finally got one to restore.

He didn't just 'restore' it  -  he

literally, first, dismantled it  -

wood slats and all (some of

the interior sections had wood,

in board-strip form, behind

panels and things), cleaned

or replaced, right to specs.,

every last little detail. 'Why a

'33 Plymouth?', I'd ask. And

he'd go on, rote and rhythm

of everything  -  what it meant

and why, stuff I'd never given

thought to  -  as if in some

long, old, lineage of cars'

progressions in design, form

and performance, this held

special place. You see, it was

his own, personal, vision, and

it drove him past most any

other obstacles. There, deep

in his driveway on Demarest

Avenue, through all sorts of

sweat and toil, he'd spend his

days and hours on that car.

It was fine to see, and baffling

too. Yet, I simply realized, it

was like that for everyone;

we each have one of those

special, unique, views and 

outlooks and drives that keep

us crazy-going. Nothing too

easily explainable to others,

and sometimes even unclear 

to us, as ourselves.

-

When I was a young kid, like

4, 5 years old, the only cars

my father ever had, back then,

were Plymouths. Late 1940's

ones, a quick succession of

maybe three that I recall. 1947,

maybe a '48, and then an early

1950 one. This was about 1954,

so they were a few years old,and

used when he got them. I can

remember each one very well;

the interiors, with that sort of

felt fabric for the seats, the

humps in the middle of the floor,

for the driveshaft beneath, and,

draped at the rear of the front

seats, that long, arc'd rope

hold, for the rear passengers.

Like a velvet rope in Hollywood,

or outside some fancy club.

There were others things too,

all very memorable. My father,

a sea-faring, sailor-dreamer

type to the end, used to buy

Plymouths. Strictly; and do 

you know why? Can you figure

what that driving force (no pun)

was for my father? He was

honest and loyal to Plymouths

because.....of the boat on their

hood. The hood ornament. Take

a look some day.

-

Many a time I tried staying

jovial, about everything; but

it was too difficult and I found

that wasn't the way to go  -  even

though I still have a clown-act

that I perform now and then

fairly well. Being stern and

miserable doesn't really get

you much.

-

In NYC when I'd go to that

jazz loft I'd written about,

there'd be all sorts of crazy

be-bop kinds of jazz people

milling. Even in the late 1960's

they were outliers and just

plain different. Jazz of that sort

had its own language, its way

of being smart, staying aloof,

the masterful hipness of the

very cool. It's nothing you can

'learn,' and if you do get caught

out trying to mimic it or pick

it up on the sly, you get called

out and smudged like snot on

a tablecloth. It's inherent, and

one has it or one doesn't. I've

written of this way earlier (I

guess that what early chapter

are for  -  sequencing and then

searching out, but, yeah, it's

all there), and it kept coming

back to me. Especially when I

got mixed up into that movie

thing I've just written of in the

last three chapters. It all came 

back to me like a kid's drawing:

when you're little and you draw 

eagles and birds in the sky with

big feet, larger than the chimneys

on the houses you also draw. 

None of it fits, but they're all

there together and you do 

believe it all. 

-

Back when I was a kid, they used

to have these things they called

smudge pots. They were at every

place where there was road work

or construction or digging. Over

these many years they've been 

replaced by battery lamps, lights

and light-signs, caution blinkers

and all that junk. But back in the

1950's they'd have these smudge

pots everywhere. They were small,

round black things, looking like

bombs or something, with little

chimney tops out of which an

oily, orange-red, open flame 

was always burning. I guess

they were filled with kerosene 

or some other oily, diesel-like 

fuel, and they burned slowly,

through a wick system or

something. They were all 

over the place, and, no, we 

never messed with them. That's

the difference between that world

and today's. If they had them today,

first-off some safety-freak would

have a go at them for open-flame,

fumes, toxic smoke, dangerous

obstacles  -  any of that panoply

of overly-dead caution that runs

things now  -  and, second and

more, they'd probably be used to

torture someone, or set cars

afire, and stolen or doused or

whatever. I used to love those

things, and the little twirly

finger of black smoke that rose

from them too. They were like

vigil lamps, like the Kennedy

eternal flame thing they put at

the President's grave. Probably

just a glorified and sanctified

smudge-pot anyway. (The

thing, not the President).

-

Writer's note to reader: Now it

is that I've introduced too many

concepts here, in this chapter. 

It wasn't meant to be that way.

I was going to write about 'Time'

as a concept, and that movie again,

the way time is created, for scenes

to overlap and for the spaces in

between the scenes. And about

my ride home that cold night and

how weirdly 'off' the whole episode

had thrown me. I was not in any

Time that I could sense. I had

just come out of a manufactured

movie time, which was all false

and made of scenes, in this case

scene-after-scene, over and over,

maddeningly. All to fit their made 

up and falsified construction of

time and sequence to fit a movie

pattern, and the spaces between it

when, in reality, a million other

things transpired, everywhere, but

to which the fake move-scene time

acceded NOT. There was, somehow,

no room for 'Reality' in their reality.

We were all supposed to buy into

the gimmick. And all the frozen

motorcycle way home, freezing my

junk on a faux-leather seat, I was

traveling INTO time, but a whole

other kind of time....and how this

all baffled me, and held me hostage

and made me unsure. Unsure enough

to...I didn't know what. Go fast,

find ice, slide and die? Crash into

the bridge abutment? Hard and fast?

Once? I was done. I was confused.

Cold and lonely and used.

But it was all good.

-

Anyway, I never got to half of what

I wanted to go on about, so, next

chapter, I'll start again about the 

smudge pots and what I remember

about my own reality from them.

So, stick around.

11,876. RUDIMENTS, pt. 733

RUDIMENTS, pt. 733

(maybe god only knows)

Faking out the beach scene

in Belmar wasn't that much

fun. Being freezing cold didn't

help but, at the same time, in

the first week of March it's

not much other than a cozy

nowhere, if you live there,

and not many do. At least

along that cold, blowy area of

bungalow beach front. (I go

back there now, and most all

of the old shore bungalows

are gone  -  a few coastal

storms, a few floods, new

people, complete re-builds.
Much of it has been replaced by
neat, in-a-row, beach homes.

The bars and crap-houses

still dot the roadway, Ocean

Ave. or whatever it's called,

and the streets with the low

numbers still run down. 7th,

6th, 5th, etc. Logical and

boring as anywhere else.

It's not like, or wasn't like,

being in sort of the same

boat in NYC. My mind

tried that connection. It

didn't work. As Gertrude

Stein had it about Oakland,

there's no 'there' there. The

whole idea of Summer sports

and Summer frolic  -  the

guts and games of girls and

boys on the beaches and at

the bars, never meant anything

to me at all. In fact, I couldn't

stand all that crap  -  noise,

sand, crummy food, banners,

bells, waves, the posturing

people and their piccolo

patterns. There never seemed

anything real about that life

at all  -  you could have your

keno games, Ski-Ball,

Sno-Cones and Frosties

and the rest. The whole

thing was a waste.

-

Much like along the bottom

of Manhattan, at what's called

the 'Battery'  -  oddly enough  - to
(speak anew of John and batteries)

people come to look, to stare,

out to sea; watching the works

of the harbor, etc. Well, they

used to. It's more difficult today

with the commercial development

of everything, new masses of

people, and the hordes now of

tourists and tourist amenities

everywhere, as well as tour

lines, boat tours, Statue of

Liberty stuff, and all the rest.

Most of that old Melville sort

of feel and solitariness is

gone now  -  masses and groups

all proclaim their hallelujahs
while they worship the dollar.

Trying the same thing in

Belmar, also, maybe, once

long before, could have been

a righteous experience too.

But the Jersey shore, for the

most of it, has long ago

succumbed to the plague

of nettlesome frolic. I don't

think anyone really these

days stares out and thinks.

I'm not sure they stare out.

I'm also not sure they think.

But what stuck in my craw

the most was the wide

misunderstanding and the

misrepresenting of the whole

scene itself. The shore area

was portrayed as a dark, fetid

area of crime, drugs, and unseen

dangers. I guess it all might very

well be true, but is that any reason

to portray the negatives and the

undesirable aspects, just to turn

some movie-coin for mostly

dim-witted studio investors?

Who otherwise mostly didn't

know what they were even

talking about in mixing up the

two : porno-biker-fantasy-babes,

drugs, low-life sluggos, and

creepy-crawly thugs on midnight

motorcycles. It was all a sham.

And in some awful aspect of it

I had become a part-time sham

master, voiding my waste into

what they offered  which was,

essentially, the promise of

ridicule, and free food.

-

'Badda-boom, badda-bing,'

as they used to say in the mob.

But there's no mob in Belmar.

Right? Ha. Ha. John had better

be wary of the things he touches.

If 'Sal' is watching and really

wants his batteries, anything

could happen. In this movie,

by the way, the Bikers were

portrayed as users, buyers, and

sellers of this new super drug

hallucinogen called 'chew'  -

dumbest name in the world;

but then no dumber than having

a film named Fathers and Sons,

and hoping people don't think

of Turgenev (don't worry, they

won't). Ivan Turgenev, in 1865,

wrote his own Fathers and Sons.

If this film was meant in any

way to resound with some echo 

of that, it too failed. The kids

portrayed in this movie would

chomp on this stuff and turn

immediately to idiot-zombies.

That's a pretty good summation,

in a quick instant, for the entire

society it was supposed to be

addressing itself. 

-

It was all too easy to take any

of this serious. It was too cold,

too cheap, too sleazy to be real.

It couldn't have had any sense.

The fortune-teller lady as presented

was an idiot, who couldn't tell the

moon from the spoon, nor the

cow that ran away with it. However

that is. Jeff Goldblum, supposedly

in the film an avid runner and

jogger, ran the boardwalk boards

with the gentle, toned step of a

female. There's one scene, later

on, by the Biker scene, where he's

punching some dweeby troublesome

creep, on the beach sand. He punches

as if his arm is disconnected from

his body. It's a visual nightmare.

The whole thing was. The female

co-lead, the one John had tried

jumping, in the trailer, looked

fatuous and already broken.

And God only knows what she

had to do, poor girl, to get the 

role, bad as it was. I hope God

knows anyway, because I don't.
-
The main point is that the entire
idea of having Bikers on the beach
was an add-on. Just a way to lend
some attractive low-life culture
to the film and maybe draw some
extra people in. I think it failed
miserably anyway. But, in any case, 
there was no justice, no meaning, no
need for the biker contingent to be
presented and then simply dropped, 
like some bad background noise, once
the movie's 'reconciliation' takes place, 
between father and son. It has nothing
to do with the dropped bikers in any
way, and could just as well have been 
set in a priest's home or a YMCA camp. 
As it is, I seem to recall the 'reconciliation' 
coming down to the reasoning that the 
father can now 'scramble' some eggs, and 
they can have their father-son breakfast 
together, while the rest of the world rots,
the bad-boy Bikers and their drugs still
on the loose. The miserable Biker-den still 
there and tolerated. Who owns it? Some 
slum landlord who cares nothing for 
the tenants? What's a Biker den anyway? 
Who  lives there? What goes on? Are there 
neighbors? No cops? I would think, true 
to 'Justice' and uplift, there'd have been a 
classier denouement and a better serve
to Justice if, in some Easy Rider sense,
the Bikers had been slain, or the house 
blown up, or the Justice of the day took 
place. Well, maybe it did  -  that justice 
being false, artificial, and do-nothing. 
But no real ends were served. It too was
all a sham. The same rotten world is
left in place. Hey, Jim Jarmusch, next 
time, don't call me. I'll call you.

11,875. I AM A POOR, WAYFARING STRANGER

I AM A POOR, 

WAYFARING STRANGER

(But that doesn't mean your life

is in danger. I have my strong-suits

too): I like driving fast in a stolen

car. Very fast in fact. So far, no

haphazard mishaps have happened

haphazardly to me, or not, either 

way, the clown pops up when you 

crank that handle. Like one of those 

kid toys with the Jack, in the box.

Pop goes the weasel. Devoid of

all props; the show must go on.

-

Aw, go on. Tell us what you really

mean to say. I fell asleep this morning, 

on the Staten Island Ferry.  Hey! They

could not wake me up, so they threw

me overboard instead. Full fathom

five, and those were pearls that

were. His. Eyes?

11,874. OATS AND THE GHOST OF HAMTRAMACK ACRES

OATS AND THE GHOST 

OF HAMTRAMACK ACRES

People sometimes get so proud, about

everything they've destroyed. I can't

figure the cost, nor the retribution

that should be paid. We now have a

million dazzling souls denying

whatever's been done. While the

holy dead still hang on trees and

the lands and the mountains are

but burned debris.

11,873. RUDIMENTS, pt. 732

RUDIMENTS, pt. 732

(I'm like that, you know)

So then, I began mentioning

how all this began. Frankly,

I can't precisely remember

except for some reason it fell

to me to answer the call  -

someone from the film pool

figured I'd be the guy to

round up some of the usual

suspects and bring them in.

A few problems: First, this

coincided with the first week

of March, when lots of these

'real' guys (and not) are in or

on their way to Daytona, FL.

Some of my best candidates,

thus, were gone  -  and the only

reason John (see pt. one),

was still around was pure,

blind luck. Usually, he was

Daytona-bound by then.

I wouldn't expect a film-crew

geek to know that, but, that's

one of the conflicts. Second

was -  the really gnarly, slice-

your-nose-off guys that they

were seeking for 'authenticity'

wouldn't have had anything

to do with this without a

promise of booze, drugs, or

babes in return. Bikers at that

level often had a motto that

went: 'Ass, grass, or gas; No

one rides for free.' Meaning,

let's say, girls had to pay for

their ride. I did manage to

get about 15 people. We met

in Flip's, an old bar (long

gone now) on the other

side of Iselin. About 4:30,

as I recall. 9 or so of us had

motorcycles, and the girls

rode in a car, someone's giant

old Pontiac or Monte Carlo.

One problem, already, was

that it was only about 18-20

degrees out. Yeah. Cold. Let

me add that, in the depths

of the next morning, when my

friend Rod (dead now) and I

finally got done, we had to

ride (slowly) home in what

was about 12 degrees. On a

straight, dark, and mostly

empty Garden State Parkway.

I was, we both were, comatose

and frozen. One of the quandaries

of cold weather riding is whether

to go really fast, but make it

shorter, yet colder, OR go

slower, to accommodate the

cold, (which does get everywhere),

but which also extends the trip

and the exposure time. It's

truly a Devil's bargain. We had

little choice but to drive slower

yet steady. At some point half

in, in any case, Rod changed

his mind  -  just deciding to

go fast, and left me behind. I

did get home, eventually, stiff

and frozen as a board. Kathy,

along with the girls in the car,

had gotten home long before,

and was soundly sleeping. She

says that when I arrived home,

the arctic blast of air I brought

in with me, awoke her and

chilled the entire room.

-

Each of us, at the end of the

night, received cash  -  something

like 25 bucks each  -  for our

appearance. Rod and I, having

stayed later, after the others left,

so as to be in a motorcycle

scene (they paid us an additional,

larger amount, for the use of the

motorcycles in the scene. It went

unused anyway, but the bikes got

more money than we did, and

underwent the same stupid take

after take BS too) got paid

more and stayed later. Having

motorcycles at work, riding,

in a movie scene, when it's

12 degrees out, made about

as little sense as would have

giving Roseanna Arquette

to John for 20 minutes in

a make-up trailer. (I said

make-up, not make-out).

Unless it was to be called,

'Ice Capade Idiots On Two

Wheels.'

-

When I do writing, which is

most all of the time, I find

myself making distinctions

between 'writing' and 'telling.'

The telling is easy, though

more of a pain, laborious; I

guess because it has to 'add

up' moreso than the 'writing'

does. There I can do most

anything and have a freedom.

Unfettered establishment of

my own facts. Neo-real. People

will go watch The Matrix, and

come away all energized and

happy, accepting a guy oddly

named 'Neo.' Try that with any

writing, and you're immediately

labeled this or that. Much of my

writing  - which is painful, and

hard for me sometimes  -  has

to do with 'listening.' Listening

for what's coming in. I catch most

of it, but a lot is missed. If I don't

grab it, as it's coming over,

I'm often then surprised, five

minutes later, that it's just gone.

-

The intriguing thing was, for me,

how I'd gotten mixed up in this.

I never thought I was a natural

for standing out as a ringleader,

nor as a person seen by others

as commanding enough to reel

people in to do 'biddings.' It's

always turned to disaster anyway,

mostly because I don't go along

with any programs, and my ideas

are so outlandish and other-worldly

that eventually they just (seem to)

drive others away. It was like

that in Metuchen too, with

Stanley Lease and Fred Keiser

somehow thinking that if I was

set up to run (sacrificially) for

Mayor, I'd have this following

of stooges behind me to do what

I said and, I guess, bring out the

votes. What a joke  -  you know

the story, and I've written of it

here. I lasted about 14 days,

before the whole political

establishment gave me the

old heave-ho. Just as well.

-

You know why? Because  -  as in

this movie thing  -  I brought in

the real world, the authentics,

the regular people, but it was

the actors and actresses who

walked through the scenes,

oblivious to the packed room

of 'extras' around them. They

walked without any awareness

of the 'people' around them,

just intent instead on their

lines and their pose. You can

see that in scene with the Bikers

in the house, posted with the

previous chapter. The muddling

festives  -  my people  -  in the

scene : slouched and stupid :

are merely backdrops for the

tepid walk-ins and walk-outs of

the role-players, who can actually

be seen acting through this, in

their badly mechanical fashions.

The entire film is a waste, and

it's all very visible. I think there's

a fair case to be made here for

the insipid nature of entertainment

reality. Were we stupid to go along

with all that? Yes, probably we were.

I'll stand by that, and end it here.

-

But, of course, jerk that I am,

I have to go on : why is it that

we've allowed the world to be

so structured? How is it that we

are satisfied with gibberish for

mental entertainment, a Starbucks

on most every corner, movie

phones and palaces to peddle the

stuff, and we grapple with none

of it  -  instead we hang out,

discussing  the sensitivity of

the character portrayals and the

finer processes of the filmic

qualities of dross? I'll leave

that all to you. BUT, maybe if

you need an authentic bunch

of ruffians to trash your house

and yard, I could probably

rustle up a few candidates.

I'm like that, you know.