11,499. RUDIMENTS, pt. 579

RUDIMENTS, pt. 579

(getting to vermont)

One time in Vermont, I was all

the way up north. Bennington,

you see, is lower, southwest 

Vermont, and the drive north

up towards Burlington and 

the rest, begins differentiating 

itself because of its looming

neighbor, Canada. In fact,

at one of the northern gas 

stations, the attendant, a

young local, farm type of kid,

while passing the time with

me while the car gassed, 

began going on, for some

reason I forget, about people

from Canada always paying

in Canadian money and that

was the reason the change he

was handling, and handing

over to me, was Canadian

coins. It was all the same, he

said, and usable up there, even

the paper money, and no one

gave it a second thought and

whatever the denomination said

it was that was what everyone

took it for  -  meaning there was

no exchange rate mathematics or

any hesitancy in the commerce.

You could buy shoes or food or

whatever, in the same way all

along up there. He made it as

their little secret and, as well,

their small way of thumping

the finger to the rest of America.

I certainly thought that was

cool  -  a sort of rabid 1970's

revolt in the most quiet of ways.

I knew I was in the land of giants.

-

There was nothing I'd come across

like what I found in Vermont; it

being almost the classic opposite

of New York City. I'd been told,

then, that half-wit hippies, on 

their ways north, stop at the 

Woodstock area and never leave, 

but the  real ardent, back to the

land, and serious ones  -  the ones

you'd want to listen to  -  kept

on going, all the way up into the

upper reaches of Vermont and

New Hampshire, and never came

back nor were seldom heard from

again. I wasn't so sure about that

except as hyperbole, but even

then it was OK. I wasn't on any

mission myself, just wanting

to see what I'd see, in my usual

loose and sloppy way  -  no real

itinerary and no intention NOT

to stop anywhere I damned-well

pleased, to see and savor anything

I cared to. I'm still like that now,

and if a cow's face or some 

oddball corn-stalk, ruin, barn or

wreck of a car gets my eye, I

stop. Property lines and whether

or not I should be there, never

enter my mind. I either make

friends of some sort, or get 

chased away. I've traipsed

through weeds, sticker bushes,

fences, streams, side-roads, and

deep into infested dead-ends

just to get a photo. 

-

Ardent fans of protectionism

have never liked me. Or my

camera; which pretty much has

a take-no-prisoners view of the 

world. 'I go, though the way

be wild' would be a good motto,

yeah. (I think that's from Charles

Schultz, or Charlie Brown, or

something). When you get up 

there, Vermont way, up above

Rutland and all, a road is just

a road, and things get pretty 

wild. Strange. I'm not speaking

for today, because that's not

in my recent experience, but

in the early 1970's, etc., out in

the super-sticks of rural Vermont

all that was underway was the

crazy, speeding, bullet of the

outlandish rule-breaker(s) holed

up in some shack/farm set-up.

A raging commune, a totally

hippie farm-tribe, little kids

and dogs everywhere, kitchen

mamas clanging pots and pans,

gnarly guys trashing things

around, shouting at sheep 

and punching cows (I've seen

it, it happens, and a cow can

take a beating, though I never

knew why anyone would want 

to do that. I guess there really

always were 'cowpunchers').

A lot of those hippie guys 

anyway, you had to watch. They

were really pretty fey, weak

and lady-like in outlook and

approach. There were certainly

two sides to all that male-hippie

power-drive stuff. At one extreme

was the power-hungry dominant,

stringing up people and women,

for his own purposes  -  tribal,

sexual, and organizational. All
the controlling and over-weening
attention covered by wails of only
good intentions  (like politicians 
today); ask Peter Coyote, ask Hugh
Romney, Charles Manson, or, for
that matter, ask Jim Jones. If
you can, hint - you can't). That

was the almost cult-like side of

the movement. On the other side

were the hippie guys who were

so weak and mangled that they'd

cry over a dandelion or a butterfly,

while wearing flowered pants,

a suede vest over a bare chest,

and some (yep) flowers in their

hair. They just eventually got

pushed around and pushed aside 

too. There wasn't much hope

for them. In the middle 

somewhere were the majority, 

male and female, together,

sort of living in consort and

making it all work, from the 

middle out, leaving the fringe

extremes, at either end, to

work themselves out. There

was, about this time, or sometime

around this, record albums out

by two different groups, each

pretty much, if you see the

albums and album photos, etc.,

personifying and showing the

sort of fey-guy thing that was

becoming prevalent. One was

The Incredible String Band,'

and the other was three guys

who called themselves, as 

a band, 'America.' It seemed,

to me anyway, as if the

muscle was slowly draining

out of the American physique.
-
It was all something written in the
cards of destiny  -  the transformation
of a once-dreamed of paradise named
'America,' into the degenerated and
soiled forest of deceit and lies. In
Vermont they sometimes had it
in their heads to take the old
'forest primeval' routine and
make it work all over again  -  
even  though that old era was 
long gone and all the land was
already into its second cuttings
and farmland-uses. There wasn't
that much of anything really ancient 
left. New England itself, actually,
was a pretty terrible farmland; rock
and boulder-strewn lands needing
de-rocking  -  farmers would spend
huge amounts of off-time hours
pulling boulders and stones from
their arable lands so as to make
a clearer sailing for plows and
tractors. There'd be piles of rocks
all dumped in one place along
otherwise well-planted fields.  The
lines of planting, etc., would just go
around them  -  in addition, what 
other result could there have been
for the wonderful craft of rock-fence
building that took off like lightning
through the land  -  when God gives
you lemons, you make lemonade.
Most roadside homes were an
afterthought  -  you'd see them
hugging, or crammed into corners,
of the roads. Things developed in
haphazard fashions : leaning sheds,
barns on little hillocks, houses 
a'kimbo. Nature, in its eventual grace, 
covers all those things, all those
errors and squeeze-ins, with its
own form of forgiveness, growing
crazily up and down walls and
cuttings, trees taking root on
or between things, shrubbery, 
weeds and other growth in
abundance. A wise man doesn't
cut and crop and channel. That
person just lets Nature
rule its own day.

11,498. RUDIMENTS, pt. 578

RUDIMENTS, pt. 578

(starting out forceful)

I never started out to be

forceful, though I did

become that eventually.

It was all about 'Authority,'

which I hated. Still do  -  it

comes from the swankiest

little bunch of low-lives

I can think. Even now, right

here, in this town. We've

got a mis-matched Mayor

with a mix-up somehow

having been done between

his ass and his face and with

neither of them holding a

mind. Of course, I've a

notion to keep my distance,

but nothing ever comes from

separation  -  unless you're

a lawyer or a judge. I'm

neither. But I play one on

TV. Like we have here : a

councilman who keeps no

counsel. Betrays his fellow

townspeople at very turn,

lives off their tax dollars,

and lies. Whose tongue is

like iron and whose mind is

an empty void. I pity the poor

immigrant, who's no-mind has
been toyed. In James Joyce's

'Ulysses,'page 239, there is talk
of payoffs and 'palmoil' (the 
greasing of inspectors' hands for 
passage of faulty conditions,
in reference to the General 
Slocum disaster, in NYC. Here's
what it says about 'America' in
answer to 'why' that happens: 
"Palmoil! Without a doubt. Well
now look at that. And America
they say is the land of the free. I 
thought we were bad here." I
smiled at him. "America," I said
quietly, just like that. "What is it?
The sweepings of every country
including our own. Isn't that true?"
"That's a fact. Graft, my dear sir.
Well of course, where there's
money going there's always
someone to pick it up"
-

There were lots of times when

I just had to get away. That's the

Lord's work  -  taking to the

highway and proselytizing my

own Freedom in the face of

all the other straitjackets

I kept seeing. One cold and

iced over January day I jumped

in my Jaguar and simply took

off, told no one, was just gone.

Pointed north, even got stuck

in all the (usual, I guess) sorts

of northbound Rt. One traffic,

(I didn't ever do toll roads back

then : State Police). Early morning

rush hour stuff, drones, the people

kind, dragging off to work in their

Falcons and Comets and Thunderbirds

and Skylarks. Where do they come

up with those names, and why?

I wasn't at all sure how far my

Jaguar would take me -  usually

about every 80 miles it needed a

new investment of some kind;

every expensive malfunction

you can think of, I had, over

time. But this day, dreamlike,

it took me right up to where I

was headed. Bennington, Vermont.

Not one problem, in the whole

driving world. I used to love

Bennington, and the Bennington

Hotel. Much like the Troy Hotel

I made mention of way back, it was

one of those outrageous, rambling,

Victorian era home hotels, built

all very seriously, room after room.

levels, porches, sitting rooms, a

vast lobby, and a taproom  - like

it was 1882 and the stage and the

rail were due in soon. Each little

landing on the interior stairways

had an oil painting of their own;

so out of time, as if 'Modern Art'

had never existed  -  perfectly

crafted cows and farms and and

barn scenes, Vermont snow scenes,

half buried fences, layers of blown

and drifted snow, animals with

steaming nostrils. There were

farmhouses in quaint clearings,

old implements, farm-harvest

machines, ancient wagons and

plows, gingham ladies, weird-

looking kids. Staring at them

each, there was a whole

education to be had, some

communal idea to be taken

away and accepted from it all,

as if 'Vermont' was making

itself up as it rolled along; in

slow time, in muddy time, deep

and deliberate. All this time,

I thought, to what had I been

fleeing, the Past? Or some Future

I still had no inkling of  -  or were

they not both meaningless and

of no different import at all?

Ethan Allen and his Green

Mountain  Boys weren't going

to be of any but theoretical help.

but, still, here I was again in

their kingdom.

-

Unlike the local lying magistrates and

fire-king peons hereabouts, getting

away for me meant getting strange;

the opposite of getting pleasant. I

wanted nothing to do with pleasant

at all. I hated pleasant. It killed.

Pleasant lied and double-spoke,

couldn't look you in the face and

tell the truth even about a blade

of grass. From which it would

probably want money first. There

are such things as men-whores

too. Up there somehow in

Bennington, the world was more

pure  -  crossing that border along

from the highways of New York

State, it all changed. The sky

was, immediately, a different

hue of blue, a real, strong blue

that took no prisoners. You

entered that kingdom at your

own peril  -  it tolerated no one

of bad intention, it suffered no

fools. Right across from the hotel,

and down about half a block, was

 -  unbelievably  -  a W.T Grant's

that appeared to have stepped

right out of a 1946 guidebook to

sedate social-services. You could

eat like a madman for a buck-twenty-

five. Tuesday night was 'Turkey Night.'

Friday was, of course, 'Fish Night.'

I took advantage of that scrap heap.

The inside of the place, the store and

the dining art, which actually also

had its own entrance, from the street,

for those who didn't come for the 

shopping. High-class food-dump,

for sure, but those gluttonous 

Vermont farm-folk near around

Bennington seemed to like it.

They were always packing around 

to dine in their flannels. It being

mid-January, I don't recall any

local thermometers topping 12

degrees, above zero that is, in the

daylight, while to every night

12 below was an old friend.

There was a supposed fancy-ass

girls' college in Bennington, famed

already for its poets and essayists

and lesbian writers. but all I ever

saw were horny maidens peeking

around corners. It was fun though,

and the guy at the hotel, who did

eventually become a chum, had an

indentation in his forehead (yes,

I've covered this before too) the

size of maybe being beaned,

flat-on, by a speeding baseball

or maybe a golf ball, at speed. it

was just a huge depression in the

middle of his forehead. You could

probably have taken a ping-pong

ball and, with some pressure, 

wedged it in there to stay. I

guessed it was a birth defect. It

couldn't have been a forceps pull,

I figured, at birth, because there

wasn't a matching one in the back

of his head. He stayed around

there much of each day; suit and

tie, fairly formal, managing to

keep going an old slightly gone

to seed but still mighty impressive,

grand old hotel  -  in the old style:

mail calls, bell-service, attendants.

I do forget if there was an elevator;

I never used one, luxuriating 

instead in those grand stairs and 

landings. I was not used to what

'massive' was, to these interiors 

of these old places. Modern motels

and all, they try maybe to come

close to the pretense of long

hallways and numbered doors,

but it's all missed  -  especially 

with the usual puke-fest now 

of card-entry and touch-pad 

doorways instead of the old

wooden doors and doorknobs 

and keys. What a waste. It's

like comparing some old Senator

Calhoun to the usual shits we

get now in town halls and

governmental palaces. Aces

with their centers burned out,

by comparison'

-

You could sit around, in a leather

armchair, all night, like a king, 

next to a roaring lobby fireplace.

Reading or writing. Or just sitting

there to watch the comings and 

goings - of salesmen from St. Louis

or Akron, for their quarterly visits

to the hardware or cutlery merchants,

to take new orders for the upcoming

season, and report and turn in sales

factors and numbers. Everything was

tangible, in paper ledger books, with

pens and notes. Men talked back and

forth; the world was real. Nothing

like now, with Vaseline-lubed 

eunuchs pretending to stick it to

each other in towns of nothingness

and filth. The world is a fallen

place. Wars, and rumors of war.

11,497. I DON'T LIKE TO BE IN A HURRY

I DON'T LIKE TO 
BE IN  A HURRY

And, no, I don't. So much of

everything takes time. The

slow and languorous time.

Like honey, dripping from 

a wound in some quickly

drying lava.

11,496. WHEN THE POSTMAN BRINGS DIRT

WHEN THE POSTMAN 

BRINGS DIRT

I want to leave you for a dream,

vacate this world for the semblance

of a faraway, recalibrate my Fitbit for

another, different, stride. I'll take

any other option I can find : the 

trail through the Hallet Preserve

would do, but it's too small and

they often keep it locked.

-

There's no reflection from the sky

today and the mailman's running 

late. It always amazes me now, how

our mailman is lame. He's got a

twisted leg, short, or crooked, and

he has an awkward, hobbled gait

that's hard to watch. How he got

this route I'd never figure.

-

The roadway out of here, I guess

is a decent stretch. But it's often

crowded at the worst 0f times

  -  people pile on, cut lanes, start

screaming, and cutting the lights
for the turns they make. Small, 
loud cars, often blue, with 
Rahway drivers too. Just as 
lame, I guess, as Jake.

11,495. RUDIMENTS, pt. 577

RUDIMENTS, pt. 577

(eclipse crash on the moon : something landing) 

'Artfully disguised as a pillow,

my dog jumped off the couch.'

I'd always taken that as a great

opening line; always wanted to

use it, but never did. So, I just

did. But, no matter. I went to

Chinatown once  -  not a place

where you'd find many dogs,

back then anyway. I don't

know about now. Dog stuff

has changed, even though

Asians never seemed to like

canines. It mostly seems still

like that now. The big dog in

those years, to have, big, hippie

breed, lots of black guys had

them, and could often be seen

walking and strutting with their

well-combed and groomed, was

the Afghan Hound. For a full 5 or

6 years, it seemed, Afghans were

everywhere downtown  -  along

St. Marks and the surrounding

streets. For sure. Them, and also

Red Setters, or Irish Setters I

guess they were also called.

Both breeds seem now to have

long disappeared  -  it's funny

how that happens. Looking back,

now, it seems pretty obvious,

though I didn't see it then, in

my naivete, the Afghan Hound

was probably a gay-icon kind of

dog. That makes more sense,

except why they got dropped

in favor of today's Chelsea

version of little yappers and

Cavalier Prince Charles dogs

is still beyond me.

-

In Chinatown, the world was

so mixed up  -  a few different

cultures  -  that your own

personal anonymity was almost

assured. There'd be the usual

bewildered tourists from places

like wherever, with cameras and

gawking faces, wonder-struck

by strange noises and smells,

roasted ducks hanging from

their necks in the windows of

a seemingly endless array of

restaurants. The crummier they

each looked, the more authentic

each restaurant was. Bizarre

people and beggars, Buddhist

types with tonsured heads,,

monks with shaved heads and

little funny ponytails off the 

back of their skulls. One-legged 

beggars, robed guys playing 

one-stringed instruments, with 

baskets next to them for coins 

and dollars. There were also

more nasty-looking lurkers,

corner Tong gag guys, killers

probably too, mean, distant

stares, opium-heads drained

of all regular life. Chinese

signs everywhere, food prices

and other messages; music of

that same nature, slightly strange,

sometimes eerie. Barber shops 

and toy stores; and newsstands

with Chinese papers and 

magazines, their letters and

calligraphic writing writ large.

There were herb shops, weird

roots and things in jars, rows

of medicinal powders on long, 

high shelves with ancient old

men dispensing, diagnosing,

usually while someone else

watched  -  a daughter or a 

wife  - and who would then 

finalize whatever was the

transaction  -  ancient, old,

tried and true remedies. It

was all like nothing else, like

another place from the moon,

first-time, amazing stories, 

one after the other. There was

an arcade with fortune-telling

chickens inside; trained like a

Pavlovian dog  -  for a quarter

you'd get a little bit of feed, and

feeding it into the cage receptacle, 

the chicken would go into its

programmed routine, a shuffle 

dance, a peck or two, and a

reach for 'YOUR' very own

fortune-card, back through 

the window slit. Craziest 

stuff ever, and all through

this, madly at the rear of the

long room, would be Chinese

teens, intensely attendant at 

Ski-Ball lanes, pinball machines,

noisy virtual-driving' machines

projecting race-car noises and

facsimile videos of speeding

roads and byways.

-

Language wasn't exactly 

necessary. I'd spend a lot of

time at the Mayflower Cafe,

or Tea House, or whatever it

was called. Just The Mayflower.

It was a down-five-steps dive,

tiled and unkempt, one side

a coffee and pastry bar and the

other side a very intriguing

version of a low-grade Chinese

restaurant. I'd gotten to know,

by seeing, all the usual waiter

guys, even the ones who'd switch

in and out for other Mott Street

eateries. Nods and smiles, and

even sometimes, knowing what

I'd want, a there-it-is-service.

The place was cramped and 

dingy, it sometimes smelled, 

one extra door, right near where

you ate, was, unfortunately, the

small-closet-sized bathroom, 

with some stupid Batman sticker

on it that no one removed and

it stayed for years, until the

cleaning and bleaches had 

removed all the color from it.

This place was a big hang-out

for a certain breed, Allen Ginsberg

claimed it as his favorite. In no

way was it the Indiana-Tourist

kind of place. There was no

glamour, no time, and no real

style or pizazz here.

-

Just up the steps and to the

right, upon leaving, was always 

the same Chinese guy, begging 

and lurking. Never a word

spoken  -  he was hairy and 

lame too, and probably weighed

about 9 pounds. Well, okay then,

89 pounds. The guy needed help.

-

Years have passed since then.

I think I'm pretty much the same

as I'd ever been. I didn't change,

everything else has. If not, well

then time itself has. It's now the

present day,and I've made some

wizard-like central leap from one

dark galley to another. Very odd.

I still think on the very same

things. Heaven and Hell; the

real and the not-real, the deep

cosmos, time, light, change,

myself, and others. Nothing

ever makes sense and fewer

and fewer things fit  -  every

concocted story I was ever 

taught has turned out to be

pure, convenient, fiction. The

other day there was a lunar

eclipse of some sort, and during 

the time of that eclipse (this is

real; no fiction here) scientists,

because of the unique and

peculiar lighting of the moon

for the duration of that eclipse,

were able to see things they

otherwise don't get to see. It

was one in a billion, as a 

chance, but they witnessed

something landing on the 

moon. At first they were 

hedging and quite perplexed,

and then, quickly enough, the

'official' story was that an 

asteroid or something had

hit the moon  -  an occurrence

no one had expected, predicted,

or thought of. So, what were

the chances? Hush it up, please,

and come up with a story. Well,

can you figure? What were the

chances, perhaps, just maybe,

just perhaps, all these years

we'd been sold a story line and

just like that 'fortune-telling'

chicken, simply trained in their

ways to accept all their blather 

and act on command. Just think!

They say there's nothing out there,

dead, cold, bleak (and black?)

space, a cosmic constant, a

transit point with NO transit

going on? What sort of God,

I ask, or I guess I'll ask, would

do that? Now, I like surprises,
I guess, as much as the next guy,
but all we've ever been fed are
commanding stories about
an unfriendly cosmos and 
being alone in the universe,
and a dead moon always facing
us with just the one side and a
dead and dark other side
Here's your quarter; go

through your routine. How

embarrassing is it for them,

by a miracle of eclipsoid

happenstance, to get caught 

with their own proverbial 

chicken-pants down and have

a prime-time landing (of

something or some-its) on

the equivalent of prime-time

viewing for the whole world?
Weirdly, they even used the
word 'touchdown,' not 'crash.'
And these science types are
usually ultra-cautious people.
Here's another quarter....go

through your routine,

you Chinese chicken.