RUDIMENTS, pt. 760
(justice and cause and crazy violence too)
There never was any sort of
bolt of lightning or anything
like that - unless maybe you
count getting hit by a train.
That can do it. In any case,
most of my conscious life
has been just a steady off-kilter.
I'm often thinking I'm all set
to go with something, and
then it's gone and I need to
start all over. My mind holds
lots, but lots is fleeting too.
Numerous times I've been
to Philadelphia, when I
wander around to this
statue they have of Benjamin
Franklin; he's got a kite
going, on a string (it's all
metal sculpture suggestion),
wearing his funny breeches
and those colonial shoes and
even some sort of hat, I think,
with his funny hair. The place
where the statue is, now just
a tiny park in the middle of
rows of row-houses, typical
Philadelphia, quaint and real
nice, was once the outer rim
of countryside between the
Schuylkill River and the city
itself - now it's all been
absorbed in as one. But this
they've left, and memorialized,
so that, of course, each time
I come across it my mind
starts reeling and soaring in
those different places we get
between the worlds we live
and those we don't. Americans
tend to forget everything, just
thrashing what was in the past,
beating it up so it can then
fit their present purposes, and
then trashing it too. Thrashing
to trashing in one fell swoop.
Not for nothing did Gore Vidal
call this the 'United States
of Amnesia.'
-
It was always strange for me to
walk between two worlds like
that, and I was always getting
lost. Philadelphia, New York
City, Elmira, Columbia Cross
Roads; every pattern of my life
was always putting me on roads
that led out, away from it, away
from the present, and even away
from the future. Why is that? I
recognized it all, but, to others,
I could hardly even speak of what
was going on. My 'reality' had
been transformed really, and more
consisted of all that old stuff. No
one computes that; to them it was
foreign land, and I was some jerk
from Oz. 'In forgetting lies the
liquefaction of time.' I never
forgot a thing, because it was all
still present. 'Bad remembering
causes time to clot; can be an
error of content (we remember,
but for wrong reasons). Time is,
or ought to be, fluid, and the be
fluent in time, we must let a
lot of life drop away. Every
act of memory is also an act
of forgetting.' There you have
my dilemma. But I managed.
-
Regular people forgot everything;
thought nothing of the loss, and
simply consigned the past to the
past and screw that. (To consign
something to oblivion is not to be
oblivious about it). How's that
for being lost in the stars - here's
Benjamin Franklin and all his
story - (He's buried, at the
other end of Philadelphia, in a
large, corner grave at Christchurch,
and, for whatever it's worth and
for whatever useless people now
remember or make of it, the wide,
flat, lettered grave stone is littered,
always with pennies, dimes and
quarters like a manna from some
coin-Heaven. Is that, I wondered,
remembering, or forgetting? E.M.
Forster is quoted as having said,
'To forget its Creator is one of
the functions of a Creation.'
-
So, in the same way as I range
the strange ridge of early America
and think and walk with an imagined
Ben Franklin present and at my
side, I did, as well, in Elmira, get
lost and transformed everywhere
by a deep addiction to the remnants
of the Civil War. No matter how
northern a town it may have been
(and it was far more 'northern' in
its loyalty to the Union cause than
was Philadelphia, or even New York
City), Elmira was quite connected
to that war. By necessity - there
was a constant traffic by rail and
wagon and walking, of bedraggled,
injured, lame, or sick Confederate
prisoners, thrown as they were into
their barrels of incarceration atop
the sometimes cold and bitterly
frozen highlands of Elmira. The
icy river ran, not so far away too.
All these men died, suffered, cried
or withstood this all, for years.
And for those that died, the
descendant burial, with but the
most meager rights, was just
downhill, along the flats, of the
lower lands of town. In all of
that, yet unspoken, there was
justice and cause and crazy
violence too. In the middle of
town as well - right adjacent to
what was a large Sears parking lot
(which by the mid seventies, and
after the flood, was lucky to even
see 12 cars) was another Civil War
graveyard. This was a much more
traditional one, with the local boys
and their local regiments and
squads and all that - numbers and
names listed, places of origin, battles
fought, and where each individual
was killed - name of battle, location
date. Lots of tall obelisks, carved
wreaths and broken rifles and
renderings of hats and horns and
all that. It was one of the saddest
places I'd ever been - in that it had
really lost all context. In a place
like Elmira, without any texture
by then. Sort of abandoned and lost,
it all just sat there; un-kept mostly,
grasses growing, small breezes
blowing. That sort of death is
a real thing, and in a place like
that, it lingers, stays around, and
haunts those who remain. Even if
they are no longer conscious of any
of it. I'd look around and gag.
Sears. McDonald's. The P.C.
Market. (With my young son,
we always called it PC Margaret;
and got our groceries there).
-
I myself often felt like a bad
astronaut - out in deep space, just
floating around, untethered, no
longer with any real connection to
the mother ship, or to home. To
Elmira and its denizens of old,
THAT was the local war, and
the only one that counted.
town as well - right adjacent to
what was a large Sears parking lot
(which by the mid seventies, and
after the flood, was lucky to even
see 12 cars) was another Civil War
graveyard. This was a much more
traditional one, with the local boys
and their local regiments and
squads and all that - numbers and
names listed, places of origin, battles
fought, and where each individual
was killed - name of battle, location
date. Lots of tall obelisks, carved
wreaths and broken rifles and
renderings of hats and horns and
all that. It was one of the saddest
places I'd ever been - in that it had
really lost all context. In a place
like Elmira, without any texture
by then. Sort of abandoned and lost,
it all just sat there; un-kept mostly,
grasses growing, small breezes
blowing. That sort of death is
a real thing, and in a place like
that, it lingers, stays around, and
haunts those who remain. Even if
they are no longer conscious of any
of it. I'd look around and gag.
Sears. McDonald's. The P.C.
Market. (With my young son,
we always called it PC Margaret;
and got our groceries there).
-
I myself often felt like a bad
astronaut - out in deep space, just
floating around, untethered, no
longer with any real connection to
the mother ship, or to home. To
Elmira and its denizens of old,
THAT was the local war, and
the only one that counted.
