MY SURREPTITIOUS VALPARAISO
1. WALKED A HUNDRED ANDES MOUNTAINS:
(Peruvian Fantasy, Chilean Truth : year 1161)I have lived a miserable age - have endured something somehow beyond endurance too - walked a hundred Andes Mountains and noticed birds and vultures hummingbirds and flies and every living thing made better sense to me than me or anyone else for that matter and we put the lights on with flames in little tents and we stayed up nights on rigid stone-topped hills where the only company were the local native girls who had swabs of menstrual blood in their hair as ritual and hooped rings in their noses and ears - but no matter for that - and we were their way out of something as much as they were ours : storybooks by the gallon have been written of this stuff and someone's had to read it all whether to children as make believe or to new age gurus as gospel truth - for we flew literally past the ages and through all time we saw spirits in smoke rings and the far sides of our minds we communed with the Heavens and saw Gods and Goddesses too - everything worth to mention and hundreds more and at dawn we worshipped the rising sun the Sun God of All Manco Capac the Osiris of Ever the basis for all religions world-over the primitive side of Mankind's story the great Unknown the great Connector the HE who makes all things real and with all eyes past the East we found all the new directions in places no one else had ever heard : Seriaside Opturu and Megoyna : the spinners were the operators and all the hands were on the walls and the flute players came down from the nearby hills shouting some awful name and playing deathly games - rocks round as balls shot hard into people's foreheads as we watched as they died in rivers and pools of blood - this vicious sport for pygmies the Amazon deathlust for living through death the sanctioned voices of unknown Gods ranting about things without foundation or reality - just beyond the pale of vision sense or sight : I turned to King Minah who was seated beside me and said quite simply "Great Sir take me now from this place - for I am both finished and done" and he nodded apiece and had me carted away in a wagon of lead and gold - airport-bound I was left on the ground and flown back (before I knew) to Cherokee Place and some East River Drive where I stayed for a week drying out coming back to my senses and cleansing my system of all I'd imbibed : but wonders such as this become memories forever and I'd been designated to speak again.
2. IT WAS A PETER TOLENDINO MOMENT (I don't wish to say any more):
Said with certainty - ask anyone - things mean more than they really are : the ponderous drawbridge of circumstance and occurrence the little items with which we mark destiny and days and time - listening hard to Beethoven while deconstructing a Bagatelle Fur Elise just to see what makes it tick - different tempos within speeded up slowed down and stopped the topsy-turvy over and around of the lead melody (right hand) while all that other stuff is underneath (left hand) and then they mesh uproariously together in some glissando of speeded-up rage or glory (don't know) and all the while the regularity of it all brings a certain welcome peace or some reticent background ease to the entire thing and from experience I know it can really be played a hundred ways but only one's right (is that correct?) and that means all the others are wrong (is THAT correct?) - oh well who knows anything for certain - incendiary meltdown here I come and just like this fellow I once knew Peter Tolendino who spent many months reading 'God Is My Co-Pilot' and 'Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo' as if gospel truth were being dispensed (what grandiosities what great pictures must have been drawn in that obsessive young mind but no more than mine and no more than thine) and in like the blink of an eye they had robed the Emperor for blast-off sent him flying through the sky for 'one God's as good as another God' it seems and if you can make the nation-state secure with the Emperor no more then by any means TURN HIM LOOSE set him free point him into the sky and fire let him fly make a God out of that guy and then write his stories in the flashback tense - 'the bombs were falling the city was scorched we were young and very frightened and we ran to him as our parents died and soon there was nothing left so little to eat and even the pigs then were running free again chasing chickens and somehow all these animals had survived when so many people had not' and even the palace of the Emperor (whom they'd just made a God) took a hit : and when the new walls do come tumbling down they'll still be handing out Spanish menus at the corner of 14th Street and 2nd Ave and the days of wine and roses will have left town and by then all the grand painters of old (color tint perspective and the rest) Giotto Tintoretto Caravaggio and DaVinci too (more to come on him later) will have created their own Giacometti and Rauschenberg and 'the other painters in the field will be left in places making postcards sketching lilies and making sure the tomb is sealed.'
3. DO ALL THAT YOU CAN DO NOT TO DRAW BLOOD:
Is it that someone will rob you in the pants that you fear ? then do all that you can do not to draw blood for you are REMEMBER in the American Isles and the rules are different - no machete no scimitar no sabre allowed - and things are all about finesse are they not ? NO they are not these are again the AMERICAN Isles and people take seats where they choose they sit where they may and talk about whatever it is they wish to talk about and no stopping them for that : every subject becomes of course tendentious prattle and boring nonsense mostly filled with error but one cannot AGAIN stop that (I want to be a fly on THAT wall) and I'd love to listen to her talk some more BUT I GOTTA' GO! and did you know that Prohibition was one of the longest dumbest chapters in the history of 20th century American folly and the impulses behind it are still alive today ? or that the architects of that bizarre experiment were as varied as the country in which they lived and included : 'faith-based Christian zealots idealistic social reformers flat-out bigots a few solemn feminists and more than a few cynical businessmen who simply wanted their blue-collar workers to show up sober and on time' and that part of the ease and success of the Prohibition movement came from being tied in with the 'support our boys' war effort underway in WWI with Americans being urged to 'support our boys in uniform by keeping them away from alcohol and loose women' and because we were fine upstanding people and 'blessed by God we should never enter combat with the dastardly Hun while suffering from hangovers' but the problems Prohibition faced - at the same time - came from immigrants and especially New York immigrants the millions of Irish Italians and Jews and even Germans who were being asked to abandon their own cultural habits including drinking and thereby ABSOLUTELY prove they were Americans and that the 13 years 10 months and 18 days of Prohibition were little more than a crazed American Utopian delusion pressed down onto hordes of hard-drinking recent new citizens part of whose new 'birthright' they had thought was Individual Liberty and the right to do something they'd selected to do and all it did - even as these American soldiers returned home and marched in parades in a dry city - was cause a cultural insurgency unlike any other seen before and the new proliferation of speakeasies caused crime to proliferate as Jews Italians and Irish took it first upon themselves to form illegal syndicates for distribution and then later UNITE and COMBINE these operations into alliances - and corruption was then used to cut down on enforcement through payoffs and dirty cops and by playing upon the easy temptations of money presented to enforcement officers (who were often not even real police) and it was nearly impossible to stop saloons and later speakeasies anyway as they had always served immigrant communities well as centers for social commingling employment centers shakedown halls mustering centers and simply places of socialization and community bonding - in these cases a sort of defiant laughter was their response to all this foolishness - and thousands of Americans would die too during these years from bad liquor during the 'noble experiment' - THERE WERE 15,000 saloons in New York when Prohibition started and within a few years of it there were 32,000 speakeasies as saloons and eventually even ENFORCEMENT was only done reluctantly and the American delusion faded away AND WHAT'S THAT TELL YOU - idealists can always ruin an ideal so be assured of that : and like the old pick-up line from some 1930's film 'you've got the curves baby and I've got the angles' the whole story was made for a match - the ideal against the real the concept against the error - AMERICA has always been in the grip of something whether a fierce crusade for some perverse ideal or a 'dangerous lobotomizing notion of endless war' and a 'great writer of fiction of course by writing truthfully about the society in which he or she lives cannot help but evoke the better standards of justice and truthfulness that we have the right to press for in the imperfect societies in which we live' (heard all that somewhere by candlelight one night drinking wine on a 62nd Street couch in a perfectly shaded ivory room on some seventh floor of somewhere and the person who spoke was wise beyond means (I thought) and vivacious and stunning too but I didn't know my reasoning went much beyond that and I only later found out that such was the means by which revolutionaries too were given training and just like 'cells' in the old communist underground these small groups of people known only to each other communed in a silence louder than sin but it was cool and so was I and everything went well for a very long time and THAT'S HOW WE LEARN and that's how we grow in these 'strenuous mercantilistic biases which are American culture' ( a part of me sensed I wanted nobility I wanted a royal European culture but was instead getting this...) I got motor oil in grassy ground I got singed trees where a forest once was I got both the YES and the NO of the culture at the very same time - a coarsened sensibility and an ineffective mind but that was the American way back then ('and I was so much older then - I'm younger than that now').
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'Too much salvation to accumulate too many points of origin to trace and the long wide train from the New England hills has gone off the track long ago'...
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"As we passed out of Chester today at Old Dutch Road the Forbes Estate there was a flatbed truck just arriving with a brand new beautifully cream-white Rolls Royce with a black convertible top being transported up their roadway and it had the austere smell of the capital rich about it the almost legitimate means of wealth and nobility which was allowed - in the American episodes - to prosper and grow as men after each other and their storied women too instead allowed themselves to turn attention to the quest for gold and read the numbers and ride the markets up and down in and out until they amassed great sums and margin-sums of fortune and as shakeouts came and went they were each able to make alliances and ride the doom-bells and find the new crests and make their fortunes so that deep in the woods in places like this and in townhouses like that vast hidden mansions of fortune were built and today's world is a remnant of all that swaddling new money made old and not a whimper was ever really pronounced and no one has really ever objected either and they could live lives of privilege and you know no matter what else is done I do suppose it's always been true that as they say 'there is no culture without a standard of altruism of regard for others' but actually that MAY have once been true but I have my doubts about it now - and even then - because I've found that mankind does nothing - singly or en masse - unless first some self-interest is being served and money itself by its very nature or at least the quest for money always seems to replace any introspective energies or passionate intellectual quests and just as well any code of self-sacrifice or immense hope and I always figured that's pretty much what was meant by 'the love of money is the root of all evil' though I find that as well very unsatisfying and not nearly encompassing enough as a saying" and he was writing in a notebook between his bouts of talking as I'd come upon him at Sadlin's Water Cafe which was a curious and small place on the east edge of Chambers Street near where the Collect used to be and now was all government civic and welfare buildings family court and all the rest and the beleaguered place was a real nowhere - in between as it were the tentacled expanses the vivacities of Chinatown the financial district and the area around City Hall - so that it was amidst all these places but had nothing of its own to speak of - occasional bums passed out or just waiting where the pond used to be (a true mess) financial and bureaucratic careerists passing through and the prison traffic of The Tombs and all its guards visitors cooks and sanitizers all passing around and to but no one other than commercial beings really traversed the area and when they did it was the indigent the hurting or those in need - real need - the five-kids-with-no-food kind of need the stuff Family Services stepped in and took control of and the 'Water Cafe' as it was named although all water had long ago been taken away was set between two much larger buildings with brick and mortar and high glass windows and everything towering over Sadlin's with its small posture and darkened shadowed nooks where people sat - often just staring - and this guy who'd said long ago his name was James - James Madison in fact - just stayed in place writing and talking whenever the urge struck and it's always amazing the leeway people get when they're adduced to be 'smart' or 'genius' or eccentric even and no one ever stopped this guy from going on in his own way about whatever he wished (it wasn't the first nor even the tenth time I'd seen him) and he had already gotten to know me from previous sit-in's and he'd in fact offered the coffee I drank a few times already - bought and re-bought and I never said no to any of that and he said "I was almost a lawyer you know - right over there at John Jay - but I always had more of an interest in philosophy and the two don't mix very well - law and philosophy that is - always at odds with each other one thing bumping into another and turning into the next so that I couldn't really do justice to either so I just quit all that and found a way VOILA! to be here and there instead and now philosophy's a wonderful thing and made just for me - I harbor no man's passions and work hard at making my own and it can't be beat and BY THE WAY did you know the in the long history of religion the one obvious and dangerous fact that jumps out is probably the most simple one too : Christian religion and Judaic tradition and all the old enforced religions have simply cut off prophecy and new revelations as if the old and new testaments had simply one day STOPPED and ended and with that too ended ALL of God's workings in the world as if He'd forgotten all about mankind and simply went along elsewhere on His way but there are newer religions now - Mormonism among them - which enforce the creed of a still-active prophesy and a working God present in the world today and even the Muslims don't do that and with this thought in mind you realize that ALL doors which were once long ago closed and then simply worshipped are once again all opened and given new life and possibility with the idea of NEW prophesy coming through constantly and the titular 'head' of the Mormon church is considered a Prophet and because of that apt at any point to tap once more into the active work of God and find himself decreeing anything new and original all over again and the millions of Mormon followers now would go to death enforcing that new prophecy or regulation or creed - and isn't that really an amazing thought the very idea that we could at any time be back on the cusp of new words from God - with new details on things and new commands and energies to go forth and do something ANYTHING to enforce again the real life of this miserable world!" and I said "no I hadn't realized that" and he smiled and said back "think of it as this way - at any time we can be led once again into new revelation which would change everything we may have thought until now and to me that's amazing incredible and worth everything in the world to know" and I said "well then am I to assume you're a Mormon?" and he said "no not by any means - just an active observer right now and waiting" which I of course found puzzling but then most of the things about him puzzled me as it always seemed he never really had anything to do but say what it was he was doing - very odd - and the more I thought of the revelation stuff the more I realized that yes it was truly fraught with possibilities but who would listen to what was considered really no more than a strange sect an offshoot of more realizable religions in a country which pretty much had considered that long ago it had settled all accounts with religion of any sort - and now here was this new guy saying it could all start again at any time and I wondered to myself 'is this true ? who else has known of this and not mentioned it ? how prevalent is this knowledge?' and most importantly 'how correct is it?' - answers I never got but then any evaluation of religion is usually unsecured and it ends up being based on whatever it is you want to believe so I felt 'no matter' to that and then I asked him "all well and good but how is any of that philosophy?" and he said "well you see ANYTHING can be made to be philosophy if you phrase it so and dwell on it enough in those terms and all philosophy is really is a broad approach to finding a point of view with which to justify acts and means" so I stayed around and listened to this Mr. Madison who for all I knew could have been the guy who invented all the bullshit on Madison Avenue because sometimes he really sounded like it but I knew from observation that at heart he was really in earnest and onto something and it reminded me of the way prisoners sometimes - when they write letters or start talking about things - use obscurely large and unnecessary words in stilted and overwrought prose as a means of merely parading their self-taught knowledge in front of others which it usually isn't - knowledge or self-taught - because they miss the entire point by burying themselves in a few textbooks of law or grammar or whatever and then swallowing them whole regurgitate the entire edifice back out into people's faces and that never works because - you see - the essence of knowledge and true education is in knowing the means of intuitively caressing and portraying - sometimes without 'saying' - the essentials of what you're trying to portray or impart and it's usually smooth glib and attractive whereas the self-taught motivator's shtick is usually slow obtuse obscure and annoying too and Mr. James Madison here sometimes came close to that but he kept a certain elan alive by just touching on things and then retreating into questioning or transferring to some other point so that nothing ever was nor seemed tiresome and belabored - and that made all the difference even if it probably NEVER would have washed in a court of law - so he'd probably made a good decision on that count BUT I still never knew what he did for a living or how he managed to stay in place.
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Madison said "I find myself of late very disorderly with every attempt at order then becoming another cubby-hole I forgot that I used in which to stash something - do you have such problems? - as I recall the habits of most others being quite neatnik and processed and I seem unable to change that in myself - the books and papers of some importance sometime get mixed in with other things and my car and room is filled with portfolios envelopes packets and boxes of things I quickly forgot I'd placed there - now that I'd say was a rather Mediterranean trait no?" and I nodded and said "well for those much fewer things that I have and the little space I have for them I get by all right just managing to keep things in some semblance of a good-enough order and anyway I'm not sure Mediterranean or any of that even matters" and he sort of laughed back while leaning back at the same time as if we'd finally become quite informal about things and relaxed and I realized that this was actually the sort of stuff I'd read about from the old days - coffee-bar chums kicking back 'shooting the shit' as it were about most anything as equals even though that's never the case there are never really 'equals' in stuff like that because someone is always ahead or on top or more assertive or whatever and I piped up "I want to tell you about this new way of writing I've stumbled upon and it's working well for me and as I can put absolutely everything into it it's like circular reasoning for me too and an antidote to the sloppiness and disorder I just mentioned and it's as if - once used up - it all goes onto the rockpile for further milling and refining and because of that I get something out of everything and this new way of writing is all over the place yes but manageable too - sometimes a little sketchy but so filled with diversions it's cool and every diversion or thing alluded to is a path for the reader to go out and find more about whatever it is that interests them about what they've just read - it's broad and wide and wild and magnificent and again it's my way of coming full-circle you see - like tidying up one's room or whatever it is for the equivalent of straight and regular thinking and grammar (I've gotten rid of all that and all the old clutter too) and now I by the opposite live and write the same - allover scattershot and with amazing and sometimes completely random results and ALLUDING which is not stealing - you see? - and that's quite simply 'my philosphy of the law' - to sum it up nice and tight."
4. THAT'S WHAT YOU DO WHEN YOU'VE GOT TO DO SOMETHING:
"Society ? I feel that one must be outside of all that - far from the scope of critical eyes and the swarms of commentary - which affect and color creativity and I think all the great old reputations from the past bear that and my hero in all of this is really William Blake (whom I swear I was in another life) but now it's too late for all that and the hell with the rest too and you can't really listen to anyone else 'cause they're all full of shit - present company oh OK excepted I suppose" he said "OK" and I continued "it's a difficult life a life like this this running and hiding this recirculating everything and listening to voices that claim to want to be repeated and sometimes I KNOW I've got it and other times it's miles away from me but I have to stay with it - I would hope you'd understand - and just hope that the results will square with the effort and be put all together as something easy and graceful - I 'write' just as I talk and think too and because of that there's really very little translation to be done it's just a straightfoward pattern a staccato recognition of everything that's inside me and the pittance of it all is 'others' because there's no value there there's no importuning anything no advancing and certainly nothing to take from the dogs who lie dead around me and everything's like a story or a tale or AT THE VERY LEAST a categorical imperative that drives me along and there are incidental behaviors and indicative behaviors (they're the most fun) like when you see someone from a close distance - say a guy behind the wheel of his car and you see him sitting there at a light and you know just by looking at him by looking him over - the square chin with the close dark beard the straight-out stare ahead the supposition of rightness the solid exposure of the world to HIM you can pretty much just predict by that one moment how he's going to drive when that light changes and what his presuppositions will be and how little accountability any of his behaviors will have towards any effects upon the world he may leave : he's slow getting off from the green he drives slowly and allows extra space and another before him to come in from a turn and he pays no attention to what's around him and causes slowness and a congestion all from his stupid caution and deliberateness and he probably prides himself on his own foresight but at the same time never understands how he alters the fabric of that traffic light and that time for the others - the car or two who catch the next light because of his slow obtuse driving the people next to him who are unsure of what he'll do next etc. and he takes ALL OF THAT out into the rest of the world with him and ALL of his suppositions and actions are wrong dead wrong for any other than THAT precise moment in time a self-absorbed and completely self-centered moment a tunnel-vision from which he sees nothing else and that is if not anything than certainly an 'indicative' behavior and I think if one can just get to recognize that quality everything else comes easy" and as I spoke all of that I realized I was speaking faster than thought almost blurting out in long ridiculous and steady phrasing some wild theory of myself - in some way - a thing which it must have certainly been difficult to follow but I thought right then too of the sun-baked merchandising of the funny elite and I figured he'd probably already heard one hundred and more versions of the same sort of presentation so I wasn't letting it stop me and then he suddenly interjected "poets and writers you know tell us how we feel by telling us how they feel - they find ways to express the inexpressible - so sometimes they tell the truth and sometimes they lie to us to keep our hearts from breaking" and I said back "yes well that may be but to me every truth becomes a lie as soon as it's told and the same way in the other direction - so really if done right there's no difference between the two and I deal in my writing with image and picture and scene and if at first it seems outlandish or EVEN IF it seems perfectly normal EITHER WAY it's my newer reality as constructed - and that's now where I live and what I'm deeply involved with at every turn - here's an example - there's a statement I once had which was 'I couldn't reach your burning silver pallet before the fires went out and anything more I tried to do was useless in that situation - so I watched everything burn with you upon it riding that red cloud down the fiery river to the bend in another time and place - and though I did nothing I hoped you were safe' and on its face that statement could be strictly seen as linear and as a narrative of something constructed with words - a scene a picture something which occured in reality or allegorically no matter for it still READS vividly and beyond sense and someone else could say 'that's crap it's all meaningless nothing' and I'd have to accept that too from them but it wouldn't really matter because AS I WROTE IT it was perfectly clear to me and written rightly so as to be seen beyond that and you see Madison (I called him) that's always been the quintessential definition of parenting or fatherhood or what have you for me and that's as I wrote it - looking at the awkward fact of letting go in an obviously very bad situation and as much as we think we might we cannot each bear responsibility for one another for just as space defines space and things run separate from each other so too is the life of the mind so different from the life of the body and heart and I don't see that you can look as it all as simply that 'this life' is the pinnacle of something - no higher reaches no other planes no further meaning to these small moments we get to put together in anguish and sadness - something too precious to spill perhaps but not worth the glass it's put in either - so if this is the pinnacle I'll take the swamp - but that's not the message here the message was that I CHOSE to write that little stream of words in that way in order to describe (as I said) parenting in just that fashion - filled with strange wonder and startling strings of words - all of which can be read at one level as a description of a strange and fiery scene and yet on another level as the allusion to what guidance and letting go is all about : I could have written it in a hundred other ways more straightforward and normal but I selected that means because of the manner in which I'm now working - a staggering new way of working with words and imbuing consciousness with another awareness AND NOW I ASK do you see it ? do you see it this way or is it all not able to be grasped and am I too crazy or too far gone in doing this?" and he said "well Robert Lowell called writers' work a 'free-lancing out along the razor's edge' and you've certainly done that but actually it's very nice and rich with allusion and texture and words and really I think it does work nicely and I was quite satisfied with that - and actually too I'm glad you wrote it down for me because just 'hearing' it is really not enough - I can see it's got to be read and looked at and gone over - and if that's your life's work at this moment it's very well done too" and I said "thanks" and he said "now I ask you this : WHAT are you going to do with it?" at that I tried to look forlorn (but probably failed) and said "I have read all those philosophers and writers once mentioned as pinnacles of their own achievements and I note too that none of them actually 'merchandised' their work as much as they simply let it continue and take on the life of its own which IT created - everyone is included here even the exceptions who became personalities more then their words Bertrand Russell and Sartre for instance - they were less prose-monsters than philo-monsters PERHAPS but in any case their work was evened out and brought together enough so as to make them social-philosophical characters KNOWN through their writings - and I imagine that's sort of the path I'd like to take - not for me the ersatz fickle stupid philo-pornography of TV talk show news shows and any other of the glib and sickening outlets of media news and magazine now available to anyone with a canker sore to go on about SO anyway you ask me what am I going to do with it and I really must reply to you 'NOTHING' nothing at all" and he laughed a bit sipped a sip and lit up a smoke as he leaned back and muttered "damndest thing I ever heard but probably just as true as anything else I heard" and I said "that doesn't work that means nothing and it simply equalizes any uniqueness I may have once before - like a few minutes ago - possessed according to you" and he said "yes you're right I'm completely off the mark - but I'll tell you what - meet me here next Friday again and I'll have something more to say and maybe a proposition too - how's that?" and I agreed simply to keep from not agreeing and because my own head was spinning and aghast at anything I may have just created (thinking to myself 'what after all is a 'philo-monster'' good God) and by agreeig I had unwittingly I supposed also set myself up for whatever sort of drama this James Madison fellow would put upon me and of course the mind reeled : he'd bring me a contract of some sort or ten thousand dollars or an agent or a reader or something valuable as an outlet or exposure but most probably he'd come back with some silly prerogative allowing him to critique me and my work for free as he wished - that was my USUAL sort of luck - so I kept quiet even unto myself.
5. 'THAT WHAT WE DID IN HARMONY GLADE IT WILL LIVE FOREVER'
1. WALKED A HUNDRED ANDES MOUNTAINS:
(Peruvian Fantasy, Chilean Truth : year 1161)I have lived a miserable age - have endured something somehow beyond endurance too - walked a hundred Andes Mountains and noticed birds and vultures hummingbirds and flies and every living thing made better sense to me than me or anyone else for that matter and we put the lights on with flames in little tents and we stayed up nights on rigid stone-topped hills where the only company were the local native girls who had swabs of menstrual blood in their hair as ritual and hooped rings in their noses and ears - but no matter for that - and we were their way out of something as much as they were ours : storybooks by the gallon have been written of this stuff and someone's had to read it all whether to children as make believe or to new age gurus as gospel truth - for we flew literally past the ages and through all time we saw spirits in smoke rings and the far sides of our minds we communed with the Heavens and saw Gods and Goddesses too - everything worth to mention and hundreds more and at dawn we worshipped the rising sun the Sun God of All Manco Capac the Osiris of Ever the basis for all religions world-over the primitive side of Mankind's story the great Unknown the great Connector the HE who makes all things real and with all eyes past the East we found all the new directions in places no one else had ever heard : Seriaside Opturu and Megoyna : the spinners were the operators and all the hands were on the walls and the flute players came down from the nearby hills shouting some awful name and playing deathly games - rocks round as balls shot hard into people's foreheads as we watched as they died in rivers and pools of blood - this vicious sport for pygmies the Amazon deathlust for living through death the sanctioned voices of unknown Gods ranting about things without foundation or reality - just beyond the pale of vision sense or sight : I turned to King Minah who was seated beside me and said quite simply "Great Sir take me now from this place - for I am both finished and done" and he nodded apiece and had me carted away in a wagon of lead and gold - airport-bound I was left on the ground and flown back (before I knew) to Cherokee Place and some East River Drive where I stayed for a week drying out coming back to my senses and cleansing my system of all I'd imbibed : but wonders such as this become memories forever and I'd been designated to speak again.
2. IT WAS A PETER TOLENDINO MOMENT (I don't wish to say any more):
Said with certainty - ask anyone - things mean more than they really are : the ponderous drawbridge of circumstance and occurrence the little items with which we mark destiny and days and time - listening hard to Beethoven while deconstructing a Bagatelle Fur Elise just to see what makes it tick - different tempos within speeded up slowed down and stopped the topsy-turvy over and around of the lead melody (right hand) while all that other stuff is underneath (left hand) and then they mesh uproariously together in some glissando of speeded-up rage or glory (don't know) and all the while the regularity of it all brings a certain welcome peace or some reticent background ease to the entire thing and from experience I know it can really be played a hundred ways but only one's right (is that correct?) and that means all the others are wrong (is THAT correct?) - oh well who knows anything for certain - incendiary meltdown here I come and just like this fellow I once knew Peter Tolendino who spent many months reading 'God Is My Co-Pilot' and 'Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo' as if gospel truth were being dispensed (what grandiosities what great pictures must have been drawn in that obsessive young mind but no more than mine and no more than thine) and in like the blink of an eye they had robed the Emperor for blast-off sent him flying through the sky for 'one God's as good as another God' it seems and if you can make the nation-state secure with the Emperor no more then by any means TURN HIM LOOSE set him free point him into the sky and fire let him fly make a God out of that guy and then write his stories in the flashback tense - 'the bombs were falling the city was scorched we were young and very frightened and we ran to him as our parents died and soon there was nothing left so little to eat and even the pigs then were running free again chasing chickens and somehow all these animals had survived when so many people had not' and even the palace of the Emperor (whom they'd just made a God) took a hit : and when the new walls do come tumbling down they'll still be handing out Spanish menus at the corner of 14th Street and 2nd Ave and the days of wine and roses will have left town and by then all the grand painters of old (color tint perspective and the rest) Giotto Tintoretto Caravaggio and DaVinci too (more to come on him later) will have created their own Giacometti and Rauschenberg and 'the other painters in the field will be left in places making postcards sketching lilies and making sure the tomb is sealed.'
3. DO ALL THAT YOU CAN DO NOT TO DRAW BLOOD:
Is it that someone will rob you in the pants that you fear ? then do all that you can do not to draw blood for you are REMEMBER in the American Isles and the rules are different - no machete no scimitar no sabre allowed - and things are all about finesse are they not ? NO they are not these are again the AMERICAN Isles and people take seats where they choose they sit where they may and talk about whatever it is they wish to talk about and no stopping them for that : every subject becomes of course tendentious prattle and boring nonsense mostly filled with error but one cannot AGAIN stop that (I want to be a fly on THAT wall) and I'd love to listen to her talk some more BUT I GOTTA' GO! and did you know that Prohibition was one of the longest dumbest chapters in the history of 20th century American folly and the impulses behind it are still alive today ? or that the architects of that bizarre experiment were as varied as the country in which they lived and included : 'faith-based Christian zealots idealistic social reformers flat-out bigots a few solemn feminists and more than a few cynical businessmen who simply wanted their blue-collar workers to show up sober and on time' and that part of the ease and success of the Prohibition movement came from being tied in with the 'support our boys' war effort underway in WWI with Americans being urged to 'support our boys in uniform by keeping them away from alcohol and loose women' and because we were fine upstanding people and 'blessed by God we should never enter combat with the dastardly Hun while suffering from hangovers' but the problems Prohibition faced - at the same time - came from immigrants and especially New York immigrants the millions of Irish Italians and Jews and even Germans who were being asked to abandon their own cultural habits including drinking and thereby ABSOLUTELY prove they were Americans and that the 13 years 10 months and 18 days of Prohibition were little more than a crazed American Utopian delusion pressed down onto hordes of hard-drinking recent new citizens part of whose new 'birthright' they had thought was Individual Liberty and the right to do something they'd selected to do and all it did - even as these American soldiers returned home and marched in parades in a dry city - was cause a cultural insurgency unlike any other seen before and the new proliferation of speakeasies caused crime to proliferate as Jews Italians and Irish took it first upon themselves to form illegal syndicates for distribution and then later UNITE and COMBINE these operations into alliances - and corruption was then used to cut down on enforcement through payoffs and dirty cops and by playing upon the easy temptations of money presented to enforcement officers (who were often not even real police) and it was nearly impossible to stop saloons and later speakeasies anyway as they had always served immigrant communities well as centers for social commingling employment centers shakedown halls mustering centers and simply places of socialization and community bonding - in these cases a sort of defiant laughter was their response to all this foolishness - and thousands of Americans would die too during these years from bad liquor during the 'noble experiment' - THERE WERE 15,000 saloons in New York when Prohibition started and within a few years of it there were 32,000 speakeasies as saloons and eventually even ENFORCEMENT was only done reluctantly and the American delusion faded away AND WHAT'S THAT TELL YOU - idealists can always ruin an ideal so be assured of that : and like the old pick-up line from some 1930's film 'you've got the curves baby and I've got the angles' the whole story was made for a match - the ideal against the real the concept against the error - AMERICA has always been in the grip of something whether a fierce crusade for some perverse ideal or a 'dangerous lobotomizing notion of endless war' and a 'great writer of fiction of course by writing truthfully about the society in which he or she lives cannot help but evoke the better standards of justice and truthfulness that we have the right to press for in the imperfect societies in which we live' (heard all that somewhere by candlelight one night drinking wine on a 62nd Street couch in a perfectly shaded ivory room on some seventh floor of somewhere and the person who spoke was wise beyond means (I thought) and vivacious and stunning too but I didn't know my reasoning went much beyond that and I only later found out that such was the means by which revolutionaries too were given training and just like 'cells' in the old communist underground these small groups of people known only to each other communed in a silence louder than sin but it was cool and so was I and everything went well for a very long time and THAT'S HOW WE LEARN and that's how we grow in these 'strenuous mercantilistic biases which are American culture' ( a part of me sensed I wanted nobility I wanted a royal European culture but was instead getting this...) I got motor oil in grassy ground I got singed trees where a forest once was I got both the YES and the NO of the culture at the very same time - a coarsened sensibility and an ineffective mind but that was the American way back then ('and I was so much older then - I'm younger than that now').
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'Too much salvation to accumulate too many points of origin to trace and the long wide train from the New England hills has gone off the track long ago'...
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"As we passed out of Chester today at Old Dutch Road the Forbes Estate there was a flatbed truck just arriving with a brand new beautifully cream-white Rolls Royce with a black convertible top being transported up their roadway and it had the austere smell of the capital rich about it the almost legitimate means of wealth and nobility which was allowed - in the American episodes - to prosper and grow as men after each other and their storied women too instead allowed themselves to turn attention to the quest for gold and read the numbers and ride the markets up and down in and out until they amassed great sums and margin-sums of fortune and as shakeouts came and went they were each able to make alliances and ride the doom-bells and find the new crests and make their fortunes so that deep in the woods in places like this and in townhouses like that vast hidden mansions of fortune were built and today's world is a remnant of all that swaddling new money made old and not a whimper was ever really pronounced and no one has really ever objected either and they could live lives of privilege and you know no matter what else is done I do suppose it's always been true that as they say 'there is no culture without a standard of altruism of regard for others' but actually that MAY have once been true but I have my doubts about it now - and even then - because I've found that mankind does nothing - singly or en masse - unless first some self-interest is being served and money itself by its very nature or at least the quest for money always seems to replace any introspective energies or passionate intellectual quests and just as well any code of self-sacrifice or immense hope and I always figured that's pretty much what was meant by 'the love of money is the root of all evil' though I find that as well very unsatisfying and not nearly encompassing enough as a saying" and he was writing in a notebook between his bouts of talking as I'd come upon him at Sadlin's Water Cafe which was a curious and small place on the east edge of Chambers Street near where the Collect used to be and now was all government civic and welfare buildings family court and all the rest and the beleaguered place was a real nowhere - in between as it were the tentacled expanses the vivacities of Chinatown the financial district and the area around City Hall - so that it was amidst all these places but had nothing of its own to speak of - occasional bums passed out or just waiting where the pond used to be (a true mess) financial and bureaucratic careerists passing through and the prison traffic of The Tombs and all its guards visitors cooks and sanitizers all passing around and to but no one other than commercial beings really traversed the area and when they did it was the indigent the hurting or those in need - real need - the five-kids-with-no-food kind of need the stuff Family Services stepped in and took control of and the 'Water Cafe' as it was named although all water had long ago been taken away was set between two much larger buildings with brick and mortar and high glass windows and everything towering over Sadlin's with its small posture and darkened shadowed nooks where people sat - often just staring - and this guy who'd said long ago his name was James - James Madison in fact - just stayed in place writing and talking whenever the urge struck and it's always amazing the leeway people get when they're adduced to be 'smart' or 'genius' or eccentric even and no one ever stopped this guy from going on in his own way about whatever he wished (it wasn't the first nor even the tenth time I'd seen him) and he had already gotten to know me from previous sit-in's and he'd in fact offered the coffee I drank a few times already - bought and re-bought and I never said no to any of that and he said "I was almost a lawyer you know - right over there at John Jay - but I always had more of an interest in philosophy and the two don't mix very well - law and philosophy that is - always at odds with each other one thing bumping into another and turning into the next so that I couldn't really do justice to either so I just quit all that and found a way VOILA! to be here and there instead and now philosophy's a wonderful thing and made just for me - I harbor no man's passions and work hard at making my own and it can't be beat and BY THE WAY did you know the in the long history of religion the one obvious and dangerous fact that jumps out is probably the most simple one too : Christian religion and Judaic tradition and all the old enforced religions have simply cut off prophecy and new revelations as if the old and new testaments had simply one day STOPPED and ended and with that too ended ALL of God's workings in the world as if He'd forgotten all about mankind and simply went along elsewhere on His way but there are newer religions now - Mormonism among them - which enforce the creed of a still-active prophesy and a working God present in the world today and even the Muslims don't do that and with this thought in mind you realize that ALL doors which were once long ago closed and then simply worshipped are once again all opened and given new life and possibility with the idea of NEW prophesy coming through constantly and the titular 'head' of the Mormon church is considered a Prophet and because of that apt at any point to tap once more into the active work of God and find himself decreeing anything new and original all over again and the millions of Mormon followers now would go to death enforcing that new prophecy or regulation or creed - and isn't that really an amazing thought the very idea that we could at any time be back on the cusp of new words from God - with new details on things and new commands and energies to go forth and do something ANYTHING to enforce again the real life of this miserable world!" and I said "no I hadn't realized that" and he smiled and said back "think of it as this way - at any time we can be led once again into new revelation which would change everything we may have thought until now and to me that's amazing incredible and worth everything in the world to know" and I said "well then am I to assume you're a Mormon?" and he said "no not by any means - just an active observer right now and waiting" which I of course found puzzling but then most of the things about him puzzled me as it always seemed he never really had anything to do but say what it was he was doing - very odd - and the more I thought of the revelation stuff the more I realized that yes it was truly fraught with possibilities but who would listen to what was considered really no more than a strange sect an offshoot of more realizable religions in a country which pretty much had considered that long ago it had settled all accounts with religion of any sort - and now here was this new guy saying it could all start again at any time and I wondered to myself 'is this true ? who else has known of this and not mentioned it ? how prevalent is this knowledge?' and most importantly 'how correct is it?' - answers I never got but then any evaluation of religion is usually unsecured and it ends up being based on whatever it is you want to believe so I felt 'no matter' to that and then I asked him "all well and good but how is any of that philosophy?" and he said "well you see ANYTHING can be made to be philosophy if you phrase it so and dwell on it enough in those terms and all philosophy is really is a broad approach to finding a point of view with which to justify acts and means" so I stayed around and listened to this Mr. Madison who for all I knew could have been the guy who invented all the bullshit on Madison Avenue because sometimes he really sounded like it but I knew from observation that at heart he was really in earnest and onto something and it reminded me of the way prisoners sometimes - when they write letters or start talking about things - use obscurely large and unnecessary words in stilted and overwrought prose as a means of merely parading their self-taught knowledge in front of others which it usually isn't - knowledge or self-taught - because they miss the entire point by burying themselves in a few textbooks of law or grammar or whatever and then swallowing them whole regurgitate the entire edifice back out into people's faces and that never works because - you see - the essence of knowledge and true education is in knowing the means of intuitively caressing and portraying - sometimes without 'saying' - the essentials of what you're trying to portray or impart and it's usually smooth glib and attractive whereas the self-taught motivator's shtick is usually slow obtuse obscure and annoying too and Mr. James Madison here sometimes came close to that but he kept a certain elan alive by just touching on things and then retreating into questioning or transferring to some other point so that nothing ever was nor seemed tiresome and belabored - and that made all the difference even if it probably NEVER would have washed in a court of law - so he'd probably made a good decision on that count BUT I still never knew what he did for a living or how he managed to stay in place.
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Madison said "I find myself of late very disorderly with every attempt at order then becoming another cubby-hole I forgot that I used in which to stash something - do you have such problems? - as I recall the habits of most others being quite neatnik and processed and I seem unable to change that in myself - the books and papers of some importance sometime get mixed in with other things and my car and room is filled with portfolios envelopes packets and boxes of things I quickly forgot I'd placed there - now that I'd say was a rather Mediterranean trait no?" and I nodded and said "well for those much fewer things that I have and the little space I have for them I get by all right just managing to keep things in some semblance of a good-enough order and anyway I'm not sure Mediterranean or any of that even matters" and he sort of laughed back while leaning back at the same time as if we'd finally become quite informal about things and relaxed and I realized that this was actually the sort of stuff I'd read about from the old days - coffee-bar chums kicking back 'shooting the shit' as it were about most anything as equals even though that's never the case there are never really 'equals' in stuff like that because someone is always ahead or on top or more assertive or whatever and I piped up "I want to tell you about this new way of writing I've stumbled upon and it's working well for me and as I can put absolutely everything into it it's like circular reasoning for me too and an antidote to the sloppiness and disorder I just mentioned and it's as if - once used up - it all goes onto the rockpile for further milling and refining and because of that I get something out of everything and this new way of writing is all over the place yes but manageable too - sometimes a little sketchy but so filled with diversions it's cool and every diversion or thing alluded to is a path for the reader to go out and find more about whatever it is that interests them about what they've just read - it's broad and wide and wild and magnificent and again it's my way of coming full-circle you see - like tidying up one's room or whatever it is for the equivalent of straight and regular thinking and grammar (I've gotten rid of all that and all the old clutter too) and now I by the opposite live and write the same - allover scattershot and with amazing and sometimes completely random results and ALLUDING which is not stealing - you see? - and that's quite simply 'my philosphy of the law' - to sum it up nice and tight."
4. THAT'S WHAT YOU DO WHEN YOU'VE GOT TO DO SOMETHING:
"Society ? I feel that one must be outside of all that - far from the scope of critical eyes and the swarms of commentary - which affect and color creativity and I think all the great old reputations from the past bear that and my hero in all of this is really William Blake (whom I swear I was in another life) but now it's too late for all that and the hell with the rest too and you can't really listen to anyone else 'cause they're all full of shit - present company oh OK excepted I suppose" he said "OK" and I continued "it's a difficult life a life like this this running and hiding this recirculating everything and listening to voices that claim to want to be repeated and sometimes I KNOW I've got it and other times it's miles away from me but I have to stay with it - I would hope you'd understand - and just hope that the results will square with the effort and be put all together as something easy and graceful - I 'write' just as I talk and think too and because of that there's really very little translation to be done it's just a straightfoward pattern a staccato recognition of everything that's inside me and the pittance of it all is 'others' because there's no value there there's no importuning anything no advancing and certainly nothing to take from the dogs who lie dead around me and everything's like a story or a tale or AT THE VERY LEAST a categorical imperative that drives me along and there are incidental behaviors and indicative behaviors (they're the most fun) like when you see someone from a close distance - say a guy behind the wheel of his car and you see him sitting there at a light and you know just by looking at him by looking him over - the square chin with the close dark beard the straight-out stare ahead the supposition of rightness the solid exposure of the world to HIM you can pretty much just predict by that one moment how he's going to drive when that light changes and what his presuppositions will be and how little accountability any of his behaviors will have towards any effects upon the world he may leave : he's slow getting off from the green he drives slowly and allows extra space and another before him to come in from a turn and he pays no attention to what's around him and causes slowness and a congestion all from his stupid caution and deliberateness and he probably prides himself on his own foresight but at the same time never understands how he alters the fabric of that traffic light and that time for the others - the car or two who catch the next light because of his slow obtuse driving the people next to him who are unsure of what he'll do next etc. and he takes ALL OF THAT out into the rest of the world with him and ALL of his suppositions and actions are wrong dead wrong for any other than THAT precise moment in time a self-absorbed and completely self-centered moment a tunnel-vision from which he sees nothing else and that is if not anything than certainly an 'indicative' behavior and I think if one can just get to recognize that quality everything else comes easy" and as I spoke all of that I realized I was speaking faster than thought almost blurting out in long ridiculous and steady phrasing some wild theory of myself - in some way - a thing which it must have certainly been difficult to follow but I thought right then too of the sun-baked merchandising of the funny elite and I figured he'd probably already heard one hundred and more versions of the same sort of presentation so I wasn't letting it stop me and then he suddenly interjected "poets and writers you know tell us how we feel by telling us how they feel - they find ways to express the inexpressible - so sometimes they tell the truth and sometimes they lie to us to keep our hearts from breaking" and I said back "yes well that may be but to me every truth becomes a lie as soon as it's told and the same way in the other direction - so really if done right there's no difference between the two and I deal in my writing with image and picture and scene and if at first it seems outlandish or EVEN IF it seems perfectly normal EITHER WAY it's my newer reality as constructed - and that's now where I live and what I'm deeply involved with at every turn - here's an example - there's a statement I once had which was 'I couldn't reach your burning silver pallet before the fires went out and anything more I tried to do was useless in that situation - so I watched everything burn with you upon it riding that red cloud down the fiery river to the bend in another time and place - and though I did nothing I hoped you were safe' and on its face that statement could be strictly seen as linear and as a narrative of something constructed with words - a scene a picture something which occured in reality or allegorically no matter for it still READS vividly and beyond sense and someone else could say 'that's crap it's all meaningless nothing' and I'd have to accept that too from them but it wouldn't really matter because AS I WROTE IT it was perfectly clear to me and written rightly so as to be seen beyond that and you see Madison (I called him) that's always been the quintessential definition of parenting or fatherhood or what have you for me and that's as I wrote it - looking at the awkward fact of letting go in an obviously very bad situation and as much as we think we might we cannot each bear responsibility for one another for just as space defines space and things run separate from each other so too is the life of the mind so different from the life of the body and heart and I don't see that you can look as it all as simply that 'this life' is the pinnacle of something - no higher reaches no other planes no further meaning to these small moments we get to put together in anguish and sadness - something too precious to spill perhaps but not worth the glass it's put in either - so if this is the pinnacle I'll take the swamp - but that's not the message here the message was that I CHOSE to write that little stream of words in that way in order to describe (as I said) parenting in just that fashion - filled with strange wonder and startling strings of words - all of which can be read at one level as a description of a strange and fiery scene and yet on another level as the allusion to what guidance and letting go is all about : I could have written it in a hundred other ways more straightforward and normal but I selected that means because of the manner in which I'm now working - a staggering new way of working with words and imbuing consciousness with another awareness AND NOW I ASK do you see it ? do you see it this way or is it all not able to be grasped and am I too crazy or too far gone in doing this?" and he said "well Robert Lowell called writers' work a 'free-lancing out along the razor's edge' and you've certainly done that but actually it's very nice and rich with allusion and texture and words and really I think it does work nicely and I was quite satisfied with that - and actually too I'm glad you wrote it down for me because just 'hearing' it is really not enough - I can see it's got to be read and looked at and gone over - and if that's your life's work at this moment it's very well done too" and I said "thanks" and he said "now I ask you this : WHAT are you going to do with it?" at that I tried to look forlorn (but probably failed) and said "I have read all those philosophers and writers once mentioned as pinnacles of their own achievements and I note too that none of them actually 'merchandised' their work as much as they simply let it continue and take on the life of its own which IT created - everyone is included here even the exceptions who became personalities more then their words Bertrand Russell and Sartre for instance - they were less prose-monsters than philo-monsters PERHAPS but in any case their work was evened out and brought together enough so as to make them social-philosophical characters KNOWN through their writings - and I imagine that's sort of the path I'd like to take - not for me the ersatz fickle stupid philo-pornography of TV talk show news shows and any other of the glib and sickening outlets of media news and magazine now available to anyone with a canker sore to go on about SO anyway you ask me what am I going to do with it and I really must reply to you 'NOTHING' nothing at all" and he laughed a bit sipped a sip and lit up a smoke as he leaned back and muttered "damndest thing I ever heard but probably just as true as anything else I heard" and I said "that doesn't work that means nothing and it simply equalizes any uniqueness I may have once before - like a few minutes ago - possessed according to you" and he said "yes you're right I'm completely off the mark - but I'll tell you what - meet me here next Friday again and I'll have something more to say and maybe a proposition too - how's that?" and I agreed simply to keep from not agreeing and because my own head was spinning and aghast at anything I may have just created (thinking to myself 'what after all is a 'philo-monster'' good God) and by agreeig I had unwittingly I supposed also set myself up for whatever sort of drama this James Madison fellow would put upon me and of course the mind reeled : he'd bring me a contract of some sort or ten thousand dollars or an agent or a reader or something valuable as an outlet or exposure but most probably he'd come back with some silly prerogative allowing him to critique me and my work for free as he wished - that was my USUAL sort of luck - so I kept quiet even unto myself.
5. 'THAT WHAT WE DID IN HARMONY GLADE IT WILL LIVE FOREVER'
('enter the grand revisionists in their wicked fields of play':
About stars and the cosmos it went - 'I see the stars for what they are / half-submerged stepping-stones / to zones some unimaginable race / will homestead when the sun's a guttered candle') - which was always pretty good to me but I had gotten used to reading for a spell older things like 'Maggie a Girl of the Streets' by Stephen Crane and that had introduced me yet again to an entire other level of writing - in an older more staid vein about things which simply were no more and I'd gotten pretty heavily into that by dint of reading and re-reading and then sourcing whatever references for it I could find - also I'd even gone to his grave in Evergreen Cemetary in Elizabeth NJ (a truly miserable place - Elizabeth is - with not one bit of any unified face or ordinary and cultured layout - instead a mad ugly complex of every mix of twisted and old ratty buildings left without any care or - if not left - than re-done in the most awful and hideous approaches to be seen to anything able to be dwelt in and again no one seemed to care or even notice) and the grave-site and spot was an obelisk marking the entire family (he was the last one of 14 children) with the markings on the obelisk being about his father the Methodist minister George Townley Crane who'd achieved a fame surpassing the rest and his mother too (Mary Helen Peck Crane) - a temperance addict and a crusader for all things 'good' and 'right' and the name of Stephen Crane (1871-1900) although in place was simply there as afterthought or part of the ordinary layout of the burial spot : I'd always learned of him that he died wasted or quite drunk somehow on the streets of Newark nearby but I could never exactly ascertain a place or a proximity (or a reason in fact) for that and whether it was true or not didn't actually matter for I was more concerned with his life and output than with his demise - whatever it was - so I eyed things differently and the Evergreen Cemetary is actually pretty expansive and one of a series of interesting cemetaries in that area of Linden to Newark filled with strange assortments of famed Gypsies revered Chinese and favored or not so writers and poets so there was always some form of satisfaction in the seeking and yet the Crane site was somewhat different from all that in that it was staid traditional stately and normal too and - as I said - seemed only as an afterthought to even make mention of Stephen Crane in the most plain sense with no special notations nor accolades and a most-certain second or third fiddle for sure to his father and to his mother yet as I read and studied his work I always found interesting tidbits of this or that to connect it with and curiously the one most-famous piece 'The Red Badge of Courage' was the one I held in the least esteem - 'Maggie: A Girl of the Streets' being for me far more satisfying and interesting even in its shortened length by comparison for he describes the bawdy halls and the dance halls and beer gardens of old Bowery and I found all that endlessly interesting and quite visual in its way too - I could fairly be enticed by the roil and rumor or the sights and sounds he described and all that I felt by reading it - so that in some respects like much of Washington Irving (more later - another grand favorite of my study and note) and even Dreiser it all became history-book material for me also and just as today so much of the old is falling away from us instant by instant as a craving mankind strips the world of all its old - architecture lane story building habit tale and manner - so too then within the presence and pages of these books and through their writers' eyes so much of all that WHICH IS NOW LONG GONE was still kept vivid and kept living and the enlivening vitality kept it real even lo' these many years which makes it more the treasure for all of what we've lost in those intervening years which passed by us of late - and it's all a tired shame this losing and forgetting for once it's gone it's never coming back and just as quick as the memories fade so too come the denials that any of this ever really 'was' anyway : enter the grand revisionists in their wicked fields of play.
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And by the way did you know that it was the beat poet Lew Welch who wrote that slogan in the 1960's ad campaigns - 'Raid kills bugs dead' - in a stint he did as an advertising sloganeer back in the early 1960's - quite an adroit phrase don't you think and a startling strange one too but alas gone little noticed for its import and uniqueness of authorship in these countless days of countless trite phrases now come and gone.
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I awoke one day to a freeze of ice which coated everything and the streets and avenues were littered with cars that were unable to stay straight and had bumped twisted curved or smashed each other and parking meters were down pane-glass had been broken on a hundred different storefronts the streetlamps and fire-boxes were coated with a thick ice and the streets were slick with adventure and ice everywhere and as the weak sunrise eventually sent its weary light to the streets the slow removal of the icy glaze started - a slow transformation to water-over-ice which in some many ways was worse and the darkened roadways were unglazed first as the heat and warmth below and the travel of vehicles atop caused melting and breaking but then the parade of tow-trucks idle trucks and cargo-box trucks all backed up and the noise of horns and shouts was unnerving and merchants acted nervous and rude as I wondered - in a case such as this - why anyone even tried - why they couldn't just wait it out or shut down the entire day until things were changed and problems solved but the crazed way of New Yorkers allowed nothing of the sort and the constant drive for power profit and trade and its push to take place and continue against all odds made a shambles of what could have a been a beautiful peace for a day - it never arose and it was gone before it could even start.
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I always knew whimsey I always knew the sense of humor which sometimes bore more sense than the dread of death or illness or the crank of the wheezy realization that we were all - each - fated to die a death SOMETIMES not of our own choosing and I bore that well while being able to use it in all of my episodic outlooks towards whatever was vouchshafed as truth in every changing moment : which is why I often just laughed LAUGHED at the Bible at death at all the storied clouds of adventure and misadventure which held most other people down (it seemed) and as Emerson had said 'I would write on the lintels of the door-post WHIM' which was always a reminder to me the humans were sort of a joke-making species anyway or at least if they wanted to be but I walked sodden streets coated with grime and risk and wondered 'was it the cave man like this huddled around some snaking lick of flame who first cracked a joke about it : 'that might be a lick of flame but I hope it don't lick me' or something to that effect and if so who laughed and who did not laugh and was there always that distinction between the two different sorts of people (or more of course why just two?) - the worrier worried of the fire's going out the worrier watching the gruel being cooked to see if it's done versus the happy sprite the laughing one who hovered or who pee'd in the flame just to see what would happen and laugh or the other who drew audacious cartoons on the walls of his cave : what were these differences between people and how had they been brought down to this age and what evidence of old markings still abounded - 13th Street with painted windows announcing some florid march of flamingos for peace or disarmament the gypsy booth with the fat old woman who just sat there - seemingly morose - day after day to await what she claimed to already know would happen to happen - and none of it made any sense or had any value for it was merely people putting their own claims on life people drawing colors in their own selected lines and lines which outlined whatever it was only they wished to feature - a storied crazed coloring book of isolated intents and random desires broken apart re-selected and formed then into a life and a mind and a place and a people : and as I walked along and saw it all I realized I was OUT of it and far away both in mind and spirit though not in body - the slush and the cold affected me the dirty puddles gathered in huge ponds as each streetcorner collected its melt and the way people of all sorts had to jump or go around or simply slog through - their choice - whatever it was which awaited them at each corner they passed and I did notice NO ONE laughed for theirs seemed no humor theirs seemed no grace and there was NO ONE to laugh a fact which at first didn't bother me but then later took on a life of its own into one massive dreary fact of dread as I laughed instead - the two guys looking under the hood of their car and the dead battery which brought them to a halt - UPROARIOUSLY funny - the lady walking her mastiff as it wrapped its chain about her and she could not move enough and finally toppled over into the old dirty snow - HILARIOUS - the sound the garbage truck made as it hit the parked car too close to the corner in the turn and the guy who came running while yelling and screaming about what had just occured - totally OUTRAGEOUS and wild! - and yes I found a million ways of laughing at one and every thing - me with nothing me set at the loose ME some stupid Jesse James of humor laughing from daybreak to dusk and probably throughout the night too if I could.
About stars and the cosmos it went - 'I see the stars for what they are / half-submerged stepping-stones / to zones some unimaginable race / will homestead when the sun's a guttered candle') - which was always pretty good to me but I had gotten used to reading for a spell older things like 'Maggie a Girl of the Streets' by Stephen Crane and that had introduced me yet again to an entire other level of writing - in an older more staid vein about things which simply were no more and I'd gotten pretty heavily into that by dint of reading and re-reading and then sourcing whatever references for it I could find - also I'd even gone to his grave in Evergreen Cemetary in Elizabeth NJ (a truly miserable place - Elizabeth is - with not one bit of any unified face or ordinary and cultured layout - instead a mad ugly complex of every mix of twisted and old ratty buildings left without any care or - if not left - than re-done in the most awful and hideous approaches to be seen to anything able to be dwelt in and again no one seemed to care or even notice) and the grave-site and spot was an obelisk marking the entire family (he was the last one of 14 children) with the markings on the obelisk being about his father the Methodist minister George Townley Crane who'd achieved a fame surpassing the rest and his mother too (Mary Helen Peck Crane) - a temperance addict and a crusader for all things 'good' and 'right' and the name of Stephen Crane (1871-1900) although in place was simply there as afterthought or part of the ordinary layout of the burial spot : I'd always learned of him that he died wasted or quite drunk somehow on the streets of Newark nearby but I could never exactly ascertain a place or a proximity (or a reason in fact) for that and whether it was true or not didn't actually matter for I was more concerned with his life and output than with his demise - whatever it was - so I eyed things differently and the Evergreen Cemetary is actually pretty expansive and one of a series of interesting cemetaries in that area of Linden to Newark filled with strange assortments of famed Gypsies revered Chinese and favored or not so writers and poets so there was always some form of satisfaction in the seeking and yet the Crane site was somewhat different from all that in that it was staid traditional stately and normal too and - as I said - seemed only as an afterthought to even make mention of Stephen Crane in the most plain sense with no special notations nor accolades and a most-certain second or third fiddle for sure to his father and to his mother yet as I read and studied his work I always found interesting tidbits of this or that to connect it with and curiously the one most-famous piece 'The Red Badge of Courage' was the one I held in the least esteem - 'Maggie: A Girl of the Streets' being for me far more satisfying and interesting even in its shortened length by comparison for he describes the bawdy halls and the dance halls and beer gardens of old Bowery and I found all that endlessly interesting and quite visual in its way too - I could fairly be enticed by the roil and rumor or the sights and sounds he described and all that I felt by reading it - so that in some respects like much of Washington Irving (more later - another grand favorite of my study and note) and even Dreiser it all became history-book material for me also and just as today so much of the old is falling away from us instant by instant as a craving mankind strips the world of all its old - architecture lane story building habit tale and manner - so too then within the presence and pages of these books and through their writers' eyes so much of all that WHICH IS NOW LONG GONE was still kept vivid and kept living and the enlivening vitality kept it real even lo' these many years which makes it more the treasure for all of what we've lost in those intervening years which passed by us of late - and it's all a tired shame this losing and forgetting for once it's gone it's never coming back and just as quick as the memories fade so too come the denials that any of this ever really 'was' anyway : enter the grand revisionists in their wicked fields of play.
-
And by the way did you know that it was the beat poet Lew Welch who wrote that slogan in the 1960's ad campaigns - 'Raid kills bugs dead' - in a stint he did as an advertising sloganeer back in the early 1960's - quite an adroit phrase don't you think and a startling strange one too but alas gone little noticed for its import and uniqueness of authorship in these countless days of countless trite phrases now come and gone.
-
I awoke one day to a freeze of ice which coated everything and the streets and avenues were littered with cars that were unable to stay straight and had bumped twisted curved or smashed each other and parking meters were down pane-glass had been broken on a hundred different storefronts the streetlamps and fire-boxes were coated with a thick ice and the streets were slick with adventure and ice everywhere and as the weak sunrise eventually sent its weary light to the streets the slow removal of the icy glaze started - a slow transformation to water-over-ice which in some many ways was worse and the darkened roadways were unglazed first as the heat and warmth below and the travel of vehicles atop caused melting and breaking but then the parade of tow-trucks idle trucks and cargo-box trucks all backed up and the noise of horns and shouts was unnerving and merchants acted nervous and rude as I wondered - in a case such as this - why anyone even tried - why they couldn't just wait it out or shut down the entire day until things were changed and problems solved but the crazed way of New Yorkers allowed nothing of the sort and the constant drive for power profit and trade and its push to take place and continue against all odds made a shambles of what could have a been a beautiful peace for a day - it never arose and it was gone before it could even start.
-
I always knew whimsey I always knew the sense of humor which sometimes bore more sense than the dread of death or illness or the crank of the wheezy realization that we were all - each - fated to die a death SOMETIMES not of our own choosing and I bore that well while being able to use it in all of my episodic outlooks towards whatever was vouchshafed as truth in every changing moment : which is why I often just laughed LAUGHED at the Bible at death at all the storied clouds of adventure and misadventure which held most other people down (it seemed) and as Emerson had said 'I would write on the lintels of the door-post WHIM' which was always a reminder to me the humans were sort of a joke-making species anyway or at least if they wanted to be but I walked sodden streets coated with grime and risk and wondered 'was it the cave man like this huddled around some snaking lick of flame who first cracked a joke about it : 'that might be a lick of flame but I hope it don't lick me' or something to that effect and if so who laughed and who did not laugh and was there always that distinction between the two different sorts of people (or more of course why just two?) - the worrier worried of the fire's going out the worrier watching the gruel being cooked to see if it's done versus the happy sprite the laughing one who hovered or who pee'd in the flame just to see what would happen and laugh or the other who drew audacious cartoons on the walls of his cave : what were these differences between people and how had they been brought down to this age and what evidence of old markings still abounded - 13th Street with painted windows announcing some florid march of flamingos for peace or disarmament the gypsy booth with the fat old woman who just sat there - seemingly morose - day after day to await what she claimed to already know would happen to happen - and none of it made any sense or had any value for it was merely people putting their own claims on life people drawing colors in their own selected lines and lines which outlined whatever it was only they wished to feature - a storied crazed coloring book of isolated intents and random desires broken apart re-selected and formed then into a life and a mind and a place and a people : and as I walked along and saw it all I realized I was OUT of it and far away both in mind and spirit though not in body - the slush and the cold affected me the dirty puddles gathered in huge ponds as each streetcorner collected its melt and the way people of all sorts had to jump or go around or simply slog through - their choice - whatever it was which awaited them at each corner they passed and I did notice NO ONE laughed for theirs seemed no humor theirs seemed no grace and there was NO ONE to laugh a fact which at first didn't bother me but then later took on a life of its own into one massive dreary fact of dread as I laughed instead - the two guys looking under the hood of their car and the dead battery which brought them to a halt - UPROARIOUSLY funny - the lady walking her mastiff as it wrapped its chain about her and she could not move enough and finally toppled over into the old dirty snow - HILARIOUS - the sound the garbage truck made as it hit the parked car too close to the corner in the turn and the guy who came running while yelling and screaming about what had just occured - totally OUTRAGEOUS and wild! - and yes I found a million ways of laughing at one and every thing - me with nothing me set at the loose ME some stupid Jesse James of humor laughing from daybreak to dusk and probably throughout the night too if I could.
-
One March 17th I had been walking along the old streets of glittery midtown as they swooned with drunkards and people both - loud voracious wild whetted with appetites of drink and lust both salacious and crazed as it seemed ST PATRICK'S DAY the parade the St. Patrick's Day Parade had just ended up as I walked down the cramped streets florid and festive in the only-half-cold now air it seemed all the way downtown that at each tavern and saloon doorway and all in-between the streets too were faces and grotesqueries of every nature and had I the skill of the perfect sketch artist I could have filled a giant book with caricatures and drawings worth gold - teeth eyes mouths lips breasts arms biceps asses legs necks and all the rest besotted besmirched and miraculously drunken and wild and cavorting twisted wild shapes and faces in a revelry not reviled but riotous and rapid with drink passion food and lust and at every window there was something that could have been followed up and sought out and pleasure by degrees seemed everywhere too as the noise and oom-pah and the blaring bleat of bagpipe and airs seemed to drift in every direction float every which way go about on all parts and every warrantless entry and exit was filled seemed filled was crowded with wild faces of joy - about a thousand people green by degree milling about the savage streets at bars and watering holes and many cops too I noted (as they either had a softness for Irish revelement or were scanning the scene for problems either which I knew not) and as I went along I wondered - based upon seeing the service-workers to all these happy drinkers those who cleaned and brought the foods and drink being all Spanish or Mexican or other and I wondered what they thought of this day and this party and they had holed up in their usual places too but seemingly bewildered by the hoo-haw and I thought 'how long does a real assimilation in this manner take ? and are they still in some way to be a part of this whenever?' and I say my share of everything too and heard the usual riff-raff talk - one guy with a freshly-minted black eye was teased by another guy 'I know - you thought your wife said 'get up' but she'd said 'shut up' I've had my share of them too' and that was a big laugh line and all the way down the line too - one snicker after another was picked up and the newly-minted guy blanched only a bit to be the butt of a joke - but no matter for no one cared and they all carried on in the boisterous way which eventually always gives way to something else : the Irish will fight like stumpy pugilists yes but then so will anyone else too when fueled by the fires of the day and I saw some of that too.
-
Life never fits its skin and it is as if we are given a fabric too small to cover over the contents of that which we lived and we must somehow try to stretch that which we're given to cover the ever-expanding contents and the ends never reach each other and the contents are never contained and they spill out and cause havoc over the spilled contents of all the others around us in the same situation and fights break out so that just as described above the wilding of the wild spouting mouth eventually takes its toll and gets hit and the fight which ensues involves others and others still more and the roiling rolling trembling set-to bloodies and bruises many and tables and chairs are destroyed as is the wall of mugs goblets and mirrors into which things are thrown - bottles chairs and anything else nearby and no one can do anything about it but watch and take part if so but as they do it merely spread the wreckage and havoc and things go from bad to worse and the downhill slide in order to be contained somehow must be called 'progress' and in the name of that progress the countless yapping mouths which talk this talk will sort their words for countless hours of talk and thereby debating the slice of the slice which they hold prolong that which they speak about - and just like the bar crowd in front of me they know nor do nothing of merit to add valor to the scene which degenerates then into further mayhem until some absolutists steps in wield fire and bat and proceed to slay all enemies of each other where they sit and that sorry aftermath fouled with blood and stench is called 'Peace' the very 'Peace' for which we've been searching all this time anyway for.
-
Something for nothing and the nothing is what matters : nihilism like fruitcake hanging from trees with words as simple as can be - and the shelves are filled with narghiles olive-wood camels imitation pearl-studded scabbards and postcards of the nearby church : this is found art like the sort never found - an old sandy road running out from the town and all the streets seem to converge on the tiny little store and then start up again and the round green tourist bus stops by three times a day - filled with tall people from other lands and as they walk about they pick and touch at everything and the dust which rises like ghost-souls into their faces covers them and coats their cheeks and the grimey-headed females find themselves with dust and dirt and sand sticking to their make-up and lip-stick as they try to protect their faces but nothing can be done so they amble over to the glass frame and counter labeled 'Ambegris' and try looking hard at what they see - while locals peering in get ready to converge like beggars seeking change from them all as they leave and the bus-man too is in on this and leads the people to the tables outdoors and along the way where people sell carvings and fruit and chalk portraits of things never seen before and the local priests he too comes by wearing a straw hat and holding out a can for Mary Major Saint of the Hills and people drop change or dollars into it and he blesses with a red candle anyone who does so and they bow down or smile or genuflect a bit - never knowing anything of what they're doing - and every day like this such a life passes by and people are accustomed to what they see but the travelers see not what they think they believe : they seek deep blue sky and wild birds but instead get beggars and waifs holding hats in their hands and such a great silence overtakes them that nothing really gets done - just some awe and revulsion or something like that of things they've never felt before.
-
Lines of rocks and gemstones and such are on display as people look at them stare down at them and really really don't understand a thing : chalcedony carnelian jasper chrysoprase talline quartz-quartzite flint chert sard crhysoberyl spodumene garnet zircon malachite obsidian turquoise calcite feldspar hornblende pyrope tourmaline porphyry arkose rutile : even the very names are nice-sounding regal strange and pleasant to say : the rare metals : lithium cobalt beryllium mercury arsenic molybdenum titanium barium : and the basic rocks : basalt granite gneiss limestone sandstone marble slate gabbro and shale : these are all I guess 'REAL' things real as in LIFE having a composition something tangible something positive that one can touch and feel and rub and throw - these things are the basic similarities of everything else in life I suppose : stuff we hear of and know is there by assumption or by the fact of schooling or knowledge or experiment but mostly just with the idea that whatever's said to be out there is actually out there - somewhere to be found or contacted THROUGH experimentation and these rocks and things are like the most basic and oldest portions of what it is that we're told LIFE is made up of - the Earth Universe Reality Sphere we live in - soil stars dirt water rock fire and all the rest but we really don't 'KNOW' these things and we are only aware of them by what we're told about them.
6. I'VE GROWN ACCUSTOMED TO YOUR TASTE:Once upon a time in Magnolia Glow Somewhere USA there was a firestorm bird prancing to fly - it ran and it ran it flapped and it flapped but it NEVER could leave the ground : 'appearances deceive' it was told 'there's not a real need for you to fly even though you THINK convincingly that you can' and that meant of course so much for 'actualization' and and realization of any penchant for freedom travel life escape and with that conquered idea down the drain everything else went to the dogs with it - life became a dull bore rancid with unequal conversions and petrified situations - things never meant to coalesce things never granted accumulations of wishes and desires and because of that even the rotation of the Earth wavered for some time before deciding to halt as the sun it seemed ran backwards and the planets in place began falling and everything relative to everything else became but like a dream image - twisted unsure a bit out of kilter but with emotion so real one would swear it was real but only wise men know the true soil of the material world and what sprouts from it and NO MATTER WHAT ELSE IS PLANTED only certain categories of growth come forth : a 'we' and a 'they' and a coin box at the wishing well of foundations and SUDDENLY I looked up and around me saw : a five-man chorus singing Celtic songs about nature and the world and the reawakening of all things as nearby some ten bagpipers descended and began to play : tuneful dirge mournful something a melody that made me cry : and I took out a pen and wrote on the wall 'I forgive no one for anything - and never will either' and then I got up to walk away and was again outdoors where I'd thought I was anyway and saw bright light sunlit umbrellas and people at tables sipping teas and wines and torrid men in white jackets bringing sandwiches and pastries to those who sat around and I wondered to myself what world I'd entered for it felt for sure I'd not been here before and then a panic set in as I remembered once long ago seeing a situation much like this when of a sudden a crazed and angered street-person came along and started ranting to everyone about something and then he came through the barrier and started upending tables throwing ashtrays and smashing water goblets and everyone screamed and started running back or getting away or going inside and two men came out to attempt to subdue the man who was beast-like in his sudden strength and then three policeman arrived and they tackled the guy and with a club subdued him and held him down and they handcuffed him and dragged him off - into a patrol car and swiftly away - and the mess was cleaned but nothing ever went back to the scene it had been just before and I remembered that scene in some little horror thinking of it could ever happen again but I realized it could not for the world had changed and NONE of these people dwelt in that sort of a world and they'd not understand it or recognize it if they did and that sort of occurance had simply been thought out of existence - the vastness of change the alteration of a million consciousnesses had somehow led to something else and something new entirely and that was what we now lived : REMNANTS of stages of parts of some forlorn evolution of daring and doubt and destruction with smoldering ruins that we just went ahead and decided to live around and keep going nonetheless no matter so what : crucible of steel molten lava of circumstance all wizardry of valuation and merit : listen up and you will hear the midnight sound of what is near - the palpitating moments of lies and deceit and the magic of grace redeemed if only to be found and lost again and the world is a thousand magic moments in one swift instant and NO ONE can read the handwriting on the wall.
(Uncongenial quarters in uncongenial isolation).
One March 17th I had been walking along the old streets of glittery midtown as they swooned with drunkards and people both - loud voracious wild whetted with appetites of drink and lust both salacious and crazed as it seemed ST PATRICK'S DAY the parade the St. Patrick's Day Parade had just ended up as I walked down the cramped streets florid and festive in the only-half-cold now air it seemed all the way downtown that at each tavern and saloon doorway and all in-between the streets too were faces and grotesqueries of every nature and had I the skill of the perfect sketch artist I could have filled a giant book with caricatures and drawings worth gold - teeth eyes mouths lips breasts arms biceps asses legs necks and all the rest besotted besmirched and miraculously drunken and wild and cavorting twisted wild shapes and faces in a revelry not reviled but riotous and rapid with drink passion food and lust and at every window there was something that could have been followed up and sought out and pleasure by degrees seemed everywhere too as the noise and oom-pah and the blaring bleat of bagpipe and airs seemed to drift in every direction float every which way go about on all parts and every warrantless entry and exit was filled seemed filled was crowded with wild faces of joy - about a thousand people green by degree milling about the savage streets at bars and watering holes and many cops too I noted (as they either had a softness for Irish revelement or were scanning the scene for problems either which I knew not) and as I went along I wondered - based upon seeing the service-workers to all these happy drinkers those who cleaned and brought the foods and drink being all Spanish or Mexican or other and I wondered what they thought of this day and this party and they had holed up in their usual places too but seemingly bewildered by the hoo-haw and I thought 'how long does a real assimilation in this manner take ? and are they still in some way to be a part of this whenever?' and I say my share of everything too and heard the usual riff-raff talk - one guy with a freshly-minted black eye was teased by another guy 'I know - you thought your wife said 'get up' but she'd said 'shut up' I've had my share of them too' and that was a big laugh line and all the way down the line too - one snicker after another was picked up and the newly-minted guy blanched only a bit to be the butt of a joke - but no matter for no one cared and they all carried on in the boisterous way which eventually always gives way to something else : the Irish will fight like stumpy pugilists yes but then so will anyone else too when fueled by the fires of the day and I saw some of that too.
-
Life never fits its skin and it is as if we are given a fabric too small to cover over the contents of that which we lived and we must somehow try to stretch that which we're given to cover the ever-expanding contents and the ends never reach each other and the contents are never contained and they spill out and cause havoc over the spilled contents of all the others around us in the same situation and fights break out so that just as described above the wilding of the wild spouting mouth eventually takes its toll and gets hit and the fight which ensues involves others and others still more and the roiling rolling trembling set-to bloodies and bruises many and tables and chairs are destroyed as is the wall of mugs goblets and mirrors into which things are thrown - bottles chairs and anything else nearby and no one can do anything about it but watch and take part if so but as they do it merely spread the wreckage and havoc and things go from bad to worse and the downhill slide in order to be contained somehow must be called 'progress' and in the name of that progress the countless yapping mouths which talk this talk will sort their words for countless hours of talk and thereby debating the slice of the slice which they hold prolong that which they speak about - and just like the bar crowd in front of me they know nor do nothing of merit to add valor to the scene which degenerates then into further mayhem until some absolutists steps in wield fire and bat and proceed to slay all enemies of each other where they sit and that sorry aftermath fouled with blood and stench is called 'Peace' the very 'Peace' for which we've been searching all this time anyway for.
-
Something for nothing and the nothing is what matters : nihilism like fruitcake hanging from trees with words as simple as can be - and the shelves are filled with narghiles olive-wood camels imitation pearl-studded scabbards and postcards of the nearby church : this is found art like the sort never found - an old sandy road running out from the town and all the streets seem to converge on the tiny little store and then start up again and the round green tourist bus stops by three times a day - filled with tall people from other lands and as they walk about they pick and touch at everything and the dust which rises like ghost-souls into their faces covers them and coats their cheeks and the grimey-headed females find themselves with dust and dirt and sand sticking to their make-up and lip-stick as they try to protect their faces but nothing can be done so they amble over to the glass frame and counter labeled 'Ambegris' and try looking hard at what they see - while locals peering in get ready to converge like beggars seeking change from them all as they leave and the bus-man too is in on this and leads the people to the tables outdoors and along the way where people sell carvings and fruit and chalk portraits of things never seen before and the local priests he too comes by wearing a straw hat and holding out a can for Mary Major Saint of the Hills and people drop change or dollars into it and he blesses with a red candle anyone who does so and they bow down or smile or genuflect a bit - never knowing anything of what they're doing - and every day like this such a life passes by and people are accustomed to what they see but the travelers see not what they think they believe : they seek deep blue sky and wild birds but instead get beggars and waifs holding hats in their hands and such a great silence overtakes them that nothing really gets done - just some awe and revulsion or something like that of things they've never felt before.
-
Lines of rocks and gemstones and such are on display as people look at them stare down at them and really really don't understand a thing : chalcedony carnelian jasper chrysoprase talline quartz-quartzite flint chert sard crhysoberyl spodumene garnet zircon malachite obsidian turquoise calcite feldspar hornblende pyrope tourmaline porphyry arkose rutile : even the very names are nice-sounding regal strange and pleasant to say : the rare metals : lithium cobalt beryllium mercury arsenic molybdenum titanium barium : and the basic rocks : basalt granite gneiss limestone sandstone marble slate gabbro and shale : these are all I guess 'REAL' things real as in LIFE having a composition something tangible something positive that one can touch and feel and rub and throw - these things are the basic similarities of everything else in life I suppose : stuff we hear of and know is there by assumption or by the fact of schooling or knowledge or experiment but mostly just with the idea that whatever's said to be out there is actually out there - somewhere to be found or contacted THROUGH experimentation and these rocks and things are like the most basic and oldest portions of what it is that we're told LIFE is made up of - the Earth Universe Reality Sphere we live in - soil stars dirt water rock fire and all the rest but we really don't 'KNOW' these things and we are only aware of them by what we're told about them.
6. I'VE GROWN ACCUSTOMED TO YOUR TASTE:Once upon a time in Magnolia Glow Somewhere USA there was a firestorm bird prancing to fly - it ran and it ran it flapped and it flapped but it NEVER could leave the ground : 'appearances deceive' it was told 'there's not a real need for you to fly even though you THINK convincingly that you can' and that meant of course so much for 'actualization' and and realization of any penchant for freedom travel life escape and with that conquered idea down the drain everything else went to the dogs with it - life became a dull bore rancid with unequal conversions and petrified situations - things never meant to coalesce things never granted accumulations of wishes and desires and because of that even the rotation of the Earth wavered for some time before deciding to halt as the sun it seemed ran backwards and the planets in place began falling and everything relative to everything else became but like a dream image - twisted unsure a bit out of kilter but with emotion so real one would swear it was real but only wise men know the true soil of the material world and what sprouts from it and NO MATTER WHAT ELSE IS PLANTED only certain categories of growth come forth : a 'we' and a 'they' and a coin box at the wishing well of foundations and SUDDENLY I looked up and around me saw : a five-man chorus singing Celtic songs about nature and the world and the reawakening of all things as nearby some ten bagpipers descended and began to play : tuneful dirge mournful something a melody that made me cry : and I took out a pen and wrote on the wall 'I forgive no one for anything - and never will either' and then I got up to walk away and was again outdoors where I'd thought I was anyway and saw bright light sunlit umbrellas and people at tables sipping teas and wines and torrid men in white jackets bringing sandwiches and pastries to those who sat around and I wondered to myself what world I'd entered for it felt for sure I'd not been here before and then a panic set in as I remembered once long ago seeing a situation much like this when of a sudden a crazed and angered street-person came along and started ranting to everyone about something and then he came through the barrier and started upending tables throwing ashtrays and smashing water goblets and everyone screamed and started running back or getting away or going inside and two men came out to attempt to subdue the man who was beast-like in his sudden strength and then three policeman arrived and they tackled the guy and with a club subdued him and held him down and they handcuffed him and dragged him off - into a patrol car and swiftly away - and the mess was cleaned but nothing ever went back to the scene it had been just before and I remembered that scene in some little horror thinking of it could ever happen again but I realized it could not for the world had changed and NONE of these people dwelt in that sort of a world and they'd not understand it or recognize it if they did and that sort of occurance had simply been thought out of existence - the vastness of change the alteration of a million consciousnesses had somehow led to something else and something new entirely and that was what we now lived : REMNANTS of stages of parts of some forlorn evolution of daring and doubt and destruction with smoldering ruins that we just went ahead and decided to live around and keep going nonetheless no matter so what : crucible of steel molten lava of circumstance all wizardry of valuation and merit : listen up and you will hear the midnight sound of what is near - the palpitating moments of lies and deceit and the magic of grace redeemed if only to be found and lost again and the world is a thousand magic moments in one swift instant and NO ONE can read the handwriting on the wall.
(Uncongenial quarters in uncongenial isolation).
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