Thursday, May 16, 2013
31- LEAVING IT ALL AGAIN - Book One
LEAVING IT ALL AGAIN
Book One, as (section 1 thru 59)
12. This entire military draft thing has always stayed with me, back from those years. A few issues stand out still: The Director of the Selective Service Board then was one General Louis Hershey, or maybe it was Lewis Hershey. I don't know. Either way, it and he was, just as the name implies, a small shaft of shit, just like the chocolate, squeezing out a tube. That was all this guy was ever worth; a complete asshole, on a national scale. The very premise of the double-speak of the name said it all : Selective Service. Selective of what? They destroyed countless boys lives during the 60's and after - selected to die, run, kill, bomb and destroy the enemy WE tell you is your enemy, or be destroyed trying. They listened to no logic, these perverted cockamamie politicians and bureaucrats who send and still send others off to war. Selecting me? 'Fraid not. They labeled me with 'Anxiety Phobia as a label. What's that? What further doublespeak, and who do they think they are? I have a fear of being anxious? I am fearful and phobic because they are putting me where I don't want to be, in harm's way, to kill others, napalm villages, strafe children? This makes me anxious? I really, really wanted to kill them all then and there - and had I a gun or a rifle at that time, I would have. The gall that they waddled in, the unmitigated chutzpah they sent my way. Total, absolutely disgusting. I hope by now, as they all are, they are dead, buried, forgotten and pissed upon, and may they all rot in Hell, and their families and their families' families too, for all I care. The induction center at Whitehall, as I still pass it, on lower Broadway, is dirty and shuttered, dark and dank. It yet stands as a relic of a disgusting time and place. Each time I pass it, I anger all over again.Book One, as (section 1 thru 59)
1. I was born in 1949, Bayonne NJ. Bayonne Hospital. I was reared right under the Bayonne Bridge, in the Veteran's Projects on the Kill Van Kull, in a little four room apartment on the third floor. The Kill Van Kull ('Kill' is a Dutch word, used in early Manhattan geography, denoting a rushing or flushing body of water - New York City's harbors are filled with them), right across from Staten Island, was constant harbor traffic - tugs, tankers, boats. My grandmother could remember the President, whoever it was back then, in his tophat, riding in an open car on the inaugural day of the bridge opening. My mother had been reared in Bayonne, as had my father, through foster parents. Both grandfathers, neither of whom I ever met, died in prisons - Dannemora and Ossining. Italian hoodlum gunman crimes, each with stories attached (more on these episodes later). On the waterfront right there was Uncle Milty's Amusement Park - a cheap arcade sort of place with rides, food and a few pavilions. I can barely remember; it was like living on a Coney Island street or something - cars and walkers. '47 Plymouths, pre-war Fords, all sorts of busy junk parked at curbside with people, soldiers and sailors (all this postwar stuff was still somehow bubbling). The projects we lived in were basically for all out-of-service, returning WWII Vets; GI Bill, learning trades, little jobs, with few real 'skills', certainly no white collar stuff. I lived a dark and close early life. At age 4 1/2 we moved to a newly-built home in Avenel, perhaps 15 miles south, on Inman Ave. (#116). I was five when I entered School 4&5, for Kindergarten in School #5, the newer one (Mrs. Mudrack). When we moved in, the house, though finished, was not completely done - the yard was still piles of dirt and cuttings from the woods that once were there. I can remember the moving-in day real well - the truck, the movers, the lunch tray my mother put out for them (sandwiches and pickles, mostly).
2. Along the Kill Van Kull, alongside the water, all things seem now as if they were in black and white - a dark, secluded world of men with hats and coats, women overdressed and stern, fat and bulbous cars, and the constant stream of water traffic. Across, on the Staten Island shore, was a ferry boat junkyard and repair yard, combined, with hulks looming, half submerged and listing in the water, and occasional great, clanging sounds coming forth. I was a very young boy, and just remember, always, people moving about, lone, stark, mysterious. Nearby to us was the Washburn Pickle Works, with all its smells and odors, and near to that was the Hellman's Mayonnaise plant where, I was told, the Spanish women broke the eggs for the mayonnaise delicately and carefully, one egg at a time, on their knees, while sitting. It was always such a fine and indelible image. Now, that plant is a Best Foods corporate factory, one of many nationwide. Also nearby, and where my grandmother worked (my mother's mother) was the Maidenform or Playtex, I forget, girdle factory; a looming red-brick building that always looked ominous. It had, previous to this, during the war, held German Nationals, and other prisoners of suspicion, for the duration. After the war, when all the rationing and supplies loosened up, it re-opened and my grandmother (a seamstress) took a simple job there, and only later became the seamstress for the small Bayonne Hospital nearby and across town. She always lived alone - (more on Bayonne later). The move to Avenel went easy. I just, as was my wont, took it all in stride - with little discomfort and with even less caring. I sensed no difference. The yard was big, lined with trees, rolling downward to the railroad tracks where (I now know) the Bayshore Local did its runs each day back and forth to NYC Penn Station and all points before, after first passing Perth Amboy and Woodbridge stations, and then joining the mainline at Rahway, a few miles up the tracks. The tracks were a playground and a paradise, as was the Rahway Prison Farm, which was at our back yard area once you crossed over the tracks - cornfields, animals, wildlife, a working farm, tractors, prisoners, guards...all of that. They worked the fields as if it were rural Arkansas, right there. As boys, we all partook of our neighborhood bounties : the rail sidings, the boxcars, the supplies, the car/truck junkyard down the road at Rt. One and Randolph Ave., and the trailer courts which were there - with their strange people, poor, sometimes itinerant but most often not - wrestlers, sidemen, dancers, all a weird assortment of enticing sorts. Haystack Calhoun, a semi-famed wrestler, lived there. And others; people we got to know. I was long gone already, but by 1966, the prison farm was taken away, paved over and built upon by the State of NJ. It became an even more bizarre State School - acres and acres of cottages filled with the most severely retarded or demented people one could find - people so bad they'd been given up by their parents and lived under the auspices of the State, with nurses, doctors, and the rest. Mongoloids, spitters, yellers, droolers, humpbacks, distorted and bent people, vegetative states, you name it. They would sit around, or be wheeled around, by the Negro nurse attendants. They'd be fed like animals in disorganized clumps, controlled and corralled. The nearby, pretty much black, town of Rahway had become an employment resource, from which the school drew many of its minimum-wage attendants, janitors, cleaners, food-service people and orderlies. They were everywhere, these strange inmates, inside the fences - and we'd see the bizarre, big-headed people staring back at us, making their noises and grunts, seeking our attentions and company through the fences. It was quite an odd scene.
My mother started me, at age 6, on piano lessons. I pretty much hated it, at first, but she always said I'd be the 'most popular boy' if I knew how to play tunes at parties and such. Whatever fantasy was woven in her head, I was powerless about it. I would be driven, each week, to Miss Frank's home, on Claire Ave, Woodbridge. Anne Frank, to be exact (oddly enough). She was a single woman, perhaps 35, living alone there with her mother. Offering piano studio lessons. A very severe and ordered house, with a similar format and process of learning. White doilies everywhere, total neatness and a starkness unimaginable. For years that was my only exposure to a piano. During the rest of the week I would practice on a painted wooden-board facsimile of a three-octave, silent piano my father had painted up for me, on a flat piece of wood, perhaps three feet long. I'd practice what I'd been given as lessons, etc., but never heard a sound until I got to the next lesson and sat on the piano bench next to the teacher. Listening, Scolding. Correcting. I really don't remember much of that, but I'm sure it was odd. Miss Frank later ended the lessons and moved herself to Atlantic City, to pursue some sort of music-teaching there. I never knew what became of her mother; but the house still stands.
In late Feb. 1958, returning from piano lessons in a car driven by my mother (they would drop me off and pick me up after and hour and a half) we were struck at the Rahway Avenue/Avenel Coal and Oil railroad crossing, by a locomotive. The car was split in half, the long way, after being spun around. My mother's half stayed in place, and she got 4 stitches in her scalp. My half was dragged some 250 feet, and I was taken for dead. That ended my Miss Frank piano lessons. A few years later they were taken up again, this time with a small-time local bandleader, a Mr. Novack, also in Woodbridge, in a cottage in his yard, where he did people's taxes and gave piano lessons.
Getting back to school after recovery, I entered fourth grade in decent shape. I'd won a school talent contest actually, first place, on piano,when I played 'Around the World in Eighty days', pretty flawlessly. I was introduced as the remarkable young boy who'd come back to school, on crutches, after being hit by a train and was miraculously recuperating enough to continue. A sympathy vote and prize, I'm sure. I got applause, a paper crown, and a moment of recognition, though for what I wasn't sure.
Also in fourth grade, my friend Donald, and his friend Robert Pytell, fooling with matches, torched and burned down the Monarch Cabinet Company, next to Abbe Lumber, in a magnificent, shellac and varnish fueled fire that raged for hours. Hundreds of people watched that fire, for hours. Us boys, frolicking in glee as we watched it, were unceremoniously silenced by a crying Puerto Rican woman who hushed us and said 'you wouldn't be laughing so hard of that was your father or husband now left without a job!'. As hers was. The firestarters' secret never got out.
Another sidelight: Years later, the girl I eventually married said she'd first caught a glimpse of me at those two very times, and remembered always and clearly - the boy on crutches with the horrible, sad story, who'd won the piano-recital talent contest, and who, in her eyes, was famous, and the fire, which she too had witnessed, living some five blocks away. In 6th grade, as well, I wrote and staged a play, with my friend Aleck, and Mr. Ziccardi, the 6th grade teacher - a Christmas Pageant sort of play that Aleck and I were given freedom to write and direct, for some reason. It was called 'Maynard, the Red-Nosed Reindeer'. It was about Santa Claus being captured by Maynard the Beatnik Reindeer, and his being taken back to the beatniks' clubhouse and subjected to all sorts of beatnik ridicule, until being rescued by his elves, etc. I was Maynard the Reindeer, a beatnik to perfection, and Aleck was Santa Claus, done up fat. My big line was, after being asked where I'd gotten him from, 'Squaresville?', I answered, 'No man, can't you see I got him from Roundsville.' (exagerrated emphasis on 'round'). Anyway, she remembered this play and these scenes, and thought then that we were the playwriting equivalents of Lerner and Loew, or something. How fleeting is fame? We staged it for a few performances in the school, and one for parents and families. That was about 1960, same year as, later in the Spring, the Alan Shepherd and John Glenn space flights, early on.
I will go into some detail, a bit later, about the long hospital stay, the recovery, all the broken bones, the wired shut jaw, the brain scans, and fluids and, of course, the extended coma. But that's later. Somehow I came back from it all intact, with everything working. I played Little League, ran and jumped, baseball, basketball, and the rest. A few side effects, such as migraines, nausea, jaw and teeth pains, eventually settled out and went away. The railroad went broke, the trial was a few years later, my mother was determined to be negligent in not stopping the car in a snowstorm, at the crossing, and was awarded nothing. I was awarded $1900 as an innocent bystander (?), and the money was held in trust for me until I was 21. With it, we made our down payment on a house (more later), 1971, in the wilds of faraway Bradford County Pennsylvania, with an infant. It was a huge, cold, ramshackle old farmhouse on 12 acres. Yes, we were hippy-crazy back-to-the-land hardcore dropouts.
3. After I recovered well enough, I began once more taking piano lessons. My father did eventually get a $25, old bar-room piano delivered to our house, and it was placed in the basement. It became my possession - I could finally hear my own playing, and work at and practice it during the week. For a while a piano teacher came to the house once a week, and then I began bicycling myself, along Rahway Ave., to Mr. Novack's house. I don't recall the name of the street, but that house too is still there; all the same. It was at the top of a pretty steep hill off and up from Rahway Ave - and I huffed and puffed it heartily, in all weathers. There was, after time, one house about midway up from which, for whatever reason, there were always a few kids hanging out in the sideyard who'd begin pelting me with stones and pebbles as I struggled past the house. I don't know why or what was up with that, and I never really got hurt, just bothered and perplexed each time, but I persevered. Mr. Novack was a constant cigar-smoker - everything stank and even the piano keys were yellowed from exposure. No white ivories there. I put up with it. He would sit down, first, and play me some wilded-up show tune or something, proclaiming that I should watch his technique and his limber fingers, and learn tempo and emphasis. Once he was done (so boring) I'd have to sit in his stinky place and play the one or two lesson pieces he'd assigned, which he'd then critique and then, once more sitting in my place, proceed to play for me, correctly. Then he'd play the next week's pieces, and we'd be done. In the Winter, my father would drive me, and most of the lesson was taken up with the two of them bullshitting around while I sat there or played or feigned interest. One time (my father had 5 kids, and a sixth one miscarried) they spent the entire time talking birth control methods, quite graphically. I hadn't a clue. On the ride home my father asked if I'd understood everything they'd been talking about. I faked a knowledge and said 'yes'. End of conversation, forever. That was my sex-education totality, from parental guidance anyway.
In Little League I was a catcher (way too small and light for that actually) for the Greiner Funeral Home 'Braves'. It was fun, and I liked baseball; until one day I was knocked out cold from a swung bat that got me in the catcher's head. I was taken to Perth Amboy General for observation, and released later in that day, determination being that I was fine. To get to Little League fields, out by the High School and across St, George Ave., I would bicycle through Avenel Park - acres of swamp and skunk cabbage, in the Spring. It was later all built over for a big apartment complex, and then a Korvettes and something else across the road. In those days it was still Woodbridge Ford, a toy store place called Dooley's, some big banguet hall that later burned, by the tracks, and a Studebaker Dealership by the High School, All of that stuff is gone now. the Andes Brothers, the bane of my one high school year (they were teachers there), and another teacher, Mr. Wintergrass, all lived together in those apartments once they were built. Years later, I also had a friend in there, Jeanne Chabot, who much later was a librarian in Woodbridge, and then later I knew a girl Michelle Flowers, I think was her name, who had a black kid or two and, I was told, made her money turning tricks. Never found out if that was true, but she was nice enough.
4. Playing at the prison farm, crossing the tracks, shooting bow and arrows in the cornfields, seeing pheasants, rabbits and all the rest - traipsing through unfettered snowfields after a storm, making the first tracks through the acres and acres of newly fallen snow, tracking animals, playing in the corn stubble; all of that went on always. One time, on a railroad siding, we broke into a boxcar. It was filled with 100lb bags of flour, for the prison kitchen use, we guessed, and we, with small penknives, tore open (and ruined) as many of those bags as we could get at, the knife slits causing flour to run out, everywhere. Dirty kid mischief, but I don't know how we got away with some of it. Atop each corner of the prison walls, about a half mile away, we could see the guards, looking into the walls, not out, fortunately. Next to the prison was a factory called Philadelphia Quartz. We were told it made bug spray (probably extermination stuff, like the spray our parents put on us for mosquitos). Never really found out, could have been DDT for all I knew. Anyway, their drainage pool, for factory runoff or whatever, was a large pond of clear, cobalt blue water. We never knew what made it certain shade of blue, the blue of phosphorous or something, a chemical blue to be sure. No matter. many a hot day found us wading unceremoniously into that weirdly blue water to swim. No one ever got sick or died, or even got a rash.
The school we went to had what were called 'portables'. They weren't portable at all, but were the wooden structures built as quick additions to the schools, sort of like military barrack type-things. For us, they housed 6th grades, and one or two fifth grades. Mr. Raisley, Mr. Ziccardi, Mr Roloff, and, I think, Mrs. Stein until each retired, and I was already gone. One time another friend I was acquainted with somehow broke in to the end one, (5th grade, Mrs. Stein) on a Saturday night, trashed it, and then started, from the outside, a fire on the wall, which burned some but was eventually extinguished by the fire department. It was a big deal, a big mystery, a crime-of-the-century type thing, but, alas, all school stayed in session that April. Fire : it was deemed a failure.
My Catholic Church stuff was pretty normal - altar boy, early morning acolyte, helping with custodial stuff with the old, half-drunk Mr. Price at the church, learning about things and from inside - Mass, rectory stuff. Eventually I wound up, by 1962, instead of going to 8th grade (I'd gone to 7th at Iselin Junior High School, then brand-new) I instead began at Mother of the Savior Seminary, in Blackwood, NJ, Camden County, way southwest NJ, by Philadelphia. It was a cloistered, closed, boy's school, run by Salvatorian Priests, a German order, based in Wisconsin, which serviced African Missions in Tanganyika. I wanted to do that. I'd decided to become a priest, somehow, strangely foreign and distant to myself - an African Mission priest, to leave forever this crazy world of civilization and suburbs. If not that, I also had a parish picked out in Elizabeth NJ to which I wanted to be posted (impossible, I would have had no choice in the matter). We stayed at the school all year round, except for a month in Summer when we were allowed to go home if we wished. We were taught basic high school courses, by brothers and a few lay teachers, learned religion and doctrine, music and theater (?), four years of Latin, and rigorous study, Mass twice a day, eating in common halls, enforced periods of silence, meditation, study; group living in dormitory-style, sports, art, and the rest. Boys only. A few parental visiting days here and there. I stayed almost a full 4 years, eventually having problems having to do with my own desire to break out, be different, non-conformist, avant-garde stuff; poetry and plays, by people I 'should not have been reading'. Philosophy books by 'people I should not have been reading'. And a far-too enthusiastic interest in poetry/theater/writing/music. I'd had the lead in a few theater things we would produce (we had a gay theater coach, Brother Alexander, from NYC. By the way, a certain gayness was rampant here). I was somewhat legendary for having forcefully acted a few very strong, not-so-churchy roles, plus a strong character lead as Judas in our annual Passion Play, to which busloads of students from all over southern Jersey came. I was a momentary superstar to all these crazy kids and girls, who'd scream at me as if I was a matinee idol or something. I also won the South Jersey Region Oratorical Contest, for which I had to read aloud, in front of judges and moderators, a round-robin format of round by round readings. I read Robert Frost ('The Fear') and 'Martin Luther's speech before the Diet (Congress) of Wurms', his speech of self-defense at his 'Impeachment' trial ('someone's got to bell the cat'). Also very strong. I got newspaper coverage, and a public presentation of an actual gold medal with a tri-color ribbon attached (I still have it), engraved on the back with name and date and piece read. They engraved it as the speech before the 'Diet of Worms', which no one ever quite understood, thinking I'd read some food piece about a weird diet. The idea of a churchman doing public-speaking was heartily accepted, but my choices of what I read were frowned upon; yet I wouldn't change them and was allowed to go on. Not cool. By Thanksgiving of that year I was asked to leave for the holiday, go home, and perhaps consider not coming back. By the way, by this time the Communists had taken over Tanganyika, kicked out all the missionaries, and my dreams of Africa were ruined. So, I went home and, instead of returning, made my arrangements to finish out at Woodbridge HS. I had more than enough credits to graduate already, so I chose a few courses, basically audited them, sat it out, and graduated in June'67 from WHS, my past all forgotten. I hated that school, detested Mrs. Stanaitis and Gabriel, vice-principle and principle respectively, who both gave me constant trouble for being a weirdo, having too much hair, sending me home for haircut and clothing violations., etc. I took French with the Junior Class, just to get away from the creepy, hateful Seniors (who'd nicknamed me, for some reason, 'Mad Dog'). I had no friends, none at all. My English teacher, Mrs. Oettle, pleaded with me to allow some of my writing to be put in the yearly literary mag she'd publish, but I refused. Somehow she did get one, a long dumb one, and published it - to my chagrin and anger. It's about 'my friend, Frank, the telephone pole'. I also hated her. I did nothing to cooperate that year. Refused class trips with her group to see Georgy Girl, the Fantastiks, and a few other stupid things. Some girl kept calling me for a prom date, I never took the calls, my mother was going nuts over that. I never did go, and was not allowed to graduate with the class anyway, in the outdoor ceremony, because of the way I looked (appearance). So I got my diploma the next day, in the office.
5. This now is where some of this begins getting really interesting - and I'll be bouncing back and forth between things. Partially as a ploy, and partially as my 'writer's' strategy of keeping you, the reader, engaged. In that way I'm utilizing a bit of what an actor does when he 'crosses' that 'fourth wall' and begins engaging the very audience before him into the story with asides, winks and commentary. It's a little tricky, but none of the material being here imparted suffers for it. Everything retains its truth and validity. Life itself, in its routine and predictability, gets pretty boring; can be, and remains that. Some of this stuff, to retell, is pretty dumb and plain, and other parts of it really sore. I've done that; that's how I put this together. I'm working this, sort of, as the tale of a displaced person - a child and then a man, moved along into a strange, new place of no value and incredible plainness and tackiness, from an old, also failing, post-war urban scene - dark, shuffling, shadows, the ghost of a strange 'American' place.
After I came out of the seminary, I used to go to the Woodbridge Library, when it was on Rahway Ave, by (now) Scott's Towing, in the old Home Center building. I walked there every night and sat there till closing, wiling away the hours, reading, taking notes on things, and generally scribbling to gain my own education - since the high school environment was basically useless for me. In that library, I sought to flesh out my ideals. (I really, in retrospect, spent all of my teen energy right there re-forming and manufacturing a completely different character for myself. Something of which others previously familiar with me, as was commented on, could not recognize, nor understand. Incredible transformations, indeed - and some of this is just plain funny. You, dear reader, yes, are allowed to laugh as well). Four girls, a little team, used to follow me around, trying to get my attention, talk or whatever. Eventually, we talked, walked, and even once all stopped somewhere and had coffee. They thought I was a strange, beret-wearing character, and of course I led them on and let them believe whatever they wanted. I decided to play along; I affected often a British accent, told them I was from Britain, via NYC, and now in Woodbridge, etc. They fell for all this crap. This was Winter '67. Soon enough, they all went away except one girl, who never left. We continued seeing each other. Eventually, the next year, I got her pregnant and we had a child in 1970, a son. I never abandoned what I'd done; we got married in a no-ceremony thing with like 6 people at a tiny little steak house named the Brass Bucket. A few friends and a few family in attendance. She would graduate in '69 from Woodbridge, but by Summer '67 I had moved to NYC, on the streets, when all my adventures began. I attended the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture, at 8W8 Street, got educated in Art, lived a hippy, wild life, amidst drugs and 'revolution' in the streets, as it were. I also got involved in a few not so nice things, including two murders, at arm's length. I lived at 509 e11th, for 60 bucks a month, paid by my druggie roommate (Andy Bonomo) in drugs each month. Got involved in military contraband, Vietnam protests, SDS, runaway AWOLS on the way to Canada, ran a safe-house for them and their stolen military cars from Virginia; lots of things I won't mention right yet, the entire lower eastside scene - Tuli Kupferberg, the FUGS, Ginsberg, Leary, the East Village Other, the Diggers, etc., etc. Nothing really important. I survived unscathed, eventually had to flee, lived in the basement of the school as a night watchman guy for 16 bucks a week, worked next to what would become the Fillmore East serving food and slop to crazed concert people in the very wee hours, worked there with a runaway American Indian from Colorado, also on the run and hiding out from killing his wife (he'd thrown her from a speeding car, over a cliff). I could go on, but won't, on these counts. I fled, fearing for my life from the police, the draft, and the military. The apartment was in my name, and it ended up, with 16 people sleeping on the floors and stuff, raided by the police in my absence and they were all carted away. I went back once to get my bicycle, and the place was a shambles and police-taped. In my grandmother's foot-locker, which had been my dresser of sorts, they'd found a chopped up dead body. The 'unsolved hippie murders' case (You can look that up). Anyway, my wife and I by that time, with the 6-month old kid, took off for that house in Pennsylvania I mentioned before, to start anew amidst a hippy/nature lifestyle, and hide away from all this as well. We stayed there until 1978, when we came back to Avenel. And, yes, more on all that later too.
After I came out of the seminary, I used to go to the Woodbridge Library, when it was on Rahway Ave, by (now) Scott's Towing, in the old Home Center building. I walked there every night and sat there till closing, wiling away the hours, reading, taking notes on things, and generally scribbling to gain my own education - since the high school environment was basically useless for me. In that library, I sought to flesh out my ideals. (I really, in retrospect, spent all of my teen energy right there re-forming and manufacturing a completely different character for myself. Something of which others previously familiar with me, as was commented on, could not recognize, nor understand. Incredible transformations, indeed - and some of this is just plain funny. You, dear reader, yes, are allowed to laugh as well). Four girls, a little team, used to follow me around, trying to get my attention, talk or whatever. Eventually, we talked, walked, and even once all stopped somewhere and had coffee. They thought I was a strange, beret-wearing character, and of course I led them on and let them believe whatever they wanted. I decided to play along; I affected often a British accent, told them I was from Britain, via NYC, and now in Woodbridge, etc. They fell for all this crap. This was Winter '67. Soon enough, they all went away except one girl, who never left. We continued seeing each other. Eventually, the next year, I got her pregnant and we had a child in 1970, a son. I never abandoned what I'd done; we got married in a no-ceremony thing with like 6 people at a tiny little steak house named the Brass Bucket. A few friends and a few family in attendance. She would graduate in '69 from Woodbridge, but by Summer '67 I had moved to NYC, on the streets, when all my adventures began. I attended the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture, at 8W8 Street, got educated in Art, lived a hippy, wild life, amidst drugs and 'revolution' in the streets, as it were. I also got involved in a few not so nice things, including two murders, at arm's length. I lived at 509 e11th, for 60 bucks a month, paid by my druggie roommate (Andy Bonomo) in drugs each month. Got involved in military contraband, Vietnam protests, SDS, runaway AWOLS on the way to Canada, ran a safe-house for them and their stolen military cars from Virginia; lots of things I won't mention right yet, the entire lower eastside scene - Tuli Kupferberg, the FUGS, Ginsberg, Leary, the East Village Other, the Diggers, etc., etc. Nothing really important. I survived unscathed, eventually had to flee, lived in the basement of the school as a night watchman guy for 16 bucks a week, worked next to what would become the Fillmore East serving food and slop to crazed concert people in the very wee hours, worked there with a runaway American Indian from Colorado, also on the run and hiding out from killing his wife (he'd thrown her from a speeding car, over a cliff). I could go on, but won't, on these counts. I fled, fearing for my life from the police, the draft, and the military. The apartment was in my name, and it ended up, with 16 people sleeping on the floors and stuff, raided by the police in my absence and they were all carted away. I went back once to get my bicycle, and the place was a shambles and police-taped. In my grandmother's foot-locker, which had been my dresser of sorts, they'd found a chopped up dead body. The 'unsolved hippie murders' case (You can look that up). Anyway, my wife and I by that time, with the 6-month old kid, took off for that house in Pennsylvania I mentioned before, to start anew amidst a hippy/nature lifestyle, and hide away from all this as well. We stayed there until 1978, when we came back to Avenel. And, yes, more on all that later too.
6. So, I was living at 509 e11th, next to a place called Paradise Alley - an older, famed Beatnik haunt of Kerouac and Ginsberg, and many others of that group. Around my corner was the Peace Eye Bookstore - Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg. On the corner was the Psychedelicatesan, a somewhat famed and crazy hippy haunt - black lights, music, incense, pot, girls and kids hanging around, doped and homeless, all the time. Just up St. Mark's Place (e8th) was the Electric Circus (previously The Dom, a Polish neighborhood center), Warhol, Velvet Underground, all that stuff. The street was a warren of strange, small shops, and suddenly the entire Lower East Side was overrun with runaway hippie types - girls, fey guys, losers, smart people, drifters, and just plain old rich kids doing what they wanted. I took it all in, met hundreds, did what I wished - living a 26 hour day, everyday, on the street, I essentially abandoned the apartment - which had become an Underground stop for military and anti-Vietnam runaways on their trips to Canada. Babes laying around everywhere. Money and dope flowing. I'd taken to living in the basement of the Studio School, completely alone. It was a much happier place for me. I had a third-floor painting studio, and was able to study painting with Philip Guston, Mercedes Matter, Charles Cajori, Milton Resnik, David Hare (sculpture too), Esteban Vicente, and numerous others. I studied music theory, as well, with Morton Feldman and occasionally John Cage. Lots went on; Often I just slept on the carpeted library floor, amidst artbooks and other books, all night. Jimmy Hendrix lived down there street, just before he got started big time for England. My studio-school girlfriend, Judy Tennenbaum, and I would often haunt the docks all night, on bicycles, looking at things, talking to people, or just hanging out beneath the elevated Westside Highway. She would often steal vegetables from fruit stands and we'd eat all sorts of raw things that way. She has now become pretty famous in her own right as an artist under another name. She married some draft-dodger guy who went to jail, and now, later, somehow got his last name in there too. I also hung with Peter Serkin (Rudolph Serkin, famed pianist, was his father), and his girlfriend, Wendy Spinner, whom I too loved very much. They married, later divorced, I lost all touch. Peter is now very big time pianist. He also, in the 70's and 80's, had a classical group named Tashi. God knows where Wendy is.
My home girlfriend was still back in Woodbridge HS, to graduate in '69. She would often skip school and get on a bus instead to spend the day with me, to get home by like 6, when her parents would come home from work. She hated home life too, as I had, but stuck it out and did graduate. Then, as I said, got pregnant pretty quickly. I never let the distance or the things which ocurred throw me. My point of view has always been remarkable resilient. I just let things happen around me as if performance art of some sort was going on. People talk meanings and values, yet I share little of that with anyone. All that I have is my own - a self-created creed, a myopic manner of undertaking missions and adventures. I've never much cared, and the only thing that's ever kept me going has been art and the 'art' of the written word. Everything else is comic strip. Looking back on this life, what else is, or was, someone to do? Go fighting and screaming to some nasty end? Not me.
7. This is all true, by the way, and I'm just writing it out from my head as I type. A bit haphazard, a bit jagged, but nonetheless, it's flowing through time and there's lots more to be said about each instance I mention. And I intend to get through them all. I have more to tell, looking backwards, about my father, his mad death, his mother, her mad death in Greystone, and about the two criminal grandfathers who both died in different prisons - how they got here, and what occurred. Madness and trouble seems pretty much engrained in my family. And then, in about 2004, my 57 year-old brother in law, another bundle of oddness, blew his brains out in San Francisco, in his yard (Vallejo, CA, next town over), in a car and was only found two days later as his dogs were barking and the house was open, lit and empty, which mad spiral sent that family into a tizzy, bi-coastal, which I had to bail out. He owned 5 houses, 81 bicycles, 12 motorcycles, 30 assorted guns, property in Nevada, and some other, jumbled assorted stuff like canoes, outboard motors, dogs, clothing, watches, etc., all stuffed into this hoarder's-delight house in Vallejo. He used to haunt flea markets and garage sales. Most of the stuff still had price tags and stickers and wrappers still on them. It was nuts. They all went out there for 2 weeks, along with my son (who'd gotten 2 collectable cars in the will, a Porsche, old and ratty, which he sold out there for 10 thousand bucks, and a Facel Vega (French sports car, and a BMW motorcycle, also ratty) which, the last two, he eventually had transported to his house in Colonia, where they sit in his garage) to sort it out; I wanted nothing to do with it, for reasons you'll read here. He made pig-servants out of them. He left a hand-written will which gave EVERYTHING, absolutely everything, away, free of charge, to various girlfriends and boypals. As Executrix, his sister, my wife, had to notify, certify and vouch to give it all away. All these fucked up whores and homos got literally hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of stuff of which they had no idea was coming. Each old girlfriend got a house - completely free of charge. Any monies left to his sister, (about $20,000) had to be used to cover transfers and taxes for ALL these items so they would remain free of charge to the recipients. Whatever was left was hers. It was like a madman's evil game. I wanted it contested and thrown out. We could have been living the rest of our days on the proceeds of this stuff, but the entire family said those were his wishes and they had to be carried out. We went to attorney John Hila, in Avenel, and I asked if any of this was legal, the hand-written will, the total fucking madness, etc. He said it wouldn't be in NJ, but in California it was. And then he said 'so much for love', and tore up his copy of it, and certified all the originals. I was furious, and still harbor resentment. But, that's my lot in life. Just this side of loser central except for my work and writings.
I had his body (minus a head, I'm told, which was just pulp matter blasted all over the inside of the car from the close-range large-gauge shotgun used), shipped here to Costello Funeral Home on Avenel Street, had a very small closed-casket service, and had him cremated. Against his wishes, by the way, which in the will were stipulated as to be cremated in SF, and his ashes strewn over the Sierra Nevada Mountains, with a memorial program to which he'd supplied songs for various girls and guys to sing, words to be said, and locations to be ashed. Damn it all, no one ever knew about that until it was way too late. He's buried just next to a golf course in some dastardly cemetery in Paramus, right along a highway, no headstone, no nothing.
8. At the Studio School, as I guess you'd imagine, I had many, many adventures. I had no money, but many adventures. I'd awaken each day, after some sort of erratic and fitful sleep. Early morning hours, at first, found me at the corner of e10th and 2nd Ave., in a small cubicle, a diner only by imagination, that had a counter and a few seats. It would be daybreak. Down the street, at the end of 13th, was a huge Con Ed generating plant. In our anti-war terror-thinking days we often scouted it for chances of blowing it up - we did seriously consider that as a doable idea, but only for a while. Each morning, in this diner, I'd be sitting there with the fresh and energetic Con Ed morning crew guys on their way in and the tired Con Ed nightworkers just getting off their shift - they'd be sitting around, coffee, donuts, Danish, eggs. For my part, whenever I had 25 cents - believe that price - I'd get a bowl of oatmeal and a coffee for it. The owner and cook/proprietor was a pale, Polish guy, a Jew I guess. A camp survivor, he had the tattooed numbers on his forearm from the internment camp, and he had two lashless eyes, which were always red and tearing. His pale whiteness and the red eyes made it appear, of course, always tragic, as if he was crying and something horrid had just happened. Which, in its way, it had, and he'd never been able to live out of it. We'd nod and talk, ever so briefly, since he did get to know me on an almost daily basis even if just for ten or fifteen minutes, but no more than that ever came out as friendship. I was always struck by him, amazed at his resilience and by what I imagined his story to be.
There were others of this ilk all around me. In 1967 apparently it was still possible to find concentration camp survivors. I'd see, here and there, at Gertel's Bakery, or Katz's Deli, or Rappaport's or Yona Schimmel's (these were all little food places in the old lower east side Jewish areas) numerous and varied people, not always so old either, with the telltale camp tattoos on their forearms. It always left me speechless and somehow reverential of that person and what I'd seen of them - as if, from another place, a light was still shining within them that reflected a reality and experience far stronger than that meager and stupid one I'd experienced until then : somewhat privileged, white, stupid American-boy upbringing, always supplied with bread and fodder and sheltered from real danger in my Howdy Doody and Lassie ways. I wanted some of that light and presence for myself, and I wanted to come forth, stand and witness, as well, for these people -never really knowing why. Over time, looking back, I have now come to realize how very much of those days, the people I knew, the entire hippie movement, and the places and experiences I had, were essentially all of a Jewish nature, the entire movement - all those Jerry Rubin and Mark Rudd moments, all those bantering intellectuals and blowhards, all those whiners and complainers and most of the hippie runaways too, all of Jewish privilege living somehow out of a screed of action from somewhere else. For which everyone else, back in 1967, was somehow falling.
In Oct., 1967, the First Annual Psychedelic Festival was held in Forest Hills, NY. Whatever it was, it was planned out of my e11th Street location. I'd been given free tickets, which I gave away and kept one for myself, which I still have somewhere, wrapped in plastic and (OH!) so collectible. My roommate guy Andy Bonamo, shady character always, had lots to do with arranging the lightshow, skywork fireworks, and such, along with other stoners, trippers and wackos. I never went, never really knew even how it turned out or if big money was made. After the apartment bust, all traces of Andy Bonamo disappeared, and I was really never sure about him anyway - informer, insider spy, police plant, I never knew. He just always seemed too genial, too giving, as if to entrap or implicate as many others as he could. He claimed to be from California, and he'd make lots of 7pm phone calls, from a booth, to somewhere I never knew, claiming it was 'Mom'. He seemed, as I overheard, always to talk in code, as in 'Yes, it's getting chillier now, I'll need that coat and jacket.' Stuff like that. Whatever it was, it always left me uneasy. I was alone, I knew that, but I didn't want to not be alone either - I was onto other things and was just waiting for them to break open or flower into something for me. I just knew none of this was to be it for me.
St. Mark's in the Bouwerie is Manhattan's ancient church. Peter Stuyvesant, and many others, are buried there, beneath stones, beneath markers and memorials. The walls are marked with names and personages. The old, old church staggers on - poetry readings, music shows, speeches, rallies. The two very old statues of American Indians, original New York Manhattan natives are still out front. The place is priceless and golden. I spent much time there - they dispensed food, had warmth and held, as I said, numerous events of a sort. Hippies and homeless together shared. I met William Burroughs there, and spent personal time with him, companionship. I've written of it somewhere, and I have it right here with me. A nice piece, entitled 'Burrough's Clock Ticking.'
In addition to St. Mark's, I had a lot to do with the Diggers, a free-food and clothing source, a non-store of sorts, that was somewhere around here. I can't exactly remember where - e10th, e9th - a store into which one could walk, pick through clothing, food, whatever was there, and just take. It was all free and all a support movement, a back-to-roots effort to circumvent money and ideologies and control. Some famous guy, now named Peter Coyote had a go at the start of this movement. He originally had a regular, weird, Jewish name. He hit the big-time, after communes and encampments and such. The girls who ran this particular location lived in an apartment on e4th street, a number of blocks away. I had gotten involved, and, a few years younger than they were (they were mostly all about 22-23, I was 18) and was used after a while for bringing things back and forth from the store to the apartment and vice versa. No big task, a pleasure, something to do. The best thing about it (I tell you this here, for real): these girls, every one of them, lived their lives in that apartment stark naked. Not a stitch. To me, they were awesome and beautiful, the most beautiful and most statuesque things I'd ever seen in my life, completely at ease, loose and happy. Once I got over being stunned (in fact it never reached a 'sexual' point for me, being so stunned and awed each time) I was more than eager to make these runs. I saw lots of beauty, I witnessed lots of sex, but, alas, was never right there party to any of it, just petted and patted, like a puppy or a house pet. What I could have been part of, I never knew.
9. There were a few tussles in those days : occasional scuffles with Vietnam protestors bumping heads with people on the opposite end, but mostly none of that happened in my range. I was, by comparison remember, a kid. These college types, the more professional rabble-rousers, they took the helm differently. In my 11th St. apartment, I began hearing plans for 'levitating the Pentagon', which actually became an enticement and a deed. I did not go, nor was I around that weekend (I remember it). But these guys had planned, from my place and from SDS headquarters and wherever else, the idea of a dadaistic taunting of authority, an actual protest gathering, in Washington (many, many people were there) and the supposed 'threat' of thousands of minds getting together to think one though - that of 'levitating the Pentagon'. Absurd, yes, but the foolish authorities in DC took it seriously enough to ring the Pentagon with buses so as to actually keep the protestors from getting onto the grounds. The buses were bumper to bumper with no means of squeezing through, and ringed with cops. This meant, as it showed, that the war authorities in Washington, in the midst of all else underway, actually took this threat as a serious matter and feared the action - thousands upon thousands of protestors and activists defining and then causing to occur that which they themselves acceded to as a ridiculous stunt. 'Levitate the Pentagon' indeed. It was like a Zen caper - chanting and praying over a fictitious goal, in a situation of some near-peril only because of its ridiculousness being taken seriously by Authority which turned out to be foolish enough to blink, to show its real colors - that of jerks, assholes and fools. Which I think we all knew anyway. So much for military intelligence.
They all came back from that trip elated and wild. I was in my apartment, brooding a bit over the mess I'd let take over; there were couples sprawled out on the floor, asleep, naked, asleep, entwined, asleep, clothed. Piles of belongings and cases and bags - people on the move, running, headed north, hungry, horny and scared. It was my place, in my name, but I was seldom there. In the refrigerator there was the carcass of a picked over turkey. The 'kitchen sink' which doubled as a bathtub when one removed the plywood cover which concealed the deeper side of the sink - taking the middle out allowed one the sort of crouch and scrunch so as to be able to sit in a bath of water. It was an old and venerable tenement tradition, I was told, and the only means of bathing many people had. At the back wall, and a half a room away through an arch, was the real bathroom - a cramped and crabbed and crummy sink with toilet, and no ventilation. In between that was a half room, a room it was called - a bedroom, a place to sprawl, a pile of blankets. Also in that room were Andy Bonomo's cowboy boots, all filled with change. One for quarters, one for dimes, one for nickels. All drug money actually. Where he kept the dollars, I never knew, but he was pretty free with the change - subway fare or a sandwich, just dip your hand in and take what you needed, not wanted. It was an honor system only thieves could understand and abide by. A regular person would just steal. Many of these bodies only occasionally moved or moaned. There was a drug around, called 'Belladonna', which he'd been passing to others, and many partook - into bizarre shades of stupefaction. Another of that moment drug was referred to as STP, a supposedly super LSD concoction he'd also passed around. Any number of these sixteen dazed bodies beneath me could be on either of those - not just restful from sex. Like the Diggers place, female nudity here too seemed rampant now.
I had a bicycle there, but now I noticed it was gone - stolen away by someone. I got up and left - walking over to Eighth Street. That was the last I saw of that place, until after the raid, when - as I mentioned - it was a torn-apart shambles even worse than before, and devoid of any people. Billy Joe and Holly, upstairs from me, they were also gone - they were a young couple, very beautiful, both, with long hair and severe marijuana intake habits. They had a perfectly put together little apartment, cared for and groomed, totally unlike mine, and it was theirs alone. A loving and joyous couple of hippy kids, crazy of happiness and love, they too had disappeared. My cat, Blake, was gone. Down a few buildings, there were two dead kids, stabbed and beaten and dismembered. The drug-taking landlord guy, he was gone. All those stolen cars and even the 'body shop' across the way, run by some hip Spanish cats, it was still there but now no one knew a thing. Total silence prevailed. The two girls on Avenue A whom I'd gotten to know, they too I never heard from again. It was like a sudden and dark bomb had gone off. My life, moment to moment, had changed constantly and changed here again. I realized I could be in for some deep shit, so I moved quickly.
I used to take an occasional weekend (Sat.) bus back to Avenel, to see my girlfriend, Kathy. She'd meet me, prearranged, by the White Church/Barron Arts Center area of Rahway Ave, where the bus would drop me after entering through Carteret from the Turnpike. We'd walk around, get something to eat, probably find an abandoned boxcar to screw in, and I'd hang around for a while and then go back, usually by train, up the street. After a while, it began happening that each time I'd get off the bus there'd be a cop car waiting for me, a Woodbridge policeman, Sgt.Crilly. He was a tough, mean bastard. And he seemed to have it in for me, my looks, my whole way of being. He'd stop us, grill us, ask what I was doing here, ask if her parents knew she was with me, etc., etc. Nothing to bag me on, ever, but just endlessly annoying and bestial, leering questions that amounted to nothing. It went on for quite some time. He too is dead now, a long time ago, in fact. Some sort of mean, weird surveillance had fallen into place and focused itself on my head.
I always enjoyed, greatly, the train rides back - from the tiny Avenel station, the train ride was solitary, short and pleasant. No trouble, no one bothering me. That would leave me back in NYC, at Penn Station, from which I'd slowly, deliriously happily, walk my way back, meandering everywhere I chose to, towards the Village once more, where I'd enter the school, take up my work where I'd left off, and happily begin painting again.
I'd never registered for the draft, and was considered by that alone an evader and an outlaw, and perfectly eligible to kill and maim. It never bothered me, and I never thought about it; but somehow, one day, I think through my mother's reference in response to mail, I was found out as enrolled in that school. I was picked up for non-registering and taken to Whitehall Induction Center, on lower Broadway. My papers were filed and I was told to be back in a week or so (they gave me a date and time). I don't really know why I didn't just ignore them or tell them to go fuck themselves, but I returned, by bicycle, and went in on the appointed day. They reviewed my case and decided, since I actually was 'resident NJ', that they had no jurisdiction and that I should be, instead, in Newark, NJ. To which place I was taken - formalities. Examination - no real penalties or charges for not registering. I was examined, determined to be heterosexual enough to kill and maim, clear-headed enough to shoot and kill, and told that my past record of train-injury blemishes meant nothing to them; it was old news, and this was now. I was, I realized, five minutes away from group induction with about thirty other suckers from that day's load. I asked to see a psychiatrist, thinking as quickly as I could. The Vietnam War, at this time, was churning through bodies as fast as a roller coaster drops, and they little cared about anything except whether I could lock, load, shoot and kill. The front lines was my future, unless I got out. I was sent upstairs to a room with three psych guys staring at me. They began their routine; questions and answers, etc. I told them my problem was as follows - if someone taught me how to use a rifle, a gun with which to shoot and kill, my murderous mind would, of course, turn it and turn that knowledge immediately on the people who taught me it, the nearest people to me, and to any others nearby. To wit : I would BE the crazed killer they'd just taught. (Their worst fear?). As I said all this, in turn, I was slowly inching closer and closer to the wall of windows five floors up from Broad Street. Talking quickly, I leaped up from the floor to the wide sill, as if to make for the windows. They leaped into action, grabbed me down, tried settling me (by this time acting crazed), and told me to stay put. Fifteen minutes later, they were back - unbelievably, with a pass for, my choice, bus or train back to NY, asking first if I would be OK retuning by myself. I said sure, took the bus ticket, and left. They had told me my mother would be getting my paperwork in the mail, I'd be classified 4F (unfit for military service), and would be instructed to go for psychological counseling. Some time later, my mother did receive my mail - a draft card, 4F, but no mention was ever made to me that she ever received anything else. That was the end of the military for me.
10. The Studio School I stayed in was the old Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney mansion, at 8w8th street (all still there, and open). In the 1920's era, after the Armory Show, it became the first Whitney Museum; three brownstones and the mansion were grafted as one and you entered from the center to the three joined buildings as museum space. It was still all very nice, spacious, exclusive staircases and large rooms, curved balconies, garden openings, a courtyard, etc. It all opened out to MacDougal Alley, a private, residential street to which we had access. It all had once been stables and carriage houses for the rich fold of the 1880s, behind their mansions. This was all very beautiful stuff, just running down by the late 1950's. What we were in was the basic beginnings of a more crass utilization of these old spaces. I was given a room in the basement, of my very own - large, with a bathroom and a sink, and even a tiny kitchen, for my use. I was in some sort of free-man's heaven, plus I got 16 bucks a week, basically to do nothing except stay overnight. Mr. Rush, the black man who was the daytime custodian and doorman, etc., would arrive about 6am. He'd let himself in and, waken me, whether or not I was asleep on the upstairs library floor, or in my rooms in the lower level. There was an old, dead fireplace there, no longer in use. I'd rigged up a plywood platform bed with some blankets and a pillow, and in that big fireplace I'd sleep, about two feet off the ground. The whole place was heated, so the Winters as well cost me nothing and I was always warm, nay, hot. I had two entrances and exits, and I scurried about wherever I chose. I would read until late in the night, or paint or draw or dream or just roam about, street side, anywhere I chose. The docks, the rivers, east or west side. I've even got a long written piece about how and all that I did to make the decision about liking the west side or the east side docks best. The east side docks were fish and fish-markets (the old Fulton Fish Market, and its taverns and bars and dives) and the west side, beneath the elevated Westside Highway, was truck freight, hard goods, lumber and vegetables, etc. Much different, the two sides, and my piece is interesting reading. I''ve got that piece here toom if anyone's interested. Two large glass doors led out to the garden - a secluded area, sunlit and enclosed by the external buildings. It was a private and very nice, with a few tables and chairs. Just like a rich man would have. I often just sat around, as well, on the good days, and others would come and stay with me. Egads! I entertained! I often think back to those privileged days and consider myself a youthful and quite lucky sapling, growing taller among great trees.
11. Avenel, long before I was moved in there, had once been a place. A farm-town actually, called Demarest-on-the-Hilltop. It was agricultural; long rolling fields of crops. At the intersection of Rt. One and Avenel Street, near where now a terrible looking modern firehouse stands, was the only real 'spot' of Avenel - old pictures have shown me it was a road crossing for the path-turned roadway that became Rt. One - a straight line up to NYC. There were, right along here, two huge ball fields where early baseball was played, a flat, level field where circuses and fair posted themselves while on the road, a trailer park (most remnants still in place) where traveling groups would stay, itinerants would pose as domestic sitters and, eventually, parked and never moved trailers became home the - as I said earlier - a curious collection of people. The Agolio family, which owned Avenel Diner lived there. The diner was a tiny little roadstop, stainless steel, just like diners should be. The Agolios were about 8 strong, and lived in one trailer, not that large either. The family of Sharon D'Angelo lived nearby. She, along with Jane Culp (or Moyers), Gary Anthony, and even Haystack Calhoun's son, were friends of mine. Bonnie Agolio was considered fast and desirable. Sharon D'Angelo was considered spicy and always willing. Jane Culp was the reserved and quiet one. Behind the trailer park, at the end of Inman Ave. abutting Route One, was a large, rambling auto and truck junkyard. All through what I recall as 1959 and 1960, we boys hung out there; often sneaking into an old, abandoned tanker truck by flipping up the hatch and shimmying our way down into any of the three compartments within. We would (this is true, sadly) page through Jim Yacullo's father's girly mags, learn about anatomy by pictures and, a few times, as boys four or five strong, huddle in that tanker truck facing all the same direction and, as a group, jerk off to pictures. This is true; nothing to be proud of, but something boys did do. More than once. Michael Orlando, a few years older than us, would fill us in on the details. He once said 'You know those nights when your parents go out and leave you home. That's when they have sex - the guy kisses the girl's nipples, and that opens up her hole so he can stick his weenie in.' This is truth, just as he told it. Michael and Ray Orlando lived right at the middle of our block. Raymond was older by ten years, worked on Wall Street and always brought investment tips home, seemingly to no avail. He drove a new Thunderbird. Michael was a four or five years older than me and, basically, a thug. He was loud, effusive and could be nasty. He seemed to know everything, from sex to cars, in a weird and worldly way. Upon entering his attic (upstairs) bedroom(s), where he and his brother slept, you would flip on the lightswitch and he'd connected all that so that the radio would also come on, loud. It was nothing really, but very cool and advanced to us who witnessed it. Their father was a tall, dark, wounded war veteran (WWII), with shrapnel wounds up and down his legs and back. I don't know if he worked or not, actually do forget. Their mother, Rose, was a small, very talkative woman, with a pink 1959 Ford Galaxie. She was the receptionist/assistant for the dentist down the end of the street, Dr. Chrobot. She was there for years, and most everyone knew her. She talked fast, she walked fast, and she drove this big, crazy pink car. They had a carport built onto the side of the house, under which these cars were put, and in the backyard they had installed a built-in, rectangular pool. All very Californian then. Dr. Chrobot was a gay man. He would drive in each office day from NYCity; both he and Mr. Roloff, who had a huge 1959 Lincoln President, also pink, oddly enough, were the first two 'gay' men I ever knew, not that any of it was advertised, as it is now. Mr. Roloff also lived in NYC, Greenwich Village, and drove in each day. We often wondered how they did all this, how wealthy that must have been for that travel and cars and such. Many years later, during the 1980's, in Metuchen, teaching second grade, was a Miss Sonja Stepperude, (she taught my son) who was also gay - a lesbian in a much more open environment. She lived, and took the train to and from, each day, Greenwich Village, in an apartment on Sheridan Square. We became friendly with her, and once or twice stopped in to visit when we were in New York - she had a very nice, old-style, cramped place, lived alone, and was quite eccentric in that old, living alone lady way that once was. All of this was, in toto, a very rich environment; these people, these experiences, the spread of time. The dentist, the teacher, they're long gone - Mr. Roloff, I know, is dead. Miss Stepperude, actually, is still around and I occasionally see her here or there. Old and brittle now, but there nonetheless. The world changes.
1960 was the centenary of the Civil War. I was in 7th grade that Fall, and I remember vividly the classroom in which, at the back bulletin board, a display had been put up about the Civil War. I was entranced : photos, captions, tales and stories. It was a backwards window for me to look out of, far off, back into time - into, incredibly, a place and time I really wished I was at, instead of the unseemly and callow present in which I existed, learning, turning, trying to make work. It was a difficult moment - Avenel was a bad trap, school was dismal, no one seemed to speak anything I understood, events were meaningless and time was a fluid joke that no one seemed aware of. I wished to flee, run off, leave my time. That Civil War bulletin board may have been the best thing that ever happened to me; cheap, and random, and on the fly. I could dream and in my dreaming seem to be there and learn the words and the ways of expressing the things I felt - I was able to do it all on my own, in a solitary confinement I'd chosen. I was desperately seeking a way out, and soon found one; but for the moment it was not yet here, and I would have to wait a bit and live just a little more before I got to it.
9. There were a few tussles in those days : occasional scuffles with Vietnam protestors bumping heads with people on the opposite end, but mostly none of that happened in my range. I was, by comparison remember, a kid. These college types, the more professional rabble-rousers, they took the helm differently. In my 11th St. apartment, I began hearing plans for 'levitating the Pentagon', which actually became an enticement and a deed. I did not go, nor was I around that weekend (I remember it). But these guys had planned, from my place and from SDS headquarters and wherever else, the idea of a dadaistic taunting of authority, an actual protest gathering, in Washington (many, many people were there) and the supposed 'threat' of thousands of minds getting together to think one though - that of 'levitating the Pentagon'. Absurd, yes, but the foolish authorities in DC took it seriously enough to ring the Pentagon with buses so as to actually keep the protestors from getting onto the grounds. The buses were bumper to bumper with no means of squeezing through, and ringed with cops. This meant, as it showed, that the war authorities in Washington, in the midst of all else underway, actually took this threat as a serious matter and feared the action - thousands upon thousands of protestors and activists defining and then causing to occur that which they themselves acceded to as a ridiculous stunt. 'Levitate the Pentagon' indeed. It was like a Zen caper - chanting and praying over a fictitious goal, in a situation of some near-peril only because of its ridiculousness being taken seriously by Authority which turned out to be foolish enough to blink, to show its real colors - that of jerks, assholes and fools. Which I think we all knew anyway. So much for military intelligence.
They all came back from that trip elated and wild. I was in my apartment, brooding a bit over the mess I'd let take over; there were couples sprawled out on the floor, asleep, naked, asleep, entwined, asleep, clothed. Piles of belongings and cases and bags - people on the move, running, headed north, hungry, horny and scared. It was my place, in my name, but I was seldom there. In the refrigerator there was the carcass of a picked over turkey. The 'kitchen sink' which doubled as a bathtub when one removed the plywood cover which concealed the deeper side of the sink - taking the middle out allowed one the sort of crouch and scrunch so as to be able to sit in a bath of water. It was an old and venerable tenement tradition, I was told, and the only means of bathing many people had. At the back wall, and a half a room away through an arch, was the real bathroom - a cramped and crabbed and crummy sink with toilet, and no ventilation. In between that was a half room, a room it was called - a bedroom, a place to sprawl, a pile of blankets. Also in that room were Andy Bonomo's cowboy boots, all filled with change. One for quarters, one for dimes, one for nickels. All drug money actually. Where he kept the dollars, I never knew, but he was pretty free with the change - subway fare or a sandwich, just dip your hand in and take what you needed, not wanted. It was an honor system only thieves could understand and abide by. A regular person would just steal. Many of these bodies only occasionally moved or moaned. There was a drug around, called 'Belladonna', which he'd been passing to others, and many partook - into bizarre shades of stupefaction. Another of that moment drug was referred to as STP, a supposedly super LSD concoction he'd also passed around. Any number of these sixteen dazed bodies beneath me could be on either of those - not just restful from sex. Like the Diggers place, female nudity here too seemed rampant now.
I had a bicycle there, but now I noticed it was gone - stolen away by someone. I got up and left - walking over to Eighth Street. That was the last I saw of that place, until after the raid, when - as I mentioned - it was a torn-apart shambles even worse than before, and devoid of any people. Billy Joe and Holly, upstairs from me, they were also gone - they were a young couple, very beautiful, both, with long hair and severe marijuana intake habits. They had a perfectly put together little apartment, cared for and groomed, totally unlike mine, and it was theirs alone. A loving and joyous couple of hippy kids, crazy of happiness and love, they too had disappeared. My cat, Blake, was gone. Down a few buildings, there were two dead kids, stabbed and beaten and dismembered. The drug-taking landlord guy, he was gone. All those stolen cars and even the 'body shop' across the way, run by some hip Spanish cats, it was still there but now no one knew a thing. Total silence prevailed. The two girls on Avenue A whom I'd gotten to know, they too I never heard from again. It was like a sudden and dark bomb had gone off. My life, moment to moment, had changed constantly and changed here again. I realized I could be in for some deep shit, so I moved quickly.
I used to take an occasional weekend (Sat.) bus back to Avenel, to see my girlfriend, Kathy. She'd meet me, prearranged, by the White Church/Barron Arts Center area of Rahway Ave, where the bus would drop me after entering through Carteret from the Turnpike. We'd walk around, get something to eat, probably find an abandoned boxcar to screw in, and I'd hang around for a while and then go back, usually by train, up the street. After a while, it began happening that each time I'd get off the bus there'd be a cop car waiting for me, a Woodbridge policeman, Sgt.Crilly. He was a tough, mean bastard. And he seemed to have it in for me, my looks, my whole way of being. He'd stop us, grill us, ask what I was doing here, ask if her parents knew she was with me, etc., etc. Nothing to bag me on, ever, but just endlessly annoying and bestial, leering questions that amounted to nothing. It went on for quite some time. He too is dead now, a long time ago, in fact. Some sort of mean, weird surveillance had fallen into place and focused itself on my head.
I always enjoyed, greatly, the train rides back - from the tiny Avenel station, the train ride was solitary, short and pleasant. No trouble, no one bothering me. That would leave me back in NYC, at Penn Station, from which I'd slowly, deliriously happily, walk my way back, meandering everywhere I chose to, towards the Village once more, where I'd enter the school, take up my work where I'd left off, and happily begin painting again.
I'd never registered for the draft, and was considered by that alone an evader and an outlaw, and perfectly eligible to kill and maim. It never bothered me, and I never thought about it; but somehow, one day, I think through my mother's reference in response to mail, I was found out as enrolled in that school. I was picked up for non-registering and taken to Whitehall Induction Center, on lower Broadway. My papers were filed and I was told to be back in a week or so (they gave me a date and time). I don't really know why I didn't just ignore them or tell them to go fuck themselves, but I returned, by bicycle, and went in on the appointed day. They reviewed my case and decided, since I actually was 'resident NJ', that they had no jurisdiction and that I should be, instead, in Newark, NJ. To which place I was taken - formalities. Examination - no real penalties or charges for not registering. I was examined, determined to be heterosexual enough to kill and maim, clear-headed enough to shoot and kill, and told that my past record of train-injury blemishes meant nothing to them; it was old news, and this was now. I was, I realized, five minutes away from group induction with about thirty other suckers from that day's load. I asked to see a psychiatrist, thinking as quickly as I could. The Vietnam War, at this time, was churning through bodies as fast as a roller coaster drops, and they little cared about anything except whether I could lock, load, shoot and kill. The front lines was my future, unless I got out. I was sent upstairs to a room with three psych guys staring at me. They began their routine; questions and answers, etc. I told them my problem was as follows - if someone taught me how to use a rifle, a gun with which to shoot and kill, my murderous mind would, of course, turn it and turn that knowledge immediately on the people who taught me it, the nearest people to me, and to any others nearby. To wit : I would BE the crazed killer they'd just taught. (Their worst fear?). As I said all this, in turn, I was slowly inching closer and closer to the wall of windows five floors up from Broad Street. Talking quickly, I leaped up from the floor to the wide sill, as if to make for the windows. They leaped into action, grabbed me down, tried settling me (by this time acting crazed), and told me to stay put. Fifteen minutes later, they were back - unbelievably, with a pass for, my choice, bus or train back to NY, asking first if I would be OK retuning by myself. I said sure, took the bus ticket, and left. They had told me my mother would be getting my paperwork in the mail, I'd be classified 4F (unfit for military service), and would be instructed to go for psychological counseling. Some time later, my mother did receive my mail - a draft card, 4F, but no mention was ever made to me that she ever received anything else. That was the end of the military for me.
10. The Studio School I stayed in was the old Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney mansion, at 8w8th street (all still there, and open). In the 1920's era, after the Armory Show, it became the first Whitney Museum; three brownstones and the mansion were grafted as one and you entered from the center to the three joined buildings as museum space. It was still all very nice, spacious, exclusive staircases and large rooms, curved balconies, garden openings, a courtyard, etc. It all opened out to MacDougal Alley, a private, residential street to which we had access. It all had once been stables and carriage houses for the rich fold of the 1880s, behind their mansions. This was all very beautiful stuff, just running down by the late 1950's. What we were in was the basic beginnings of a more crass utilization of these old spaces. I was given a room in the basement, of my very own - large, with a bathroom and a sink, and even a tiny kitchen, for my use. I was in some sort of free-man's heaven, plus I got 16 bucks a week, basically to do nothing except stay overnight. Mr. Rush, the black man who was the daytime custodian and doorman, etc., would arrive about 6am. He'd let himself in and, waken me, whether or not I was asleep on the upstairs library floor, or in my rooms in the lower level. There was an old, dead fireplace there, no longer in use. I'd rigged up a plywood platform bed with some blankets and a pillow, and in that big fireplace I'd sleep, about two feet off the ground. The whole place was heated, so the Winters as well cost me nothing and I was always warm, nay, hot. I had two entrances and exits, and I scurried about wherever I chose. I would read until late in the night, or paint or draw or dream or just roam about, street side, anywhere I chose. The docks, the rivers, east or west side. I've even got a long written piece about how and all that I did to make the decision about liking the west side or the east side docks best. The east side docks were fish and fish-markets (the old Fulton Fish Market, and its taverns and bars and dives) and the west side, beneath the elevated Westside Highway, was truck freight, hard goods, lumber and vegetables, etc. Much different, the two sides, and my piece is interesting reading. I''ve got that piece here toom if anyone's interested. Two large glass doors led out to the garden - a secluded area, sunlit and enclosed by the external buildings. It was a private and very nice, with a few tables and chairs. Just like a rich man would have. I often just sat around, as well, on the good days, and others would come and stay with me. Egads! I entertained! I often think back to those privileged days and consider myself a youthful and quite lucky sapling, growing taller among great trees.
11. Avenel, long before I was moved in there, had once been a place. A farm-town actually, called Demarest-on-the-Hilltop. It was agricultural; long rolling fields of crops. At the intersection of Rt. One and Avenel Street, near where now a terrible looking modern firehouse stands, was the only real 'spot' of Avenel - old pictures have shown me it was a road crossing for the path-turned roadway that became Rt. One - a straight line up to NYC. There were, right along here, two huge ball fields where early baseball was played, a flat, level field where circuses and fair posted themselves while on the road, a trailer park (most remnants still in place) where traveling groups would stay, itinerants would pose as domestic sitters and, eventually, parked and never moved trailers became home the - as I said earlier - a curious collection of people. The Agolio family, which owned Avenel Diner lived there. The diner was a tiny little roadstop, stainless steel, just like diners should be. The Agolios were about 8 strong, and lived in one trailer, not that large either. The family of Sharon D'Angelo lived nearby. She, along with Jane Culp (or Moyers), Gary Anthony, and even Haystack Calhoun's son, were friends of mine. Bonnie Agolio was considered fast and desirable. Sharon D'Angelo was considered spicy and always willing. Jane Culp was the reserved and quiet one. Behind the trailer park, at the end of Inman Ave. abutting Route One, was a large, rambling auto and truck junkyard. All through what I recall as 1959 and 1960, we boys hung out there; often sneaking into an old, abandoned tanker truck by flipping up the hatch and shimmying our way down into any of the three compartments within. We would (this is true, sadly) page through Jim Yacullo's father's girly mags, learn about anatomy by pictures and, a few times, as boys four or five strong, huddle in that tanker truck facing all the same direction and, as a group, jerk off to pictures. This is true; nothing to be proud of, but something boys did do. More than once. Michael Orlando, a few years older than us, would fill us in on the details. He once said 'You know those nights when your parents go out and leave you home. That's when they have sex - the guy kisses the girl's nipples, and that opens up her hole so he can stick his weenie in.' This is truth, just as he told it. Michael and Ray Orlando lived right at the middle of our block. Raymond was older by ten years, worked on Wall Street and always brought investment tips home, seemingly to no avail. He drove a new Thunderbird. Michael was a four or five years older than me and, basically, a thug. He was loud, effusive and could be nasty. He seemed to know everything, from sex to cars, in a weird and worldly way. Upon entering his attic (upstairs) bedroom(s), where he and his brother slept, you would flip on the lightswitch and he'd connected all that so that the radio would also come on, loud. It was nothing really, but very cool and advanced to us who witnessed it. Their father was a tall, dark, wounded war veteran (WWII), with shrapnel wounds up and down his legs and back. I don't know if he worked or not, actually do forget. Their mother, Rose, was a small, very talkative woman, with a pink 1959 Ford Galaxie. She was the receptionist/assistant for the dentist down the end of the street, Dr. Chrobot. She was there for years, and most everyone knew her. She talked fast, she walked fast, and she drove this big, crazy pink car. They had a carport built onto the side of the house, under which these cars were put, and in the backyard they had installed a built-in, rectangular pool. All very Californian then. Dr. Chrobot was a gay man. He would drive in each office day from NYCity; both he and Mr. Roloff, who had a huge 1959 Lincoln President, also pink, oddly enough, were the first two 'gay' men I ever knew, not that any of it was advertised, as it is now. Mr. Roloff also lived in NYC, Greenwich Village, and drove in each day. We often wondered how they did all this, how wealthy that must have been for that travel and cars and such. Many years later, during the 1980's, in Metuchen, teaching second grade, was a Miss Sonja Stepperude, (she taught my son) who was also gay - a lesbian in a much more open environment. She lived, and took the train to and from, each day, Greenwich Village, in an apartment on Sheridan Square. We became friendly with her, and once or twice stopped in to visit when we were in New York - she had a very nice, old-style, cramped place, lived alone, and was quite eccentric in that old, living alone lady way that once was. All of this was, in toto, a very rich environment; these people, these experiences, the spread of time. The dentist, the teacher, they're long gone - Mr. Roloff, I know, is dead. Miss Stepperude, actually, is still around and I occasionally see her here or there. Old and brittle now, but there nonetheless. The world changes.
1960 was the centenary of the Civil War. I was in 7th grade that Fall, and I remember vividly the classroom in which, at the back bulletin board, a display had been put up about the Civil War. I was entranced : photos, captions, tales and stories. It was a backwards window for me to look out of, far off, back into time - into, incredibly, a place and time I really wished I was at, instead of the unseemly and callow present in which I existed, learning, turning, trying to make work. It was a difficult moment - Avenel was a bad trap, school was dismal, no one seemed to speak anything I understood, events were meaningless and time was a fluid joke that no one seemed aware of. I wished to flee, run off, leave my time. That Civil War bulletin board may have been the best thing that ever happened to me; cheap, and random, and on the fly. I could dream and in my dreaming seem to be there and learn the words and the ways of expressing the things I felt - I was able to do it all on my own, in a solitary confinement I'd chosen. I was desperately seeking a way out, and soon found one; but for the moment it was not yet here, and I would have to wait a bit and live just a little more before I got to it.
A good portion of my time, back then, was taken up with this stuff. Vietnam was a horrible time to live through. Especially if one was a boy. I saw numerous people destroyed by these draft board mechanizations. I saw numerous others just give up, enlist or be drafted, and enter just to get it over with. Some never came back, and others who did were still wrecks years later. It seemed the only ones it never really bothered, nay, rather bolstered, were the ones who were already so disposed beforehand - with bluster, bravado, cruelty, foulness and power-trips. It was all very obvious. I met all kinds - the ones who came back, bragged, and became cops and law enforcement personnel, trading up on their gun and gusto bullshit. They should have been slapped down instead. I knew one, Rick Guston, who came back as a small-time Pennsylvania town cop, patrolling a dismal Route 6 - and whose own stories told me of his thinking and what he did. Overt aggression towards those he did not know, leering sexual inducement to females he'd select to pull over just to see what came, the stories of the prostitutes, women and girls in Vietnam whom he'd fucked or abused and then thrown down stairwells, just to watch them die. Those he shot point blank, Vietnamese, for whom death was a constant - any excuse would cover the deal. I'd heard all the stories, and I'd witnessed his foulness firsthand. And that's but one example. Another interesting item: on that bus ride back from the Newark Induction Center on Broad Street, I somehow got to sit in the bus station while waiting with boys who had just been drafted, inducted. Where I'd gotten away, the same snares had them. They were very saddened, upset at their poor fortune and fate. One guy, named Joe, was actually crying, crying over the fact of his changed fortunes: they'd just arranged the wedding, gotten the apartment, ordered furniture, etc., and now he was saying they'd have to cancel all that; whatever he meant, he was taking it hard. My heart was sorry for those boys, though not, somehow, as sorry for my own. It was one crummy bus ride back - wherever they were headed, I was going in the opposite direction - right back into the bowels, and gladly, of NYC, my anger and outrage only fueled more.
One time, walking along Avenel Street, two guys passed by me and instantly stopped and backed up. They had an MG convertible, which they left at the curb. They jumped out, tackled me, and just began pummeling me. Having something to do with hair and filthy hippy and all that. Another time, actually in a parking lot at some hamburger place along Rt. 36 by Hazlet, two guys opened the back door of the car in which I was sitting in the front seat, reached over, yanked my head back, and - again - senselessly just began punching my face. Having something to do with hair and filthy hippy and all that. It happened a few times, and it always hurt. If I could see any of them now, yes, I'd wish them their deaths. Fuck forgiveness.
At the Studio School, I shared a great big painting studio with a Jewish guy from Montclair, whose name I really can't remember. I spent lots of time in there with him - very strange character, I felt, out of type for an 'artist' as he claimed to be. He was neat, quiet, didactic and serious. He would paint these very neat, very specific 4x4 feet canvases, the same every time, working on them each for a long time as well. Each one, it always turned out, was a full body portrait, with some background, some detail, some foreground, but always a full-body portrait of some or another standing American male in full Army uniform. Meticulously done, each time - the uniform, the patches, the stripes, hat, salute, arm sashes, the whole thing. I NEVER, ever could figure this one out, at all, as much as I tried. This guy was, compared to and next to me, from Mars. I cannot recall his name, or what happened, or where he went and how we parted. He's just a memory. As I think back on it now, I'd love to see one of these paintings - were they period pieces of 1967? What was portrayed? Objects in the background, etc? I have no recollection. Too bad.
Actually, I didn't really care about the war. Those who went, went. If they got shot up, their problem, What bothered me most was the coercion involved. I wished for nothing to do with government or rules or regulations. I hated all that. The fact that they could willingly step into someone's life and literally change it forever seemed, to me, totally wrong, unAmerican and evil. It made me resent everything - another thing that irked me was that, in both of these offices, and I figured it was done by design, the receptionists and clerks were all young and beautiful looking girls. Dressed perfectly, almost sexually, playful, bright and alert - and all of these seemed to me to be a further part of inflicting a cruel and unusual punishment, or false enticement, to any of these lunks to get taken in by. No matter what they thought, none of them were going to be getting any of that. It all seemed like a really bad joke, one too nasty to be living through. All through school, all those young years, middle years and even high school, no one had ever told these guys that life was going to be like this, that all their chances and choices could be snatched from them by Government fiat, cornering them to kill or be killed in some faraway place, for a cause and a meaning no one ever could fathom or explain, at least without all the needed lies and fake beliefs first required. It was all bullshit, and it slapped hard, each of us, in the face.
In the studio school my best working friend was Jim Tomberg. He was a 30-year old sculptor, to my 18 years and semed already like, by comparison, an old man. Balding. He was here from the San Francisco Art Institute to take a year or two of the eastcoast and see what he could do with it. He was a big guy, and a massive drinker, almost just a drunk. He had some woman or another around most of the time, though not always - he bartended at night at one of those Bleecker Street/Macdougal Street clubs, right on the corner of the two streets, in fact. He'd wear a brown bar-keep's apron, come in drunk and get drunker as the night went on. He often let me in, and anyone who was with me, to sit around, and I don't ever remember paying for anything, beer or food. Decent-looking girls were his mainstay, as was drinking and occasionally fighting. During the day, we'd often enough take the subway far out to the Brooklyn or Queens junkyards, where he'd buy or get chunks of metal to work with - he welded his scupltures, big, steely things. Many a days we'd be staggering back along a few subway rides carrying huge, disarming looking chunks of steel, wrecked and marred panels, or whatever. One day I couldn't find him anywhere, for a long time. At the far end of his big sculpture room, there was a large pit dug into the floor, for whatever reason. Anyway, peering down, I did by chance find him there, passed out, twisted and drunk, with some blood on his face, I guess from the fall. He stayed there, eventually slept it off, and we laughed about it often.
13. After we moved to Inman Ave., still as a young boy,
when I was about 5 or 6, not long after the first season there, at the far end
of the block a friend's father died. In and of itself, that was nothing, even
though all these fathers were only perhaps 30 or 35 years old, young marrieds,
first homes. Fred Kellish was the name, and also the name of my friend, a Fred
Jr., I guess. What made it notable - and it was only the first indication of
what I would come to see as a very typical approach of my mother to most
anything - was the way the death was presented. It was a hot Summer day, he'd
been working hard in his back yard, doing basic landscaping and grading (all
these yards were rough and unfinished, tree limbs and cuttings still strewn
about, and the grounds (a hard clay) needed fertilizers and soil, grass-seed,
etc.). He stopped what he was doing, went into the house, to the refrigerator,
took out a jug of ice water, and began slurping it down. A heart attack felled
him on the spot. Understandable, and all the rest - yet, forever after, my
mother used it as an example, told over and over, of what not to do. 'Don't
drink anything cold fast, it'll kill you', 'don't gulp down cold water, it will
kill you', don't drink anything cold when you're hot, it'll kill you', etc. You
can see what I'm getting at - the literalness in her mind of the connections
between things, between action and product of that action. I don't know how many
other people do this, but with her it was endemic, a pattern engrained in her
behavior. There was another time, 5th or 6th grade, when, at lunch time, I came
home from the very first day of school for lunch. She was ironing, as was her
habit, in the 'living' room, as it was called, in front of the television - she
always watched things like American Bandstand, listening to the music and loving
to watch the kids dancing and the rest - really stupid stuff, but whatever, She
asked what others I'd been put in class with - I answered with about five or six
names of local boys I knew. She disliked them, for reasons of behavior. I, of
course had nothing at all to do with this; the accident of school placement was
all it was. However, she started hollering and yelling at me, to the effect that
they were all troublemakers, always up to no good, and 'now you're going to be
just like them, you'll turn out just like they are.' I call that bizarre
behavior, whether true or not, by whatever psychological premises one would
judge such 'group-behavioral' categorization, it had nothing right then to do
with me, nor her, and in fact was the last thing I'd wanted to hear about :
stupid, dense, foul and wrong. Yet, in so many ways, it was perfectly indicative
of the things she thought about, a somehow strange mix of fatalism,
hypochondriacs (she was totally medically brainwashed), brutality towards
personality, and some sort of passive idea of bad fate ready to wring its way
through, yes again, our family and my system. I was, to put it nicely,
disgusted.
My street had a varied assortment of people, all new to it of course, since
the entire development was a new cut. At the end of the street, beneath the
'underpass' as it was called, the local grocer in his shop - a small one-man
operation - bemoaned the loss of his 'best deer hunting grounds', which
surprised me but to which he swore. The underpass which I referred to was the
Pennsylvania railroad tracks mentioned earlier, the NY/Bayshore Local line,
which had until the 1940's, late, been at street level as a grade crossing. A
local service station, junkyard and mechanic shop owner had lost a son there in
an accident with a train, and had eventually successfully lobbied to get the
rails removed from street-level crossing and instead a large ditch was dug and
the roadway for Avenel Street was placed down and under the tracks - the
resulting trestle and depressed roadway being referred to as 'the underpass'.
For many years it had a painted message, an early form of message-graffiti, on
it that said 'We Want a Recreation Center', with the signoff 'Avenel Boys'. It
remained for years, pretty startling always, and I later met the oldtimer who
claimed to have painted it. He was about 12 years or so older than me, and went
by the moniker 'Rowdy'. I actually right now completely forget his actual name,
though I once knew it. Avenel, at that point in the 1950's, had a number of
'clubs' - car clubs and even a motorcycle club. I would often, as a young boy,
see the hot rods lined up for warm Summer evenings of profiling, parading and
generally just boastful hanging out along the curb and elevated sidewall of the
Avenel Street School right by the underpass - all those chromed and lowered '52
Chevies, mid-decade Fords, older cars, and a few up to date ones, all done to
perfection, rumbling, often with cherry-pak mufflers and sidewinder pipes. They
were lowered in the rear and beneath the rear license plate each car had hanging
a nameplate of their club. They guys sulked and paraded, trying to look tough,
and probably were. The girls with them, well, who knew. My father and mother, by
that time and because of this stuff, had already banged it into my heads to
beware of these clubs, they were dangerous, there was no escaping them once they
got you, they'd probably get me too. To their minds, there was no way out;
growing up was a fearsome trip through the minefield of such things as this -
tough boys to men, girls with swagger and sweaters (and pointy breasts beneath
them, evidently). I had no clue ever to what my parents referred, where their
fears came from, why they were so tightly wound - I just liked the cars, seeing
the people, and just watching and listening. No threat at all there, except for
the constancy of the threat (imagined) that was being beaten into my head. At
one level my parents' dementia was of a nasty, inner-city variety, where the
thugs and violence may have necessitated acquiescence, but this was theirs, a
new suburbia, a clean slate, their own new place. What, I thought, was going on
in their heads? And why me? One time, at a school lunchtime break, I saw,
driving right past this sitting wall, now covered as it was with grade-school
kids swarming allover on their lunchtime recess, I saw the most beautiful car
I'd ever seen go whizzing majestically past. I was awed, and it was, for a
moment, as if time stopped. A white, 1957, Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz, I believe
a convertible. It was over in a second, as it disappeared under the underpass -
but it remained in my head for years, a ghostly chimera of an auto I never, or
seldom ever again, saw. It was, to be sure, my moment - one of time and place
having nothing to do with this grimy, stupid location.
Across the street from me lived one Jimmy Yacullo, now deceased. He was a
brash, strong kid, enamored of many things. His father worked at some sort of
job at the Linde Chemical Plant, I believe in Carteret/Linden, right along the
border there at the east. His mother was a housewife, a buxom blond in the Betty
Boop mode. Only later she did take a job at Carousel Kitchens on Rt. One, in a
showroom/warehouse of cabinetry, etc. The father always drove big, fancy Buicks,
the best being a 1958 Roadmaster convertible, white. His mother had a wonderful,
perfect 1955 Chevy, two-toned. She had an uncle or something who came over
occasionally - he was a doctor in Carteret. Each year, without fail, in October,
he'd buy a brand new Chrysler Imperial - massive, broad and finned. In October
of each year it became Jimmy's and my tradition to be given the first ride in
Doc's new Imperial, each year, for some five or ten miles as he would drive us
around. It always was a thrill. This went on until, the last I remember, was the
1962 model, which of for the first time (you can look it up) went to mounted
headlamps, each of the four on a small chrome pedestal mounted on the lower
bumper part of the grille, instead of the usual double-grafted headlamp unit
other cars were using. It was a retro touch, and striking. The next year, that
too was done away with. Jim Yacullo's big idea, always, and I guess ahead of
times too, was his wish for his own car, when that time came, to have a
telephone in it. Really we had no clue as to how this could be done - wires and
distances and all that - but the idea was a simple, big, black domestic phone,
the kind on a desk in any house, to be installed in a car. I never knew who he'd
be calling nor who would have been expected to be calling him. Alas, all that
crap and more now has come to pass, in the most up-to-date, leading edge (and
wireless) fashions. I met Jim's mother recently (she's now about 88), and she
told me, without any remorse, that his death was his own fault. He just let
himself get too fat, so fat that it killed him, and then she told me where he
was buried. Weird.
Down the street was Robert Shipley, a pretty non-descript, plain fellow. He
had a great bicycle though, onto which he painted and hung, at the rear, a
little plaque, like the car-clubbers had, which 'named' his bike 'Black Beauty'.
His father was a UPS driver, and each day that big, brown UPS truck would stop
home for a half-hour or so while Robert's father had lunch. A truck like that,
always filled with packages, was always mysterious to me - all that stuff,
coming, or going, somewhere.
Up the other end of the street were the brothers Lackowitz, Don and Kenny.
Don was older, and later on crashed his car at a high rate of speed, leaving the
house after a loud argument with his parents and a TV thrown in the back of the
car, and hitting the wall on the roadway bend as it went under Rt. One by the
junkyard. Everyone saw the car racing away, and actually, less than a minute
later, the crash itself was heard. Pretty horrid, in that it was evening,
everyone was out and around, and the sound was unmistakably of a crash that one
sensed involved the car that had just sped away. I guess everything turned out
all right; all these years later he's still around, has his own
refrigeration-repair company, and likes to both drink and hunt - big game hunt,
like Moose in Alaska, bears in Montana, trips like that. Kenny, my friend, my
age exact, was apparently badly shell-shocked in Vietnam, came back a near
zombie, underwent years of treatment and rehab, and now, at my age, shambles
around town, sometimes on a bicycle, bearded wild and often drunk too, without
an aim or a care or a place in this world, though he does live somewhere and
does take care of himself. Another mishap, living on. He was good friend though,
and as a kid we had fun. My Kindergarten photo shows me with a smile and a
scabby, blistered upper lip - from a swing accident a few days before in Kenny's
yard as we were playing. I got hit in the face with a careening swing, but, that
or that, the portrait day was upon us.
Other have died - Ken Kaisen, in Bangor, Pennsylvania, dead at 51 from some
sort of industrial cancer. Larry Walker, of South or North Carolina, I forget,
who keeled over dead on the dock after a day of scuba diving. He was a maritime
instructor of some sort, licensing boat pilots. Ken Wolchansky, twin of his
sister Joanne, dead somewhere from something. Joanne lives by Gettysburg, PA, in
a town called Hanover - it's a big Pennsylvania pretzel-making center.
14. Those are only a few names of now-dead friends. I could go on with more, but I won't - right here. It isn't as if there's any distinguishing character to the dead, and I am sure that the same number of deaths by ratio would be seen most anywhere. What does seem sad is the young age of those cut down by 'death' because at the very same time, during the most formative and 'best' of their years they were under death assault as well by the voracious, meddling appetites of a vast war machine, which sucked up anything it could. One of my first real 'jobs', when I needed one, I got because I was able to fill the space of a guy who'd just been shipped off to Vietnam, leaving a vacancy where his workplace had been. I took it. It didn't last, but I took it. I'll get back to that later.
At the end of our street, at first, there was woods; a beautiful woods,
with, deep within, a small pond, a few trails, and lots of nice places. I spent
my good share of time there, learning all sorts of Daniel Boone ways. One memory
that stays with me is the early Saturday mornings of getting up and out quickly,
and reaching the woods by early light, to be able to see, suspended upside down
from the limbs of a big oak tree long ago cut and destroyed, opossums. There
was, I guess, a family or two of possums living within the woods and we'd often
find them sunning or sleeping or whatever it is they did while suspended,
hanging, from a limb, upside down. Sometime about 1961, 62, the woods came down
and a small development of still more homes, about 30 or 40, went up. Eventually
that brought more friends and more people, but that's about it. At one point,
while the construction was underway, we used to play on and within these
partially built homes (and wreck things too) and one ay I fell into the cellar
opening of one, and gashed open my knee on an oil tank, requiring, later 8
stitches just above my knee cap. There was no or very little blood, just a
weird, whitish, pulpy jagged opening where my skin has separated and one could
look deep in. No fun. Mr. Zellner, the bus driver, drove me to the hospital. His
son, Billy, with whom I'd been playing, got me to his house and got his father
involved. No further complications ensued. About this time, too, my Scoutmaster
(for the time I was in Boy Scouts), an Armenian guy named Mr. Arjemi, had moved
into these homes with his family.
The end of our street, early on, took one to Route One North, a simple
turnoff, or, if headed south, an underpass and curve (see Don Lackowitz's car
crash, previous); To get there, one passed a few, one or two, truck terminals
(Teufel Bothers was one, which I always loved since it meant Devil in German),
the junkyard I already mentioned, and the trailer park spoken of (Haystack
Calhoun). One morning, about, I guess, 1959, my father walked with me, in deep,
new snow, with no footprints or tracks in it yet - fresh snow - all the way out
to Route One right there, just to see the snowstorm, visit the landscape and
understand the quiet. It was a curiously touching and bonding moment, one I
remember always, and one that was otherwise totally out of character. I was
struck simply by the peculiarity of the father/son moment, the quiet walk, the
simple understanding of things and, upon reaching the destination, the simple
ceasing of progress just to stand and watch - piles of new snow, whitened trees,
the distant roadway where a few cars tried navigating, the distant sound of
road-plows and the rest. We walked back in pretty much the same fashion, this
time amidst our own, still solitary, footprints; the selfsame footprints which
had brought us there. All the years later, it was never mentioned again, nor, I
believe, was that moment ever surpassed. I really shared very little with my
parents, and frankly never quite understood our whole connection - why I was
there, amidst them, and how and what was expected of me. There just always
seemed to be far too many blocks and barriers to our ever getting anywhere. I
often envied other kids, families with, it seemed, a little more money and
promise (I'm not being materialistic in that sense), who seemed to be far better
grounded, with some sort of dialogue and understanding with their parents -
almost a family 'tradition' of some sort, a wellspring to draw from. I never had
that; everything was fast, haphazard, of the moment, slipshod and loud. Sad, in
a way. I had a friend, Aleck, who used to comment upon my family by saying that
all he ever saw there was tons of fiery energy, everywhere, but with absolutely
nothing ever coming from it.
One morning I awoke - my sister and I had stayed overnight at the house of
Joanne and Johnny Wolchansky, the last house at the end of the block by those
woods while my parents attended a wedding somewhere. They had gotten home late
at night. As I looked out in the morning light, looking down the street about 16
houses where ours was, I could just determine by peering, that something was not
right. The car in front of the house (another '53 Ford Station Wagon) was bent
or mis-shapen or something. Turns out, on the way home from the wedding my
father, driving, had been involved in a car crash of some sort, and the car,
though drivable, was pretty mangled. I never found out any more on this story -
the car was fixed eventually, and nothing really more was ever said. Another
childhood mystery. Another car point : when I was about or 5, my father used to
take great pride in the fact that, as we drove along, I was able to identify
perfectly pretty nearly every car going past us - '51 Buick, '56 Chevy, etc. It
seemed to mean a lot to him that I could do that. For me it was just fun, and
easy because I'd always had an eye, even that young, for design study and shape
identification, etc. Cars were fun, gas was 19.9 cents a gallon too.
By June, '67 I was pretty much done with everything. I simply hated the
world that had been presented to me - suggested foils, lies,
mis-representations, false role-playing, pride, over-weaning ambition and
money-grubbing, people pretending to be what they weren't, or aspiring to be
what both they and I knew they'd never be. From school to house to neighborhood
to church, it was all bullshit. I could hardly talk to other people, let alone
get over the intensity of what I felt. I was on a search for truth, creativity
and light, and all these people were constantly hindering me. School was a
miserable wreck, the teachers and administrators were ridiculous fools, and the
'country' at large - TV, movies, politics - was a huge, stupid clown show. By
the end of June '67, they wouldn't let me graduate with the others and I could
not have cared less. I thumbed my nose at them, went anyway, remained on the
fringes, stood around and watched, witnessed others I knew - Frank Beck, Valerie
Andrews, Aleck Grischkevich and numerous others - beat themselves at their own
stupid chess-game and compromise any allegiance they'd ever have with me, by
bowing to Mammon, so to speak. They all went off to their colleges and
universities and did whatever it was they had to do. Within two weeks, I was
stone, cold gone.
My sister's boyfriend and later husband #1, now deceased, Bill York, gave
me, from the goodness of his heart, five bucks and a ride to the Carteret bus
station the night I took off. I had nothing except what was on my back, maybe
some change in my pocket, a few dollars at most. His five bucks covered bus fare
($1.25 I think) and walking around money once I arrived. I hit NYC and just
began walking. I eventually arranged for the art school entry I'd sought - I
needed an interview and I had to show and explain any number of paintings,
drawings, etc, to the assembled entrant-judges. My father came in for that
interview, believe it or not, in his big Plymouth Fury station wagon, bringing
paintings and things. He later received a $75 parking ticket (no tow) for
insisting on parking right out front of the main doorway. But, nonetheless he
was happy. The school at that time was in the midst of moving from the large
art-loft on lower Broadway (not far from the Whitehall Induction Station I
mentioned earlier), to its new quarters in the old Whitney Mansion. I was and
had been involved in that move - schlepping things, taking stuff apart, packing
things up. Some rich, upper eastside art-student girl named Claudia Stone had
been killed in a car crash, and as a memorial to her, and in recognition of her
dedication to and interest in both art and this school, her father had donated a
million or so bucks to the school. They built a nice lobby, and installed a
modernistic memorial sculpture in it for her -engraved and polished and all
that. Real nice, and the school utilized the rest of the money as endowment and
investment funds to keep itself going. Those early days were very good, . Doing
well.an eye-opener, and a true beginning of learning for me. The school is still
there today, with all its services and courses widened and expanded.
I lived on the streets for weeks. I ate whatever food I could scrounge;
dumpsters, restaurant throw-outs, 25 cent knishes, coffee, oatmeal and corn
muffins. A few months later I gotten myself set up a tad better, even working
night work in a food establishment, from which I could take sustenance. I'll get
to that time in a bit. On Eighth Street right then (we were at #8, right off
Fifth Ave), down a bit was a walk-up deli which had 25 cent potato knishes. I
often ate one of them whenever I had a quarter. Not far from there, in fact,
Jimmy Hendrix lived, and recorded, and later turned the recording club into
Electric Lady Studios, where he recorded his stuff, and others too; lots of NY
music acts came through there. He'd hit it back in the meantime. No more Jimmy
James funk stuff for him. He was now Jimi Hendrix and that was that. Myself, I
remained somewhat of a wild man - unfettered, loose and doing what I wanted and
nothing more. I walk or ride for hours, thought the night, exploring and seeing,
learning places and people. I knew the diners, the places the hookers used, the
police dives, the truck depots, taxi shops, you name it. I would often enough,
in deep midnight, ride my bicycle up to the area of the UN - just to see the
views, the east river, the late-night traffic emblazoned with reflections,
lights and bridge traffic. The UN, Tudor City, the nearby automat by the
Chrysler Building, all that was wondrous and home to me. 'Home field advantage',
I called it to myself.
Another time, I was walking, simply and by myself, on a hot afternoon,
along 8th Street, towards Broadway, east, on my way to 11th street, when a group
of 6 or 7 kids overtook me and began babbling. They were Woodbridge High School
kids, kids from my classes and year in fact, in the city for the day and were
shocked and amazed to see me. All of a sudden I was a buddy to them. I still
detested them but stayed cordial - answering questions about what I was doing,
where and how. It was still late August, so I guess they hadn't gone to wherever
they were due for college or further schooling. Said goodbye, and that was it.
15. By Jan. 1971, I had was married, already had a son,
was worried about all sorts of things catching up to me, was ready to let go or
go mad. In Woodbridge, NJ, got an apartment at 285 Fulton Street, on the second
floor of a wide old house with 4 units. Downstairs, the Nagy's lived - owners,
landlords, etc. A chain-smoking Hungarian beef of a woman on one side, and her
85 year-old near-deaf mother on the other, of the bottom floor. TV blaring at
top volume all day and all night from below. NBC constantly. Maddening. I had a
job down the street, in the old Woodbridge Bank Building, at NJ Appellate
Printing. Mostly I ran things, by car, printed legal documents, to Newark or to
Philadelphia, at breakneck speeds, on deadlines. Legal briefs and appeals we'd
print and bind, which had to be docketed and time-stamped, mostly by 3pm
closings either same day or next day. My boss, Ron Anzivino, had a '67 Ford
Galaxie that I used - like a State Trooper, I'd barrel up and down Route One or
the Turnpike, disregarding every traffic rule I could, in order to make these
times. That was my job. Tickets were either put aside or paid by the company
immediately. I grew to love Philadelphia, and would spend hours there, browsing
bookshops or just walking about, once my task was done. Same with Newark - which
back then was a wild and weird, nasty and sometimes dangerous place, moreso and
differently than today. Black Muslims on the corners, stuffing newspapers into
your face, muttering something, and wanting cash, a quarter or fifty cents.
Intimidation on the square. I'd most often double park along Raymond Boulevard
or the little street connecting to it, flip the hood up - as if the car had
broken down or was needing immediate work - make sure there was nothing
stealable left inside, and go do what I had to. It worked every time. Once or
twice I was questioned by a cop but I always came up with some bogus story about
what the car had been doing, any story which was good enough to work. Rutgers
Law School held classes right there, and I'd sometimes stay outside the window
for twenty minutes or so to listen and watch - all these positivist and
affirmative kids in total sincerity to learning the law, only so they could make
big bucks suing people and the rest of that crap. Total shit. One time I
remember, I was delivering some sort of master-sheets for some sort of legal
exam, answers and all, I guess, and kids were all over me, out back in that
alley, for copies of the thing I was delivering. I stood firm, don't really ever
know why, and never let anything out. It was mostly, I still think, out of
contempt for these goody-goody kids on the lam that I withheld that which
probably could have made me a good few bucks. Fuck 'em, I said.
Rotten Jew brats anyway.
One day Ron Anzivino went home for lunch or something, and found his wife
squarely in bed with some other guy, fucking their brains out. He was, I won't
say devastated, just more really annoyed, and dumped her. All that divorce stuff
then ensued, house, cars, kids, etc., but he just kept on humming. One time he
had an insider in the Middlesex County Court system (name I forget), who would
backdate and cover various things for him and for the favor of the business.
They guy got paid, was even, I think, on the payroll. Anzivino came up to me one
day and, as I recall well, said - as a defense of this guy and what they were
doing, since I knew and they knew that I knew - that 'Bob Twitchell' (or
whatever his name was) 'is an asset to this business, a real asset.' I guess you
always pay for assets.
I also used to have to take Anzivino's crazy-horny old father, about 70, by
car to his home in Perth Amboy. He'd take a bus in, hang around a while, bother
everyone for a few hours (he always used to stick his two fingers in front of my
nose and tell me to sniff, so as to show me, since they were supposed to, he
said, smell like pussy, that he was still man enough to be getting laid on the
side. It always smelled more like ass to me, frankly, and I knew pussy), and
then get a ride home. I'd be asked, almost daily, to do the trip; a half hour,
maybe a little more, no big deal. Thing was, and I was sworn to secrecy, that I
never took this guy home. Instead, each day he'd have me drop him off outside
some or another bar along the way, entering Perth Amboy, and he'd say 'never
tell Ronnie you do this', and give me a buck or two. I guess you always pay for
assets. He died a long while ago - crazy old guy with a lot of energy.
Ron eventually also took a partner into the business, a guy with big-time
(union) experience in the industry. Jim Ratigan, from Fords. He was nearly a
drunk, and went bowling like twice a week in some league - most often he'd
re-appear the next morning with a shiner or some sort of bruise from a row at
the bar or bowling-alley; often the same place. He was fun, but often too harsh
and stern for my taste. He had a son, about 16, who was already on his way to be
so gay it was totally apparent. Jim, believe it or not, within six months was
dead - he'd gone on vacation somehow, I was told anyway, to some beachfront
thing in Peru, with his wife and kid, and was shot on the beach by some
mysterious poison dart, from an unknown assailant, which killed him in a few
hours. Lethal stuff, that cocktail.
Soon, we were done. I took myself and my little family and we escaped, as I
think I mentioned already, out to Columbia Crossroads, Pennsylvania. Twelve
acres, a parceled out farm, gigantic old house, barns, out-buildings, dirt road,
spring water, really rustic shit. I worked a neighboring farm with Warren
Gustin, for milk and meat. Drove the schoolbus previously mentioned, took care
of the local schoolhouse for $4200 a year, and tried to maintain some smidgeon
of decency and cool as things drifted away, I regained footing, the infant kid
grew a little, and the wife got it together. Everything went pretty
smooth.
There are weird things everywhere, no matter where you go. Out in the fine
country of Columbia Crossroads, strange things happened too. The rural mailman's
kid killed himself, shot himself in the head, because his girlfriend, it was
said, never put out; just teased him to death, played around, but never crossed
the line. How silly is that to say, but they said it. These were kids and people
who'd watch cows and bulls, horses and pigs, fucking, and who knew all about
that stuff way early on - but obviously without any of the human and emotional
interaction that went with it. Stupid or not? I don't know. The mailman's name
will come to me, as will that of his son, but right now it escapes me. One time,
along our dusty, dirt road, the little mail Jeep came barreling along while we
were eating a mid-day meal out on the open porch, and a cloud of dust came over,
settling on everything. He stopped the truck, and yelled out, 'sorry for the
salt and pepper delivery.' I thought that was pretty funny. Another instance;
the guy who owned and ran the local small-time slaughter house/butchery one day
was cutting his great lawn with a tractor, pulling the cutter-blades behind it.
He had his small child propped up at the rear of the tractor, behind him. The
kid, unbeknownst to him, fell off, was rolled backwards into the cutter blades,
and killed. Chop meat anyone? That's how strange tragedy is. We had a crazy fool
family nearby by, the middle kid of which was Lloyd Perry, the one I knew. He
was a bruiser, mean and ugly. He sort of tyrannized most everyone around. On
their barn, shed and even house walls, they'd tacked up, for no apparent reason,
the spread eagle carcasses, over time, of larger birds and ducks and things they
killed. There they were, for all to see, rotting, drying and desiccating, nailed
to the exterior walls - large dead birds. During hunting season, which seemed to
be like every two months, outside people would come in from other places, just
to hunt. Locals were told to wear orange or stay indoors. These people - and not
just them either, for the locals also hunted voraciously - it was said, would
shoot at most anything that moved. Even housewives at their clotheslines, and
kids out playing. Everyone kept a tally of their kills and totals and options.
Landowners however had the option of killing at will, as long as they could say
that whatever they'd killed had been eating crops or threatening to livestock,
etc. My farmer guy, Warren, used to keep a rifle or two propped up along the
back of the barn wall, where a great doorway had an expansive view over the dips
and hollows of the nearby hundred and more acres. He'd often see something
moving - woodchuck, groundhog, deer, whatever - and just start shooting away,
more for the fun than anything else. Gophers and groundhogs and woodchucks or
whatever, they were constantly hunted, and constantly seen. Even while driving a
car or pickup, with the rifle always at the ready or in the
'Easy-Rider-Rifle-Rack', they'd pull over to blast a gopher, raccoon or
whatever, just to watch it flip around and die. When we moved there, we had a
Siamese cat which had been ours for at least a year by that time (wife's
birthday present, bought in Hazlet, along Rt. 35, in a seedy pet shop). We moved
it with us to Pennsylvania, and these yokels soon had killed it, for fun,
claiming to us 'uh oh, from a distance we'd thought it was a raccoon.' Real
jerks. We also lost a dog or two in that manner, running free, chasing deer,
etc., they were simply shot and left there, dead. The joys and favors of country
life ain't all they're cranked up to be, and I'm just getting started. Also in
the farmer's world, when one farmer was fucking or having an illicit affair with
another farmer's wife, well, most everyone and soon knew about it. News
traveled. The phrase used was curious : 'scratching her'. I heard it a number of
times, as in Did you know Henry's scratching Pearla? or, if last names were
used, 'Jenkins is scratching Guthrie'? Pretty bizarre, for a kid from New
Jersey.
16. The mailman's name was Robert Greenough, and his (dead)
son's name was David. The name was pronounce 'Greenauw' by the locals. I never
heard any more on that count. My father, who would occasionally visit us, was
always warning me (I think it was some crazy, forbidden-taboo notion somehow in
his head) to keep my 'hands off' the daughter of the farmer (Warren) I was
working with. She was a somewhat attractive, though quite young by any
standards, 16-year old. I spent much time, as was the deal, in the barn,
hayloft, etc. with her and most often her father, though not always. I think it
was in my father's brain that this was wild, untended country for me. It was
funny, for each time we'd drive through Scranton , PA, the few times we did,
together, he'd always be sure to start reminiscing to me about how, during his
Navy days, while stationed on land at the Bayonne Navy Yard or places like that,
they'd go to Scranton for their time off - 'biggest whorehouse in the east' is
what he'd say. I always thought it was way funny, never figured it out, nor what
he was trying to say; however it went, I do know that the intention of such
temptation, he thought, was always out to get me in that barn. That barn,
actually, is an entire other story. When we first moved there, it was just after
their previous barn had burned to the ground, due to the interference of their
young son, 7yrs. old, Danny, playing with matches. (They named each of their
four children with names staring in 'D' ; David, Debbie, Diane, and Danny. In
what was called a 'barn bee' the entire surrounding community, it wasn't really
a community as a town would be, just neighboring farms and families from about
three or so miles around, came out each weekend and free-time to assist in the
building of a new barn. It was just about getting finished when we moved there,
and it was talked about a lot - and is how we learned much, as newcomers,
of what the farm-community and atmosphere was like. And that too is how I met
many of the men - mostly stern or wise-assed, one way or the other, characters
and all fairly suspicious or downright unwelcoming to a Jersey-boy newcomer such
as me. It went away over time, but not in every case. Of course, looking at it
from their situation, no one knew anything of me, why I was there, who I was,
nor much of where I'd come from, why I'd brought a young family, and what I was
up to. Warren Gustin, out of everyone, was perhaps the friendliest. I'd show up
each day there at about 6:30am, and he'd often still be abed. Gentleman Farmer,
I called him. We'd do chores, slop the cows, milk them, spread the hay and use
the spreader from the newly installed chain drop to spread manure all over the
fields nearby - one of us would - from what was referred to as 'the honey
wagon' - basically a wagon-bed on wheels and connected to the John Deere or
Massey Ferguson tractor. You'd ride it along and the spreader would, by means of
gears and chains and spreader-arms, broadcast the manure and all its drippy
slop, of 36 cows, as fertilizer over the fields. I'd pretty much always smell
like that too, for two years most of my clothes and hair were imbued with the
stench. Then there was cleaning, washing the milk buckets, going to the creamery
and then, later, after the refrigerated bulk-tank was installed (new laws made
it mandatory) hooking up the milkers to the hoses and all the rest.The bulk-tank
was a cooled, stainless-steel contraption, with a rotor arm in in which rotated
slowly and constantly, keeping the cold milk churned and moving about. Pure,
white, cold and good - often drunk straight. Mostly, sadly always to me, sold
and taken away by tanker trucks for use in confectionary-industry candies. A
plant or bakery or something in Scranton came and got it (about 85 miles away).
I was always distressed that no one ever got to appreciate the product of milk
as milk. Remember, I worked for milk and meat, as it was called, so at least we
did get the raw milk, and nothing untoward ever came from it. About a mile or so
away, an old farm couple, John and Mary Harkness, or something like Harkness,
lived. He was an old-timer, probably born in some 1880's time-frame. Mary had
been his wife forever. They may as well have been Amish - for the way they
lived and everything about them bespoke frugality, cleanliness, sternness and
order. As a 81-year old, with whom I'd spend much time working in the barn-loft,
doing chores, etc., (lots of locals helped out over there), John was found
hanging by his neck one day in the barn, by Mary. It was pretty sad, a tragedy
of proportion. The onus of the new law decreeing that his milk would be
unacceptable at any creamery unless he invested the $7,000+ necessary to install
the entire new, mandated bulk-tank and cooling systems, and driveway access for
a truck to pick-up just took the wind out of him. Seeing he changing ways of his
world, now crumbling away and shot, he gave up - and had, I suppose, the
bravery to hang himself at 91. Very harsh. Mary was shattered (don't know
whatever happened to her). There was a huge, but understated, funeral and
procession for him - a line of cars a mile long, it seemed, over the hill to
the East Smithfield Burial ground. Women sobbing, men dour-faced, dumb local
preachers making up their bullshit stories of solace and ease. I was more in
John's frame of mind that anyone else's - all was over, the world was corrupt,
things made no sense, and the most lethal action, it seemed, one could take was
to do nothing. At least John did something, reacted, struck back, whatever you
wish to call it. A voice was heard. Ghostly, but a voice. It still stings. I
kind'a loved that stern old man for 'representing'. I was never much in favor of
this world, then or now, and from what I saw John took the bull by the horns; in
a way mostly utilized by cowards (suicide in the modern sense), he somehow cast
it back, way back, to a stance and position of response to dishonor, something
most of us would never swallow. Most of the people up in that hill country (the
'Endless Mountains', it was called) - from Towanda and environs to west of us
- nice, dense, strange and oddly rounded and tree'd hills. Towanda was a
perfectly adapted post Civil-War town, a 'burb of country sweetness in the
middle of rounded hills along the Susquehanna. Beautiful place. Civil War
monuments, for all those local boys and Pennsylvania country brigades and
detachments who and which had gone out from here and, often, never came back or
came back dead and stiff and mourned if their body and place was found. There
was violence out in these hills too - stories and takes of slayings,
multi-family killings, blood-feuds, marriage betrayals which led to murder,
sexual violence, you name it. All those smokey stories haunted the dense woods.
And then, surprisingly and at the same time, there were real pockets of junk and
surprise - new homes built to look somehow like anywhere USA would
occasionally pop-up, contracted and built, with a driveway and all the sorts of
things most of the old houses and farm-homes never had, or at least in any
planned and orderly fashion; as if a 'new', modern mind was being overlaid over
the old, where cars would be parked anywhere, on dirt and grass or gravel, not
just 'relegated' to a driveway and place. Sofas and rusted metal and trucks and
cars would just sink and rot among limbs and trees, weeds and bushes, Nothing
mattered, things just grew into their situations. Also, I noticed, in
Pennsylvania (where things were, needless to say always and far different from
anything I'd seen either in NYC or NJ), that - when you came across stiff and
crusty people - they'd be the MOST archly stiff, crusty, strange, bewildering
and staunchly regimented and useless people you'd ever meet. If this is or was a
trait of other rural parts of the USA, and an American venerable type and form,
I never knew; just never liked it.
Many of these people were lost souls - some of farmers, let's say, who didn't get the farm; parents were still alive, an older brother had the place and was running in - bad seeds, people who just fell out of their families. As a last resort, most of the time there were two choices : the military, which many took, or the Sylvania plant in Towanda (about 30 miles east) - making lightbulbs, fluorescent units, maintenance of machinery or the facilities, packing, crating, loading, unloading, etc. It was a huge operation, a few very large, warehouse and factory buildings spread over a campus-like acreage, and alongside a country-club/gold course complex. Some sort of real demographic dichotomy, that was. The Sylvania plant was a last-resort employment, minimum wage I'd guess (back than about $2.75/hr.). No one ever stayed really long, but many of these characters came through there - in a way it was the local university. Also near by, in Clark's Summit, was a large and famous mental hospital and shake-out ward. I had a local friend there as well, actually recently released from there - Jim Watkins. I'd met him through the little cleaning-the-schoolhouse job I'd gotten, since he too had just gotten one a few miles away in East Troy, at the bottom of Mt. Pisgah Hill, on Route 6. That's where my right-hand turn was off of Route 6 at Pisgah for the long few miles leading up to Springfield, Columbia Crossroads and my dirt-road turn-off. Jim was a crazy man at one remove, with a long history of troubles around him. There was an estranged 'Jim's wife' around somewhere, driving a Plymouth Valiant, occasionally seen here or there. Jim lived somewhere I was not sure of. He always had a smirk on his face, which looked dangerous anyway. I first met him when, walking my fields one day to a pond in the front corner, he stopped his car and, I saw, began approaching me. We never had really met before. His words were, to the effect that, since I was a newcomer hereabouts, and had a young boy (a year old?) he thought I should get involved with him locally for that year's baseball little league area team. I guess somehow the connection of having a male offspring, no matter how young, meant something. He said that the local boys here, mostly farm kids, were strong but as farmers they had all the wrong muscles for baseball and that he always needed help in getting hem together and ready. At first taken aback and, I guess, perplexed and scared at the same time, I hedged and then finally just said no - hadn't the time right now, new house stuff to do, moving, wife, getting to know things, work, etc. It all seemed ok, he kicked the ground a little, smiled and looked off. After that, still it seemed like he was around more and more. He'd drive over, sit on the porch, make small talk - others told me to watch out, he's weird, violent, drunk dangerous, and a sexual predator to boot (that didn't use that phrase, it's modern). They said to protect my wife from him. He leered, that much I knew. Anyway, he grew harmless to us, and more just plain annoying. Over and over it went. One time, my wife was in the local hospital in Sayre (she somehow needed to have some sort of uterine cyst removed. The local doctor claimed it had come from bicycle riding) (?). The hospital in Sayre (Robert Packer Hospital) was a teaching hospital, connected to some sort of medical school or something, which meant hat we were able to get the operation and treatment for free, which worked out fine, the entire things had no cost, hospital stay included. The only hang-up (not for me of course) was that Kathy's operation was done in an arena setting, with trainees and such watching - it was as if she was on stage, displayed for all to see. I laughed, she sort of regretted. Also, she later told me - aside from having a chain-smoking, cranky loudmouth older woman in the bed next to her for three days - that as she was being anesthetized, or whatever it's called, she, unconscious, began babbling aloud any number of foul and offensive things. She'd been told later 'if only you knew the things that came out of your mouth!' We were never quite sure what that was about. She stayed in for 3 or 4 days, a local woman, Verna Beaman, watch our 10-month son for us during that time. She had a clan of about 5 kids, a rough, little house, small but nice, and no husband. It was perfectly successful. Her son, Mike (more later) became a Texas State Trooper, or Highway Patrol, or Ranger, whatever they're called there. He'd gone to Texas to see his father, who lived there, and just didn't come back. He used, by the way, a different last name (Mike Meehan) - from Verna's other husband or something. I never knew. Anyway, it was during that time that Jim Watkins wore out his welcome. He'd somehow taken it into his head that, since it was only me around, he'd invite everyone he knew (kids actually, like 18-25 yrs. old) over to my house. It was the birthday of one of the female kids; they brought cakes and food, and the rest. I wasn't sure what was underway and - my fault - did nothing about it, just let it go on. A few of the girls were very loose and free with their ways. Everyone began getting drunk. The girls began doing their thing. The boys frolicked about. It was dark and rainy outside, November dreary and cold. Eventually, I said something - whatever it was, it set Jim off. In a drunken rage he came at me, began flinging chairs and furniture around, pretty much wrecked the room, was eventually tackled, punched me about a little, was taken outside, and this 'party' fizzled out quickly. Everyone left. I cleaned things up as best I could, myself included, and picked up the pieces and went on. That was pretty much the end of Jim with me, though I'd still see him about. Nothing new ever transpired.
Many of these people were lost souls - some of farmers, let's say, who didn't get the farm; parents were still alive, an older brother had the place and was running in - bad seeds, people who just fell out of their families. As a last resort, most of the time there were two choices : the military, which many took, or the Sylvania plant in Towanda (about 30 miles east) - making lightbulbs, fluorescent units, maintenance of machinery or the facilities, packing, crating, loading, unloading, etc. It was a huge operation, a few very large, warehouse and factory buildings spread over a campus-like acreage, and alongside a country-club/gold course complex. Some sort of real demographic dichotomy, that was. The Sylvania plant was a last-resort employment, minimum wage I'd guess (back than about $2.75/hr.). No one ever stayed really long, but many of these characters came through there - in a way it was the local university. Also near by, in Clark's Summit, was a large and famous mental hospital and shake-out ward. I had a local friend there as well, actually recently released from there - Jim Watkins. I'd met him through the little cleaning-the-schoolhouse job I'd gotten, since he too had just gotten one a few miles away in East Troy, at the bottom of Mt. Pisgah Hill, on Route 6. That's where my right-hand turn was off of Route 6 at Pisgah for the long few miles leading up to Springfield, Columbia Crossroads and my dirt-road turn-off. Jim was a crazy man at one remove, with a long history of troubles around him. There was an estranged 'Jim's wife' around somewhere, driving a Plymouth Valiant, occasionally seen here or there. Jim lived somewhere I was not sure of. He always had a smirk on his face, which looked dangerous anyway. I first met him when, walking my fields one day to a pond in the front corner, he stopped his car and, I saw, began approaching me. We never had really met before. His words were, to the effect that, since I was a newcomer hereabouts, and had a young boy (a year old?) he thought I should get involved with him locally for that year's baseball little league area team. I guess somehow the connection of having a male offspring, no matter how young, meant something. He said that the local boys here, mostly farm kids, were strong but as farmers they had all the wrong muscles for baseball and that he always needed help in getting hem together and ready. At first taken aback and, I guess, perplexed and scared at the same time, I hedged and then finally just said no - hadn't the time right now, new house stuff to do, moving, wife, getting to know things, work, etc. It all seemed ok, he kicked the ground a little, smiled and looked off. After that, still it seemed like he was around more and more. He'd drive over, sit on the porch, make small talk - others told me to watch out, he's weird, violent, drunk dangerous, and a sexual predator to boot (that didn't use that phrase, it's modern). They said to protect my wife from him. He leered, that much I knew. Anyway, he grew harmless to us, and more just plain annoying. Over and over it went. One time, my wife was in the local hospital in Sayre (she somehow needed to have some sort of uterine cyst removed. The local doctor claimed it had come from bicycle riding) (?). The hospital in Sayre (Robert Packer Hospital) was a teaching hospital, connected to some sort of medical school or something, which meant hat we were able to get the operation and treatment for free, which worked out fine, the entire things had no cost, hospital stay included. The only hang-up (not for me of course) was that Kathy's operation was done in an arena setting, with trainees and such watching - it was as if she was on stage, displayed for all to see. I laughed, she sort of regretted. Also, she later told me - aside from having a chain-smoking, cranky loudmouth older woman in the bed next to her for three days - that as she was being anesthetized, or whatever it's called, she, unconscious, began babbling aloud any number of foul and offensive things. She'd been told later 'if only you knew the things that came out of your mouth!' We were never quite sure what that was about. She stayed in for 3 or 4 days, a local woman, Verna Beaman, watch our 10-month son for us during that time. She had a clan of about 5 kids, a rough, little house, small but nice, and no husband. It was perfectly successful. Her son, Mike (more later) became a Texas State Trooper, or Highway Patrol, or Ranger, whatever they're called there. He'd gone to Texas to see his father, who lived there, and just didn't come back. He used, by the way, a different last name (Mike Meehan) - from Verna's other husband or something. I never knew. Anyway, it was during that time that Jim Watkins wore out his welcome. He'd somehow taken it into his head that, since it was only me around, he'd invite everyone he knew (kids actually, like 18-25 yrs. old) over to my house. It was the birthday of one of the female kids; they brought cakes and food, and the rest. I wasn't sure what was underway and - my fault - did nothing about it, just let it go on. A few of the girls were very loose and free with their ways. Everyone began getting drunk. The girls began doing their thing. The boys frolicked about. It was dark and rainy outside, November dreary and cold. Eventually, I said something - whatever it was, it set Jim off. In a drunken rage he came at me, began flinging chairs and furniture around, pretty much wrecked the room, was eventually tackled, punched me about a little, was taken outside, and this 'party' fizzled out quickly. Everyone left. I cleaned things up as best I could, myself included, and picked up the pieces and went on. That was pretty much the end of Jim with me, though I'd still see him about. Nothing new ever transpired.
17. I want to step back a moment, once more, to John Harkness. Everything done in John's version of farming was done the old way : by hand. His procedure for milking was hand-milking, into pails and then into a milk-barrel which went off to the creamery, about 7 miles away. I used to drive Warren's '52 Chevy pickup, an old battle-axe of a work-vehicle, after it was loaded with perhaps 20 milk crates - once arrived there, I'd drive up to the siding, wait - if there was someone else there, or a line - and then the crates would be poured off, one by one, into a larger collection vat. I don't know now many that took, or how long. I'd get a voucher for the milk amount, made out to the appropriate party's account, whether it was John, or whomever. All of this came to a screeching halt once the new law came in - one had to provide access, ramp and driveway with clearance for the tanker truck, which came through to each barn on its early morning rounds once, maybe twice, a week. All done clinically and cleanly - one hardly ever even saw the product, 'milk'. The refrigeration had to be kept stable and just right, like 38 degrees or something. There were layers of rules and bureaucracy, and inspections. This is all part of what took John over the edge. The poor man was not, certainly, in any way articulate. He couldn't share very well his anxieties, fears, etc. He remained aloof, stern and stoic, and I guess it just ate into him. Everything within his barn as well was done by hand - manure shoveling, hay storage and stacking, feeding, squatting to milk, all that - no vacuum lines, no pumps, no chain-drop - all the new stuff that went into sanitary conditions and refrigerated bulk-tanks processes. It just killed him. The rope was only an aid.
John had Jersey cows; in fact Warren himself had three or four. They were
smaller cows, brown, from the Isle of Jersey, by France somewhere. Their
butterfat content was higher, meaning richer milk, for which you got paid a few
cents a gallon more. They were calming, gentle creatures. always a pleasure to
be around. Most of all the other farmers and other cows were Holsteins - much
brawnier, stronger, and larger black and white cows from Holland and Germany;
from the Holstein district, in fact, and if they were sometimes mixed as well
with Friesian district cows, they were called Holstein-Friesian - same thing,
just a different nomenclature. Warren's herd had about 40 of them as
well. Nobody much cared, you got what you had - that's what you bred and
that's what kept coming. A seventy-cow herd was a running investment - new
cows from heifers, growing old, old cows dying off or going to slaughter, a
rotational milk-stock that had to be kept in order. We sometimes, and often
enough, knew the name of the cow we were eating. Sounds gross, but, whatever.
There were also, in these parts, herds of Charolais - a white or creamy
colored, large, stocky beef cow from the Swiss agriculturalists. They were
raised strictly for beef and as meat products, and mostly kept outdoors. You'd
see them grazing in herds of twelve or twenty, never moving much, just stable
and sedate. And, of course, there were also Guernsey cows, but rather few. They
too were docile, almost friendly, and had a rich butterfat content. The most
standard cow, again, however, was the common black and white, big-eyed,
sometimes inquisitive and pushy, Holstein. When John died no one really owned up
to anything specific - they knew it was coming, and they were willing to go
along, whereas he never was. This was a total infraction of things for him - a
transformation of Life into something he'd not known and never wanted; like TV.
All that still stays with me. You had to be there. I witnessed truly a passing
of an entire and other way of life, outlook and procedure - closer to the
Civil Wars days than to anything in 1972. It was enough to make you hate
everything - cars, lights, even running water. I just really wish I'd talked
more with him.
The local Minister, always bothering everybody, was a little man named
Wallace McKnight. He was some old, twinkly Irish or Scots guy and lived and hung
out at the local Baptist Church, a congregation for which he was very lucky to
ever see 30 people at any one time. I couldn't stand the guy. He'd come around,
visiting farm to farm, and begin talking all that fairy-tale, snake-oil stuff
(everything was very child-like; all the Bible tales he'd re-tell as if he was
reciting stories to little children - no depth, no thought, no reflection, and
certainly no reality involved in any of it relative to real, day-to-day life. He
was a manchild, wrapped in his own fantasy). For some reason, all the local
lonely ladies, biddies and old women loved him - all his silly church
programs, ridiculous non-sequitur sermons, and the rest. I stayed far away, and
he knew I barely could tolerate his mouth. Pleasantries were all I could extend.
It was better that way - I still had yawning raw spots remember, form my nasty
seminary-days holes and wounds - my own stigmata that this turkey would never
understand. It's funny how 'religion' goes - for some it can remain light and
frothy, just silly enough to glide them along, passing through life with a
pleasant outlook, thinking only of good things, reciting prayers and phony
dialogues, and listening to small-ward preachers intoning hallmark drivel. For
others, it's a heavy and dense, serious and mordant thing, able to shackle and
defeat, or lift and elate, but each only for a moment - before, really, more of
the truer 'religious' reflection comes back and resets everything again, forcing
one to start over. faith anew, or not; knowledge and awareness anew, or not.
It's very much like a circular whirlpool, one wherein, once trapped, you can
occasionally surface and come up for air, but usually only for a moment or two,
to be refreshed, before the vortex sucks you back again. It just goes on. It can
deflate everything, take the air out of everything, and ruin a life just as easy
as save and replenish a life. Maybe unless total confidence can drive you along
it's just a plain, old danger.
The birthday girl, name forgotten, who'd come along to Jim Watkins' party,
came with her own birthday cake - some fanciful concoction, and - for same
reason - came fully dressed in as much of a whore's costume as I'd ever seen,
except it was real life. I have no idea what she was thinking, but these country
folk, I'd already learned, could fuck and nuzzle like there was no tomorrow. No
one much cared. I guess being around animals and seeing barnyard stuff going on
all one's life kind of inured a person to the emotional and reflexive realities
of what occurred. Not to be outdone, of course, her girlfriends then felt the
need as well to chime in - altering their 'dress' to fit the need or mood,
shall we say. It was a true disaster. I do remember standing out on the dirt
road, under some trees, in the pouring rain, looking back at the house, lit up
from inside, and wondering what the hell was going on around me, how'd this
happen and what do I do now? When it was over, I was glad it was all over.
Another guy, named Bob Saterlee, was screwing around with Mike Meehan's older
sister. A few of them, including Jim and Mike, came by to ask me if, for a few
dollars each time, they could use my vacant, concrete-floored barn space to do
car repairs in. I said OK, and they brought a few cars over, one at a time, over
a number of weeks - tune ups, camshafts, timing chains, etc. It went OK. Then
one day I saw a cherry, 1963 Austin Healy 3000, a highly desirable sports car at
the time, parked on the dirt approach at my barn. Asking about it, they at first
told me it was in for repairs. Only later, when the State Police arrived and
took the car and those two away, for interrogation, did I learn it belonged to
one Bob Saterlee, had been taken without his knowledge, and then had been
trashed; suitably trashed so as to make it not run. And dumped on my property.
My problem was in truly explaining how I had no idea what these cranks were up
to, had only rented repair space to a couple of goons, and, by the skin of my
teeth, I think, gotten away with it. They had to repay everything, make right,
take some punishments and fines, and - once more - that was the end of that
venture.
18. After I got hit by that train, in '58 or what it was, I spent a long time
in the hospital, some of it in a coma - long time enough. My Aunt Mae always
told me that, until I re-entered the world after that accident and its resultant
coma, I had been the happiest, sweetest, most comical little boy she'd ever
known, but that subsequent to that experience my whole being changed. She said I
was always dark and serious, distant and a little odd after that. Probably very
correctly surmised. My aunt and uncle always had, on the wall in their hallway
in Rutherford, on Calvin Way, a painting of some Tunisian or Arab guy, a Nomad I
guess, or Tare, or something, in his native garb, standing upright on desert
stand, portrayed up-close, and he was standing on one leg, with the other up his
other leg's knee, forming a triangle of sorts, at the bottom half of his figure.
He bore a slightly wild, rough-hewn expression on a very rugged face, strange
and black-stained teeth, a few whiskers. He seemed to be peering right into the
viewer, quizzically, from another world or someplace else, faraway, distant. I
was always fixated by that picture, and spent long spells just staring at it.
Aunt Mae noticed, and it became a shared something between us. Ever since that
hospitalization and coma and all that rest, I'd noticed that certain things,
this among them, had a predilection somehow to ring bells in my head, awaken
lights or memories or something, transport me and take me away from where I (was
told I) was. I'd somehow lost all Earth-bearings and felt myself living and
being somewhere else. Maybe echoes and voices and words yet ringing in my head -
alarms or guidances, other places and people. Suffice to say, I was no longer so
specifically 'grounded' here, not that much any longer 'of this world'. There
had somehow been made, for me, a blood and mind connection to something greater,
broader, more current and more real. I admit to that now, and probably did, at
least to myself, then. It flowed through me, deepened my understanding of
things, and yet at the same time made it more and more difficult for me to get
these ideas across. It didn't take long before I'd turned myself completely
around - through reading, and writing. I began to read anything and everything I
could, even at the young age of, say, 10, I was trying to plod through books I
didn't always fully grasp - poetry, essays, certain non-fiction things, like
Vance Packard and such. My mother and father got, not surprisingly, Reader's
Digest, Life Magazine, Reader's Digest Condensed Books - all that suburban
household crud, bit I ate it up. Photo essays, famed photographers, by-lined
little caption-stories, things that took me all around the world (Around the
World in Eighty Days, as a piano song, was what had won me that crazy talent
contest; it was also a book, and I feel into place with Phileas Fogg). Seven
Days in May (Fletcher Knebel), Advise and Consent, and many other things. And,
to top it all off, my much wiser and far more worldly and world-wise Aunt Mae
had a subscription to Paris match, which I adored. It was, somehow, like a
French 'Life Magazine', but better, more urban, more chic. At home, I actually
had a subscription, in my name, to an oversized and always startling magazine
from Moscow, called 'Soviet Life'. A communist propaganda prize for sure, but I
loved it, and it took me to such odd places as Kiev, St. Basil's Cathedral, the
streets and shops of Moscow, and more. It was, I guess, in 7th grade that I did
this massive report, a school-project for History or something, on St. Basil's
Cathedral, in Moscow - all those wildly colored turrets and towers, in a place
(church) present in a land where it was supposedly outlawed. Caught my
imagination immediately. No one else knew what the fuck I was talking about. For
a seventh grade Science Fair, in contrast, by which I was totally bored, I took
one of my mother's spaghetti colanders, covered it in form-fitted aluminum-foil,
stuck a few large toothpicks in it, and called it a 'solar-power collector' - a
completely bogus, made up and exhibited and explained in my own pure gibberish,
but sounding somehow right, and I got away with it all. No prize, but
respectable enough. Stupid bastards.
It seemed always to be like that : nothing really bore any reality. My
sensation of living was grander and broader now, connected to other things -
material and images, ideas and words, which spoke to me, rather silently, and
which I understood. I didn't really understand anything else spoken at me. I'd
connected to something grander and more faraway and distant - I sensed messages
in shapes and forms and colors, sensations in things, forms within
shapelessness, and carrying meaning. I was long gone. That was a tough
sensation, for it meant I had to re-learn and acknowledge my distance, and
realize that - almost sadly - nothing around me could hold my attention,
certainly nothing which would fill up Time or give sense to a certain, specific
and personal Reality that I could not share. I understood where I was, to where
I was going, the distances and worlds of space and time, stars, travel, clouds,
planets. I'd look up and read dark-night skies, even by the waning number of
stars left for me to see. I'd been away. I'd been somewhere, and now (it seemed)
I was back, maybe with a different jacket, a different skin; something
recognizable but not me. They'd sent me to school. I had to listen to the
endless stupidities of the things that made sense to parents and teachers and
doctors and lawyers. I had to look at pictures and words, dead on the page,
carrying stupid and heavy meanings that were all wrong. I knew that directions
had been altered and that the world had been taken over, taken over by those
others who would mis-direct it, run it into the ground, and twist and force
everything into fake meanings and destinations that they'd get others to
believe. For their own gain. Devils and evil princes. Snakes. Temptations.
Everyone had fallen, everyone had bitten the same dumb apple and the fallen
world just went on. In my little attic room, with my father's innocent help I'd
built a crystal-set radio, a sort of short-wave contraption by which I cold get
the world. Distant earth places. He'd also bought me a translucent plastic model
kit called 'The Visible Man', which was an anatomy, a man's body, about
twenty-four inches high, maybe more, color coded and all that, which showed
everything with in the body. You built it with glue and such, just like a model
airplane or one of those model cars or boats I'd build. It stood, when complete,
on its own pedestal; a man, standing straight, arms flat, palms out, at his
side, feet forward, expressionless face; and you could see everything within -
organs, blood vessels, heart, lungs, all that. I seem to remember too that, once
plugged in, something lit up, eyes, maybe, or a bloodstream coursing red.
Something. I was pretty fascinated by that, but only, really, for a moment. by
contrast the radio held me transfixed. I well remember the U2 Plane crashing,
from high over the Soviet Union, and the spy-plane pilot Francis Gary Powers
being captured. He became a bargaining chip in some odd high-powered foreign
intrique between two crazed and angry and overdosed on something superpowers.
This little radio told it all - in English or not, from radio Moscow, Radio
Havana, captive Hungary. It was all there. I sat silent, with huge headphones,
turning dials and twisting a little antenna for reception. I never even tried
for music, unless I stumbled on fold tunes from Romania, Gypsy dancers, and
fast-talking comedy types from faraway and distant lands. My favorite books was
'Around the World In 1000 Pictures'. I still have a copy. I tried reading
'Profiles In Courage' (Kennedy), but it bored me. My Six Crises (Nixon). Bored
me. These normal people had no magic, no tact or understanding of the world at
all - they were just using words, dead words, to bring forth horrible and stupid
and equally dead results. Just like school, or church, or any of that. My mind
was with that desert nomad, standing sentinel, on one foot, waiting and staring
out. At out tiny, small public library, a little later, I'd get endless books of
poetry, new things, stuff that captivated me : 77 Dream Songs, Berryman, Dickey,
Plath. Reflections In a Convex Mirror', John Ashbery, and many others. My very
favorite was A Coney Island Of the Mind', by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. His NY to
San Francisco odyssey fascinated me (He'd been a Jew, Lawrence Ferlin,
eventually got to San Francisco and the nascent beat scene, began living in a
beat-hip Italian neighborhood and, to better fit in, decided to become
'Ferlinghetti'. Amazing stuff. Something like a Richard Brautigan story, but
fifteen years earlier). It was brash, colloquial, in your face, snide, ironic,
hip and forceful, all together. I memorized some, and pieces of others. I'd sit
around and just go over things like 'I Am Waiting'. By the end of high school
that purloined poem of mine which they stole from me and put in the literary
magazine against my wishes, was in a perfect Ferlinghetti style, and was called,
I think, 'My Friend Frank, the Telephone Pole.'
Anyway, I only slowly got back into things, into this life. And I never
really wanted to. 1958, '59' and even '60, are a vague blur. I remember cars
getting dual headlights, I remember cars losing their fins and, by 1961,
suddenly all having flat back-ends where fins used to be. I remember the demise
of Packard and most of Studebaker and Hudson, much like, in our day, Oldsmobile
and Pontiac and Plymouth have disappeared as brands. Most people were
unconscious of this having any meaning. I found it all pretty cosmic. My friend
Donald, across the street, and his brother Richard, had an attic-full of comic
books. They were strewn everywhere, and there had to be, constantly growing, a
collection of four hundred. We'd pore over them, mostly meaninglessly and
without any import. On the back pages, 1000 toy soldiers for a quarter, or
plastic ships and boats, a hundred for a dollar, body-building ads, flyer and
glider balsa-wood places, magic kits, all the usual crap of childhood and
comics. My other friend, Raymond, on the other hand, had a very neatly-kept and
pristine attic all set up with a train set - HO size (small) - with bridges and
tunnels, grass, service stations and trees; all that meticulous railroad stuff.
His little family dog was named Pepper. Very cool, small bull-type or something.
When I was about 6, my father took his own great pleasure in setting up, in the
basement, an enormous train set-up of his own devise - L-shaped, trestles,
tunnels, straightaways and, instead of smaller HO size, he'd had the big guys
put in place; full-scale Lionels, with a double transformer and smokestacks that
puffed smoke when you put a smoke pellet in them. Me and my sister had striped
engineer hats, and even big trainman's gloves. She never much cared for it, and
I cared only a bit more - but my father was in his glory lording over that
scene. Later, in Pennsylvania, he'd loaded it all up, dismantled, in his station
wagon and brought it up there for me - ostensibly to use for my own son's
pleasure, as he had for mine. I propped the entire apparatus up alongside a
shed, and there it stayed. I never touched it again. Or the trains, which I
later gave away to my friend Donald, and which giveaway, once he found out about
it, my father demanded back, and, I think, got back, from Donald, still in NJ,
across the street on Inman Ave. Way too much attachment for me. Things I
couldn't understand.
19. My friend, Ken Kaisen (dead now, some sort of industrial cancer), used to smell everything - whatever he picked up or saw, anything really, it would be brought to his nose for a quick whiff. We were about 10 and 11 then. I don't know how long it continued. He also had a sister, Christine, about 2 years younger. Once or twice, I remember, in the attic at his house, we'd gotten her to take her clothes off. There was another time, when Kenny was about 15, and I was not around - he'd gotten close with another friend, Howie Belfor, whose family owned the Avenel Street Candy Store - that, for a period of time, they'd established the routine of coming home from school, taking his not-at-home parents car keys (they'd go to work by train) and take off in the family Oldsmobile, just driving around, wasting some time, seeing what was. This went on day after day, until some neighbor lady who'd continue seeing this happen, eventually told on them. No license, underage, no personal driving insurance, permission, knowledge...it could have been a whole passel of trouble for Kenny. He was scolded, and it all got buried.
My other friend Larry Walker, (dead now, I've mentioned), had a predilection for my family - hanging around with my father, going fishing - I hated fishing - and, once I was gone, in time became a surrogate at home. I was in the seminary then. They all came to visit one visiting Sunday. It was strange to see Larry, in a suit and tie, brought over with the others, as if a regular child of the family. My father, that visit, had lost his voice to a severe case of laryngitis or something and whatever words he could say were of bizarre, low, scratchy noise. It was quite startling to me to re-visit my father with that strange alteration. Funny feeling, odd and bizarre. I still have a snapshot taken by someone that day, of Larry and my father, with their arms around me in the middle, at the seminary fountain. All very awkward and, seemingly, quite forced.
When I was young, my father had occasional blow-outs at work - fights, arguments, getting fired, what-not. One time, when he worked at 'Co-Op' in Newark, an upholstery shop right off McCarter Highway, he was charged with serious assault and battery in a fight at work. His claim was that someone, the plaintiff in this case, with whom he worked, had came at him with a pair of large scissors (upholstery guys call them 'shears'), with intentions of stabbing him. He beat the guy to a pulp (my father, in his youth, had been an amateur boxer, or at least a sparring partner to boxers, at a local Bayonne gym. He'd get like two bucks a bout, to go in, with some sort of protective sparring helmet or mask, and get the crap kicked out of him, or not, for the couple of rounds they went. He really did know his fighting shit). One evening, the guy's wife called up the house and my mother answered the phone, and began wailing - the guy's wife was berating my father, calling him every name in the book, and threatening my mother that she was going to sue us for everything we ever owned. My mother almost had a nervous breakdown. Being young then, I never do know really how that whole episode turned out. Other times, my father would stay to work just a little late, or stop with 'the guys' for a beer or two instead of coming right home, and they'd have huge fights, shouting matches anyway, once he got home. A few times he just stormed out - came back later, I guess. There is one time, it stays in my mind like a horror film still, I (about 8) followed him to the door and, as he left, shouted out 'and good riddance!' I don't know what the fuck I was thinking, or why I would do that - I guess just backing my mother perhaps, or reacting to all the noise and rage. As soon as I said it, I felt like a dead man lived within me. Sorrow and remorse. My father did later mention it once or twice, it had pained him grievously; but I couldn't make amends or even sense of what I'd done. To this day, I am sorry, still as an 8-year old would be sorry.
My father died in his own horror-ward in 1999, How he would have loved seeing the turn of the century, but it didn't happen. It was a cold December 12, I think. He was in Carrier Clinic, trying to get straightened out. But, having gone around the bend already, he essentially starved himself to death. Like Kafka's 'Hunger Artist', in a way (a curious and always favorite tale of Kafka's, taught to me with great love and affection by Christina Rosner, a German Professor I'd had in Elmira College, 1974). I'd had to bail my father out of jail in Toms River, to where he'd been taken and charged, after some bizarre form of sexual abuse towards a young girl (false charges pressed by an aggrieved ex-husband of one of my sisters involved in a vicious divorce with property). They guy, Nick, had put up a neighbor friend of his to the ploy of claiming to have seen my father, on the wharfside deck of their Bricktown lagoon home, pop his finger into the vagina of a four-year old niece while she was in her bathing suit. Still confuses the hell out of me, how the guy could see this from 500 feet away, and how the police believed him. My father and this son-in-law guy had been going at it for months, in anger and hatred. Physical threats, violence to objects. This was pay-back time, and yet, to this entire aggrieved ploy, my father 'admitted'. he was, at the time, on heavy medication, and essentially had become just plain stupid. He'd gotten hauled off to jail, and stayed two or three days. It fell to me, since no one else would, to bail him out ($25,000). I did so by mortgaging bail against my house, or however it worked. Eventually I paid it off, after time, just like a credit card bill. Something like that. I bailed him out one night about 9pm. He was babbling, angry about a beating and abusive treatment he'd seen in jail (towards another, not him), and complaining about the food as well. All the way home, up the Parkway, there was a full moon and he went on and on to me about how the Russians were already on that moon, aiming their shit down at us, getting ready, and how we were sitting ducks from there. I said, 'Dad, do you have any idea what you're coming home to? Forget the moon! Do you know what's going on here? You've got a problem and people to face off.' he stayed aloof. My mother and him, my sisters and him, had be now become fierce enemies. At home, my father and mother were combatants. The police came a few times. He had had open heart surgery some year or so before, and had not told them of his varicose veins in his calves - so that, during the operation, when they went to his legs to get new veins for the heart, they couldn't find any in easy reach. He spent, because of that, far too much time on the machine or whatever kept him going for the duration of such an operation, and - it was said - he never fully came out of it right. Dazed, confused, sometimes in a stupor. When he found out that he was facing like 10 years for a nasty sexual-infraction charge of that nature, he just no longer wished to live, could not face it. He stumbled, I am told, up and down the block, walking very slowly, on his daily walks for rehab, and would stop neighbors or stop at their houses, and start telling them 'I've done something very, very bad, know what it is? Know what I did?' And then he'd go into the entire story, pretty much, I guess, as I just did to you reading it. Anyway, they checked him into the mental clinic, trying to salvage something, but he then gave up. Instead of going to trial, he chose, selected, to die. The day he died, I was at a motorcycle swap meet, got the call (my wife took it) that 'daddy's dead' - from my sister Donna, and kept on my way. Never even stopped. I was sure I was not going to pay this any mind. A funeral took place, I came, I went. I've still never visited the grave (of either parent) since each internment.
Whatever that makes me, I am what I am. There's a ton of pain and anger, perhaps resentment, still floating around somewhere. I can make no amends for myself, for anything. They are dead, nothing ever worked anyway, and I never was part of their world. I never knew how this happened, by what means or from where, but that's how it went. Honestly, I never knew parental love. It was always very fierce and very difficult.
20. In awakening from my coma, after the train wreck, it went as follows, as I still yet dimly recall: It had been a long time, and it, in turn, took a long time, seemingly, to re-enter this life-sphere. I can recall a visualized long corridor, let's say, with lights along the sides, spaced every so often, like any corridor mirrored in real life. Plato said, remember, that everything here is a dim, mirror reflected-image of a perfect version of same, so perhaps this was a perfect corridor, somewhere, and nothing more; the reflection-image on the cave wall. I remember the long, fretful slow traverse along that corridor, with sloping sides and seemingly incorrect proportions and perspective, to below, or there, or wherever it was in relation to my 'presence', towards some opening at the end. There was a sense of glacial movement, but no movement at all - merely some unquestionable semblance of traveling or forming through time; a quick-time or a slow-time, I couldn't wager. For I knew not how long any of this took or was taking, and I, for certain, was not yet reconnected to that body, and anyway, none of that existed - for I was somewhere else, some other place where all that was was the 'idea' of being, not the manifestations of it. Which is the place to which I was heading back - a place of physical probables and dimensions and seeming solidities. It was all a mental construct, a cerebral game which formed realities and their objects. I remember realizing that I had to, was about to, re-enter and needed to be ready for it, for a compression, a slow breaking into something harder and dimensional, something more cramped and crowded. It wasn't very 'nice', as a feeling, but not so bad either. I never did feel pain, nor any discomfort. All that was part of the hulk below me, not the 'me' I was. I began hearing noises, loud rushes of echoey sound. Low and booming, and then they normalized out, somehow. I remember heavinesses hitting, and sensations of color and light. And then, I was back, cradled again in some body all wired and in traction (I was. My broken jaw and mouth had been wired shut, my right leg was aloft in cast and traction, my head was bandaged, my right arm was slung up onto some other contraption holding it in place). I'd had 'spinal fluid leaking out my ears', whatever that meant. But, anyway, I came back through and, I guess, opened my eyes or however that's done. There were people around me - parents, a doctor; on the next bed over, a childhood Avenel school acquaintance, Michael Hoffman, was recuperating from tonsil surgery or something easy. My aunt, my grandmother, my sister, neighbors and parents, they came and went. Myrtle Yacullo, Jim's mother from across the street (the guy with the new Imperial Doctor Uncle car drive each year) would come by every day, with a custard she'd make. Since my jaws were wired, I had to basically suck in soft food through my plated mouth and teeth, a real nuisance. I ate so much of her custard, and various Gerber baby foods, that I hated them for the rest of my life. That's this life, I guess, I came back into - from somewhere else - as the new Gary, the one my Aunt Mae said was so different. What had happened for the switch, where had I been? Those questions never lingered, because I never thought about them. I was me, whoever I was. I felt refreshed and re-defined even. And it seemed, as a new mission, that I had to reacquaint and find a way in to this newer and different life. Something, yes, I guess like an alien inhabiting a stolen Earth body. Who knows?
I was on crutches for a long time, got really good on them, and learned how to bop around really fast. I never took a wheelchair. I guess I looked the same, though a few photos of that period that I've seen have me looking thinner and (maybe because of that) even a bit taller. But I don't think so; I've never surpassed a measley 5' 9', even after stretch traction. I never liked blood or medicine after that. Have never really been diseased or ill, 'cept once, since. Don't have a doctor or medical plan, never would go anyway. I believe the body heals itself, by morning or by next week. Whatever. I believe in a far different and far more real God than any I've ever heard of. And that's the one that put me together once, called me back, and then put me back together and re-entered here again; with a secret code, wired in, the Rosetta Stone of which I'm still working on transcribing. Dig? I'm so really fucking special, and I can talk your language. Hot damn.
I don't remember the train wreck, the actual wreck of it, the tumbling, the impact the crash and glass. I do remember the snowfall falling, the cold of the night and the danger of the road. They said when they came upon me I was crumbled and bent under the metal dashboard, assumed for dead, and only when I moaned upon being pulled out did they realize I was yet alive. I received last rights, I'm told, at the scene (some Catholic Church gobbely-gook, Extreme Unction or something it's called, for the soon-to-be-dead's safe passage to the next life, under the rubric of having gotten right, paid up, and smiling with the Catholic Church - somehow, even, at age 8).
The guy two cars behind us was Bill Mezaros, curiously enough, a buddy with my father in the local First Aid Squad; which squad had to respond to the call. He drove to my father's house and broke the news to him. It's said that my infant sister Andrea, right then about a month old, jumped in her cradle and let out a whelp of a scream, at the moment of impact, it turned out. This train accident, whatever its occurrence or reality, over time became almost mythologized in my family, extended family and among neighbors and kin. I almost no longer know the reality of what happened, or the aftermath. It was talked about often, people were later amazed I could run and jump, play baseball, even laugh. I had wicked headaches for years afterward, seemingly always at about the same time on certain recurring days. I'd go to sleep with an ice pack on my head, and wake up a few hours later without a headache. I'd have a brain-wave test taken every so often. They stick these suction cup things onto my scalp, and pass a current or something through - it read on a graph, and they were somehow able to read that graph. No one ever spoke to me about anything, results, normality, or otherwise. Eventually, everything just went away. I used to tell girls in bars that the train wreck had severed my penis and, in the emergency room cooler all they had was a horse dick, which, of course, they grafted onto me. That sick line worked every time (kidding). When I finally did arrive back home, my father had set up and put in place, this time not trains, but a pretty cool aquarium set-up, 10 or 15 gallons, with really attractive fish in it. I was intrigued, both my its strangeness (all new again) and its sudden and unexpected presence there : what was weird to me, immediately, was like the idea of how - in wherever my coma place had been - all the prep work that had gone into putting me back here, familiarity, mapping, place, etc. - did NOT include an aquarium. It set off a very strange and almost serious alarm in my mind, at once, as if an infraction had occurred - how could this have happened? How could this have been missed? I can't really here explain, but it broke some trust I had in what all my preparations for 're-Earth' had been.
Needless to say, she was un-nerved and dismayed, and eventually fell back into the bus routine. She never reported anything, nor did I ever find out who these guys were or if I or she knew them. The world is weird and very strange, and I suppose shit happens, as is said. This was 1967; different world by far from today.
I met her when she was 14, a month off from 15. We got familiar with each other, would meet and walk, feel into that swoon of love that youth brings. By the lumber yard, in the evenings, on the planks, in boxcars left open at the sidings, wherever we could, we'd sit and talk, kiss, neck, and have sex too - teaching ourselves only as we went along what worked, what was where, what procedures brought best climax, and all that. It was very strange, and went on for about a year I'm sure. I did eventually, as I stated before, get her pregnant, but that was later, in her bedroom, almost fully clothed, on the edge of the fully made bed in her house during a reception for her uncle's marriage (in late life. He was 60). We took five minutes to sneak away and fumble through it. I remember it all very well, and know I slipped up. But it was good enough for me. As we found out, we stayed with it, I owned up, went to her father, arranged for the honorable thing, (back then) and we did have a wonderful, warm and loving son which made it all idyllic and worth doing. Her father kind of laughed it all off, was more glad that I'd come to him and not just run off. Her mother was pretty upset, as usual, and whatever grandiose wedding plans were stewing in her head for her daughter's future marriage (to me), were dashed, thankfully. We had a 12 person reception at a little dipshit steakhouse called The Brass Bucket. We drove off the Bennington Vermont for a few days, and that was it.
Narratives are boring. I hope this one isn't - I'm jumping around in time, figuring you, as reader, can go or take what you wish. Stay with it, ride along, or jump in your own fashion. It really shouldn't matter to you, since, as reader, a month ago you had no inkling of any of this, so why should it matter now - it's all new anyway, and should be vivid and fresh to you. I dishonor the strict progression of time and all that sequence of events stuff. Time never follows logic. That's for mathematics, and it can get boring. When you read a flat map, there's only the surface, no sense of dimension or twist and overlap. Real time is more dizzy, much more precipitous. Spinning a globe, in time, is to realize how everything goes on all at once, all journeys exist simultaneously and that to 'be' in one place is not to discount or deny the existence of another; even if it can't be seen or felt. Outwardly, lives are governed one way. Inwardly, they answer to no one, follow no logic, have dreams and skim surfaces, make impulses, scatter us along, pebbles, lightning, flashes of things, things, many without understanding. It's a wonder we can talk to each other. All rules are gone; we can't prove infinity or its own opposite either. Finite or not, here we are, just accumulated. The world is flat, and round, at the same time. Like this narrative, this story line, take it or leave it, twirl it, or spit it back up and chew it again.
My father, as I said, was in the local First Aid Squad. They had two, great and enormous, Cadillac ambulances. I loved that - now the EMT people use well-equipped vans and trucks. These were much neater. My father, for a while, was Vice-President. No big deal, but odd for him. Bob Snowfield (great name, I always thought), was President. At the Squad picnics and outings, he (Snowfield) could hit a softball higher, farther and longer than any one I'd ever seen before. I was awed. He was a big, powerful guy, with a particular style and smile. If I close my eyes, I can still see him. There were all sorts of men, big, small, wise and stupid. One of my father's early friends, and my mother's too, was the Bill Evans family. We'd go to their house, locally, at the other end of town, for visits, and vice-versa. They had, I think, two kids, our ages. My sister and I would play with them while the parents drank coffee and cake, and just sat around talking. Really boring, and confusing for me to see others, see how they lived, their kids, their lightswitches and furnishings, kitchen stuff, etc. I seemed to notice everything and was always a step back, cataloging and observing. Don't know what that meant, but anyway. They finally moved away to Missouri. Missouri! That was so unheard of, and exotic, for me - even though I don't even know what it meant. St. Louis? Or did they go to some Missouri countryside to farm and such? Never knew, They just disappeared. The first aid men , at these picnics, were always loud and having fun. Sack races, with other men's wives, little flirtings, and who knows what else went on - Maple Tree Tavern had large grounds, a few out buildings, a pond with a bridge, and plenty of secluded space. All bets off. I could sense it all, there was always some very weird electricity in the air. One time, they had to go on a call, were gone a while, came back with a tale of a highway death and cleanup - some motorcyclist had hit a pole at high speed and his head has been smashed and severed. Great story, they went on endlessly. Drunk first-aiders, or drunk enough anyway, leaving a squad picnic on a hot Summer day to tend to a speed-wreck on the highway. Bizarre stuff.
I was usually pretty bored, but I managed. Watching other people, seeing things, looking at cars, running ideas through my head, even as a little kid I stayed around, at least marginally interested in the world as presented to me. I don't know if I noticed the same stuff as other people did, or even cared, but it never seemed that way. Girls were always playing hopscotch on the sidewalk, dolls, etc.We often played some urban sidewalk game we called box-ball - A Spaldeen (pink Spalding ball), the three or four sidewalk blocks between two players all being designated by zones to represent different things, the one-bounce of the slapped-ball on the pavement, etc. It was confined and crazy, but represented a ball game somehow. We'd play 'curb-ball' - same deal, but this time throwing the ball at the curbside from the street, about two feet back, and, on a fly or bounce or line drive, having the resultant landing of the ball represent hits. Football in the streets, pole to pole as goalposts, vicious tackles and hits where they shouldn't have been. No one much ever got hurt, and when we did finally get to play on grass, schoolyard or grassy lot, it was much welcomed and far better. Old Mr. Wynne, a disabled vet would watch us playing football in the street. He'd just sit there, taking things in.
22. Mr. Wynne? You know I'm not really sure if he was a disabled vet
- just some guy with a bad back who never worked because of disability and
because of that was mostly sedentary on this little cinderblock porch thing
they'd built onto the front of the house. His wife, Gladys, was a
nurse - white uniform, little white cap - somewhere. A
really tall lady, from Wisconsin. She acted as the local emergency room for the
houses around her too - skinned knees, wounds of whatever sort,
cuts, scrapes, twisted fingers, all that kid stuff. She took care of everything.
Even did people's fingernail cutting and the like. She had two dachshunds,
always scuttering around. Three sons, and a daughter. Everyone was spaced apart
by about 3 years. Barry was the boy closest to my age - they all,
one by one, the kids anyway, moved to Louisiana for college (LSU), and just
never came back. They all became cops or sheriffs and things - the
oldest boy, Billy, was a Baton Rouge District Attorney for a term or two. his
wife got killed on a bicycle, hit by a car or something. The daughter, Maxine,
ended up in Texas. I never much heard from them again. but Barry, at the end of
his high school years, before Louisiana, hung around a bit. He liked the Lovin'
Spoonful, and played them a lot. Since he had a car, a few times I just drove
around with him - other friends of his houses; he liked to make
small, quick visits around. Once he got to Louisiana, he came back one time,
just to say how life-changing and better-paced it all was, and that he'd never
be coming back to Jersey. Funny guy - he was intrigued by me,
somehow, and by my painting habits, etc. He came over once, while I was doing a
dumb little painting outside in my parent's driveway, and - as his
own art - took some papers and colors and spent nearly an hour
're-designing' the American flag - which he said really needed it.
It was funny, but he was serious; and he did about 6 versions of it, all new,
but really just reconstructed formats of the same old stars and stripes
routine - same colors and all that, newly configured and distorted.
They were cool, and his interest seemed real and sincere. I never understood it,
and it certainly wasn't art - with or without Jasper Johns's
influence. To my mind it was 'what a waste of effort to be called 'art'', but
who knew, certainly not me. I guess they just got thrown away, or maybe he took
them; I can't recall. Anyway, his father, Mr. Wynne would sit on the porch
and listen to some crazy radio broadcast, each day, from Chicago -
or all that one Summer I remember anyway. 'Don McNeil's Breakfast Club' it was
called. Sort of like a mix of Arthur Godfrey's show, a Garrison Keillor thing
before Garrison Keillor did it, and some homespun/glitz mixture of Vegas and New
York. I could never really place it. Nor do I remember what exact Summer that
was, but it was the Summer of the Watts Riot in Los Angeles (we listened
intently to all that too), and - just as well, the Newark Riots, and the
Plainfield Riots, and a bunch of other hot-Summer, Summer of Hate race riots, it
seemed, everywhere. It was pretty bizarre, sitting there, 10am or whatever,
bright sunshine, doing nothing, hanging around with some old guy also doing
nothing while his wife went to work in the car each day (1955 Chevy Bel Air
Station Wagon, dark blue), listening to hokey songs and radio talk, fake or dumb
audience crowds in Chicago laughing and cheering (it was broadcast live), while
far-away and nearby, cities burned, people died, angry and disenfranchised poor
ghetto Negroes lost their homes to flames, looted stores and generally went
crazy in the face of police truncheons, batons and guns. Everything was quite
vivid.
23. In my final, miserable year of high school, which would have been 1967, there were any number of times when I skipped school and instead took a ride with my neighbor from across the street, Richard Florio, who was in his first or second year at Farleigh Dickinson University in Madison, about 20 miles away. He had a 1960 Ford Falcon, white, basic stuff, and in that I'd accompany him to a day's classes. There was no security or any of that, so I'd be able to just mingle, walk in, audit a class, whatever. I'd sit in English or Literature or History lectures, either with or without Richard. It was just something to do and something by which to fill my mind instead of amassing dead time in the sluggardly and decrepit high school atmosphere. Nothing ever came of it, but I enjoyed the space, the buildings, the idea of communal learning by choice, the people around me. Everything just somehow seemed different. Richard, at that time, was way into or involved in the writing of, something on George Bernard Shaw - I was never interested in Shavian stuff (but I always liked how references to Shaw became 'Shavian'). Along the same route, to and from Madison, on old Route 24, there was a bridge in Summit, at Millburn, referred to as the arch - right near to it, as well, was a hilltop restaurant, consider classy and fancy, called The Arch. It was at this restaurant that, when still 16 and not ready for driving age at all, my friend Aleck's father would take us with him - he parked cars as valet/greeter on certain Friday and Saturday nights. We'd make a few dollars parking cars - mostly fancy cars - even though unable to really drive. it was Aleck's father's idea and the custom struck us as nice. It was only a few yards of driving, and any parking that required real maneuvers or tight spaces we'd leave to him. But, we'd get away with it and, in turn, collect a few bucks greeting or bringing their cars to people. It was fun. Aleck's father, in turn, would sometimes take me on his rounds as he did his day-job. He was a gasoline station pump mechanic and maintenance guy, for Amoco. So we'd drive around Middlesex and Monmouth counties and he would stop as appointed Amoco stations to service their pumps and recalibrate and things of that nature. He had a box-sided Amoco electrical-equipment truck. I don't know, or remember, why or how that got started, but he always took me, alone, never Aleck. I got to think, over time, that he preferred my company on these days to that of his son. Aleck was a little odd, creepy in a way, with numerous personality problems. Yet he stayed far more involved in school and things than I ever did. perhaps that was it. The home-life there, I'm told now (by Aleck) was not very good. Perhaps they all just needed space and different companions. Aleck is still around, in California. Still filled with problems. His very nice sister, Carole, committed suicide in Las Vegas sometime back in the 1990's. She'd married a real estate guy, who treated her roughly. Aleck, however, in later conversations, had blamed his father/parents and the state of that upbringing for bringing his sister to ruin. It didn't do much for Aleck either. Some time about 1994, his parents moved away - to Las Vegas themselves, and basically just left Aleck behind - he was about 48, still living at home, aimlessly walking the streets a lot, pretending to be things he wasn't, and pretty much slowly losing touch. His mother, sad, bewildered, took me aside and told me to 'please keep an eye on Aleck. He tends not to be very good with telling things real, and believes his imagination.' It was a bit eerie to hear his mother say that to me - and I did my little best, but even Aleck was soon enough within that year or two afterwards, gone to Las Vegas, and then California. last I knew, his father was yet alive in Las Vegas, and Aleck was in Venice, California, as a multi-millionaire movie-finance mogul. Perhaps it's all true, though I'll never know. He's told me that Martin Sheen, Leonardo DiCaprio, and a few other big-name stars, male and female, are his best buddies, come over to visit and wish him well on birthdays and holidays, that's he's won multiple awards for billion-dollar movie financings, has the ways and means of gaming the financial system to make big bucks based on movie investments and financing of films. He's changed addresses on me a few times, each time to better, bigger and more massive beachfront Venice, California mega-properties, condos and offices. He's also a crazed, angry and bitterly destructive person when you get on the wrong side of these stories, so I've let it all go and just drop the subject. Believe me, the stories and the posturings are legion, and I've been buffeted enough, abused, hung up on and called names enough times to know. He was one my very first, real, post grade-school, bus-riding friends, and lived at 25 Chase Avenue, a tiny little house I always liked. They'd moved there, in Avenel, from Winfield Park in about 5th grade. If you recall reading this piece, he's the Aleck of the 'Maynard, the Beatnik Reindeer' play in 6th grade. All gone bad since. Enough said for now.
23. In my final, miserable year of high school, which would have been 1967, there were any number of times when I skipped school and instead took a ride with my neighbor from across the street, Richard Florio, who was in his first or second year at Farleigh Dickinson University in Madison, about 20 miles away. He had a 1960 Ford Falcon, white, basic stuff, and in that I'd accompany him to a day's classes. There was no security or any of that, so I'd be able to just mingle, walk in, audit a class, whatever. I'd sit in English or Literature or History lectures, either with or without Richard. It was just something to do and something by which to fill my mind instead of amassing dead time in the sluggardly and decrepit high school atmosphere. Nothing ever came of it, but I enjoyed the space, the buildings, the idea of communal learning by choice, the people around me. Everything just somehow seemed different. Richard, at that time, was way into or involved in the writing of, something on George Bernard Shaw - I was never interested in Shavian stuff (but I always liked how references to Shaw became 'Shavian'). Along the same route, to and from Madison, on old Route 24, there was a bridge in Summit, at Millburn, referred to as the arch - right near to it, as well, was a hilltop restaurant, consider classy and fancy, called The Arch. It was at this restaurant that, when still 16 and not ready for driving age at all, my friend Aleck's father would take us with him - he parked cars as valet/greeter on certain Friday and Saturday nights. We'd make a few dollars parking cars - mostly fancy cars - even though unable to really drive. it was Aleck's father's idea and the custom struck us as nice. It was only a few yards of driving, and any parking that required real maneuvers or tight spaces we'd leave to him. But, we'd get away with it and, in turn, collect a few bucks greeting or bringing their cars to people. It was fun. Aleck's father, in turn, would sometimes take me on his rounds as he did his day-job. He was a gasoline station pump mechanic and maintenance guy, for Amoco. So we'd drive around Middlesex and Monmouth counties and he would stop as appointed Amoco stations to service their pumps and recalibrate and things of that nature. He had a box-sided Amoco electrical-equipment truck. I don't know, or remember, why or how that got started, but he always took me, alone, never Aleck. I got to think, over time, that he preferred my company on these days to that of his son. Aleck was a little odd, creepy in a way, with numerous personality problems. Yet he stayed far more involved in school and things than I ever did. perhaps that was it. The home-life there, I'm told now (by Aleck) was not very good. Perhaps they all just needed space and different companions. Aleck is still around, in California. Still filled with problems. His very nice sister, Carole, committed suicide in Las Vegas sometime back in the 1990's. She'd married a real estate guy, who treated her roughly. Aleck, however, in later conversations, had blamed his father/parents and the state of that upbringing for bringing his sister to ruin. It didn't do much for Aleck either. Some time about 1994, his parents moved away - to Las Vegas themselves, and basically just left Aleck behind - he was about 48, still living at home, aimlessly walking the streets a lot, pretending to be things he wasn't, and pretty much slowly losing touch. His mother, sad, bewildered, took me aside and told me to 'please keep an eye on Aleck. He tends not to be very good with telling things real, and believes his imagination.' It was a bit eerie to hear his mother say that to me - and I did my little best, but even Aleck was soon enough within that year or two afterwards, gone to Las Vegas, and then California. last I knew, his father was yet alive in Las Vegas, and Aleck was in Venice, California, as a multi-millionaire movie-finance mogul. Perhaps it's all true, though I'll never know. He's told me that Martin Sheen, Leonardo DiCaprio, and a few other big-name stars, male and female, are his best buddies, come over to visit and wish him well on birthdays and holidays, that's he's won multiple awards for billion-dollar movie financings, has the ways and means of gaming the financial system to make big bucks based on movie investments and financing of films. He's changed addresses on me a few times, each time to better, bigger and more massive beachfront Venice, California mega-properties, condos and offices. He's also a crazed, angry and bitterly destructive person when you get on the wrong side of these stories, so I've let it all go and just drop the subject. Believe me, the stories and the posturings are legion, and I've been buffeted enough, abused, hung up on and called names enough times to know. He was one my very first, real, post grade-school, bus-riding friends, and lived at 25 Chase Avenue, a tiny little house I always liked. They'd moved there, in Avenel, from Winfield Park in about 5th grade. If you recall reading this piece, he's the Aleck of the 'Maynard, the Beatnik Reindeer' play in 6th grade. All gone bad since. Enough said for now.
24. There was one time when I lived in NYC I was walking
along the streets, pretty much homeless and out of luck, trying to figure out a
next step. This was pretty early on in my time there. I'd somehow gotten myself
over to the West Village, the area of Christopher Street and Gay Street (weird
name, but it's real - a little curvy street that, two hundred years ago, was for
black people - slaves and servants and such. It's named after some guy whose
last name was 'Gay', and - oddly enough - now it's very gay, and in fact quite
close to the famed, gay Stonewall Inn). Over time, through the 1920's
'bohemians' and writerly types took it over, and then just rich old gents of
peculiar bent. Now, along with that entire area, the ferocity and
vocal-flamboyance of the queer population has everyone knowing it's the district
for gay men - the entire section. Back then, it really wasn't so obvious,
everything was still under wraps - and now, voila! the very name Gay Street is
perfect. Anyway, I was walking along and I must have been idly spaced-out or
daydreaming, but this big, middle-aged, natty black man sitting at an outside
table eating by himself, called my attention and asked me over. I went, really
naive and sheepishly, and - as well - not knowing at all what I was getting
involved with. He had me sit down next to him, asked if I was hungry - of course
I said yes. He ordered a sandwich or whatever it was he'd been eating. I ate, he
ate, and he also monologued. I answered a few perfunctory questions - the
conclusions of which were that, as he put it, 'if you're a hippy, you're the
most naive one I've ever seen.' (I remember that quote precisely, as I was
struck by it immediately). He had the quality of intellectualism, interest,
culture and bearing I was attracted to, interested in. I was not gay or homo
myself, and - in fact- never had given it a thought. My girlfriend and I had
been having a steady stream (no pun) of hetero-sex for over two years. This was
all new to me. This fellow had a James Baldwin sort of quality, an incredible
smoothness as well - nothing I could really place. I'd not admitted to being a
hippy, in fact not said much of anything, being more in shock and curiosity than
anything else, and hungry. That was all his conclusion, and a wishful-thinking
too, I suppose, on his part. Somehow, we did manage to walk over to his nearby
apartment after eating. I went up, third or fourth floor, some nearby street. I
really forget all that now. He had a perfectly real apartment, nice and clean,
fully furnished and appointed with money and class. The idle small talk
continued. He'd sat down, and had me do so, on the couch - a large, broad,
thickly stuffed couch covered nicely. It went on. Cut to chase : before too long
his pants were down and what he presented me with was the largest, purplest,
most throbbing fucking erect dick I'd ever seen or imagined. He asked me to suck
it, gently getting his hands to the back of my head. After I refused, demurred,
whatever you'd call it, he said simply that all I had to do was stroke it and
jerk him off and I could go. I was flabbergasted and thought to myself 'that no
way could any damned sandwich be worth this'. I objected, got shitty in his
face, started talking at him, in a forceful and threatening manner - it took
about two minutes and I was gone. His stupid-ass dick had never gone down a
centifuckingmeter in the entire time of my berating and refusing him, but I at
least hope he jerked himself off well, because I wasn't about to do it for him.
And frankly, I could have killed him and had a knife been handy right then I'd
have cut that bastard wide open and stolen every piece of good shit I could
carry. I guess that was my lesson in civil rights or something for that day.
Quite the scene, and it stays vividly with me right now.
There were plenty of such weird lessons to be had all over those days.
Litanies of crazy Jew shit, leftover survivors hanging around to die in the old
parks and lanes of benches, fucking ass-horny runaways, girls and guys, looking
for anything - drugs, homo sex, naked, raw power sex, trips, beatings,
adventure, shelter. Everywhere. I can't remember ever really seeing a police
presence - just everywhere along the lower east side a few thousand runaway,
homeless, decrepit, foul-smelling and rank girls and guys. It was like a kid's
circus - black lights, loud, bad music, people tripping, seeing things,talking
aloud, sleeping while awake and dead while alive. I told you about the murders.
Any of these people might as well have been murdered too. 24 hours a day plus.
We talk about it now as glorious fun hippy days : that's all media shit and not
true at all. (I have a lot to say, and I sometimes say it, well or not. One
thing that sticks in my craw to this day, and it's never much mentioned, I guess
because you just can't say this stuff, but the entire hippy, 'love everybody'
movement bullshit, it was all Jew stuff - every in-town Jewboy from Mark Rudd to
Abbie Hoffman to the unknown and most local block or building leader was some
kind of Jew bastard shilling for a 'movement' of self-destructive, negative
tendencies, peddling product, hawking their shit to the hungry and willing Jew
media people, and finding target, unwitting and stupid Goy audiences for it
everywhere from Long Island City to Puget Fucking Sound. And all those sad and
sorry leftover survivor peoples on the dwindling park benches, soundlessly
watching all this unfold, they too (paradoxically) were all Jews, leftover
pogram and camp-victim Jews. The entire Lovin' Fucking Spoonful movement from
Bob Zimmerman to Zolly Yanowski, or whatever, they all were complicit. It was a
sort of Holocaust Revenge, though you can't say that. But, fuck that, I was
there. Just ask me.
When I was about 11, my friend Kenny Kaisen (I've already talked about him)
and his sister Christine had a really nice girl over for the day - a friend or
something of Christine's. I remember her well, she was attractive to me, don't
know why, and we were very young. We were just hanging around, playing some
stupid card game they had called Mille Bournes or something (I think it means 'a
thousand miles'), a French game with cards and a board or something, about
traveling, breakdowns and accumulated mileage. Beats me. Passing the time of
day. We'd all gone outside to the rear of the property. They had a fence with a
gate marking the end of their yard. I don't know exactly what happened, but the
next thing I knew Kenny had this girl outside the fence, on the other side, and
he was yelling intensly into her face while she was completely collapsed, crying
loudly, tears streaming. I was in a momentary confused panic, concerned. I'll
never know what triggered that moment or how or why, but Kenny had driven her
from the yard to the outside of the fence and was screaming at her all sorts and
every sort of 'you're a fucking no good Jew' accusations, calling out her race,
her name, her family, her past and future and present too. She was hurt,
shattered and destroyed. I'll never forget that. I'd never before faced off that
sort of thing, and had no idea, at that moment, from where Kenny could have
gotten all this information and how this could have been started. Years later,
in watching, I realized his father was a stern Germanic sort, as was his mother,
a Lithuanian or Russian or something, and that this all probably came through
their homelife and upbringing. But I didn't know that at the time. Yes, this
girl's facial features, posture and bearing were very obviously 'Jewish' as we
think of it, but it never, until that moment, mattered to me. After that time, I
was stuck and branded by some form of that awareness. Right then, I really could
have cried in shock and sorrow with her. Pretty amazing stuff. It was a brutal
scene, as much as anything I'd ever see in my future German Lit. classes at
Elmira College, of Nazi actions, ghetto cleansings, and the rest.
Lots of things make me sad, still. Lots of things still have me stunned.
Still. There are things I can't get over, things which linger in my memory,
things from which I make other things, build upon them, run with - but the
essential kernel of Reality I went through is always there. I'm not special; in
any way. And I really think that the sorts of things I live by are available to
everyone - Life is a treasure, amassing nuggets of gold, But no one bothers to,
or knows how to, pan for it. Can't be bothered. Too much trouble. Well then,
walk on. Live your own miserable shit, and I'll work through mine. When we're
all done, we're both dead.
One of the cliches of the 'down and out brigade', of the young and homeless
and hungry - Bob Dylan to The Berrigan Brothers, Ginsberg, Herbert Huncke,
Orlovsky, Keruouac - is that dire situations and downright Beat living took
everyone eventually up to 42nd Street to hustle. To make some money, to blow
men, to escort and fuck wealthy women looking for company, hanging around
poolhalls, 42nd Street dives, SkiBall parlors, and the rest, If I've read one,
I've read a hundred, usually self-serving, bullshit stories. Dylan made all his
shit up - there's not a true line in any of that. (He had as much to do with the
Beats as I did with General Eisenhower.) There was so many gay men around it
could make you puke. That part's true. All that ancient, monstrous, strong,
dirty, bountiful and beautiful 42nd Street area is now gone anyway, turned into
another sort of Disney brothel of family goo, skanky schlock, and the sort of
asshole-sickening vacation oriented theme park crap you've ever think of. Used
to be the bathrooms, for God's sake, had holes drilled in them for men to stick
their dicks through for a blowjob or a handjob or - as has been known to happen
- to get their sorry-ass dicks chopped off or cut open while in there and then
get themselves robbed and killed all at the same time. No security-cop types
here either, back then. Now, you can't fart for it being on camera someplace.
Everything's bullshit. I did my time there, in those precincts, but I never did
anything worth telling. Porno shops, peep shows in the stupid little booths,
dirty magazines, skanky and untrustworthy old girls - all that was everywhere,
but it weren't no fun. There wasn't any money around, and the idea anyway wasn't
to pay for getting it, but instead to make money for doing it. Hey, people, and
you new fresh-faced newbies out there; that's a crucial difference.
There was row after row, back then, of beautiful, run-down old brownstones
along the westside streets, 35th 42nd ,45th, right up to the 50's. It was
old-style, shabby but nice; high-stooped, stone or concrete steps, people
sitting about, all hours. No more. Now all the rubbish has been carted away,
building after building demolished, bars and dives gone, and everything reeks;
either it's new, themed, refurbished, or gone. Just like me? Nah; I don't think
so. There's a pretty great, cheap book around, still available and easy to find,
I think, called 'Westies' - it's a lot about all of that. Worth finding. I was
part of all that in the late 60's. I'd meander about from the lower eastside
right up through the 60's, east and west. Layer upon layer of experience. Energy
everywhere. Not much fun anywhere, because I was parts too stupid, too dull, too
afraid and too poor to really do anything. But, no matter, because I was 'me' -
up to that time everything I'd ever been, had or done, was still flowing through
me like a mercury baptism that would eventually run me right through, alter
forever my blood and ways, and grant me a re-born new re-birthing which created
all my today and all the work of my now.
25. By 1979 I was back in Avenel, for a spell. We had
moved back - my wife Kathy did not relish entering our son, now 5, into the
school-systems and environment of that area of Pennsylvania we'd been living in.
It really wouldn't have mattered to me. We'd had a pretty simple 10-year
mortgage on that place, at about $310 a month, a line of credit with 60-day
notes open for us at the local Troy Bank, and the taxes were nil - about $300
per year, which I was getting paid by Don Metz, a guy in Elmira, NY who'd left a
bunch of old metal-working equipment, a large lathe, and two old trucks and a
few cars on our property. Oh, also a crane, with a 60 foot boom; high up in the
air. It was all actually pretty cool. We'd target practice, with a gun or two
I'd gotten, on the '62 Mercury and some old Chevy that were sinking in the mud
out back. It took about a year, but I finally tracked down whoever owned all
this stuff left about - and it was this Don Metz guy, a big, fat, old
cigar-smoking dude who owned a warehouse or two of auction furniture and one or
two small companies in Elmira. He was doing OK. He offered to pay my taxes if
I'd leave the stuff there. I said sure. To better the offer as well, he offered
us a walk-through of one warehouse to pick out any couple of pieces of furniture
we'd like. We threw some stuff in the back of our truck, and took it. All was
well. He paid the taxes from that point (1972) on. It was nice living, but rough
enough. I would have stayed. One time we ran out of fuel oil in the middle of a
huge multi-day snowstorm. Nothing could get through. Kathy's mother even called
the Pennsylvania State Police to tell them of her daughter stranded and in
danger of freezing-to-death in Columbia Crossroads. They said they'd try to do
something. Nothing, of course, was done, but whatever. I took a tractor and
broke out to get some pea-coal from the school I tended (heated by coal) and we
ran a steady, red-hot fire for days in the pot-belly stove we had. This was, in
fact, right during the February when Nixon was in China - so all those
early-morning, 4am news feeds and early news shows that came over on the stupid,
tiny plastic-box 'portable' TV that we had kept us company. It was really cozy,
and actually warm. We had about 5 dogs around as well, and a cat or two (and a toddler
kid). Our telephone line, feeble as it was, was a party-line, of about 6
families. If it was for us, we'd know by the steady, continued peal of six quick
rings for us. You had to listen close, and count. Anybody else could pick up
whenever they wanted, even if it wasn't for them. Of course, we could too, but I
couldn't be bothered. We often enough did have eavesdroppers on our line,
listening to see what those new people were up to. I never cared, and anyway, we
never really got calls. Everybody was in everybody else's business anyway. We
only heated the bottom four- room portion of the house; the rest was unoccupied
anyway, and it was too expensive. Once Spring came, all was well. The land was
great, the scenery awesome. I think I told you way out back was an old dump from
about the 1920's and 30's. Filled with really cool, old stuff - headlamps, old
milk-cans, car parts, tools and shovels and bottles and bones. There was, for
some reason, a whole slew of Arizona Highway magazines in the rooms which had
been built upstairs over the barn. Mostly in the bathroom. It was big and all
unheated in there, but the unfinished 6 or 7 rooms were really cool. It had been
meant to eventually be finished to rent to hunters and other sleep-overs, but
nothing ever came of it. Out back, the acreage was wild and grassy, and there
were a few big holes in the ground you had to watch out for - meant was to be
wells, but the water never came in. I eventually put sticks at each, with cloth
attached, to remind myself. For one or two years also we raised two pigs -
purchased at Kennedy's Farm Store as tiny little pink piglets, they grew to be
very huge, awesome, smart and sometimes annoying. One time, I couldn't find them
though I could hear them. Much like Jim Tomberg, they fell into the well-hole
which was inside the barn, and just sort of got wedged in next to each other and
unable to free themselves. I could have been a disaster, but I found them I
guess within a day. We managed to rope them each and somehow pull them up one at
a time. A nasty task. We did eventually sell them to the slaughter house, with
tears involved. We took the money, and never looked back - certainly didn't want
any meat. On one side of the house was a gradual, big hill. Willard Brown, the
neighbor farmer on that side, would plant corn there each year, a nice crop. He
had a huge dairy farm over the hill from us; the other side of the hill I'm
mentioning. Of course, to a farmer, land is not land as we think of it -
scenery, beauty, pleasure. Rather, it's his raw material. They plunder, gouge
cut and ruin it all at will. Here, he'd spread manure constantly, and in any
rainfall of substance it would all run down into our land, eventually coming
down into our back-door yard, if it was really rainy, but often enough it would
simply percolate down and into our stream-fed open water supply. Our holding
tank for all our water would be brown and manure-laden and gross for days, until
it flushed itself out. We'd use water from the creamery, brought over in a
barrel or two, or just wait it out, boiling the tap water. We never got sick or
died or anything, so - as gross as it was - I guess it was OK. No one else had
ever heard of such a thing. Our basement beneath the house was one enormous slab
of rock, almost cave like, onto which the house had been built and some basement
area blasted out. Enough for two cars, big doors, a big furnace, water pumping,
tool area, stairway and some free space. Crazy, but cool. Nothing at all locked,
and the place was, pretty much always open unless I jiggered up some padlock
stuff - but we never cared much, and most often never thought about it, even
when we were away. I don't know why, actually - we were outsiders, there were
plenty of crazy people about, all these people had guns and tempers, and the
rest. I had, among my jobs, a job for a year or two driving the daily school bus
over hill and dale, picking up and dropping off kids of all ages. I may have
already mentioned this; can't recall. There were all sorts of zany stories and
activities involved with this daily school run, but the best was my driving that
perfectly pristine 16-year-old high schooler each day to the Troy Hotel to
conduct her 'business' instead of to high school. No one ever said anything; it
just went on for a while. I, quite frankly and truthfully, just didn't care.
Well, I started this by saying we were back in Avenel by '79. true. The farmhouse eventually sold to some Pakistani guy and his family, who had a business-machine company in Elmira. I guess they got by OK. It was the first time I'd dealt with an Indian or Pakistani. Before Avenel, we ourselves had moved to Elmira, 827 Lincoln Street. It too was nice - right next to Elmira College, which got me in there, right by Mark Twain's grave site, and very close, by drive, to Ithaca and Cornell University, where I spent, as well, plenty of time. Cornell was still a anarchic shambles after the lock downs and protests of 1970 or whenever it was, so going there was, for that area and countryside, like re-entering a very cosmopolitan and worldly place. Interesting as hell. More on all that later,
Well, I started this by saying we were back in Avenel by '79. true. The farmhouse eventually sold to some Pakistani guy and his family, who had a business-machine company in Elmira. I guess they got by OK. It was the first time I'd dealt with an Indian or Pakistani. Before Avenel, we ourselves had moved to Elmira, 827 Lincoln Street. It too was nice - right next to Elmira College, which got me in there, right by Mark Twain's grave site, and very close, by drive, to Ithaca and Cornell University, where I spent, as well, plenty of time. Cornell was still a anarchic shambles after the lock downs and protests of 1970 or whenever it was, so going there was, for that area and countryside, like re-entering a very cosmopolitan and worldly place. Interesting as hell. More on all that later,
Back in Avenel, we stayed with Kathy's parent for about 10 months, until we
bought a house in Metuchen. Our son entered school at He lives in
Colonia, about 6 miles away. The house in Metuchen was bought from Ronald Aldano, who had actually, with his extended family, been a childhood chum of
mine. His brother John too. They had a big spread with three houses on it, and
lots of land (now sold for garden apartments) on the Hilltop part of Avenel, by
the Middle and Junior High School. For the house-closing, Ralph (who was in
prison) came out of prison with a guard for the day, to sign the papers and
tally things up - after all his debts and liens and ex-wife judgments and such,
he was led away, back to prison, with about 28 bucks -because of federal counts,
counterfeiting and stolen cars parts. He ended up in a federal penitentiary
somewhere in Texas, did some years of time, like 12 years, and got out. I think
he's in South River or somewhere now, with a small delivery-van company. I also
knew his father, who has since died. When we first looked at the house, the real
estate lady didn't want to show it to us. We had to press the case - it was an
untidy, small bungalow (still is), with two big Dobermans or something yapping
and scratching all the doors and walls constantly, about three feet up. Entry
was dangerous, ever for a real estate agent. Everything inside was painted dark
brown, purple, or black - I mean walls and such. It was pretty hideous, and
there was a 100-gallon fish tank taking up one whole wall, with special wiring
just for it. It had been the headquarters/clubhouse, through Ralph, of a
motorcycle club - not the Breed, but an offshoot - the name of which at this
precise moment escapes me. I'll type it in when it hits. Ah! Desperado MC.
Another friend of mine, Bill Tenner, himself of jail fame, from Tennessee or
somewhere, was also a member here, and regaled me with many stories of those
hoary days (double-entendre/pun intended). The best of them was that, on the day
that the Garden State Parkway was finally opened for motorcycles (they had been
banned from it for years), Ralph Aldano, alongside and with Malcolm Forbes,
had been the first motorcycle(s) and motorcyclist(s) on it. True story. In
Avenel, I worked for years at St. George Press, 18 years anyway, knowing all the
in and outs of the entire printing industry, with numerous 'clients' local,
statewide and in NYC. It was, for a long time, a nice career. And I had
fun.
In order to tell all of this and bring it closer to the present day, I will
try and stay pretty much on point; but, as is my wont, and your benefit, I will
stray and meander and twist through time as I choose and as it occurs to me. So
fare thee well, be patient, and stay with this, please.
In 1976, we all went to California for two weeks - Benecia, Vallejo and San
Francisco, CA. Kathy's parents footed the entire 'bicentennial' bill (her father worked for
United) - lodging, free flying, even meals. We drove up and down to Carmel, Monterey, Napa, Big Sur country, all that crap. We loved San Francisco, and got way into
the thought of relocating and moving there. Had a house all picked and selected,
in fact, on the Russian River, I think by Benecia or somewhere. It would perhaps
have been very cool, but the house itself was small, yes, and perched right ON
the banks of the river, almost literally. It seemed always damp, almost wet,
noisy with a river-soothing backtone, constantly, also called noise I suppose. I
never knew how and if it flooded or any of that. We loved San Francisco, but it
was expensive. This was, by comparison, cheap. We went home to Elmira, certain
of moving back; put the house up for sale, had a gigando rummage sale on the
lawn for a weekend, sold a bunch of shit, and then just thought better of the
whole thing. That was that with those plans. Kathy's brother, Joseph, had a
girlfriend, Margaret Collins, his third or fourth after marriage. Turned out,
she was all over me, wanting to, as she put it to me, 'fuck your socks off' (I'd
never heard that cool term before). It was pretty difficult, for two weeks to
keep her off me and remain not annoyed by it. One time, getting into the rental
car, she was wearing a skirt or dress or something, and I recall vividly how
she'd let me know she had no panties on and, entering and exiting the car, would
be sure and certain that I would get the 'very best beaver shot ever.' And then
another time, in Avenel, they'd come to visit and stay there for a week, and all
the same stuff went on, but in even closer quarters, and with everyone else
pretty much aware of and onto what was happening. It didn't make for a pretty
scene. Margaret was something else; and her family, in fact, traced their
lineage right back to George Washington, and had some bullshit testimonial
document attesting to that framed and hanging on their living room wall. Her
maiden name had been Margaret Hilton, and their family money came from Hilton
Hotels; their name and kin. She's now in Hawaii somewhere, address unknown to
me. Joseph is dead now (the earlier suicide I went over), but long before that
he and Margaret had broken up angrily. Yet some other girl was involved, and
Margaret, in a wild fit, had threatened to do it, and then driven, a car through
his house's front window-wall as her act of defiance and protest. Crazy
shit.
26. Margaret had a brother, Billy Hilton or something, who was a well-off, well-kept basic California beach bum type. For part of the stay we visited, I think it was, the second of their homes - the larger, entertainment-center home of theirs on the water somewhere. They all drank cocktails. Her mother, whoever she was, drank a constant Sloe Gin Fizz. I'd no knowledge of what that was either, except from perhaps Scott Fitzgerald and some 1920's novels. There was plenty of money to go around, and a fairly basic Kennedy-family-like ambience, self-awareness and mythology of family. It was a bit uncomfortable for me, but an eye-opener as well. The time spent there was enlightening - seeing how an entire other segment of 'society' or whatever it was, lived. The habits were so different, as were the assumptions and the general tone. They even had a particular pet-name for the mother, which I cannot remember right now either. Lady something or other, I think. Who knows? (It was 'Lady L', for Eleanot). Margaret came from all this, and had all the traits engrained. A sort of idea of privilege and entitlement, a disdain for little folk, and other things I can't place - an assumption, of sorts, that everything was there for them that things existed only insofar as they were pleasurable and of use to them first and foremost. Each item had a subtext : a car was not merely a car but as 'car' it meant something, said something about the owner. Same with house, clothing, games, travel, and even 'who you know.' Once you'd attained that level (it had to be over a long period, and, oddly, by birth; thus locking everyone else out), the subtext was readable and apparent, as if an entire other language was engrained and readable. 'We' never knew that, box-like creatures from small tract-homes as we were.
26. Margaret had a brother, Billy Hilton or something, who was a well-off, well-kept basic California beach bum type. For part of the stay we visited, I think it was, the second of their homes - the larger, entertainment-center home of theirs on the water somewhere. They all drank cocktails. Her mother, whoever she was, drank a constant Sloe Gin Fizz. I'd no knowledge of what that was either, except from perhaps Scott Fitzgerald and some 1920's novels. There was plenty of money to go around, and a fairly basic Kennedy-family-like ambience, self-awareness and mythology of family. It was a bit uncomfortable for me, but an eye-opener as well. The time spent there was enlightening - seeing how an entire other segment of 'society' or whatever it was, lived. The habits were so different, as were the assumptions and the general tone. They even had a particular pet-name for the mother, which I cannot remember right now either. Lady something or other, I think. Who knows? (It was 'Lady L', for Eleanot). Margaret came from all this, and had all the traits engrained. A sort of idea of privilege and entitlement, a disdain for little folk, and other things I can't place - an assumption, of sorts, that everything was there for them that things existed only insofar as they were pleasurable and of use to them first and foremost. Each item had a subtext : a car was not merely a car but as 'car' it meant something, said something about the owner. Same with house, clothing, games, travel, and even 'who you know.' Once you'd attained that level (it had to be over a long period, and, oddly, by birth; thus locking everyone else out), the subtext was readable and apparent, as if an entire other language was engrained and readable. 'We' never knew that, box-like creatures from small tract-homes as we were.
I liked California. The light in Golden Gate Park was amazing - it had a
different quality, 'all throughout' San Francisco - from any other east-coast
light I'd seen. A bright-white, silvery light, with great, bulbous, rolling
clouds and fogs. I think I may have mentioned that I'd been accepted to, as
well, the San Francisco Art Institute but had decided not to attend. Distance,
travel and place all seemed too formidable for me. As I look back now,
regardless of Kathy, mostly for whom I'd not gone to San Francisco in '67, my
life and art and art education, I'm sure, would have fared differently had I
taken the grand dollops of that San Francisco light and illumination and lived
with it. It that must have an influence of great import to those who can read
it. By contrast, the dense and far darker east coast brooded a self-awareness
and a gravitas heavy enough to drag people and movements down : that endless
uber-strength and pull downward of the Abstract-Expressionists, the
argumentativeness of the Cedar Tavern crowd, the color-angst of Hans Hoffman and
others, the verbal proto-violence of the beats and the NY School poets, the
badgering and beating of the wandering Jew writers and cranks and philosophers
and dilettantes and Columbia College crowd. Dark, dark, dark by contrast. Of
course, back home early on and later, on both time-sides of the California
episodes, that is what I fell into and lived amidst, and loved and treasured. I
really don't know how long the happiness and clarity of that California light
would have carried me anyway. I'm just not that.
I liked the streetcars and trolleys, the older vehicles still running - not
rusted and instead well-kept. The old ships and boats of Fisherman's Wharf
(before it too was sanitized and done over like the South Street Seaport section
of Manhattan), the Balcutha, an old schooner-vessel kept in the harbor. I loved
Coit Tower and San Francisco's Chinatown. I loved the Art Institute; all that
older, Spanish-missionary and stucco-style stuff. In Chinatown, there was a
crazy guy running a restaurant, he'd named himself Edsel Ford Wong. I saw him a
few times, and he took a liking to me and went nuts making me nuts - performing
and bossing me about as I (we) tried eating in his restaurant. He'd throw a damp
rag at me and holler 'You!! Clean the tables!!', things like that. It was weird.
He was a funny guy. The restaurant, somehow, was named Oouie Louie Gooey's -
that's how weird it was. Each table, seating about 8 people if full, was in a
partition in the wall, curtained off with a Chinese-fabric curtain on a drapery
pole, and it could be slid open or slid closed. It was almost formal, if you saw
it that way; old-style, regal, or just odd, with this crazy, noisy guy hanging
around shouting at people. I never knew what to make of it, or how this fellow
was reading me, nor why singling me out, but we ate there a number of times. it
became a game. San Francisco was in no was like New York City. The housing stock
was completely different, packed differently, brightly-colored, running up and
down hillsides. The newer developed places were dense, square and tract-like,
running off in all directions up and out from the city. People lived, it seemed,
everywhere. The Presidio, beneath Golden Gate Bridge, the boaters and runners
and joggers and sun-worshippers, all that was light and different. I don't know
what I would have been had I stayed there or moved there, and I guess it's an
alternate reality for me still running on, in full possibilities, somewhere in
the cosmos. We each have that, numerous times, going on. Quantum physics tells
us that particles are neither here nor there, cannot really be situated, they
are points AND they are waves. They move about and shape-shift - and that all of
life is nothing more than this ONE projected hologram that we are, for now,
recognizing - while all around and through us, all other versions of reality and
out story-lines are also underway, each with us again as 'star-player' to
ourselves. We witness what we make as we are making what we witness.
27. The second car I ever owned was, in 1970, a '57
Jaguar MKVII - often referred to in those days as a 'Nigger Cadillac', whatever
that meant. It was a salon-car limo, most often made for being chauffeur-driven,
but not always; a British estate-car for those Lords and Barons with big
properties. This one had American-side drive, walnut-burled dashboard, two
gasoline (petrol) tanks, ultraviolet (blue/black) interior lighting, a
short-wave, world-multi-band radio, installed not added on, in the dashboard, a
switchover toggle for either gas tank, three Weber dashpot carburetors, a
Borg-Warner automatic transmission (very poor) and, very amazingly, two
rear-seat walnut tables that flipped down out of the back of each front seat,
and rear-light (white) lamps for reading or writing. leather seats, very puffy,
all around. It was a tank, got about 8 miles per gallon, and rode very heavy. I
did have it over 100 mph once or twice however. The braking system was horrible,
and more than twice I did take my life in my hands over-propelling this thing.
Two expensive repairs and Bristol motors on Rt. 22 in Springfield, a Jaguar
dealership back then, pretty much got me nothing different as 'repaired'
results. It was a constant nightmare for inspection, a struggle, a fight. I'd
bought it for three hundred dollars from a mechanic-shop friend of mine, Freddy
Fox, in Rahway, right off Rt. 1 at Hazelwood. It was a divorce car, and the
estranged wife, having possession, was selling off everything that had been her
husband's. This car included; it was probably worth, I'd guess, ten times that.
Freddy told me I should have it, and I should quit driving that 'piss-pot' I was
currently driving (a 1962 Renault 2CV). The jag needed an exhaust, another big
expense, but Freddy prompted me by saying he'd custom weld a straight-pipe and
baffle exhaust, and hang it, for only 50 bucks more. I said OK - it all turned
out beautiful; long, chrome pipes (dual) and a sweet, unmuffled sound when
rolling back on the gas. Totally sweet car, but too much for me. I kept it for
about a year and a half. My father called it our (my girlfriend Kathy and me)
our 'Bonnie and Clyde car'. He and the neighbors claimed we looked just like
those two hoodlums in it. I did eventually find a buyer for it, for $800; some
Woodbridge hippy girl who I told shouldn't by it, bad brakes. A month later, her
father was banging at my parents' front door asking to see me. He threatened to
sue me, because his daughter had nearly gotten killed and I'd sold her a car
with bad breaks. I told them later that I had warned her numerous times, and she
sheepishly agreed that I had. They dropped everything, and I don't know what
ever came of that car. After that, I went into a succession of 3 Volkswagens,
but really did little driving anyway.
While I was in NYC and my girlfriend Kathy was still in Avenel (88
Dartmouth Ave.) and going (walking) to Woodbridge High School daily, she'd make
me big batches of corn muffins, which I'd take back to NYC on the train each
time I left after a visit. They, and the other cheap foods I've mentioned, often
sustained me. She'd go around, here and there, to school things and an
occasional local party - people, she said, pulled her in because (in some
circles) - mainly because of what she said had become my massive local reputation as
iconoclast and NYC moveaway - I was some sort of legendary demigod in their
eyes. Never enjoying this much, she often just laid low. Bobbie Hanso, Robert
and Billy DaVenk, and some local girls too, people of that sort in
Woodbridge and Avenel, were the preposterous leaders of this small movement. I'd
known all of them only peripherally. I do not know what became of any of them.
Each time I came back through Avenel, it was usually by train or bus. There were
lots of things happening, and going back to Avenel was about the most boring
thing I could think of doing, but I did it anyway. One year, it was around
Halloween, getting bare and cold out, all those decorations and stuff, and Kathy
had told me about this one guy particularly badgering here. We walked over to
his house, where I knocked upon the door and began giving him shit about leaving
her alone. Blah, blah (all stupid) and he said 'OK, OK, no more. I was only
doing it anyway to get my girlfriend jealous.' Whereupon, realizing the mistaken
stupidity of all this, I just starting laughing, as did then he, and we, all 3
of us, blew it off. No more said. Point I'm making, I think, is how really
little is the puffed-up fiefdom inside each person's head about themselves, and
- just as well - the ridiculous danger of a small-time jerk as I was just then,
scampering back to his 'town' wherein he thinks he can be a big wheel and push
his 'outsider' weight around. It's just too small and too dumb. Don't do it.
Riding the train was always cool. The Rolling Stones had a song out then,
annoying little tune, that I somehow kept hearing and thus couldn't get out of
my head. Something about 'Colors'. She come in colors, colors everywhere, or
something. From 'Their Satanic Majesty's Request' - a really lame, stupid-ass
answer to Beatles type thing. After I had been listening to music lectures by
Morton Feldman, Cage, etc., on the likes of Boulez and Stockhausen, having to step way backward onto train-riding with the stupid
Rolling Stones in my head was so really, really very annoying. Like Avenel, it
was the whole world turned upside down, made small and inconsequential, with
prisoner-people trapped in some amber-molasses of their own devise. Lost in
time, a nasty reverse Mayberry, a truck-route on the highway to Hades. I wanted
out, but I kept going back. The primal relief I'd feel on getting back into the
bowels of Penn Station, crawling around underneath NYC was palpable. A total
relief, a sort of re-gutting into the more primal bloods and energies of all
that seedy dirt and grime. I'd go outside at 33rd, and start my long, slow walk
back downtown, taking in everything along the way, whether I walked westside or
eastside, I made sure there was nothing I'd not catch or see. It was all
educational material, and I could have died right then and there and never
really cared. I'd go nowhere and I'd go everywhere. I'd get back to 8th Street and
re-enter the Studio School, right back to it as if I'd never left - no one asked
questions, no one said a word. By nightfall I'd pick it all up again. I had no
time, no place, and not a thing in the world really mattered. Except the cold, except the cold - which that Winter seemed to always stay within my bones.
Kathy would sometimes skip school and come to see me, by train. She'd walk
downtown, or I'd meet her somewhere, and we'd just hang out for the day, walk,
do nothing. I'd show her things and places that merited attention. Then she'd be
gone; back by train. Not a lot of times, but enough. I guess school (hers) never
noticed. Or she'd come in, during hot months, barefoot, with really tight and
short clothes on, sending the Puerto Rican guys along 11th Street into paroxysm
of crazy horniness - catcalls, barks, the whole bit. I'd always fear for her
bare feet, with glass and all that being around - not really for anything else.
It was also asshole bluster by horny guys who never did anything. Upstairs at
11th, Andy Bonomo, as I've mentioned, would give her whatever money she'd need
out of the many of his money boots on the floor.
28. There was something about drugs that I never took to.
Just over at the corner, at e10th, was the famed Psychedelicatessan, which had
somehow gotten the reputation, probably warranted, of being a cool, dank, open
space with strobe lights, black lights, loud music, mats and sofas all about,
where one could just enter, do nothing, plop down, and trip - all day if one
wished - or sit there stoned, happy and high. Whatever. I'd gone in any number
of times, just to see what was up. I'd plop down myself, gaze about, and just
stay around - sometimes in wonder or in my own reverie. I never really witnessed
any nasty drug scenes; just a few seriously passed out and/or seriously freaked
out people - they'd be muttering about some weird fear, something I couldn't
see, something that didn't exist. The other extreme made them just look like any
stupid drunk you'd see zonked out at any bar : dazed and confused, disoriented
and gone. Drunk, drugs, I never saw the difference, for both of them, it seemed
to me, took some form of pre-cognition about what one was going to do. You step
into that shit knowingly, or not at all. So, I never felt it was any of my
problem whatever problem(s) others brought upon themselves by doing it. Call me
cavalier or aloof, but my feeling was 'let them fucking die, if they have to.'
Really, when you think about it - or when I did anyway - what was the sense of
heading nowhere? Any person could rot and wither, that was easy. Most of these
kids, in fact, had better upbringing then did I, but in spite of it they were
all mostly just shits. Some of them, it was obvious, as myself, came from lesser
station - but they were still stuck in it, and instead of striving to get out
all they were doing was compounding and deepening their morass by dependence,
wasting away, getting the shakes, latching onto some pervert who wanted nothing
more than to ruin them, take advantage of them, and dump them. Leastways the
best of what I could for myself was travel (meaning walking), stay moving about,
visit the library, read old newspapers, scour the research stacks, get
interested in something and stay that way. The streets and palaces of the
drug-fest hippy mind sucked, Let no man tell you differently.
Everything conspires against an individual reaching wisdom and true
self-sustenance. As I've always put it, used a couple of times in various poems
and writings - 'the world is vast arrayed against our possibilities.' It's a
struggle of constancy and pride to stay ahead of waste and destruction; which is
all most ordinary lives end up being anyway. It's not nice to say, but it's true
- look around you: parking lots, shopping centers, strip malls, plazas, movie
palaces, churches, schools, business buildings, car parks, and all the rest. I
won't go on. it's all shit - it's all business and corporate money-making
lenders and greed-mongers making their money off you, and you, and me, if and
wherever they can. They cut, trash, sunder, wreck and ruin and pave everything
they can. If mortal life is judged by the manner in which we've husbanded the
earth; fuck, we're all doomed. Not me - I'll say that with certainty. I've never
cut or trimmed, never dug or moved. I let all things be. I've always fought,
tooth and nail, as is said, against municipal, state, county and government crap
at all levels; they know it and they know me. The Government is our worst enemy,
followed by the church establishments and then the medical profession. Oh, did I
leave out real-estate and developers? They'll die first, and go straight to a
prime bunch of acres in Hell reserved for them. Bastards all. Back in those days
I'm talking of, I walked around stunned after I learned and studied the
Commisioners Plan of 1800, the one which literally leveled the Island of
Manhattan - having driven the locals, native, and Indians out, these mercantile
bastards put all their energies to cutting and decimating everything they could
find so as to make a perfected grid of striaght-lined and numbered streets and
12 North/South Avenues for business-traffic ease and flow. They overlaid
everything, without regard for hillock, lane, bower, marsh or waterway. It was
downright disgusting. New York City - filled with tree-huggers, cry-baby
environmentalists, whiners, Earth-Firsters, movement heads and all the rest, is
probably one of the most artificial places on earth - a flattened, destroyed
(once-extremely beautiful, rocky, and geographically sound) paradise filled with
local and native inhabitants. No one ever thinks about that - no one knows. By
1800 it was all underway - the hills and rocks were leveled, the land flattened,
the street grid drawn over everything, waterways, springs, ponds and the rest
just wiped away. Even by my years, 1967 and on, there was nary a trace or a
knowledge of what once was. Even less so today.
29. Actually, you have to figure how different it all was anyway, even recent
like that, back in 1967. Telephones still had cords and cars still had
carburetors; Man had not yet gotten to the Moon, Robt. Kennedy and Martin Luther
King were still alive. LBJ and Dean Rusk and all those critters were till
getting some respect, microwave ovens were not quite news, no SST's, a radio was
a radio, and a TV was a TV - crazy little stuff like that makes all
the difference in the coloration of people's ways and assumptions. The world,
even then, had something of an ignorance about its own oneness; people thought
nothing of talking destruction, separation, differences and distinctions.
Absolute differences were everywhere, you - me, black was black and
white was white. The world was an entirely different place and everyone was
yearning and aching for what they somehow sensed was coming, or could be coming.
Then it all went pop anyway, and blew apart and settled all back together into
something else, another variation - the limitless, sick despond of
the 1970's, right through to now, pretty much. Time stops when it hits
an obstacle, in some respects. If one only used a dictionary of yesterday
for the words of today, one would be lost - whoever that 'one' is.
It's, in fact, as if God has come a hundred times, back and forth again, over
and over, since that time, 1967. And still people are deaf, dumb and unconscious
to the knocking. Like Thomas, they fucking have to see or touch something before
they realize what's up. Part of me, way back, a long time ago, just KNEW I had
to be, soon enough, going about my work, and this was all preparation for that
work, which is now well underway - the writing of a new Scripture.
It's all to be there, once I'm done, and for those who don't or won't recognize
it, well to them I say 'tough shit'. A prophet is not without honor except in
his own town, or country, or land, whatever, like the good book says. It takes
balls to be me. It takes a total conviction in the rightness of what you are
doing, a strength of cohesion to keep doing it, and a rigorous dedication to
live through all perils and poverty to get it done. There's not going to be any
advancement, any higher rung to climb. I know that. Recognition
breeds dissent, breeds envy, breeds hatred and insidious dislike. That's
what I have to live amongst. But I can, and I will.
On balance, as I look back, I can now realize a sort of fine equilibrium for the things which had affected me : a sort of parallel equilibrium between New York City and Avenel. It was often said that New York was like a small town, or a series of small towns, and everyone took care of everyone, etc., as in a small town. It was never, of course, like that, except maybe for the wealthy. It was dog eat dog, and it was, if anything, everyone else in your business just to snoop and to see what they could steal. A nasty mercantilism was rife. Speculative frenzies came and went, with everyone wishing for quick and easy money while doing nothing to earn it - except making profits off of what others produced and/or labored over. Like Avenel, it was speculative, fast-growth, and it had decimated the geography and naturalism of the 'place' of the place. Just longer, or out of reach of, people's memories, no one really knew or cared about what gone before. Like the old cities which, once their 'modernism' had arrived, tore out from their cores and centers anything which once made them livable - trolleys, surface rails, stables, wagons and horses - and replaced them with roadways, broad avenues for cars, systems of lighting and traffic, etc. and then 75 years later found themselves in a mess and tried returning to grace and livability by re-introducing all those things - retro-fitting so to speak, to bring back the trolley and the surface rail - but admitting no mistake, so too Avenel made a complete mishmash of everything. But - instead of retro-fitting or admitting of mistake - it remained at a complete and utter loss as to what had occurred, never admitting anything, and instead kept expanding, inviting newcomers, wiping out woods to build still more homes and apartments, and taking a subservient role to roadways, highways, exchanges, gasoline stations, auto-marts, and auto-oriented sleaze-bag hot-sheet motels, one after another after another all up and down the highway. Progress.
My upbringing diluted things, in fact everything after WWII diluted things, homogenized things. People who, in older pictures, look distinctly European and factional, ethnic, and showing their locales (Hungarians and Swedes, Jews and Italians) by 1960 had somehow shifted certainly their own looks and most certainly the looks of the generation they'd produced - which generation in turn again diluted the looks of its own children - so that, by now, nothing any longer looks like anything. Tribe breeds with tribe, ethnic group and nationalities mix and mingle in that great swamp of sperm which produces today's human. We warred, killed, decimated and fought to preserve nations and places, only to somehow have it all taken away when it comes to 'here'. Ideology has made everything the same.
There are numerous old photos around of Avenel. In them, before even the
'underpass' had been dug out, the rail tracks ran through the center of town,
with some sort of grade-crossing. In these old photos are proudly shown the
small civic pride once held by a place like this, in the 1920's, 1910, a hundred
years ago, let's say. There's a Fourth of July parade right down Avenel Street,
wherein you can see children walking, holding small flags, behind a regiment of
real marchers and drum/bugle corps people. Others lined the streetside,
watching. The present sight of an ugly lumberyard along the tracks at Avenel
Street, where that underpass is exactly now, At the fine-looking old train
station and ticket office, in what appears to be some form of ornate, perhaps
Victorian-era house, was also the town library, referred to less as 'Library'
than 'Sitting Room', within the train station; tables and nice chairs and, yes,
a form of circulating library from which locals could borrow books. On both
sides of the street right along there, perhaps 10 or 15 small storefronts did
business, along with a few offices. That too, like Manhattan itself, was all
done away with by the 1950's - the rail-trench was dug out to allow
for better passage and swifter progress by autos, the library and ticket office
were taken away, torn down, and eventually a small and pretty stupid
'government' (municipal') library was erected, through the unfortunate auspices
of a municipal Library System, bad for all. The woods and forests and local
watering holes were all removed, so as to build developments of many hundreds of
homes, such as the ones described in the opening of this piece, the ones in
which I lived. All the grasslands and woods were gone. One entire half of Avenel
Street was quite simply obliterated; shunted behind the nasty concrete wall of
the underpass, shut off from everything. Nearby Route 1 disgorged traffic,
streaming it onto Avenel Street, to places such as there General Dynamics plant
right in the middle of town. Soon enough, as well (by 1954) both the NJ Turnpike
and Garden State Parkway had their exits and entryways for easy access, right
adjacent to Avenel. Everything changed. As newcomers and as children we knew
nothing about this, and were never told. The entire town acted as if it never
had a past, and came from nowhere itself. The world was mute. I soon enough
realized I lived in a nowhere place, redolent of excess, suburbanization, ease,
and streamlining - all in the best American vein.
The other end of Avenel, down at the prison - which had once,
again a hundred years back - been a boy's reformatory and was now a
maximum security State Prison, was marshy and swampy. People who lived down that
way were single, and separate. You could find, in the woods and marshes, a
couple of American-Indian families, a few stalwart loners living ruggedly in
what amounted to grandiose sheds, and just a couple of plain, normal
down-at-their-luck creatures and families deep in poverty but not caring. They
sent their kids to school only if and when they had to. The rest was ignored.
One of my early teachers, a Mrs. Gaspari, lived there, weirdly enough, a single
mom, with her son Paul. Paul Gaspari was a regular sort of kid, quiet, a little
distant, with whom I'd even spent a few afternoons and free days with. There was
never a father down there for Paul; I don't know what had ever happened, nor
what became of him and/or his mother. All I know is that for a year or two our
paths crossed, and his mother was a presence in School 4, teaching.
On balance, as I look back, I can now realize a sort of fine equilibrium for the things which had affected me : a sort of parallel equilibrium between New York City and Avenel. It was often said that New York was like a small town, or a series of small towns, and everyone took care of everyone, etc., as in a small town. It was never, of course, like that, except maybe for the wealthy. It was dog eat dog, and it was, if anything, everyone else in your business just to snoop and to see what they could steal. A nasty mercantilism was rife. Speculative frenzies came and went, with everyone wishing for quick and easy money while doing nothing to earn it - except making profits off of what others produced and/or labored over. Like Avenel, it was speculative, fast-growth, and it had decimated the geography and naturalism of the 'place' of the place. Just longer, or out of reach of, people's memories, no one really knew or cared about what gone before. Like the old cities which, once their 'modernism' had arrived, tore out from their cores and centers anything which once made them livable - trolleys, surface rails, stables, wagons and horses - and replaced them with roadways, broad avenues for cars, systems of lighting and traffic, etc. and then 75 years later found themselves in a mess and tried returning to grace and livability by re-introducing all those things - retro-fitting so to speak, to bring back the trolley and the surface rail - but admitting no mistake, so too Avenel made a complete mishmash of everything. But - instead of retro-fitting or admitting of mistake - it remained at a complete and utter loss as to what had occurred, never admitting anything, and instead kept expanding, inviting newcomers, wiping out woods to build still more homes and apartments, and taking a subservient role to roadways, highways, exchanges, gasoline stations, auto-marts, and auto-oriented sleaze-bag hot-sheet motels, one after another after another all up and down the highway. Progress.
As I drive back to places I knew then today - Avenel, yes, of
course, but just as well parts of NYC and Newark and environs, I realize how
little is left, how little outside of memory I have left, and how truly I most
rather inhabit a ghostly past that yet lingers. All it does is bring forth
silence and awe. There's really nothing to say, because these places are now not
what they once were; the old is now an alternate universe, a reality and place
that - yes - still exists and which I can still inhabit though it has no 'place'
to enforce itself through any longer. Like a dead body, a cemetery remnant. All
those people who once lived there, those whom I knew, and the others who just
were there, Mr. Metro, Mrs. Kuzmiak, Mr. Cermyan and others, they may all be
gone, dead and forgotten, yet, as in a cemetery, theirs is still a place, a
scrolled marker of some sort that keeps them present for those who can imbibe
that less-sweet and more-bitter juice. Places, like people perhaps, have ghosts
that linger.
My upbringing diluted things, in fact everything after WWII diluted things, homogenized things. People who, in older pictures, look distinctly European and factional, ethnic, and showing their locales (Hungarians and Swedes, Jews and Italians) by 1960 had somehow shifted certainly their own looks and most certainly the looks of the generation they'd produced - which generation in turn again diluted the looks of its own children - so that, by now, nothing any longer looks like anything. Tribe breeds with tribe, ethnic group and nationalities mix and mingle in that great swamp of sperm which produces today's human. We warred, killed, decimated and fought to preserve nations and places, only to somehow have it all taken away when it comes to 'here'. Ideology has made everything the same.
30. I remember staying up one night for as long as it took me to read 'A
Clockwork Orange', a totally engaging, but light, little novel by Anthony
Burgess. In the basement bowels of the Studio School, I found a place, a corner
nook, a cubby-hole far in the recesses, where I could spend the night completely
away from everything - not that there was anything, nor that
there had ever been anything wrong with my own space there in my lower room, or
in the upstairs library wherein I also spent a lot of off-time and, as I
mentioned, often just slept on the floor. This was just a completely
self-created spot. In my wanderings down there (there were rows and rows of
shelving and - literally - hundreds of thousands of sheets of reamed-wrapped or
open colored paper, all colors, pale, bright, vivid, plain, ordinary and not
so). Some previous occupant, I'd supposed, maybe even the old Whitney Museum
before it left, had used these areas for storage, printing perhaps, and simply
left all this unique paper on the shelves. It was a goldmine, and now as I look
back I consider why I'd never thought of using colored paper in layers or in
applications onto paintings - I'd have had all the raw material I
needed. A Clockwork Orange, yes, had become a movie, a little later I guess, but
I never concerned myself with that. It was the book I liked. I'd found somewhere
the little paperback volume of it. It intrique me - the new strangeness of the
hybrid Russian-English words, an energetic use of language which was an
eye-opener for me, the strange little bands of boy-men (boychicks or boykins?, I
forget) doing crazy, lawless and illicit things, Alex, the character, the
resultant police forced rehabilitation, the sex, the 'grody' stuff...all of that
caught me right up. I somehow felt (like bells tolling, like a distant
land-light blinking recognition) that I'd stumbled onto something that could cut
through to me. Nothing classic or spectacular, certainly not one of those stiff
books without contractions and with all the tight and pretty and proper English
usage and words. The problem oftentimes with reading, from what I could see all
through high school and regular school years, had always been that level of
enforced labor with which it was pushed along. Didactic teachers informing you
dryly of what you'd be about to read and then telling you, when done, what you'd
just read, fitting into times and schools of writing, places and programs of
literature and politics - as if they themselves had known all that
and weren't just belting out the same crap that had been drummed into their head
a long time ago. There's no creativity in that rote-teaching,
government-schooling teacher-pap stuff. If you can't dash and dare and run out
on your own to do it, it's probably not going to sink in anyway. So, up until
this point, anything I'd been made to read had been by threat of this or that,
and had been, even amidst class discussion and reports and all that crap,
nothing you could really strike out on and portray with an authentic opinion or
tone. That's not what schools teach. Of course, they may 'proclaim' they do.
They may present mission statements to that effect. But it never follows suit
and does not ever work. Teachers are pushed, and pretty dull. Their chance of
pushing back, unfortunately, comes to pushing you. This one little book by
Burgess, written as an outsider's guide to literature and to the universe of
real-world situations, was a true spanker for me. I gobbled it up, watching at
each turn the lights and the doorways come on and come open - all that
I needed within - to bring me forth the realization that writing, whatever
else it was, at this point just meant breakaway. Breakaway. That was the word
for me. It sounds silly now, but an entire new opportunity had reared its little
head. That's all it took; I was off and running.
That would have been January, 1968. I remember it as cold, freezing cold,
steadily and all the time. Yes, same thing, but I'm making a point -
the days were frigid, and the nights moreso. In the daytime I'd walk around, in
what meager coat and clothing I'd have (didn't change much, never had a closet)
and at night, bundled and wrapped in the same cloths and some blankets, I try to
stay at best warm enough to sleep. That's where the library floor came in so
handy - that room always had good heat. I did like the bowels of the
building however, and stayed around the basement as much as I could
- lone resident, night-crawler, denizen of the deep. Looking a little up
and out, there was one spot where I could see a glimpse of 8th Street, the
people passing, or at least the feet - sometimes I'd just sit there
watching to see. People in coats and hats and scarves. Umbrella people. Those
very well-dressed and off to something, and others just as ramshackle and
disheveled as me. Artist or not, I had a character that was me. I wondered what
character these people claimed. There was a period that year, that Winter, of
about two or three weeks that I remember. In all this constant cold, the Hudson
River had iced up - big, huge chunks of ice floating and jamming
down the river, making sound, hitting each other. It was amazing to watch. The
ice chunks must have come from upriver where at some point the ice had broken
apart or been dismantled perhaps by river traffic, tug-cutters, etc. The river
flowed south, making its way down into the New York Harbor area. I'd be at the
docks along west 14th street down, on any of those streets, where the river
could be seen - a black, inky nighttime trail of pillaging, crashing
and roaring ice. I stayed fascinated. The dock guys never cared; they crash
through anything they had to, break through by whatever means were needed to get
the boats and cargo going. It was a great adventure.
After a while, I used to eat a small bowl of brown rice at a tiny,
macrobiotic place in the east village off St. Marks, or maybe on it, somehow I
actually forget. It was called The Paradox - I always liked the
name - and all they served was for the most part various teas and
various forms of rice and vegetable things together. The cheapest thing I could
ever find was just a bowl of brown rice, which I kept to. It was an
interesting place - all these dark and shadowy types coming and
going, a sense of silence pervading the place. A 'macrobiotic' diet, for the
late '60's was pretty radical. Not so much like today, when vegetarianism,
strict vegans, and other 'raw food'; movements have taken foot. This Roman
fellow, back in the Roman Empire days, Macrobius, had founded, or the movement
was founded in his name - thus the 'macrobiotic' title. I researched it a
little, out of curiosity. What I found was interesting, and it never actually
made much sense in the middle of bustling Manhattan. The idea of Macrobius was
that (this is the part I liked and clung to, for it made a lie of all the bother
and fuss that others gave to the brouhaha of their 'perfect dietary habits) one
should not get hung up on diet strictures, rules and regulations, worrying about
every little thing, etc. Instead, all one had to do to stay healthy was to
ignore the entire, fallacious, egotistical basis of prescribed diets and just
(merely) eat that which was available and local - without any fuss
or noise about it. It all amounted, really, to humility and not much else.
I bought into all that, and liked it, and liked by sea-salted brown rice too.
How it didn't make sense to me in that location, even though the people were
cool, I liked them and they knew me enough to talk with and make pleasantries,
was that I couldn't see how it could be 'local.' It seemed to belie the whole
enterprise. I figured (never checked it out) that the sacks of rice had to come
from somewhere, somewhere far-off and not NYC based; the sea-salt too. And the
tea. Maybe I was wrong; never knew. One day, I walked in and - on the walls - I
noticed a new poster for a casting call for a musical to be entitled 'Hair'. It
was there for a while, and day after day I'd sit there looking at it and, almost
enticingly, think of myself - with my little bit of successful stage
experience in the seminary and such - trying out for this
'Hair' - which sounded as if to be pretty cool, in the works, hip
and happening. I never did go, because of it being a musical and I knew I
couldn't sing a whit and wouldn't be interested anyway - learning how to, and
breathe, and sing and all that. Only much later, as the play and then
movie became a big hit, did I learn how various people, such as Sam Shepard and
Susan Sarandon, had come through the Paradox in the early days, and from it
enter their stardoms through their participations in - guess what - this very
same 'Hair' being advertised in this very place. It was all just a passing
idea anyway. I'm not much in that entertainment business 'stuff'.
One other thing about me is and was that I'm not much in any 'stuff' stuff.
I usually before long wind up seeing right through things, finding the fatal
flaw, which kills it all for me. The lie behind everything just pops up its
stupid head, roars, and that's it. I can't stand 'business' or 'acting' or
'intellectualizing' or 'professing' or 'preaching' or any of that stuff. It's
like watching a film and knowing that you can no longer accept the premise of
the movie you're watching, or pretend not to know that it's all artifice,
planned out and coerced so as to move plot along. Nothing's real, nothing has
any real validity. It's all manipulation. That's how Life itself is for me; a
dark, player's cave wherein every sucker going along with the plot has to be too
dumb to catch on to it being a plot.
That winter, there was a period of time that I'd gotten involved
peripherally with two bands; one, based on the lower east side, was called 'Cat
Mother and the All Night Newsboys'. They were four guys, (I think it was four)
who had a black van; their band was pretty cool and they played a number of
local venues, small bars and clubs around, and a few open-air park gigs, legal
or not. Hippy kids all over the lower east side were always digging music
- zonked, stoned, stupid or wild - and any group that could
make coherent sound could get a listen. These guys were OK. There had been
recently started a small, counter-culture, hippy-oriented, free newspaper there,
with offices at maybe 9th and Avenue B, somewhere along there. It was called the
East Village Other, and prided itself as some sort of alternative-lifestyle
Village Voice, which was, in itself, already an 'alternative' newspaper. The EV
Other was free, and - this is how I got to know the band
guys - I somehow became part of the crew that distributed it
around - little packets and bundles of wire-strapped newspapers,
maybe 50 or 100 to a stack. Just like regular newsguys, we'd thrown them off
from the truck to the curb, late at night, at each, any or all of the
'businesses' where it was distributed; I never knew what was up; it was never
'sold' so I never understood why these places would want it anyway, but
whatever. Any money made, from ads and the like, I guess went to the usual
bigwigs who ran it. I never met any, and I never knew any of the infrastructure
behind the paper. Eventually I got tired of the routine, I suppose, and just
gave it up. Cat Mother disappeared, and I don't know where they went. It
was fun while it lasted - they were pretty tight with all those
Digger girls on 3rd Street or wherever, and I always liked them. All the
concerts and things always wound up with naked girls prancing around, stoned and
dancing to the Heavens. Another band I ran with just for a moment was The Fallen
Angels. This was a different group entirely. They actually had an album out, a
following, and some musical skill. They seemed to be just a whacky bunch of
intense guys from Long Island or something, a wee-bit of what today might have
been called 'glam-rock' seeping in. I don't remember how I met them, or what
transpired, but I do recall a few nights when they were playing uptown on the
east side, in the area of the United Nations, say 45th Street and Second or
First Ave., at a club called The Rolling Stone, owned by a local NYC deejay of
some repute, named Scott Muni. Somehow I got invited or asked up, and I rode my
bicycle up, was admitted free as part of the band, etc.It was big time shit for
me - all those people, fancy, rich young types, from and of wealth,
thinking themselves as ultra-hip, snooty, sexy, crazed for dope and eminently
fuckable. The place inside was nuts - raucous, loud, and reeked of
pot. The band, in an hour or two, would itself become so stoned and so blitzed
on whatever that nothing much mattered past a point. The drummer was an
incorrigible user, of something. By two hours in, each night, he was on no shape
for anything, and usually missing in action anyway with some babe, in
a back corridor, bathroom or side room. As it turned out, the night I was
there, the band suddenly found itself in need of a drummer! I said I could do
it. They threw me in. So, for three nights I acted pretty well the part of
back-up, relief drummer for The Fallen Angels. I don't remember a thing, don't
recall what I did or what I played, but the job got done, all was hale and
hearty, and I got thanked, though not paid. But I never cared. I spent so much
time banging on stuff, finding sounds and rhythms at home on pieces of tabletop,
sides of metal stoves, etc., as a kid, that drumming seemed natural. It was
fun, those few nights, and if I ever do need a revised resume I'll be sure to
add that gig as work-experience.
I was never much involved at any level with the serious workings of
business or the serious formings for myself of a saleable, schooled, working
commodity called Gary Introne. I could not have cared less what I was going to
become or how I was going to manage. It seemed always as if other people always
had this figured out for them already, or their parents had tons of money and
some was already at work for them with other monies having been put aside for
their educating and futures. Not me. None of that had ever been mentioned in my
house. My father's motto was 'learn a trade', or 'learn a trade and you'll never
go hungry'. To him, people of learning and education were just 'goddamned
sissies, can't hammer a nail, can't swing a fencepost.' I took it all in stride.
He hated people who acted better than him, even if it was warranted. We had a
few neighbors, Mr. Lordi and others, who worked in NY City. You'd see them
walking to the train in the morning, or coming home at night from their evening
commutes, in shirts and ties, jacketed and even with tophats. That would
drive him nuts, seeing these other men (there were only two or three; the rest
of the block was - rock-solid, car-driven industrial laborers), different from
him, 'sissified' strutting home from there 'office' jobs. I'd guess the
difference here was education, even if it only got them to accounting offices
and paperwork jobs instead of 'Management' positions. My father had dropped out
of school, lied about his age (16), saying he was older just so he could join
the Navy and enter the war. He was, and always remained, a hothead. One time, at
Simmons Mattress Company in Linden or Roselle or somewhere there, he got a job
in the Frame Department. Instead of upholstery, there he oversaw the wood, slats
and lumber that went into the making of the frames and mattresses for Simmons
beds. When he got the job as Foreman, my Uncle Joe (his older brother), a NYC
Management guy in the Art Department at M. W. Kellog, some sort of ad agency
downtown, came over and gave him a book - a serious, hardcover
tome - entitled 'Human Relations In Supervision.' He expected my
father to read it - it was about properly handling other people,
management roles and details, etc. My father went nuts over the very premise;
and I don't thing he ever once touched the book.
31. As far as it goes, I could have been quite happy being born and raised in Manhattan; perspective skewed, of course. Using hindsight, I say that now - I suppose, perhaps, had that been the case I'd have wished I was somewhere else. Who ever knows this stuff? I always held it against my parents that they de-urbanized themselves; in fact, I held everything against the suburbanization which took place and into which I was ushered. That's the way it goes. The entire adult population, by 1947, was sick, tired, scared and bombastic. They were also battered, meek and wasted. They let themselves be led on. After just fighting a disgusting war, a huge stream-drain of men, material, resources and (most importantly and offensive) sentimentality took over: all that happy-home talk, inane TV prattle, introductions of television, radio theme shows colliding with visual images, Jewish, mostly, coarse humor and situations, overlaid with a fake sincerity and a purloined sense of 'culture (all false), the entire nation fell upon itself, and fell apart. The answer to everything was to run away, start anew, leave the cities and urban areas, and be enticed sucessfully by dream-merchants into dream-scapes, fueled as it all was by greed and a lust for money : shysters, creeps and liars doing the peddling, and dupes like our parents, all, doing the taking. The leading edge of blemish had won the day. Millions of acres of pristine lands, re-cut, scored and scoured, were trimmed away so tacky tract-housing, all in lousy rows, schematics planned by vultures, could be laid out, roadways built, overlain again with re-building, the enticing evil of merchant and shop-owner giving way to corporate commercialism which broadened everything - strip malls, malls, plazas, and the rest. There was nothing left, and we were left holding the bag. Speaking for myself, the 'we' means children, carpetbagger parents, family ties and any and all memories or remnants of what once may have been. I know I lived destitute of everything good. My street was a hideous wasteland of no learning and the coarsest tastes. And that was all presented as right, American, culture. One big, fat, perverse Milton Berle gag after another. Shit, when I was 7, even then I knew it all was crap. All those people who moved into Inman Avenue, they all shared the same sort of story - it was all as if, in their ways, they were in rehab, all of them together. Shattered and broken men, tepid and shy women, finding things for themselves, learning and accepting blindly. I often wonder what the family sex was in those days for these young people (parents). Most of them seemed, at that point, to be about 28. There must have been enormous fucking going on, over-compensation for all this, perhaps. Sexuality, though publicly diminished, was probably even more powerful by being secret. It was not quite yet the time of double-entendre, riposte and filth talk. That had to wait. Once, of course, that came, the floodgates were opened - but that was mostly my (the kids' generation). Still just as crude, just as evil, just as, at base, Jewish too, but done by the children of the first veterans I speak of. For men, sexual conquest was a means of reclaiming power. It was a form of forceful violence and, even if it was in secret and with the lights out, it took on every form of dominance and power-play one would imagine. A man, essentially, will fuck anything; will stick it in any receptacle he can find or get. It is sheer and willful domination. That was the man/woman world of 1950; there was no halfway point in this new-land suburbia. Sex was nervous, it was unsettled, and it was stern. But it was managed by men. Their inner libidos may have been shattered and beaten down by war, but at heart, the first chance they could get, it was brought back from the shadows.
The place just shut down. It was near Thanksgiving, everything was (again) in black and white - but this time for real - the little televisions, the riderless horse, with the upside down boots in there stirrups, or whatever that was, the catafalque (new American word experience there), the wife's pink and blood-stained dress, Lyndon Baines Johnson swooping in and taking things in hand, all those people, the crying relatives, the swamping reporters, foreign dignitaries, it was all on television endlessly. And then the next shooting, which was parlayed live, grainy black and white, Lee Harvey Oswald, shady Jack Ruby, an arm pumping out of the police-station basement walkway, a shot, Oswald's grimace, and down again. All during those days, since I was a 'barber' in the seminary (assigned to cut the other fellows' hair as needed), me and the other one or two 'barbers' had TV on while we snipped heads for three days. It was hilarious; all that seriousness and 'dignification', I called it, of nothing but black death in a new form, and we sat around cutting thirteen year olds' and fifteen year olds' hair like we were old-timers or something. No sense at all. Religion permeated the place, yet here we were acting like old-time movie guys in a bleak film-noir, with a gently-playing John Coltrane in the background, thanks to Mike Bartholomew. He's dead now. He played a pretty good guitar, and with his little three-man group (they called themselves 'Laissez Faire', which means 'hands-off' sort of in French. It's really a term from economics and Adam Smith and all that). Mike was able, it seemed, to turn any hokey tune, by changing tempo and differently situating chords and melody, into a pretty decent 'rock' version of itself. It only lasted a while, and they too got shot down. There was this one kid, Tony Mosca - he was a little, short, broad Italian kid from Camden or somewhere, newly arrived. At some talent show or something, the same one that was the last venue for Laissez Faire, this Mosca kid belted out the weirdest version of 'When You Walk Through a Storm Hold Your Head Up High'. It stunk, but everyone loved it. He sang it for the rafters - all high emotion and sentiment, belting out the lyrics with a trembling lip, forcing great heaves of emotion at those proper moments, like some Italian, Camden-ghetto barber-crooner himself. It was amazing how schlocky the whole thing was. He was acclaimed the assassination week hero for that crap; making grown men (if you want to call them that) in black cassocks cry as if Jesus himself was up there writhing in pain and sorrow, nails, blood and cross all thrown together. A hoot. I'd never seen someone really shot on live TV before. I guess no one else had either, for that matter. It was a pretty catchy scene. Andy Warhol made a painting of it, years later, welcoming the entire thing, Marilyn and all, into the high pantheon of emerging American Pop-Art. The whole thing, from start to finish, looked like a set-up to me, even two days after. Johnson looked evil, like a crook now set and ready to roll with the tables fixed in his favor. Everyone else was still stagger-mouthed and stunned. How many disappointed pussies there were, after that, nationwide, I never counted (nor thought about, actually). Every blond wife in the world, I figure, was made sad for a day or two. The nation's greasy swan song had begun. The lights were down, and the voltage was still high.
In Princeton, still, just down the road from the old Morven Estate, no
longer used by Governors or the State for anything but a history site, is
Drumthwacket. It's larger and quite different, but equally amazing. I've been
there a few times for invited-only breakfasts and socials, and it's wonderful
inside. Yet, sadly, the last two Governors (Corzine and Christie) simply do not
live there. They prefer their homes where they are, Hoboken and Madison,
respectively, even though, really, the official duties should have them here
using instead of wasting taxpayer money which goes into upkeep, protection and
all that. It's stupid. Princeton is, after all, but 8 miles from the Trenton
Statehouse and Chambers and all that. But these last two, modernized,
bull-headed Governors find it beneath them to live in these mansions provided.
Stupid. By the way, during the socials, and breakfasts, and banquets and stuff
at Drumthwacket, the entire serving staff, wait staff, attendants and all that,
are always perfectly attired, portly sized black people, in whites and aprons
and tails. It's like going back in time to some weird, bizarre and twisted
southern ante-bellum plantation or novel. So strange. Princeton has always been
called the northernmost bastion of the old South, so maybe it's true. Gentility
lives on, even if it uses a crutch or two to get around.
Albert Einstein's house is right around the corner. He's held as like the
class clown of Princeton, both reverence and comedy somehow combine in him. No
one, of course, really knows what else to make of him - all that off-German
history and not very conforming opinions on things - so they just make some
twisted sort of pet out of his memory. The Institute For Advanced Study is right
nearby too - Oppenheimer's place, a big, factory-fancy think-tank with a swell
bevy of highly-paid genius moping around. Kurt Godel was there. He's buried in
the Princeton Cemetery. So is John O'Hara, who wrote, among others things,
Butterfield 8; and Sylvia Beach (nee Woodbridge), a local girl who, as a woman,
ran Shakespeare & Company Bookshop in Paris, where all those 1920's
ex-patriots like Hemingway and Gertrude Stein, Fitzgerald, and all those people,
hung out. The Menendez parents are buried in Princeton - their kids, the
Menendez Brothers, killed them. They once owned, the kids, 'Chuck's' a dumb
little eatery in town. Aaron Burr is buried there, Jonathan Edwards, all the
Princeton Presidents and dignitaries from the early years up until about 50
years ago - crypts and tombs and stuff. President Grover Cleveland is buried
there. And John Witherspoon and Richard Tulane too - with big statues. Tulane
has his back turned to the University, in pique, since they declined to make him
University President back then, and he took off, in spite, to New Orleans to
found Tulane University. There's also the guy in there, sort of famous, whose
stone reads, really, 'See, I told you I was sick.' All true.
41. The leader of the Pagans, out of South Jersey, was a guy named 'Egyptian'. John somebody - all these guys had real names, but they weren't often used. I only got to know them because I'd see the membership and subscription lists, and home addresses if given. He was a nice guy, actually, but ruthless. Not someone I'd want to cross. Shortly after our time together, he was caught up in some RICO Act scheme, and put away, after some time shackled at home under house arrest. The RICO act was a federal enactment, a targeted anti-motorcycle gang (1%'ers, they were called) which gave the Feds the rights and powers to break things up, bust heads as needed, and surveille and make arrest. It stood for something like 'Racketeering and Influencing Corruption' Act. What was weird about it was that it stated things like 'any group of six people wearing like clothing, if found together' constituted a gang, a corrupt mob, etc., and gave the Feds rights to do what they'd select. What was weird about it was, in actuality, that something like that could refer to a carload of priests or nuns, a baseball team or Boy Scouts, etc. It was wholesomely stupid. But, through it, many roundups and arrests took place. There would be trials, long investigations, trials again, sentencing, shut-downs, etc., and then it would all begin again, with newer guys. Each newer club guy, being younger, and stupider, knew less and less about the past and its traditions, so that, over time, the entire Biker game had turned dull, forceful, violent and rash. At the top of any of these syndicates there was a never a real brain. There were guys like Sandy Alexander, and others, who at least at one time showed some brain and gumption. One time we had a three-day camp-out festival, way down South Jersey somewhere, and the Pagans were all there in force. They were a real bunch - mean-spirited, evil-looking, and constantly on the prowl for infractions and/or what babe they could entice their way. They had their own stable of women, of course, but the word was always out for more. Lots of young girls and women really grooved on this stuff - I don't know if it was the danger, the outlaw stuff, the crazy sex, the group bangs, whatever, but there were always any number of girls or women ready to go. I had a friend, named Burglar, from up my way, and, amidst all this fearsome stuff, one day he did the funniest thing: the Pagans would wear, on their colors/jackets, a set of initials, as all clubs did, which signified their club as 'forever'. In this case it was PFFP, meaning 'Pagan forever, forever Pagan' - a kind of endorsement of the right to die by the sword for club honor, and worn proudly - by those who'd made it. Well, Burglar, not really hip to all this totally, when I introduced him to Egyptian, simply muttered, 'Hi Pepe, happy to meet ya'. He'd misread the PFFP patch and took it as a name patch for 'Pepe'. For one shuddering moment, truly, I thought it was all over for both of us; but they let it pass. Had they been inclined, such a flagrant infraction could have easily gotten us a beating. Sounds weird? No, that's how things were. Up in north Jersey, Central anyway, out by Union, the local Pagans chapter was run by perhaps the evilest looking person I'd ever seen - 'Landlord'. Again, his moniker. In his eyes lived Death - pure, unadulterated. If eyes alone could kill, these would - this guy was icy-cold, steely and powerful. As I got to know him later on, he was actually in many respects the nicest, family-oriented business- guy (heating and cooling truck) you'd meet. If you'd not known his club side, you'd probably never guess. But his pack of wolves was really nasty. I got to know them all, one by one. Landlord eventually, when all the shit with the RICO Act started coming down big (about 1995), backed off, moved into Pennsylvania with his family and business, and became a Pennsylvania Pagan - a much easier gig, since the Philly mob and the Pennsy Pagans worked hand in hand; it was well-known and of long-standing evidence. You can look that connection up for yourself. They were just a powerful, power-wielding, bunch. Both the Pagans and the Hell's Angels made legitimate money by operating small businesses, strip clubs, van and delivery service operations, small trucking companies. It enabled them to launder money, run their operations, while seeming legit, and at the same time cover for their amphetamine and contraband and firearms trade, and - it was said - their prostitution operations. The Hells' Angels 3rd Street NYC headquarters - a really cool place, by the way - was said to be both the most-armed arsenal in the city, and the safest street, as well, (east 3rd) to live on. They had their bikes out front, parked at the curb, a guard or two constantly posted, surveillance cameras scanning the street, and a lively trade, as well, of tee shirts and trinkets - if one was tough enough to inquire - out the front doorway. For both clubs, at different rank-levels, runs were mandatory (if they said you were riding to Baltimore all night, starting now, that's for sure what you'd be doing), as were the fights, battles, slayings and sacrifices they'd put you up to. Prospects and newest members got the worst deals - if there was battle or mayhem to do, they were the first to do it. You either earned your stripes, or you were in prison, maimed or wounded. If you balked, you were pretty much dead anyway. Like I said, I was never happier than the days I had the gumption to decline memberships. The one Pagan guy, from Elizabeth, who asked me in, said he'd sponsor me but it was on his head. If I'd fuck up and dirty his name by that sponsorship, I'd be dead because he'd have to kill me. I knew he meant it - he lived, that Summer, out in a field under a billboard over by the Goethals Bridge end of Elizabeth. He was a totally maniacal and ruthless mother-fucker. I do not know if he yet lives today. The same deal went for all these clubs - membership, possessions, women, time and lodging. The Hell's Angel's 3rd street clubhouse was an apartment house of sorts as well. It was just 'where' members lived. The club owned everything else - many possessions and, of course, motorcycle titles and ownerships, were turned over to the club. Those two guys I mentioned earlier, Fred, and 'Blues' (Dan Canale), moved into 3rd street and are still there for all I know. Houses, mortgages and family stuff and personal finances...I don't really know what transpired there. All I do know is that, like the rest of them, Egyptian, for instance, had a family, a regular suburban address, and a house. Blues had a grown son in Iselin. Most of the towns around kept to the code that no club colors could come through their town. If you were riding, you rode with no club insignias or vests, etc. It meant, otherwise, stopping, vehicle violations, noise and equipment violations, searches and seizures too. No fun. It never much mattered; they'd do it anyway. To this day, I still see packs of 1%'ers occasionally speeding along the Turnpike or other highway, club colors flying - Hell's Angels, Pagans (curiously enough, they use the possessive of something in their name. It shows always as Pagan's, not Pagans. I never figured that out, nor their weird little evil demon logo guy, who does have a name, by the way), Chicago Outlaws, Nomads, Ching-A-Lings, Iron Knights, etc. All these big clubs have farm-team seeder clubs, from which they float up some of their membership. You needed always to be aware of the affiliation of these feeder clubs too - a wrong move could get you killed or maimed. A weird case in point : Hoboken MC - although it was mostly cops and firemen, city worker guys from the Hoboken City center - was an affiliate of NYC 3rd Street Hell's Angels. Period. Nobody else need or better not attend their functions. (One of the beatings I took was there, over a crossed affiliation. I'd 'showed up' the security guard/bouncer guy at a Staten Island strip club by bringing 'your boys' (as he put it to me) to their location and allowing them to get unruly and drunk, thus showing him, and his 'authority' up. It was about a month later, but this guy and some cronies caught up with me at a Hoboken MC clubhouse party, and I went down, hard. Just like with Craig Bellina, it was first fists, and then boots and leather down on the ground. It wasn't the first, it wasn't the last.) That guy Pancho I'd mentioned before, he'd come into Metuchen to visit and spend some time with me at the writing office I kept, and brazenly ride in and out of Metuchen with straight pipes and colors on. No matter to him, and nothing ever happened. He honored nothing. He wouldn't have cared anyway. His buddy, another Pagan named 'Ming' - as in Ming the Merciless - often came with him. He was a swarthy, shaved-head, brute-looking silent killer type, and he kept me always in complete attention as to his moves, even just sitting down. They're both in prison now. One time Pancho came to me asking if I could help them set up a Pagan web-page (I didn't, but it was later done, and still exists, with a rogue's gallery too of imprisoned member portraits). His funny and curious complaint was that he couldn't ever call up the word Pagan's online without getting 'a bunch of religious shit instead'. Well, I thought it was funny. First off, it was not religion, sort of, instead, to opposite of it, and he wasn't aware anyway of the entire pre-history of the term Pagan, by any means. It must be great to live a life wherein, even at age 40, everything is new to you. First Exposure MC would have been a better name for these crackers. Anyway, I'm glad I'm still alive. And I have a whole roster of dead friends from this stuff too.
31. As far as it goes, I could have been quite happy being born and raised in Manhattan; perspective skewed, of course. Using hindsight, I say that now - I suppose, perhaps, had that been the case I'd have wished I was somewhere else. Who ever knows this stuff? I always held it against my parents that they de-urbanized themselves; in fact, I held everything against the suburbanization which took place and into which I was ushered. That's the way it goes. The entire adult population, by 1947, was sick, tired, scared and bombastic. They were also battered, meek and wasted. They let themselves be led on. After just fighting a disgusting war, a huge stream-drain of men, material, resources and (most importantly and offensive) sentimentality took over: all that happy-home talk, inane TV prattle, introductions of television, radio theme shows colliding with visual images, Jewish, mostly, coarse humor and situations, overlaid with a fake sincerity and a purloined sense of 'culture (all false), the entire nation fell upon itself, and fell apart. The answer to everything was to run away, start anew, leave the cities and urban areas, and be enticed sucessfully by dream-merchants into dream-scapes, fueled as it all was by greed and a lust for money : shysters, creeps and liars doing the peddling, and dupes like our parents, all, doing the taking. The leading edge of blemish had won the day. Millions of acres of pristine lands, re-cut, scored and scoured, were trimmed away so tacky tract-housing, all in lousy rows, schematics planned by vultures, could be laid out, roadways built, overlain again with re-building, the enticing evil of merchant and shop-owner giving way to corporate commercialism which broadened everything - strip malls, malls, plazas, and the rest. There was nothing left, and we were left holding the bag. Speaking for myself, the 'we' means children, carpetbagger parents, family ties and any and all memories or remnants of what once may have been. I know I lived destitute of everything good. My street was a hideous wasteland of no learning and the coarsest tastes. And that was all presented as right, American, culture. One big, fat, perverse Milton Berle gag after another. Shit, when I was 7, even then I knew it all was crap. All those people who moved into Inman Avenue, they all shared the same sort of story - it was all as if, in their ways, they were in rehab, all of them together. Shattered and broken men, tepid and shy women, finding things for themselves, learning and accepting blindly. I often wonder what the family sex was in those days for these young people (parents). Most of them seemed, at that point, to be about 28. There must have been enormous fucking going on, over-compensation for all this, perhaps. Sexuality, though publicly diminished, was probably even more powerful by being secret. It was not quite yet the time of double-entendre, riposte and filth talk. That had to wait. Once, of course, that came, the floodgates were opened - but that was mostly my (the kids' generation). Still just as crude, just as evil, just as, at base, Jewish too, but done by the children of the first veterans I speak of. For men, sexual conquest was a means of reclaiming power. It was a form of forceful violence and, even if it was in secret and with the lights out, it took on every form of dominance and power-play one would imagine. A man, essentially, will fuck anything; will stick it in any receptacle he can find or get. It is sheer and willful domination. That was the man/woman world of 1950; there was no halfway point in this new-land suburbia. Sex was nervous, it was unsettled, and it was stern. But it was managed by men. Their inner libidos may have been shattered and beaten down by war, but at heart, the first chance they could get, it was brought back from the shadows.
That was the world I was plopped down in : Inman Avenue, in a place of
no-place. That dark, black and white film of all those men and women walking
along the sidewalk at the Kill Van Kull, along Uncle Milty's Arcade (curious how
the names overlap), that film was still playing, but I was someplace else
entirely new - a world of color, a place of blues and reds, wallpapered kitchens
with hens and roosters and sunlight and barns. What specific American-memory was
being sought by these touches, I never knew. My mother and father had no taste
at all; their furnishings ran from French Provincial lamps to faux Duncan Fyfe
furniture to Sanitest bathroom walls and shower enclosures to Congoleum kitchens
panels and floors to Early American chairs and sofas. False names, commercial
products, ultra-modern accidents of chemistry and slime, brought into each home.
What a violent counterplay, a shadow-box of battle, between anything real and
what was prevalent. It was all lies. And they bought into all of it - Princess
phones, tangle-free extension cords, wooden box televisions by Dumont with doors
that closed to conceal what it was, snack trays and snack tray racks and
holders, Hi-Fi's and Lazy Susans. The small-man's paradise play-acting at wealth
- some twisted version of Envy, a cardinal sin, as if it mattered at all. It
didn't take a genius, even in this case a ten-year-old one, to see that someday
soon this would all implode; women's issues, rights, personal criteria, family
relations, civil comity, it was all doomed, right from the start. Hiding behind
every bush was a Germain Greer and a Camille Paglia, just waiting to erupt.
Helen Gurley Brown and Timothy Leary had just to wait.
Some people are born during wartime with a gun to their head. Others awaken
slowly, hearing the battle, sensing more to come, but not realizing, exactly,
what it is that's going on.
Smug, willful, coarse, fiery. Those were the words of the men I remember.
Descriptions larger than life. I couldn't tell them anything; they wouldn't
listen. My father used to say things to me that seemed cheesy and thin. Over
time, as they've stayed in my head, I've developed them and made them heavier
and more meaningful, long with him. 'As long as you're happy, remember that;
that's what counts.' 'No matter what you are, even if you're a garbageman, be
the best garbageman you can be, the best there is.' Boilerplate logic; illogical
as all get out. I see it now, differently. Life is made up of small moments,
every small moment, one after the other, piled up. If you can take care of each
of those small moments, each increment along the way, and find satisfaction in
the rightful completion of each of them, then - yes - you will find
satisfaction. You can make perfect. It doesn't take anything large or
over-arching - that's for the reachers and grabbers, the one who don't reflect,
who grab and lunge, working at speed. The little satisfactions demand that one
slows down. Those other guys, they're the ones who destroy the world, who make
little Inman Avenues everywhere they go, and leave the rubble of what they've
made behind, for others to live in. And then the fuckers charge you for it. The
real perfection is the smallest stuff. Putting your glasses and pens out at
night so you know where they are in the morning. Keys and gloves, things like
that. Remembering to move your shoes so you can find them, as needed, in the
dark. Not losing things in the frenzy. Remembering just what you done, the last
time and how and where. Thinking of what's next, in a frightfully pleasant
occasion of upcoming moments. Not letting Life overtake you. Controlling it
instead. It's conscious living, having no man make a fool out of you, letting no
other have control. Being the 'best', almost meaningless, really just means
being the best to yourself. Finding what you do, from inside out, and doing it,
convinced that it must be done and rightfully so. Dedicating oneself to it and
not buying into distraction. That's the light of a star. That's the density and
purpose of the cosmos. It's really nothing. It's really a timelessness, it's
being out-of-time, totally.
32. There's a great distaste in my mouth for 'reality',
what it's called anyway. I never partook, and I somehow think it knew it, if
'reality' can know anything. I think what Reality knows is the same sort of
stuff we think we know by 'religion', 'prayer', and all that : earnestness,
sincerity, a real indulgence in some harmonic idea of fantasy coming true. Just
the other day I had someone telling me about his ongoing program of acupuncture,
therapy, and counseling, which, as he told it, amounted to some form of
affirmative-actualization routine wherein, after the therapist inserts the
needles, etc, to release the pressure points within which have 'knotted up' and
restricted the person's idealization and sense of expectation (bad vibes), that
person is then given personal mantras and words to say, over and over, whether
silently or secretly, during any period of stress, etc. It is all supposed to
bring positive, right and forceful results, which, he said, 'is exactly like
prayer; it's the same thing as what prayer does, it's a form of prayer.' I had
heard all of this a long time ago, back in California, when Margaret was
undergoing Actualization and Rolfing routines, so it wasn't new to me. I
shrugged. I didn't ever really respond - it all seemed so vapid. If that's what
prayer is, then so be it, and probably just as effectual. Why isn't prayer
considered egotistical? Why is it not considered some form of high crime instead
to have a mere mortal supposing to address, set-up and advance a personal agenda
to the very same thunderous God who once migrated around Mount Sinai, if so? Why
not the same, in mufti, for the gobbledygook-gook being advanced here - same
thing, by their own conclusion, but without the darkness and the incense and
dogma? Is it instead just a free-swinging, more spirited party for spiritual
self-acknowledgement? I don't know, but either way, that's what Reality in turn
does to us. Reality tries to advance itself upon us by getting into our heads. I
never let that happen.
Behind the Studio School was a place called MacDougal Alley. It was a closed street, an alley, which once simply housed all the stables and servant quarters for the 8th street mansions and Washington Square North mansions for which the backsides of those homes existed into this alley - for service and ease of comfort, for horse and wagon and the rest. It was open at one end with a fine, wrought-iron fence with great gates and lanterns. The other end of it, about 400 feet away (I'm guessing) was closed off - in 1967 it was closed off by a huge, offensive looking 17 or so story apartment complex recently built there, but before that I don't know whether it opened onto the side of Fifth Ave., or not. I do know that, in the past, since the 1920's, it had been occasional home for varied writers, artists, and performance-types of some note. Like the nearby Patchin Place and others of the same ilk, these were leftover conduits of the 'old'; the old days of horse-drawn carriage and cart and trolley New York, of gas-light and silence, of shadow and mirth, when people were not yet foul and boisterous, seeking materialism at all costs. This small overlap of time - 'my time' I called it - was still around for me. I could walk through it, recognize it, and walk back out of it. I lived in at least two worlds, and people never fully recognized at any moment which one I was in, from which I was addressing them or appearing to them. I liked things just that way - I was an eternalized apparition, to everyone. That still goes on today, and it's all only gotten better. I think everyone sees that here and there, recognizes characters they're not quite sure of, energy forms the origin of which they can't pin down - it befuddles and rankles, causes confusion. But there's an entire secondary subtext to these people, and they - like myself - draw form and quarter from other wells and other places. They translate the past into the now. They carry the light of a tradition, and a form of reality we're not yet clear off. Quantum physics is only just now catching up to tell us that atoms are not things, are as unreal as their concepts and formulations, that 'objects' as we know them are never precise, always in motion and movement, and cannot ever be pinned down to one place. They can be and not be at the very same time : hence, the postulate of 'Shroedinger's Cat', that very famed physics conundrum which has confused people for nearly a century now. Paradoxically, chimerically. As a group-mass society, the clump of Humanity alive, as one, at any one time has absolutely no idea nor grasp of where they are, what they are living amidst, how it is changing within them and around them, and - most importantly - how none of it, nor they actually, exist. All concepts of flim-flam, ad-hoc definitions of 'now' - a now which is never now. And we just do not know. That is what I am, that is what I am of.
So, MacDougal Alley was a portal for me - back in those days it was still kept open; residents, and non-residents I suppose, had access. Though none of that was like today where things are all locked and closed and protected and held to be fearful against theft, entry and crime. MacDougal Alley was just a wonderful, flickering, portal of place and mind together. At its far end, the last two doors were mine ('mine' as in belonging to the Studio School, and open-access). They opened, graciously, broadly, onto the sculpture studio, where Jim Tomberg, of most note, held court (I've mentioned him before). In that light, one would walk into a broad room, and a side room, of whiteness, with forms, sculptural clay, plaster, and sprawling metal (Tomberg's great weldings), literally splayed anarchically around : read, 'anywhere'. It was the wonderful back-door entryway to the Studio School's magic - another realm, a place. Philip Guston, the famed American New York School Abstract Expressionist, in his Rover 2000, with his dog, wife, daughter (Musa Mayer now), or whatever, would enter at will, driving his Rover right to the back doors. He was on staff, meaning there anytime - for us to talk to, fool with, joke, tease, cajole or - seriously - discuss Art. At one point, we built him a room upstairs, on the third floor I think, in what had been an abandoned kitchen alcove. We threw up plaster walls, studs, an entry and doorway, and labeled it something perfunctory like 'Guston Studio' or something. It's still there today; last October, at Studio School Open House, I visited it, and a very pleasant Japanese-American art student, not fully aware of the import of the room she painted in, was intrigued and interested in learning the details of her spot - before that she'd had only the haziest inklings of what had occurred. She'd been told it once was a kitchen. The little nametag on the doorway, mentioning Guston Studio, had always piqued her interest. It was built for him, as a gag. Simply and efficiently white. Now it lives on. Philip Guston, in those days, was just underway with his late-career change of style, a sort of reversion back to his New Deal WPA art from his years as leading-guard Abstract Expressionist; Cedar Bar, New York downtown art scene and all that. We, or at least I, didn't really know that then, were unaware of his new direction - oddly, we still revered him for his Abstract School art fame. The ghost of that, I'd guess just as well, hovered. Maybe that's what I'd been reacting to.
Behind the Studio School was a place called MacDougal Alley. It was a closed street, an alley, which once simply housed all the stables and servant quarters for the 8th street mansions and Washington Square North mansions for which the backsides of those homes existed into this alley - for service and ease of comfort, for horse and wagon and the rest. It was open at one end with a fine, wrought-iron fence with great gates and lanterns. The other end of it, about 400 feet away (I'm guessing) was closed off - in 1967 it was closed off by a huge, offensive looking 17 or so story apartment complex recently built there, but before that I don't know whether it opened onto the side of Fifth Ave., or not. I do know that, in the past, since the 1920's, it had been occasional home for varied writers, artists, and performance-types of some note. Like the nearby Patchin Place and others of the same ilk, these were leftover conduits of the 'old'; the old days of horse-drawn carriage and cart and trolley New York, of gas-light and silence, of shadow and mirth, when people were not yet foul and boisterous, seeking materialism at all costs. This small overlap of time - 'my time' I called it - was still around for me. I could walk through it, recognize it, and walk back out of it. I lived in at least two worlds, and people never fully recognized at any moment which one I was in, from which I was addressing them or appearing to them. I liked things just that way - I was an eternalized apparition, to everyone. That still goes on today, and it's all only gotten better. I think everyone sees that here and there, recognizes characters they're not quite sure of, energy forms the origin of which they can't pin down - it befuddles and rankles, causes confusion. But there's an entire secondary subtext to these people, and they - like myself - draw form and quarter from other wells and other places. They translate the past into the now. They carry the light of a tradition, and a form of reality we're not yet clear off. Quantum physics is only just now catching up to tell us that atoms are not things, are as unreal as their concepts and formulations, that 'objects' as we know them are never precise, always in motion and movement, and cannot ever be pinned down to one place. They can be and not be at the very same time : hence, the postulate of 'Shroedinger's Cat', that very famed physics conundrum which has confused people for nearly a century now. Paradoxically, chimerically. As a group-mass society, the clump of Humanity alive, as one, at any one time has absolutely no idea nor grasp of where they are, what they are living amidst, how it is changing within them and around them, and - most importantly - how none of it, nor they actually, exist. All concepts of flim-flam, ad-hoc definitions of 'now' - a now which is never now. And we just do not know. That is what I am, that is what I am of.
So, MacDougal Alley was a portal for me - back in those days it was still kept open; residents, and non-residents I suppose, had access. Though none of that was like today where things are all locked and closed and protected and held to be fearful against theft, entry and crime. MacDougal Alley was just a wonderful, flickering, portal of place and mind together. At its far end, the last two doors were mine ('mine' as in belonging to the Studio School, and open-access). They opened, graciously, broadly, onto the sculpture studio, where Jim Tomberg, of most note, held court (I've mentioned him before). In that light, one would walk into a broad room, and a side room, of whiteness, with forms, sculptural clay, plaster, and sprawling metal (Tomberg's great weldings), literally splayed anarchically around : read, 'anywhere'. It was the wonderful back-door entryway to the Studio School's magic - another realm, a place. Philip Guston, the famed American New York School Abstract Expressionist, in his Rover 2000, with his dog, wife, daughter (Musa Mayer now), or whatever, would enter at will, driving his Rover right to the back doors. He was on staff, meaning there anytime - for us to talk to, fool with, joke, tease, cajole or - seriously - discuss Art. At one point, we built him a room upstairs, on the third floor I think, in what had been an abandoned kitchen alcove. We threw up plaster walls, studs, an entry and doorway, and labeled it something perfunctory like 'Guston Studio' or something. It's still there today; last October, at Studio School Open House, I visited it, and a very pleasant Japanese-American art student, not fully aware of the import of the room she painted in, was intrigued and interested in learning the details of her spot - before that she'd had only the haziest inklings of what had occurred. She'd been told it once was a kitchen. The little nametag on the doorway, mentioning Guston Studio, had always piqued her interest. It was built for him, as a gag. Simply and efficiently white. Now it lives on. Philip Guston, in those days, was just underway with his late-career change of style, a sort of reversion back to his New Deal WPA art from his years as leading-guard Abstract Expressionist; Cedar Bar, New York downtown art scene and all that. We, or at least I, didn't really know that then, were unaware of his new direction - oddly, we still revered him for his Abstract School art fame. The ghost of that, I'd guess just as well, hovered. Maybe that's what I'd been reacting to.
Philip Guston and his family had some sort of house or cabin and studio up
in Woodstock, NY. It was the back and forth from there that mostly brought his
car around to the back entrance - picking something up or dropping something
off. I used to think to myself how amazing it was that - me, a little, dumb
upstart nothing from nowhere - was here spending time with and hanging amidst
the likes of Philip Guston and the other artists and people that the Studio
School afforded me. On a one/one basis - it was never just a 'guy up on the
stage', or on a pedestal talking down, kind of thing. Here, these people were
just regular people scattering about - Morton Feldman, Milton Resnick, David
Hare, Mercedes Matter, Esteban Vicente, Charles Cajori, even John Cage. I could
go on. It was all part and parcel of bring there. My time both in and out of
this building was massive, and formative. Over at St. Mark's in the Bowery, I'd
had my run-in with William Burroughs, acting in consort with him to escape the
weird scene one time (I've written about it elsewhere). MacDougal Alley was very
wise, very removed and cool about everything - in the same manner as Patchin
Place, which never, ever, seemed to move a leaf or even have a door opened or
shut. It too was a legendary spot - many famed people, writers mostly, had lived
right there. MacDougal Alley, in the time I'm talking of, was still open for
autos - they'd park in front of these little, tiny places, hugging the
half-curb, in full view of gas-lamps and street light and the interior lights
flooding out from these wondrous places through the open doors. The cars were
always exotic, usually from other places - Rovers and Peugeots, Humber Super
Snipes, Jaguars, an occasional Morgan. Nothing ever pedestrian, except perhaps
the still-life wagon of Steve Sloman. Everyone had, as well, it seemed, huge,
big, fluffy dogs, second and country and Summer homes. It was monied, rich and
fine. All, somehow, at once. I remember so much, as distant from it as I was;
distant but right in it too. I could walk at will, had I chosen, into any one of
these places and probably been taken right in as a daring, young artist from
nearby. The body walks itself, by circumstance, where it knows not. Magic
abounds everywhere, if we let it. The shiny darkness of those nights, in my
mind, still dazzles and sharpens my memory. I remember Mercedes Matter,
chuckling in her way, retelling often the stories of the Cedar Bar, her days in
the 40's and 50's when it all hit big for these artists. Her and Franz Kline -
her stories would always end with her repeating what she'd always say whenever
he'd had done something wise or stupid or sexy...'Oh, Franz...!' spoken slowly
and drawn out. Evidently this Franz Kline fellow was quite a character back in
his day. By the time I was present, both he and Hans Hoffmann, another legendary
8th Street guy, were dead.
One time I remember I'd gotten really sick, from exposure, from cold, not
eating, walking like Rimbaud, for God's sake, and - prostrate and nearly passed
out - my father and my girlfriend's (now wife's) father drove in and came and
got me - actually they pretty much had to kidnap me out - and took me home for
recuperation. I was fevered and dazed, and not ready to resist anything, almost
unaware of what was happening around me. I remember my father had a 1960 Impala
Station wagon, and I was stretched out on the back seat while, up front, the two
of them talked incessantly, or so it seemed - the sound thrumming into my head
in that way sickness has of expanding and enlarging, and then slowing down,
everything around you. I remember the endless traffic, the Holland Tunnel out,
and the hideous ride along the Pulaski Skyway and the airport-ring highway until
home. Very unpleasant. Once home, I guess I got up into my old room space and,
it seems, I woke up about 2 days later, feeling better some. Recuperation was
tedious, but my weakness passed and I strengthened up. Otis Redding being played
on the radio in my mother's kitchen - 'Sittin' On the Dock of the Bay.' And I
think he soon after died in a plane crash as well. All these memories of things,
and the overlaps, very strange and telling.
There's so much to recount, all these moments, that I know I cannot and I
won't do it right or do it justice anyway - this was a peculiarly perfect place
and time. I want to say 'you had to be there', but it sounds too stupid. Any
number of people made those days for me - back to the Studio School, the strange
people at E11th, and any of the walk-ons I'd gotten to know. Thinking back now,
all during this time, when I pretty much was open to anything and anyone,
really, could probably have taken me aside to talk earnestly, or talk sense, or
whatever they'd call it, my Uncle Joe had a really good job down at Wall Street
running one of those in-house printing departments for, I think, Drexel-Burnham
or whatever it was called in those years. I never once sought him out, never
went down there to catch him for lunch or say hi or talk. It was, as I see it,
pretty stupid of me, and a lost opportunity as well for me to see someone
sensible, and someone I respected. I was so far off and distant that these
things never registered. I never added the pieces, sought the summation. I let
everything, by contrast, remain shredded and remain fragmented; but not
knowingly. I was so caught up, and ensconced in a little self-contained
unfolding drama of my own, that I just never saw past it. I lost the language of
others. All I could read were the books and words of my own sparse tongue. All
these people I mention, they're all gone now, and nothing of any of it can be
made up, renewed or atoned for. I remain sorry, to this day, at some of the
things I've done, and some of the things I've NOT done
too.
33. It's not that hard to sort things out. It's like
picking through a shoebox of hints and messages, things scrawled as if on the
backs of bad postcards. The afternoon that John Kennedy was shot and killed,
Nov. 22, 1963 or whatever, I was in the seminary library. It was mid-day, sort
of after noon, and there were perhaps 10 or 15 of my fellows roaming about in
there as well. That library was sort of a nice, multi-leveled place, and -
although the book selection was carefully controlled and essentially, to my
memory, flat and boring - it was a refuge of some chairs, a magazine and news
rack, and books. One of the priests came in, announced quickly and loudly that
the President had been shot. Soon enough he was dead, in fact. We were
instructed right then and there to get to our knees, and some fitful sequence of
prayers and words began. We were, I suppose, in Catholic parlance of the day,
either praying to prolong his head-blasted life and prevent him from dying, or -
once dead - we were praying him along to his Paradisiacal reward. It was all
very unclear : he was a 'Roman Catholic', and we were supposed to cheer him on.
Whatever tragic aspects the rest of the day held, nothing more than that
actually happened. Vigil, chapel, prayers, mutterings, and then, in the 'lounge'
rooms, endless TV coverage and primitive prattle. It all meant very little to
me. It's not to say I was uninterested, but at some remove I was, instead, just
watching the unfolding of a drama-hysteria that I could not grasp. The nation
swooned in a sentimental breakdown. Once, of course, we were sequestered for the
duration, it was mass and prayer and all that for the duration, no
questions asked and no thought allowed. Of course, it took over 40 years for the
truths to come about about this fellow - not a bad guy, I suppose, but another
one who thought with his Presidential Dick, screwing and fucking around with a
whole bevy of women while the Secret Service and the rest all went along. Not
exactly Roman Catholicism's finest moment, but they haven't had one in a long
time anyway so, no matter. They're all washed up, as are the rest of the
religious hoodlums who peddle that cant.
The place just shut down. It was near Thanksgiving, everything was (again) in black and white - but this time for real - the little televisions, the riderless horse, with the upside down boots in there stirrups, or whatever that was, the catafalque (new American word experience there), the wife's pink and blood-stained dress, Lyndon Baines Johnson swooping in and taking things in hand, all those people, the crying relatives, the swamping reporters, foreign dignitaries, it was all on television endlessly. And then the next shooting, which was parlayed live, grainy black and white, Lee Harvey Oswald, shady Jack Ruby, an arm pumping out of the police-station basement walkway, a shot, Oswald's grimace, and down again. All during those days, since I was a 'barber' in the seminary (assigned to cut the other fellows' hair as needed), me and the other one or two 'barbers' had TV on while we snipped heads for three days. It was hilarious; all that seriousness and 'dignification', I called it, of nothing but black death in a new form, and we sat around cutting thirteen year olds' and fifteen year olds' hair like we were old-timers or something. No sense at all. Religion permeated the place, yet here we were acting like old-time movie guys in a bleak film-noir, with a gently-playing John Coltrane in the background, thanks to Mike Bartholomew. He's dead now. He played a pretty good guitar, and with his little three-man group (they called themselves 'Laissez Faire', which means 'hands-off' sort of in French. It's really a term from economics and Adam Smith and all that). Mike was able, it seemed, to turn any hokey tune, by changing tempo and differently situating chords and melody, into a pretty decent 'rock' version of itself. It only lasted a while, and they too got shot down. There was this one kid, Tony Mosca - he was a little, short, broad Italian kid from Camden or somewhere, newly arrived. At some talent show or something, the same one that was the last venue for Laissez Faire, this Mosca kid belted out the weirdest version of 'When You Walk Through a Storm Hold Your Head Up High'. It stunk, but everyone loved it. He sang it for the rafters - all high emotion and sentiment, belting out the lyrics with a trembling lip, forcing great heaves of emotion at those proper moments, like some Italian, Camden-ghetto barber-crooner himself. It was amazing how schlocky the whole thing was. He was acclaimed the assassination week hero for that crap; making grown men (if you want to call them that) in black cassocks cry as if Jesus himself was up there writhing in pain and sorrow, nails, blood and cross all thrown together. A hoot. I'd never seen someone really shot on live TV before. I guess no one else had either, for that matter. It was a pretty catchy scene. Andy Warhol made a painting of it, years later, welcoming the entire thing, Marilyn and all, into the high pantheon of emerging American Pop-Art. The whole thing, from start to finish, looked like a set-up to me, even two days after. Johnson looked evil, like a crook now set and ready to roll with the tables fixed in his favor. Everyone else was still stagger-mouthed and stunned. How many disappointed pussies there were, after that, nationwide, I never counted (nor thought about, actually). Every blond wife in the world, I figure, was made sad for a day or two. The nation's greasy swan song had begun. The lights were down, and the voltage was still high.
Time went on, things progressed. I got all set up for the little drama-club
stuff and Passion Play things I was motivating for - in a year or two, as I
mentioned, I was a superstar of early sorts for the best Judas the joint had
even seen. The fucking b-e-s-t. Still legendary among the survivors. And, before
or after that I cannot recall, the Oratorical Contest, which I won, representing
all of South Jersey high schools and besting their best in the round-robin
qualifications. I used to - following the lead of this Greek orator from
way-back, of whom I'd read - walk the woods with a mouthful of pebbles, four or
five at a time, cleaned and readied, and 'orate' my pieces out loud, with the
pebbles in my mouth. Just the way Demosthenes used to do it in ancient Greece,
except he'd walk the beach. I had none, so the woods did good. I don't know
exactly what the pebbles were supposed to do - diction or clarity or breathing
or something, but I guess it worked. I kept the pebbles for a really long time -
but they're gone now, 45 years later. The Governor of New Jersey at this time
was Richard J. Hughes. He was himself an alumnus of this crazy seminary in his
own youth - if that didn't beat everything - and he came back every so often to
pep-talk us and look around. He was present for this big-deal Oratorical Contest
final in our playhouse/auditorium, and, sure as Hell, he wanted to meet the
victor when it was over. So I put the pebbles in my mouth, went over, shook his
hand, and said 'Brfggihpmmf Greetffig.' No, just kidding; no pebbles in that
meeting. It was just a congratulations and a handshake. Cool? Now, in Princeton,
my wife and I visit Morven, an old colonial house which, up until the late
seventies, was the official Governor's mansion. I just look around, walk the
grounds, and think of what it all must have been like for old Dick Hughes. (I
wonder if his wife ever called him Dick Huge, by mistake?). Well, anyway. At the
same time, during that administration, the Commissioner of Public Utilities was
William Hyland. His son, Bill, Jr., was a classmate of mine there as well; I
think he was, in fact, one year ahead of me. Nice guy, nice kid, whatever. It
was William F. Hyland, Sr., who had lost to Richard Hughes, for Governor. Now,
here in Blackwood, it was all jumbled together anyway. Hyland Senior became, as
I said, Public Utilities Commissioner and then later, under another
administration, Attorney General of NJ. He too did a lot of stuff, and, in fact,
was the Executor of Bennie Goodman's Estate. All sorts of connections
everywhere. You can look it up. I don't know where Bill, Jr. ended up, nor that
Mosca kid either.
So, anyway, even back in 1963-4 I already was connected to Princeton, as an
outsider but connected nonetheless. Now it's John Nash, Paul Muldoon, C.K.
Williams, Chris Hedges, and a number of others, and - until last year - Cornel
West. All old buddies to the brat kid from Avenel.
That assassination week or two was a weird period of time. The religiosity
of the place really tried coming to the fore, and we went along with it all, but
beneath that layer the rest was just a sort of intellectual fascination. Now,
you may say, and probably easily can, that we were nothing more than a bratty
bunch of 12-16 year olds growing up, feeling cheeky, overdone and overtrained,
pretty much, for nothing. But that's not true - we really meant it, we were
totally bizarrely precocious, catered to, considered little, wandering geniuses,
and all of us were involved in some sort of fiction that we were, at heart,
really there for pious and religious purposes. It wasn't all true - any number
of these kids had parents who treated this place as an expensive private school,
run with stern and rigid belief and discipline, with a religious core - a place
that would protect and take of their precious boy, while training him as well in
all the right things - leaving out girl-sex, puberty-sex, masturbation, dirty
magazines and filth talk. There were no movies or videos of phone and computer
porn back then. Too bad. Some of these monks and priests and brother types, it
was obvious, were pretty fucking gay. As were some of the young boys already.
Together, they meshed real well, in that perverse Catholic fashion we're just
now learning more about. They kept a little cottage in the woods, along the
nearby dirt road, with a bumper-pool table, a few beds, a small kitchen and
sitting room. 'Insider' status, if you know what I mean, got you admission into
that cottage on a pretty steady basis, if that was your thing. Never was mine,
but I knew of it and was in there once or twice. No one ever blew the whistle on
this stuff, or even really highlighted or talked about it. That was then and,
hey, at least no one got pregnant. That's a joke, right?
I used to work the farm. A few of us sturdier types did so. Our farm-boss
guy was Brother Sebastian, an old, small, twisted up German guy, probably about
70 then. His big white beard was stained from pipe smoking and food. He seldom
talked, and went about his tasks in silence and very sternly. Meant business. I
later found out, in reading his biography post in the Necrology of the
Salvatorians (the religious order from Wisconsin), after he died, that he once
slapped the young, upstart Corporal Adolph Hitler across the face. This was
sometime in the mid19-teens. Hitler, according to this story, was new to the
German Army, or whatever, and incessantly demanded more straw for his bedding.
Incessantly; to the point that he so angered his superiors (our 'Brother
Sebastian') that he slapped him as an insubordinate crank. Brother Sebastian
later fled Germany, ended up in the German community in Wisconsin, took
religion, and joined the Salvatorians, a German missionary order posted in the
USA, Wisconsin (and New Jersey). On the farm I mentioned, we kept about 40 pigs,
real porkers. I would feed them nightly, the slops and leftovers from that day's
kitchen work. All sorts of leftovers, odd cuts, thrown out foods, etc. I'd take
a big wagon, filled with the dripping slop, and we'd push and/or pull it about
3/4 of a mile or so (past the trysting cottage I just mentioned), to the
pig-troughs which were set up at the large pig-sty's end. All those snorting
beasts would grunt and push, thankful to us, showing their stinking
appreciation, for the gargantuan feast. We also had cows, fields of hay and
corn, primitive tractors, scythes, tools, and the rest. It was great. Our big
fields, filled with tomato plants, pepper plants, and other stuff, we tended as
they grew, and then Campbell Soup Company (nearby, in Camden. NJ) would sent
flat-bed trucks of itinerant, southern blacks, migrant workers who would work
their way north as crops matured. They would disembark, swarm the fields,
picking and harvesting peppers and such, into bushels and burlap, load up a few
rack-body trucks, and all would drive away, to return again the next day. All
sorts of strange, unearthly looking characters, swarthy southern black girls,
old, wizened black men, a few kids, if they managed, and plenty of adult folk.
Singing along, talking, humming, preaching. It was amazing in the sunlight, and
equally amazing even if it was cloudy out. But, that and then was my life. Real
life
34. A little bit of the same thing happened when Malcolm X
was shot and killed - I don't really remember the date, but it was on one of
those screens we kept seeing in these 'lounge' room. Again, grainy black and
white, a bit hard to understand and fathom (the issues involved) but the image
of seeing those mysterious black men on street corners in Philadelphia and New
York handing out 'Muhammad Speaks' or whatever that newspapers were called,
remained steady. We'd occasionally go by car into Philadelphia and Camden - for
various things. Father Alexander, the gay Drama guy from NYC I'd mentioned, had
the use of a new 1963, maybe '64, Ford ; basic, black car, but new. He'd often
be seen driving in and out of campus in it, no one really ever knowing where
he'd been or was going. Little matter. Once or twice there were dental or
medical emergencies - I'd gone on those excursions too - late night or mid-day,
toothaches, a broken limb or finger from sports, a deep cut or gash, sickness,
eyeglass stuff, etc. I'd always somehow be involved in the two or three guys
needed to get the patient, with Father Alexander driving, to where it was he
needed to go. Other times, once or twice, there were 'religious' type movies
we'd be taken to see, mostly in Philadelphia - titles like 'Becket' with Peter
O'Toole in the lead (that was supposed to mean something to me, but the name
never did), or 'The Ten Commandments', yet again - being replayed or something.
There was also one purported Life of Christ and all the rest, with some Swedish
big-name guy in the lead. I truly forget his name for sure, but think it was Max
Von Sydow. He died a few years ago. It was a decent film, but these films we
were taken to, selected boys, a car-full of kids and a 'parent' figure driving,
they were always twisted up with some supposed concern for religion not
entertainment. I never correctly was able to remove the one from the other, yet
I never declined a trip. Going back to Malcolm X, that shooting was on TV over
and over, and all the commentators (there weren't many back then) went over the
details and reasons possible behind it all many times. The only black people we
knew were the kitchen hands who fed us - big, black mamas and docile black guys,
making us three meals a day, with this crazy, drunken southern guy (named Max,
as I recall) running the entire thing. We ate lots of grits and scrapple,
wheatcakes and flapjacks, had plenty of milk. Lunches were usually good
sandwiches of one sort or another; and the evening meal was regular food - meats
and potatoes and things. On the whole, as I recall, the food was good, and
plentiful, well-assorted and menued. I guess there was some sort of a dietician
around or something. The biggest center of the place, of course, was the chapel.
It was called that because that's really all it was; a country-type wooden
chapel, like you'd see in the woods or on a camping trip somewhere. No big
church stuff, no marble or brick or stone. This was a pretty humble-looking
wooden structures, rudiments of a stained-glass window here or there, a feeble
outside entrance, and a more feeble inside entryway - which of course led right
to the 'refectory', which was how he had to refer to the large room wherein we
ate. Each meal, morning, noon and night, was preceded by church - whether a mass
in the morning, a noonday prayer session with a small talk/lecture, and a great
big blessings and thanks scene in the evening; from each of those we'd walk down
the steps and take out seats at tables, large, multi-chaired tables, to eat.
Everyone sat, pretty much where they chose and with whom, but it was all
segregated by class - freshmen here, sophomores there, etc. All that was OK, but
what got annoying is that there was always someone at a lectern reading aloud
from 'Lives of the Saints', and we were supposed to listen. We didn't always, of
course, but then there'd be trouble. "Lives of the Saints' was some real crud,
all this pious baloney about Jesus people who, in their zeal, had been martyred
(understandable), or had withstood great trials and tribulations
(understandable); what really got me crazy were the obvious nut-cases-for-Jesus
who got away with things and were beatified and then sanctified, mostly for just
very weird, self-inflicted, psychotic, crazy stuff - later termed miraculous and
correct : like subjecting oneself to 10,000 bee stings in your work of making
holy honey, or living in a cave poking holes into your body to bleed the blood
of Christ, things of that nature. Crazy villagers, or goat herders, walking
through flames, healing little kids, running through fire and catching flames in
order to convince and convert some mad, stupid pagan emperor of and to the
rightness of Catholicism. The stuff was crazy - the women were worse than the
men. St. Theresa of Avila, for instance, to name but one. I could go on, but I'm
not about to. Miracles bore the hell out of me, as do apparitions to weirded out
little kids, dripping red liquids that purport to be God's blood dripping onto
altars in the shape of our Savior, all that crap. Count me out, please, oh
Damien the Leper. I swear there's an oil drip on the street in front of my house
that perfectly resembles the left-sided profile of Jesus J. Christ himself.
Master Mechanic?
So I guess it was all in seriousness, totally, but it gave me a whale of a
sense of humor, one that I still use. Basically, I think my sermon to the world
is or would be : 'I don't give a shit. And you shouldn't either. The world is
false, everything you hear is a lie, and the only responsibility to have is to
move along, under your own power, to the chancellery of your own created dreams,
ways and aspirations.' (Applause).
I used to listen to this stuff endlessly. Endlessly. I took every word of
it for gospel (no pun) truth, and read many meanings into the shape of my own
life from it. My conclusions were not always the correct or accepted
conclusions, but I liked them, dwelt on them, and even wrote things from the. (I
was a real scribbler, early on; notebooks full of stuff; songs, poems, crazy
essays, etc.). For instance, the Loaves and Fishes episode, in Mark or whatever
gospel it's in (all four, actually) - there are two such separate stories in the
gospels, each different. It's confusing, one time he feeds 4000, and another
episode, a different one, he feeds 5000, each with a few loafs and a few fish;
and everyone gets filled up and there are even leftovers (!). But, anyway, all
that showed to me - no miracle stuff at all - but instead it showed how gullible
and pliable to suggestion people are, and how nothing is actually 'real'. These
episodes showed me how a mass of people, having 'convinced ' themselves they'd
be hungry, went about being so - until they were bested by some crazy,
charismatic person who, by power of his suggestion and by a small, paltry
dribble of food and drink, if that, can convince them to change their
interpretations of 'Reality' and time and need and hunger. To wit, to
re-interpret things and see all things differently. As in, 'dude, you're not
really hungry, now shut up.'
You 'change' reality by your interpreting of it, by your mind. A mental
magician can change the factors of interpretation and quality for you - altering
and coloring the substance of what you live. I guess what I'm saying is that
consciousness is all, and it can be changed, altered from within, by the
simplest of alterations in belief. That is what we are, not hungry, not thirsty.
Jesus bested them by a sham, in his way. He said, 'look, eat, and be sated.' And
he said it so convincingly that they were able to actually change the fabric of
that moment they were living. It's like that with everything - we are captives
of the concepts we inherit, the words we use to make thing what they are. It's
somewhat the same condition of any madman who rules people by total craft and
control - any Hannibal or Nero, any Mao or Caucescu; hell, any Joseph Smith or
any religious leader with millions at his feet. Every such story can be broken
apart and be seen for what it is. Which is why, forty years later, or four
hundred, you look back at something and say 'how could people have believed this
crap or done this stuff?' Anyway, I digress.
I've only been to Camden, of late, to visit the grave of Walt Whitman; been
there a few times. It's a hellish city, as far as ruined, slum-cities go.
Getting to Whitman's grave is manageable enough, if you can take it (the route
runs through some real rubble), but why the State has done things like put the
New Jersey Aquarium there, at the waterfront, is beyond me.Iit's just inviting
trouble, and inviting people, as well, to just stay away, or shy away from going
anyway. At the seminary, about 1964, there were any number of times that I'd go
with Brother Isidore (another Germanic old-timer, about 60) in the farm pick-up
truck out to Camden, usually after last meal, about 6pm, with a truckload of
scrap - old metal or building materials, or whatever crud he'd collected. As I
vaguely recall, we'd get to a junkyard, unload everything, it was weighed and
counted and, I guess he'd get paid for it, or the school's account would, or
whatever. He too never talked much - he was little guy, about 5' 4", always wore
work clothes (I'd only very occasionally see him in his habit, or church-garb),
gray-haired, kind of elfin all about, but dour and never jovial. No whimsey. I
cannot remember where these places were; out by the river, the Delaware, whether
on the Camden or Philadelphia sides, it alternated. There was the Walt Whitman
Bridge, or the Betsy Ross Bridge, or the Ben Franklin Bridge, any of them would
take you to the industrial waterfront areas of Philadelphia. For the Camden
side, you'd not need to cross the river, thus no bridges. It was mostly Camden
trips we made. They were mostly in Winter months, it seemed, so it was always
dark and or cold or chilly. Wherever these scrap yards were,in this old pickup
truck we'd slowly pass rubble-strewn streets, house after house, missing gaps of
houses no longer there, ruins of houses, weedy lots, all sorts of destruction.
There would always be, on porches and stoops, clumps of black people just
listlessly staring at us, watching, staring us down, as we slowly wended our way
of ruts and bumps of really bad streets. It was a very scary scene, often; much
like something in an old wild-west movie or scene where indigents and outlaws,
seemingly and nearly semi-retarded, dull and dense, would just stare, watch and,
maybe, judge. No words were ever spoken. It was one of the oddest things - still
etched in my memory as if it just happened. I was saddened, frightened, made
curious and interested, all at the same time. I couldn't figure this 'poverty'
out, didn't understand the conditions these people lived with and under. Nearly
50 years later now, Camden is ten times worse, except for government occupation
it would be a complete NO place. The NJ State Police patrol the town; regular
cops have long been gone, unpaid, laid-off or quit. The housing stock, even
what's left, is rubble. The school system is a black-America scandal, as are
those people themselves : rot, wreckage, obscene sounds and music, coarse
street-knowledge, and no interest in anything redeeming is, I'm sorry to relate,
the cultural norm. The bastards who run things keep it corralled, and allow it
all to continue. It's a war-zone, sequestered and kept walled in so that,
hopefully, they just kill their own, and eventually kill them all.
If you call that some form of living, well then go ahead and call it. And I
hope you live it just as well, so you too can get a feel for destitution from
your lofty perch. Government is criminal; it wheedles and destroys, takes and
lies, and the remnants of what it leaves behind are places like Camden, Newark
and Detroit. Randomly picking a few. Back in those days, when I was studying God
and Theology and all that drivel, what came to me, sitting in the seat of an old
pickup with Brother Isidore, believe you me, was the idea that I was living in
an occupied zone - occupied not by Freedom and Liberty or any of that very
squashable and trite bullshit that gets peddled around holidays and stuff,
around wizened old stupid war veterans who've never outgrown their dazzled
allegiance to duty and can never be shamed by even themselves and their dumb
lives, but instead that any form, any snippet of 'religion' - from way, way back
at Day One - was never anything but a form of Control, a secular operation
dressed up with magic and wonder, capes and hats, incense and fires, so some
secular authority could institute the stealing, looting and pillaging of the
inside of people's heads for their own gain : lineage, dynasties, purebloods and
the rest. All alien creatures from a faraway other place, fighting amongst even
themselves, for definitions : for the stuff with which to hang us - Duty, Power,
Belief, Right, Wrong, on and on. It's all magic, it's all an infraction of
private-zone space, right up to this very day, this moment right now. yet now
people have become so dulled and stupid that they willingly go and even listen
and vote for their choice, selected portion of shit. 1964 brought me lots of
things. real though was one of them. There is no fucking reality.
Through the night, in Camden. We'd gather money for steel - some little
Jewish guy, Goldberg Brothers, Steinman Wreckers, whatever, he'd always come
stomping out to the scales, little musty man in a hat, gruff, direct, piddling
over pennies to make a dollar, buying other people's scrap. These guys, like the
rest of them, were magical in their attention to the detail of pennies and
dollars, profit and loss, as if the entire world depended on their making 30
cents, and then, come High Holy days for them alone and their stupid, chosen
race, they'd go huddling back to their secreted rites and God-awful God and
garner the power to all of a sudden be forgiven yet again for that year's
depredations and swindles and start anew, leaving out, of course, the little
part about forgiving debts and things like that. How could any race of people
walk around like that and not gag? Not that they were different that much by
other races and religions, but it was their yearly moments of smug
self-satisfaction and self-acceptance that really got to me. All these German,
Salvatorian priests and brothers, I don't know how they dealt with this stuff,
with the Jew in Jeweler, so to speak, the wrath of business in a truly fallen
world. Dark night descended, each time, above my head in a bleak Camden, New
Jersey.
35. One more thing about the seminary I want to mention - just to see where it leads me. Before that year when I was the Judas player in the Passion Play, and then the Oratorical Contest stuff, I was - the previous year - only able to get close to the Drama Dept. by getting the post of 'page-turner' to the organ accompanist who played the various music and songs needed. It was some sort of pageant-play presentation, for which parents and families had come. I was the seated assistant to John Banko, and - because I played piano and was thus able to read music - I kept along with the score as John played, and appropriately turned pages for him on the score sheet. No big deal, and it was fun to see him in action. I observed everything, and wanted to be ready for whatever occurred, for part of this included the possibility that if anything happened to John during either of these two-weekends of presentation (4 in total), I would be pressed into service as a sort of understudy accompanist. I actually dreaded even the thought of that, but realized nothing would happen to him. Nothing did.
38. So, I don't know where any of this started. Maybe, for me, it was the
first time I saw a man or a woman in a great, cloth coat. No one wears stuff
like that anymore - those low, dim days of my first memories always had people
around in the most serious clothing I can recall. I remember those fat-legged
woman, thick in the calf, always, with their dark black stockings, often with a
black thread-seam running up the back. Most times, the seam was somehow
perfectly straight, but occasionally there'd be a woman whose black-stocking
seam was somehow twisted or askew. The only rational thought was that she'd
somehow just been up to something which made that happen. Women, it was made
clear to me, weren't always virtuous. Men, it was made clear to me, on the other
hand, were always lecherous. Mindful of fucking anything they could get their
hands on. My mother had a few friends, it was clear, of 'questionable' character
- looser ladies, younger than my mother, who'd come around sometimes to chat,
have coffee, whatever. The conversation was never 'for children' and was always
alone. There never were regular men around in the lives of these females. A
child, yes - one whom my mother would occasionally be 'watching' while the lady
was out doing something else. One time, my mother's young friend named 'Marian'
- as I recall, actually pretty vividly, a very attractive (to me, anyway)
younger version of my mother, but with reddish hair, a totally devil-may-care
attitude, and a wacky, wry sense of humor always at work - flip, sexy, even. One
time I recall she left for somewhere and left behind, for my mother to take to
inspection, her Studebaker Golden Hawk, or whatever it was called - a very
beautiful car, about 1955, low-slung, very audacious, heavy front, but
light-looking, with the swept suggestion of fins at the rear. I think it was a
Virgil Exner design, maybe Raymond Loewy, one of those 1950's auto designers who
made a lot of waves. I loved the car, a two-door. My mother was a crummy driver
to be sure, and I don't know how she did this one - shifting and all that - but
we got it to and through inspection OK and without mishap; in Rahway, I believe.
All I recall is running down the small, two-lane road to somewhere, in this
great, low car, sky and sunlight above glinting in through the windows, and then
driving back. Marian's complete satisfaction was apparent upon pick-up. There
were other times too, I recall, when she would baby-sit me and my younger sister
on nights when my parents were out somewhere. I liked her, who and whatever she
was. I've never met nor seen her again, but the memory of a certain, indefinable
'something' lingers - which I now know of as 'sexual' and bold. There was
another crazy woman-friend of my mothers, named Ginger. Much the same deal, and
then, later, I remember another too, a woman with two kids, divorced, and an
ex-husband who ran a large truck-repair depot out on Rt. 22. She too was
interesting. Even though I was yet a small child, certain things jumped out at
me - the men who drank, or who were always too perilously close to inebriation
at all times, bars in their finished basements, gloss in their eyes, attractive
wives at home, house toys of whom I was sure they took their personal sexual
frenzy out on, with both parties being quite ready and willing. All my father
ever did was drink beer - no hard liquor, except for the few times he made what
he called anisette in the basement sink, or somesuch. I never was sure. I had a
crazy, wired Uncle Eddie, in Fort Lee, who seemed to drink a lot and leer and
then drink a lot some more. My Uncle Walter from Germany, he drank lots of beer,
but it was somehow like water to him. Never seemed to matter, the intake. I
never saw men with girlfriends, or fucking around on the side. It seemed no one
in my family, anyway, ever did it. I never even saw any flirtatious or sexy side
of either of my parents. One time, when I was about 9, my mother was lying on
the couch, my sister and I were nearby, and her robe or whatever fell open. I
was shocked upon see her big, black-hairy pudenda, for the few moments I saw it.
Nothing was ever said, but she knew, as well, what I had seen. I have to recall
often enough how young these people were in the years I am here thinking of them
- 28 or 30, at most, I'm guessing. It was certainly a different world, far
different. Also, in thinking back, I have to realize how, amazingly enough, we
were closer then to the 1920's then we are, even now, to the 1960's or 70's; by
way of relative time/recollection, that's a shocking fact.
35. One more thing about the seminary I want to mention - just to see where it leads me. Before that year when I was the Judas player in the Passion Play, and then the Oratorical Contest stuff, I was - the previous year - only able to get close to the Drama Dept. by getting the post of 'page-turner' to the organ accompanist who played the various music and songs needed. It was some sort of pageant-play presentation, for which parents and families had come. I was the seated assistant to John Banko, and - because I played piano and was thus able to read music - I kept along with the score as John played, and appropriately turned pages for him on the score sheet. No big deal, and it was fun to see him in action. I observed everything, and wanted to be ready for whatever occurred, for part of this included the possibility that if anything happened to John during either of these two-weekends of presentation (4 in total), I would be pressed into service as a sort of understudy accompanist. I actually dreaded even the thought of that, but realized nothing would happen to him. Nothing did.
Let's jump ahead now about 30 years: Father John Banko killed himself in
prison. He'd been sent there, long after his ordination as a parish priest
somewhere in South Jersey, for the usual sexual-abuse of minors for which
priests seem so often to be party. It all had something to do with the
altar boys and kids he worked with. He was caught, admitted to things, and was
sent away - to a place where obviously the remorse and the
conditions became just to much for him. I knew John was gay even way back
then - he was perhaps 16 or 17 to my 13, I'm guessing. It never
meant anything to me, and I kept away. He wasn't the only one -
others who were later ordained also ran into these troubles. John was the only
one who took his life over it; one or two others, to my knowledge, are still in
prison, or out of business anyway. In the year 2008, Michael Alliegro, from
Fords, NJ, with whom I'd attended seminary died from some form of leukemia, it
was said. I'd remained friendly enough with him for small talk, and
conversations about various things - when he worked in the Diocese
of Metuchen offices as an Administrator he once told me that if I
'knew then what I know now about all this job entailed, I would never had been
ordained.' Essentially, his point was that he'd been turned into a clerk of
sorts, a dollars and cents man to small parish concerns. He was later
transferred to St. Bartholomew's in East Brunswick, where I remained in contact
with him, and after that, by perhaps the year 2002, he became a Monsignor and
was once again back in the Diocese House in Metuchen, taking a dual role as
Monsignor with the Diocese Offices and, as well, a Pastor or emeritus of some
sort for St. Francis Cathedral, the Metuchen Diocese's home on Main Street. In
1964, the seminary had about 350 boys enrolled; of that total, over time, I
think perhaps 70 at most became priests, and - during that same time - at least
5 of the priests and brothers that I know of left the church entirely.
Tumultuous times make tumultuous times, I guess.
It's hard to think of all the people who've once been
'seminarians'
- Joseph Stalin comes to mind, and others. It seems to leave its mark.
Joseph Stalin (the fake last name means 'Steel') had a daughter,
Svetlana
Alliluyeva, I think the 'rea'l name was (Svetlana Josefina Alliluyeva
Peters, died Nov. 20, 2011, known as Olga, came to the USA in 1967), and
she fled the Soviet Union, broke
with her 'father' obviously, and - until she died - lived in Princeton,
NJ. She
wrote one or two books, traveled to California some and - generally -
lived a
happy and complete US life right here in Princeton. Once again, lines
cross. I
actually would have liked to meet here; she died some time ago.
So, what I'm saying is that this stuff stays with you, or at least
with me.
I've met a lot of people, seen a lot of issues and developments, but
that little
germ of those seminary days - for whatever their value (those
days) - have always stayed with me and left a mark conjoined somehow
to my thinking, or at least my judgment. I can't shake it. I have lost
every bit
of that religious zeal and silliness in meant to instill. That never
happened.
But I did see the shrieking hilarity and forceful earnestness of the
programmatic push and pull of belief foisted onto people, the piety that
reeks
of servitude dressed as humility, and the age-old racket of getting
others to
belief in what they cannot see so that they can be manipulated by what
the can
see. The entire idea of 'Religion' anyway is subservience. A
'pounded-into-your-head' subservience that, were it done in a secular
fashion, would be outlawed and condemned as some sort of primitive servitude or slavehood.
One of the first jobs I had, a Wintertime, evening job, was as a
high
school senior, I guess, selling magazines door to door in urban areas,
mostly
Elizabeth and Newark, NJ. This guy would pick me up three or four
evenings per
week, at like 6pm or so, drive me in his Volkswagen to these stipulated
areas - marginal streets, poorer classes of people, immigrants, Puerto
Ricans, and the like. Once I was dropped off, he'd go do something else,
while I
went door to door knocking on these peoples' front doors, bothering them
at
dinnertime, essentially. Mostly, the husbands weren't yet home, or there
weren't
any. I'd introduce myself as a 'Representative of the P.P.S.B.', which
meant
Periodical Publishers Service Bureau, and I'd throw them a small booklet
with
about 30 magazine offerings in it, for yearly subscriptions for about
5.99 or
7.99 a year. Good Housekeeping, Glamour, Ladies Day, Life, Look, all
that 1960's
stuff. My job was to press and cajole them, convince them of their need
and want
for magazines in their home - using any sort of angle I could come
up with - help the kid's read, pass the wife's idle time, beauty
tips, coupons, etc. None of these people had much money. If I did break
through,
by being sweet or cracking the houselady's veneer (all this while the
cooking
smells and steam-heated air sometimes almost made me barf) I'd get her
to fill
out a card, tear off a portion of the receipt, etc. I never took or
handled
money - that's what the other guy did when he came back to get me.
He was the 'closer'. He would return to these addresses, of the buyers,
and get
or attempt to get the money they'd just committed for, and leave a copy
of the
magazine they'd selected (we had a few of each, current or back issues).
Their
subscription would being in 4-6 weeks. It was all above board, and the
rest, but I was never sure what was going on. The PPSB, I suppose,
really did
exist. Anyway, as it turned out, I was always OK, or good enough, at
breaking
down these women's sympathies and such, but when he got there to collect
money, the deal was all gone - he claimed he could only seldom close
on one of my
deals. Evidently I was able to break through to these women's hearts for
a moment, but they'd think better of it once I left. It was pretty
hopeless. I stayed with it for one Winter -
just for the fun and excitement of walking darkened, slum streets in
these cool
city places, meeting and seeing the colorful people, their kids and
pets, even
their homes. But, as soon as the weather turned, I went on to other
things and
dropped the job. My job companion, Jimmy Melton, he stayed with it a
long time,
but nothing ever happened for him. He died a pothead, and had been
living in his parent's
basement for years, and, by 1975, zoned out of his head most all of the
time. In the 1990's he moved to a little place of his own in Hazlet, NJ,
but I guess being on his own was too much for him at last. It was all
fun while it lasted. But it didn't last.
I guess the thing I most mean to get across here is that there's always been a somehow superior sensitivity to things operational with in me. It doesn't mean much in the longer run of things, and it certainly will not, nor ever has, brought me any particular achievements, career, money, renown and the rest. It's not about that, and I guess I never really cared about that stuff anyway - had I cared I suppose I would have chased it all down. There's a certain level of awareness operating within each person - you're either attuned to your real self, intuitively or not, or you're caught onto the raging coattails of attaining something else, whatever it is that you're presented yourself with as the 'thing' you're after - the huge house, car, mortgage, places to go, name, whatever. Securities offices and brokerage houses are filled with these people, huge sums of money, speculative ventures, crazed attitudes towards getting and having and building. It was never me. My sensitivities led to other things, and all these evenings in Newark and Plainfield, Perth Amboy and Elizabeth brought me a keening sense of the just-underside of Life, the part most people live and others never really see - the beleaguered housewife, coming to the door with a dish-towel draped over her wrist, soup and meat smells all around her from a stove, and three kids romping indiscriminately in the central room, living room whatever, of the rental they're in. Stairways, tight and narrow, clogged with stuff, old tiles, old wallpapers, leading up to hallways of doors with numbers on them. Rows of such homes, one after the other, filled up with such small families; the comings and goings of everything at once. Bread ovens, low-lights, metal kitchen tables, fringed lampshades, pictures on a mantle of the parents in the old land - all of that I saw each day. Those rounds were wonderful for me. I think the minimum wage, at that time was $1.25 per hour, late raised a little bit, incrementally, to $1.75 and then $2.50, as I remember. Crazy little numbers, numbers which seem audaciously meager today. But that was then. No commissions, nothing like that for me - remember, my deals never even really closed. For me, in a way, it was all missionary work - talking straight, listening to others, understanding what I was seeing and what was behind it.
I always loved darkness, and the Winter - all that being huddled close, wrapped up in coats and jackets, lots of pockets, darkness making some recognition difficult, enhancing whatever light there was,. It always seemed somehow that 'darkness' was the manner in which we should live, as humans. Others could have all that light and sunny stuff - coastal beach-combing, basking the sun, daylight lounging, etc. not for me. As a writer and artist (artists' light notwithstanding), I featured the solitude and sanctity of the dark, that from where my lessons came. People otherwise seemed frivolous, stupid, cheap and tacky, like some crummy wall covering or a Woolworth's picture of some pathetic dune and surf with a cottage on the edge of a somehow neglected sea.
36. If a timeline were to be drawn through all of my days, it would have its length and its ups and down, its steady progression. But it would have neither me in it, nor any real continuity. I would have to be seen as a spectral figure, off to the sides, going in varied directions, this way and that, in spite of the timeline's intent. All that linear stuff never works - in fact it all really gets to me. It gets to me as much as a rotting piece of meat or flesh would. Distasteful. Disgusting. There are people who thrive on that sort of notational progress, an approach towards a goal. But not me. I've always been anarchic and intuitive in living my life - as it comes, when and how it comes, that's what I'll deal with. So far, in writing this portrayal, I've tried to bring out the manners by which I operated through my days - one eye always watching for incidentals, the other, perhaps, just off the main focus of that larger 'other' picture of what I was supposed to be doing. The lame line/list of everyday life.
37. When I was in the hospital at the time of the train crash - which I've already mentioned - one thing I noticed was that, I guess because of crowding, people had been placed in the hallways - hospital beds with people in them, in the hallways instead of rooms or wards. (This was still a time when there were what were called 'wards', which is what I was in). It was a large room into which, on open-style floor space, some thirty or so beds and patients were arranged. When privacy was needed, each bed had a curtain around it which could be pulled shut. After I was pretty much recovered, and up and about with crutches, I used to go around, on the crutches, just moving about to see what the place was like. In this trips I always included the hallway walk; and one thing I noticed, and have never seen since, nor really understood, was that there were people with raw steak, or raw meat on their face wounds. Perplexing to me. A black eye, or a bruised face, or whatever, would get them a raw piece of meat to put on the wound - so that there'd be people laying about with meat on their face. I never asked about it, but never got any answers either - was this a common practice? A primitive cure?
I guess the thing I most mean to get across here is that there's always been a somehow superior sensitivity to things operational with in me. It doesn't mean much in the longer run of things, and it certainly will not, nor ever has, brought me any particular achievements, career, money, renown and the rest. It's not about that, and I guess I never really cared about that stuff anyway - had I cared I suppose I would have chased it all down. There's a certain level of awareness operating within each person - you're either attuned to your real self, intuitively or not, or you're caught onto the raging coattails of attaining something else, whatever it is that you're presented yourself with as the 'thing' you're after - the huge house, car, mortgage, places to go, name, whatever. Securities offices and brokerage houses are filled with these people, huge sums of money, speculative ventures, crazed attitudes towards getting and having and building. It was never me. My sensitivities led to other things, and all these evenings in Newark and Plainfield, Perth Amboy and Elizabeth brought me a keening sense of the just-underside of Life, the part most people live and others never really see - the beleaguered housewife, coming to the door with a dish-towel draped over her wrist, soup and meat smells all around her from a stove, and three kids romping indiscriminately in the central room, living room whatever, of the rental they're in. Stairways, tight and narrow, clogged with stuff, old tiles, old wallpapers, leading up to hallways of doors with numbers on them. Rows of such homes, one after the other, filled up with such small families; the comings and goings of everything at once. Bread ovens, low-lights, metal kitchen tables, fringed lampshades, pictures on a mantle of the parents in the old land - all of that I saw each day. Those rounds were wonderful for me. I think the minimum wage, at that time was $1.25 per hour, late raised a little bit, incrementally, to $1.75 and then $2.50, as I remember. Crazy little numbers, numbers which seem audaciously meager today. But that was then. No commissions, nothing like that for me - remember, my deals never even really closed. For me, in a way, it was all missionary work - talking straight, listening to others, understanding what I was seeing and what was behind it.
I always loved darkness, and the Winter - all that being huddled close, wrapped up in coats and jackets, lots of pockets, darkness making some recognition difficult, enhancing whatever light there was,. It always seemed somehow that 'darkness' was the manner in which we should live, as humans. Others could have all that light and sunny stuff - coastal beach-combing, basking the sun, daylight lounging, etc. not for me. As a writer and artist (artists' light notwithstanding), I featured the solitude and sanctity of the dark, that from where my lessons came. People otherwise seemed frivolous, stupid, cheap and tacky, like some crummy wall covering or a Woolworth's picture of some pathetic dune and surf with a cottage on the edge of a somehow neglected sea.
36. If a timeline were to be drawn through all of my days, it would have its length and its ups and down, its steady progression. But it would have neither me in it, nor any real continuity. I would have to be seen as a spectral figure, off to the sides, going in varied directions, this way and that, in spite of the timeline's intent. All that linear stuff never works - in fact it all really gets to me. It gets to me as much as a rotting piece of meat or flesh would. Distasteful. Disgusting. There are people who thrive on that sort of notational progress, an approach towards a goal. But not me. I've always been anarchic and intuitive in living my life - as it comes, when and how it comes, that's what I'll deal with. So far, in writing this portrayal, I've tried to bring out the manners by which I operated through my days - one eye always watching for incidentals, the other, perhaps, just off the main focus of that larger 'other' picture of what I was supposed to be doing. The lame line/list of everyday life.
I used to wait for that Volkswagen guy to pick me up, along with Jimmy
Melton, at the Avenel Firehouse, a number of blocks from my home, at the
intersection of Avenel Street and Route One. At this time (1966) the firehouse
in place was the 'older' firehouse of the 1940's era, since replaced yet again
by a grossly larger, way overdone, structure. Firemen as a group seem to have a
need, whether volunteer firemen or not, for big structures housing their rigs
and equipment, but just as importantly housing their version of a social-center,
meeting-hall clubhouse place. The same goes, actually for EMT and
first-aid-squad places. Pretty much they're all the same - guys like to hang
out, with other guys, have wives and auxiliary ladies groups take care of the
sort of housekeeping duties they disdain. Socials, carnivals, parties, anything
which comes along to refill the coffers of the beer fund and the TV fun is fine.
The women never object and, in their own version, they do the same thing among
the ladies. Firemen like nothing better than a good fire. I guess it validifies
all their slack-time lounging around watching sports scenes and other stuff on
their big-screen TV's and all that crud. Anyway, this Avenel Firehouse had
remnants of its past scattered about - the usual historical references that
usually make one laugh. Suspended from a double-columned brick frame, right at
the roadside bench where we sat each pick-up night, was the old, red, iron fire
alarm clanger which used to announce, by means of being rapped with a hammer or
something to make it peal its loud noise, any local fires. Horse and fire wagon
would follow; water bucket brigades and the rest. It was a pointed, and
poignant, reference to days of old, and it was kind of funny, or sad even, to
witness it and think of all this now being superceded by the shrill bloat and the
run of US Highway One truncating the town and doing its part in destroying any
of the legacy of a simpler place and time which, by this monument, was being
celebrated, or at least pointed out. It's like that everywhere - America likes
to settle its golden prosperity by means of such deal-closers as historic
markers, which simply manage to tell you what is no longer here, having been
long ago sacrificed to the lethal drip of 'progress'. Cemeteries, or at least
ones of historic value, try to portray themselves as sacred grounds for the
large personalities of yesteryear - all those founders and warriors - while Rt.
78, 287, 10, 22 or whatever run right through the corridor, zooming by them as
they sleep. I can thing of an immediate ten places - battlefields, hallowed
Revolutionary War grounds, old village sites and all the rest, that have been
pushed aside, rammed and killed by the intentions of the present. Read that as
money-grubber mercantile interests intent on despoiling whatever they can for
'lucre', for profit. Part of our reason for being put here was the 'husband' the
Earth, take care of things, leave them alone. We have certainly mucked that up.
I'm not pointing fingers, (OK so I am), but someday just take a look around you
at the people who are grinding out strategies for money-making, selling,
developing, altering and squandering what's left of our land, air, water, etc. I
can tell you who they are, and I can probably also tell you from what 'tribe'
they arise.
Speaking of which : about five years ago I decided to find the
grave of
Delmore Schwartz. Now, if you don't know who Delmore Schwartz was, I'm
not going
to delve here into his biography. Do that for yourselves. Find and read
his
books, read Saul Bellow's book entitled 'Humboldt's Gift' - it covers
the scene
and the aberrant personality very well. (There's two more Princeton
connections
for you, Schwartz and Bellow having been contemporaneous at the
university,
along with the famed, now gone, restaurant on Witherspoon Street called
'Lahiere's. In fact, I pass this Lahiere guy's grave here in town every
day). I digress. The cemetery where Schwartz is buried was in a northern
NJ town called Emerson - easy enough to find and locate and enter, right
off the
Garden State Parkway. He died, abandoned and unloved, mostly, and was
only given
burial some long time later by an uncle (all covered in Bellow's book).
When we
arrived there - it's a large, rambling, but crisp, Jewish cemetery,
quite large
- we immediately realized that we'd have trouble locating the grave, or
even the
area. (Isaac Bashevis Singer is also buried somewhere in there; we never
located
that grave, to this day, and have plans to return for that task). Not
being able
to find Schwartz's grave, we went into the cemetery office - location
plans,
maps, etc. I went up to the desk, where two Jewish fellows were busy
arranging
things, and asked for help; which they gave. Neither of them recognized
the name
at all, showed no sign of knowing who the writer was. In fact, all they
asked
was 'what tribe was he?' - that question startled me, it being such an
old style
question. These fellows, however - and I should have remembered - came
from the
oldest of old-line traditions, belief-sets and behavioral patterns and,
representing all of that, the cemetery itself is laid out not by name,
or family
or anything of that nature, but by the 'original' or at least more
'original',
tribal connection from which any one of these Jewish surnames derives.
It was
startling too, in almost its own paganistic, primitive way. As I type
this now,
I realize I do not really remember how we solved that quandary, in that I
truly
did not know anything of his 'tribe' or family/tribal/Jewish connections - but
they did eventually give me a section and row number. Using them, we traipsed
around the far-side he'd pointed to and found what we'd been seeking. The point
I'm making here is the steady and incendiary nature and - to me - confusion of
this entire Jewish ethos, personified in this way by Delmore Schwartz:
considered an abject failure his entire life, dying in the gutter, cold, sick
and wet, paranoid, unrecognized, unapproachable, sick and vile. He spent very
little of his writerly currency on his Jewish traditions (or did he?) but ended
up smothered in the arms of its oldest and strictest traditional patterns. The
religion which, on the one hand, preaches concerns and stricture for and over
the cutting and desecration of any part of sacred Earth, sacred groves of trees
being sacrosanct, etc, revering an ancient, dog-eared and rattle-trapped book
called Book by the rest of the universe, does go about, on its other hand,
desecrating, chopping and selling and destroying for profit anything it can get
its mitts on. Crop futures, metals and golds, jewelry, sticks and bonds,
landholdings, real-estate development, shops and malls, stadiums and palaces,
right down to the smallest, crummiest slum-lord houses you can locate. All Jews,
these owners and strivers, betting their days against the days of the Earth.
Winning for a while, and then losing, but losing with style and a vile ritual.
Crazy stuff. I never considered Schwartz a Jew; just his habits made him that;
and everyone returns, anyway, at the end, to their original configurations right
before they fade away. If you read Bellow's book about Delmore Schwartz, you
learn lots - the Princeton to Frenchtown area car rides in that big, fat Buick,
the old farmhouse on the slope down to the Delaware River in which he and his
wife lived for a while, all his craziness at Princeton, and all the rest. We've
searched numerous times, as well, for that old farmhouse, or at least its
location - but have never been able to come up with anything from the cursory
place-clues given.
I was very little aware of this as I grew up. Avenel did have a synagogue,
and only one friend, Howie Belfer, went to it, that I knew of. We'd see him
walking on Saturday mornings on his way to temple as we were (happy Christians,
all of us 10 year-olds) boarding the Saturday school bus at the Shop-Rite near
the church, which would take us bowling-league members to our weekly three-game
Saturday morning kid's bowling league. Yes, he got belittled some and hooted and
hollered at from the passing schoolbus windows, but little was ever made of it
but fun and good-natured jabs about Saturday religion. I think that was
suburbia's doing - had I been a city boy, amidst the teeming streets where
immigrant and East European and Russian/Kiev leftovers still hung around, with
their myriad synagogues dotting the blocks, I'd have known all about that. As it
was, Avenel was a sacrosanct Christian place, with little else said or offered.
Funny thing too, when I had that magazine job, its main office and the location
to which I had to go for hiring and interview, etc., was in Perth Amboy, at a
busy downtown intersection, right across from a synagogue, a solid, plain,
rather non-descript square, brick building. I took little notice, and little
note there was. I'd see those small, quiet men, dressed in their black
longcoats, shuffling by in the half dark, on their ways to or from whatever it
was they silently did within their drab palace. I simply never bothered myself
with it. The last I knew, in Avenel the synagogue was a cable TV company
headquarters, just off Route One.
There's so much for me to record here, put down, type. It can't be done in
the usual, expository fashion, or at least I don't wish to do it in that manner,
so what you're seeing is an amalgamation of many things - all put together,
pretty much ignoring time and sequence. I am, however, mindful, of the need both
to tell things and put things down, as informational and real material and, at
the same time, keep you, as reader, engrossed and interested enough to continue.
I'm not that aware of how others have done this task, but I'm throwing in bits
and pieces of everything that comes to me as I'm constructing it. This makes,
perhaps for lurches and outrageous jumps or gaps, but I like that.
One interesting early memory I have, from Bayonne, is of the first time I
saw someone watching a television - I remember it pretty well, oddly enough.
Guessing I was four years old, I can recall my father taking me up a few stairs
into someone's house or apartment - no names or specific places remembered. In
this location was a large room, seemingly expansive and painted white, or in
light colors. In the middle of this room was a man, seated on a small chair -
regular chair, not a large or upholstered sitting chair, just a chair - and in
front of him, perched atop a cabinet or something, was a television. He was
sitting quite close to it, maybe two or three feet from it at most. As we
entered, he looked our way, sort of a sideways glance, and I could see the
screen - he was watching a baseball game. I was flabbergasted; by the image, by
the scene, by the idea of someone being able to watch a sports game. In
hindsight, of course, it seems ridiculous, but it was the first time for me - it
made this man, whoever he was, seem to be so regal, wise and worldly, having the
world at his command, being able to view a remote event, take it in, react to
it, and then take of it (he and my father had started to talk about the game). I, and it (the TV)
just stood there, mute, weirdly in the middle of the room, not against a
wall or anything, as is done today. That's really all I remember, but
it was a harbinger of
so much to come - the distant future world had, it seemed, already set
up a
foothold in this old and dusty, black and white (again) past. It is said
the
time overlaps and folds upon itself, with some bleed-throughs and
escapes from
one time into another - this would be a good, though very plain,
instance of
that. Who this man was and why we were there, I never knew, and still
don't.
What does it mean, I wonder, when something still startles?
The first television we had was in Avenel, I suppose about 1956. I don't
remember much what was broadcast, but the television itself was a cabinet-style,
small screen which was hidden behind two half-doors which opened out to show the
television screen. In other words, when it was closed one wasn't exactly aware
it was a television - it looked much like a large, stand-up radio cabinet, with
a cloth-woven section at the bottom where sound came out (the speakers were here
concealed), and the closed doors, being of nice, polished wood, made - along
with the rest of the upright cabinet - a rather sturdy and attractive-looking
piece of furniture. It was, of course a tube TV, meaning it had to warm up for a
few minutes in order to come on; there were test-patterns, an odd hum, and an
slowly expanding white from black image-circle as it turned on or off. I can
only barely remember various early shows - more as time went on - Mrs. Goldberg,
Howdy-Doody, Ted Mack's Amateur Hour, Roy Rogers, the Lone Ranger, Milton Berle,
things such as that. Later, perhaps, the usual things such as Million Dollar
Movie, 77 Sunset Strip, etc. Never really made much of an impression upon me for
content or episodic stuff. Out in the swamps of Carteret, I recall, there were a
few broadcast towers for WOR, or Channel 9, or something. It was an unusual
fixation, how the sweep of television and mass media seemed to slowly slide over
the nation, or the area of the nation, of course, that I knew. Not until the
1960 election, all that Kennedy and Nixon stuff, and then, later, the Cuban
Missle Crisis - that strange October weekend when everyone was sure the world
was about to be blown up by competing atomic bombs lobbed from the Soviet Union
and America, at each other, - was it ever really obvious how engrained it had
become and how entrenched already the collectivist and communitarian emotions it
portrayed and threw around had taken root. From Ipana toothpaste to booze and
cigarettes, the nation was already in the swirl of being told what to like, do,
own and want. Even though it had (already) become a commodity to be peddled, sold
and - most importantly - controlled.
There's a line in a Patti Smith book, quoting something from a silly Jackie
Curtis play in which a male character playing against a female called Penny
Arcade says something like 'he could take her or leave her / and he took her and
then he left.' When I was in New York City I remember the LaMama Theater troupe,
from which this came. I remember their location and their playing - a lot of
that was important to me but I kept it too all at arm's length. I don't know why
I never got involved in anything. There was a certain form of paralysis that was
always running through me and, in addition to that, in my own estimation I was
just an awfully stupid, head-in-the-sand bystander to so much of what I saw. Had
I some moxie, nerve or balls, I would have stepped forward, but I never did. All
along the Bowery, back then, were start-up Off-Off Broadway groups tinkering
with language, attitude and stage directions - exciting stuff. But a lot of it,
like that Penny Arcade quite, just did nothing inside of me to cause commitment
or excitation. It was all either anger or irony, and I pretty much detested both
of those qualities. Irony kills. Irony is smug. It's self-reflective, vain and
ignoble. Anger is always just anger; unwashed venom, a spit back into the face
of a parent or an image'd idea of superiors and controls. I needed neither of
that - it spoke to nothing inside of me and it looked back to nothing very great
at all. Tradition and artistic lineage was out the window with these people -
they wanted to funk-out, shout, scream, holler and offend as much as anything
else. Again, the ongoing Vietnam War didn't help any of that. It made gleeful
idiots of everyone involved in protesting it or, by connection, associating
their work with it in some fashion - junk to junk, and the rest be damned. I, in
fact, walked around for a while with a purloined copy, a thin pamphlet format,
of Tradition and Individual Talent, by T. S. Eliot. It's a rather conservative
but sensible screed which relates an artist's talent (work) to the referential
and legacy development it brings out from older, previous and canonical work(s)
of the past - and it uses that criteria as an absolute judging point for new
work - leaving out the raw, the emotive, scream and - to many - the 'modern' of
modern. Whatever. I used it and read it carefully to keep both my boundaries and
my borders intact and recognizable. It always did seem to me that, once those
legacy limits were gone or lost, any resultant work would, or could be just
high-school gibberish masquerading as high art because the 'artist' wanted it to
be so. Simple junk; without complication, and totally subjective - like so much
else today. By 1967 all that was already well on its way. It started with the
gibberish the Marx Brothers peddled from their ghetto, but - even before that -
was well underway.
37. When I was in the hospital at the time of the train crash - which I've already mentioned - one thing I noticed was that, I guess because of crowding, people had been placed in the hallways - hospital beds with people in them, in the hallways instead of rooms or wards. (This was still a time when there were what were called 'wards', which is what I was in). It was a large room into which, on open-style floor space, some thirty or so beds and patients were arranged. When privacy was needed, each bed had a curtain around it which could be pulled shut. After I was pretty much recovered, and up and about with crutches, I used to go around, on the crutches, just moving about to see what the place was like. In this trips I always included the hallway walk; and one thing I noticed, and have never seen since, nor really understood, was that there were people with raw steak, or raw meat on their face wounds. Perplexing to me. A black eye, or a bruised face, or whatever, would get them a raw piece of meat to put on the wound - so that there'd be people laying about with meat on their face. I never asked about it, but never got any answers either - was this a common practice? A primitive cure?
Also, in that hospital, from my hospital bed, I could look out to the
street below - about 5 stories down - and just watch what was
passing. I did that often enough, to pass the time (I do not remember there
being any television or other such pastime). It remained interesting to me to
watch the small figures down below; the cars and trucks, and all that milling
around on the Perth Amboy street. It was like looking through water or
something - silence, no noise, people and objects moving about,
seemingly somehow in a slow motion. I was at one remove form the world below. I
could sense and follow what was happening, but had no way of reaching out to
interact or co-exist; almost as if that 'present' wasn't really a 'present' at
all, instead just some form of another time's playing things out. I liked that
feeling. I felt good about that insulated space between. I never talked about
it, but it just was.
One time, when I was still in traction - that's when one's arms
and/or legs are stretched out in harnesses, rendering one as if frozen-stiff and
strapped in place - I remember I had a male nurse, somehow I
really did not like. At 7 or 8, it seemed creepy to me to have a man doing
this stuff. One day, in the changing of sheets, he had me moved or lifted while
he pulled off and changed the sheets below me. I remember it causing me
excruciating pain for some fifteen or more seconds and his ignoring my
entreaties and cries for whatever time it took. I can still recall his somewhat
plump figure, Asian face, in his very light-blue scrub clothes or nurse-aid
clothes, or whatever he wore. I really disliked him.
Another time I can recall my grandmother coming up to visit me
- it was nearly the end of visiting hours, and she had my sister, Donna,
with her - under age 12, Donna was not supposed to visit. My
grandmother, I was told, had told my sister to 'stand on my shoes, put your
face into my stomach, and be still.' My grandmother wrapped her big Winter coat
around them both, and walked with my sister on her shoes - walked
right past everyone, right to the elevator, and brought her right up.
I don't know by what things people remember points of their own lives, or
what events they memorialize to bring them back to something - like
Proust's madeleine (a sort of pastry), or the smell of someone's cooking, or
whatever it may be - but I have always used my own markers by which
to remember my time. These markers, however, do nothing to offer explanations or
reasons for things which still befuddle or annoy me, and I find myself yet
holding grudges and annoyances over things people did to me. There are many of
these, for instance: I can recall my parents, and my father, in particular,
always mentioning the importance of the March arrival of income tax refund
money. His point was that the money came at the right time, each year, for
purchasing 'new Easter outfits for the kids'. In itself, that's nothing much,
except actually it is a waste of money to be buying ridiculously overly 'dressy'
clothes of that nature for a silly one-day event. I would get a cheesy blue suit
from Robert Hall's, new shoes, a tie, etc. And, maddeningly, each year a new
fedora: hoodlum hat, a gangster hat, a stupid, old-country, old-man's hat. There
are pictures of me in these lame outfits. Still worse though, compounding this
all, in my father's (and mother's) steaming brain was always a need for my
sister and I to then go out in these outfits, whatever the weather, unless
totally inclement, and walk about, up and down the block, parading around as it
were, so that others, the neighbors, etc., could see that we had new clothes! I
guess it was his way (my father) of showing others that he had enough money, was
doing well enough, to nicely dress his children - to wit, that this
stupid Easter charade proved to others that he was of sound family and
parentage. It drove me crazy - when young, I had no choice but to do
it. As I grew older, I became adamant that this was not acceptable. I would
storm out, instead playing basketball in the street, at a local telephone-pole
hoop someone had installed. Defiance had set in. All over new clothes and a
hoodlum hat. I never knew what they were thinking, nor what forceful sense of
foolish pride had taken them over to do this to children. I sometimes thought my
grandmother was the only sensible one around - she'd come to visit,
and, on Sundays, have absolutely nothing to do with the go-to-church stuff the
household engaged in - my father's big suits, his fancy ties and
tie-tacks and chains, and my mother's clothes and our prancing off, en masse, to
mass. No matter what pleading took place for Grandma to come to church with us,
she'd refuse saying, 'no,no, you run along and you do my praying for me.' I was
always in fear of her death and her going straight to Hell.
I guess there's always been something about tradition that irks me. All
those old-world people - much like the ones I'd see in Elizabeth as
I tried selling them magazines - in their little walk-up apartments
and half-houses in large, rambling structures, packed in with food-smells,
things cooking, five or six kids running about, pictures of Jesus and the Virgin
on the walls, old Palm Sunday palms still drooping over the picture edges,
hallways stinking of food. It always seemed a too-wrong attachment to something
that need not be - like the more modern day South Asians of Pakistan
and Indian descent, newly arrived here, who are now seen still clutching their
old ways, walking the sidewalks in flowing garb, saris, head wraps, etc. All
this clothing stuff - my own Easter tortures or their concurrent
relapses into their older worlds, all were bad. I never understand any of that.
I remember, one time, also in Elizabeth, during my magazine-selling days, this
one house I'd gone into, Spanish of some sort, and out of which came, following
after me, and staying with me for blocks, badgering me and stalking me, two
wonderfully interesting teen-age girls from those old-type families. They were
not sisters, just friends who lived near each other. As I walked, we talked;
yes, they were ingeniously interested in me, who I was, from where, what was I
doing now, here, etc. I was happily made aware that these lovely girls had lives
and spirits of their own - I too wanted them, but of course let it
all go. So much of inherited, born-into life is nothing but entrapment or
enslavement, things we have, by dint of personal strength, to get away from,
break free of. Life can otherwise be a horrid and dead-end trap.
I was brought up amidst so much stupidity it was laughable. Sunday dinners
on time, the same time, each Sunday at 2pm - trays of Italian food,
the preparations for which had gotten underway the night previous -
steamy windows, pots of pasta, gravies and sauces, etc. It was all brought out
on Sundays, and some sort of ritualized, eating pandemonium would have to take
place. Salad, olives, my fathers jug of Country Red wine by Ernest and Julio
Gallo, which had taken the place of the chianti or whatever it was that used to
come in those straw-covered bottles. My mother's ladies club meetings, the
Sodality Society at church (some form of women's thing), Novenas, the
Minstrel Society (again at church), which staged, all through the 50's, a yearly
black-face minstrel show, a real sham, for the totally white-faced parish of St.
Andrew's, Avenel. By what power of thought were these people ever thinking or
being led? All quite strange. Why do people dedicate themselves to doctrine? Why
do they disguise and equip their fixations with the heavy hand of rote and rule,
organizational command and stricture? It was pretty apparent to me that many of
these young wives had fond attachments to being around the young priests who ran
these things. Carnival nights on the church lawns were pathetic -
folding chairs in a circle, young wives, chattering endlessly with glee, almost
flirtatiously, with Father Pedata, some young, newly-posted Italian priest over
whom they women swooned. Many years later, after I myself had gone through the
ringer of Catholic stupidity politics, seminary, et al., I just shook my head
and wondered why; and then realized, finally, that people are so doomed, feel
themselves so beat and pulverized, that they roll over and let anything take
control. When I was getting ready to leave for the seminary, the first time, my
Aunt Mary, from Bayonne - quite pious, and overjoyed that I'd soon
be among the elect, studying for the priesthood (as if it was a shortcut to
Heaven for family members) - lovingly sewed nametags onto every bit
of clothing being taken by me (which had been made mandatory in the arrival
instructions). Can you imagine how almost medieval this entire trick was, in
1961? Formal clothes, personal napkins, having a weekly laundry-service
pre-arranged, for all these things to be name-tagged and sorted? I was aghast,
in my own way - these people, before I'd even gotten started, were
already enforcing a form of medieval-royalty/elect status structure that I could
not fathom. Could you imagine the Last Supper under the tutelage of these
hombres? Cloth napkins, polished gold cruets for wine and beer, finger-plates
for greasy tips. Crazy shit already, let alone the perfectly folded and washed
and nametagged clothes for the shrouds at burial.
Everything changes, I suppose. As a hometown, Bayonne was just a story to
me. Going back now, it's a junk heap, in the same miserable fashion any other
medium-sized urban town is a junk heap, at least around the urban east. If it
had ever possessed any charm, it was long gone. My father would tell me tales of
his boyhood, foster-home days. Walking the streets, shining shoes for a nickel
or a dime, wooden buildings, alleyways, car pits. My grandmother would talk of
horses and wagons, ice men, vegetables hawkers, truant officers, poorhouses,
welfare inspectors and coal and wood vendors. She lived all by herself in a
wonderfully tiny, cramped but nice, apartment in a large brown house on one of
the Avenues. I would go in there and picture her and my mother and the two
sisters (my aunts) in there all together - growing up, maturing, meeting their
men at dances, seeing off soldiers, and the rest. They each married out of that
house, leaving my grandmother there to room by herself. She always seemed to get
by rightly. My father took me back once to one of the homes where he was raised
as a foster-kid, 'Mum Giordano' he called that lady. When we got there, the
house was gone - just a big hole in the ground at the end of one of those
numbered Bayonne Streets I'll never find again. He was taken aback, and, for a
moment, I knew he was lost. But he returned and began talking of it as if it was
still there.
Once he moved, whatever Avenel meant to him, the house into which he bought
and moved became his own personal castle, a tangible achievement that had
brought him, seemingly, up from nothing. He was always very proud of his damned
white picket fence - which I often had to help in the painting of - and, later
the large room extension built upon the back of the house, 1959-60, mostly by
him and my uncles, alone, but towards the end with a certified contractor to
ensure code conformity and all that needed for occupancy. I remember the digging
of the foundation hole, the carting of all the cinder blocks and the mixing of
cement, throwing it down, ladling and troweling it, the studwork, two-by-fours,
joinings, doorways and windows, and then nearly at the end, the breaking through
of the back of the house into the new room, breaking down what had been an
outside wall. That was a stirring moment, fraught with - to me - energy and
possibility and wonder. Quite an achievement. In the same way, just before that,
I remember he erected and put up that fancified white picket fence all by
himself, Saturday and Sunday after Saturday and Sunday. He'd, on Sundays, get
up, shower and shave, put on his horrid cologne, his big, broad tie and clip,
slurp down noisily a coffee or two, and, with us in tow, ride off to church (a
mere three or four blocks, easily walkable). Then he'd come back, get the Newark
Star Ledger, with all those colorful comics and Parade magazine, and spend an
hour or so reading it all. Then, to work clothes and to work - fence again, or
whatever else needed doing. My mother once told me that, when they were going
out, they'd go to a movie and - in those days movies were preceded by a cartoon
or two - she'd be humiliated by how loud his laughter was. She said the only
time she ever really saw him laugh was at those damned cartoons before the
movies.
Everyone is different - that's not saying everyone is difficult, not
everyone is. Some are easier than others. My father was difficult. He seemed
made from another fabric entirely. When I was very young he seemed like a total
he-man to me; short, rugged, muscular, tough, brash, fiery. As a young man he'd
been a sparring partner in a few Jersey City gyms, getting battered I guess for
a few dollars pay. Back in the 1920's I'd had a great uncle or something, last
name of Ballerino, whom I was told was the Featherweight Boxing Champion of the
World. That was, anyway, on my mother's side, and had nothing to do with my
father, but still the connection for me was there. I met him once - he was old.
He looked worn and battered, but still lively. If Charley Ballerino was a
featherweight - I never really knew if such a category even existed, or if it
was lighter than lightweight, or what it meant - he seemed normal sized to me. I
was young, and the one thing I remember somehow was him showing me, by means of
the cigar he smoked, how he could make smoke come out his ear or ears
- big 'cauliflower' ears, from boxing, I was told
- I do forget. I don't know what he did, or what he was up to, but to
my young witnessing of it, it seemed to work. It was a big joke. Thinking back
now, I figure it couldn't be; I figure that he must have somehow blown smoke
into his clenched hand and then brought it to his ear and released it, moving
his hand away to make is seem as if the smoke was coming from his ear. I don't
know; I was just a kid. Now, in New York City, in W. 35th street or wherever it
is, I go past Jack Dempsy's Tavern, all filled with old boxing stuff by a
legendary boxing-sport guy, and wonder about it - was Charley Ballerino ever
here, was any of this real, did this stuff really happen? I don't know much else
about these Ballerino people, a family name, a side of the family from somewhere
before my grandmother. I was told they ended up in Spring Lake, New Jersey, some
of them, living pretty good; while others of the name had remained in Bayonne.
Just don't know, but I figure, in all actuality, Charley must be buried
somewhere around here. Perhaps there's boxing gloves or even a feather etched
onto his gravestone. A part of me wishes I knew more of all this stuff - both
sides of the family - but I just don't. No one ever much talked about it, and I
never drew out from anyone any more than what they wished to say. It was, in
fact, only in the waning years of the survivors' lives that much of this
death-in-prisons and criminal lineage stuff came out. Untold stories become
retold stories, with no real knowledge between either. It always seems like rich
families, or families with money and achievement and lineage and legacy behind
them, know every little tale and story of their forbears. It's the poor, broken
and dumb families that seem to know nothing if it at all - if they can even
trace a family line to follow. For me, I just seem to come from blackness.
As deniable as all that is, there's a certain segment of personal identity
that wishes to know things like 'from whence have I come?' People change names,
people make up stories, people escape identities, but - no matter - it's all
still there. It's no matter now. I visit, here and there, graves of elders and
stuff, and am frightfully unmoved. It's do divorced from me, over all this time,
that it's all lost any meaning. My father's hoodlum father, whose grave I did
find, just last January, is buried in Queens somewhere, in a huge, huge
cemetery. I found it after we did much searching and toil, in a rented car. A
freezing cold Winter day, in a white, rented FIAT 500. My wife Kathy, and a
friend, Donald, both far more insistent than me on sticking it out and staying
with the task until we found what we were seeking. The grave was found, a few
hours later, tucked away near the base of a stone wall for the Brooklyn-Queens
Expressway, elevated overhead, and with much noise, whizzing its traffic by. in
the days of the burial (my Aunt Mae later said) the roadway was all at ground
level. In the intervening fifty years or so, it had been elevated, and the
trestles for the high-up roadway bisected the cemetery. He was at the wall,
presently the end of one center half of the overall grounds. Much like Delmore
Schwartz, in fact, his burial was apparently an afterthought, done by others.
It's as if he was stuffed into a grave as a last minute decision.. He's the
third name, buried beneath two other people, on the stone - family people I do
not know. He had a second family after he abandoned my grandmother and sending
her direction towards that nuthouse scenario I've mentioned. Theresa and
somebody Entrona, read their names, as well as his, on the stone - Giuseppe
Entrona, 1883-1945, something like that. My Aunt Mae told me he died the day
after Mussolini was hung, killed, hung upside down. She was glad that he lived
to be able to witness Mussolini's downfall - as he was a great backer of
Mussolini and fascism too. She took satisfaction in the fact that he had to
witness the downfall of that which he so ardently supported. That's just another
one of those conundrums in my life - my best aunt's straightforward attitude of
hate and glee, the strange path this guy must have trod and the destruction he
left in his wake. I know I'll never get to the bottom of this; 'no how', as they
say.
39. I remember when Adlai Stevenson died. He fell dead, of
a heart attack, on a London Street. I remember when T. S. Eliot died. I remember
Harry Truman. It took weeks and weeks for him to die; and I used to imagine him
slowly being passed by countless atomic bomb victims, which accounted for all
the time elapsed before he died, and they having to witness to him what he'd
done: skin peeling, faces afire, limbs savaged, etc. Of course, the rational
part of me said that wasn't happening, and the rational part of me also said
'somebody had to die so as to end that brutal Pacific War.' Who knows? It's the
kind of fucked-up choice of evils people are still talking about. Poor dumb
Harry Truman, haberdasher from Springfield, Missouri and from Boss Prendergast's
political machine. I certainly don't know. Hundreds of people died in the years
I was watching - from clunkers like Babe Ruth and Dwight Eisenhower to
whiz-bangers like Sylvia Plath and Jean Paul Sartre. That Pope who was only Pope
for like 23 days, between Pope Paul and then John Paul II. I fully expected the
next Pope to be Pope John Paul Ringo George I. Never happened. Patrice Lumumba.
Dag Hammerskjold. I have a book he wrote, which I read carefully way back then.
It's called 'Markings', and was a nice exposure to me of the neat, patterned,
thoughtful and orderly mind of diplomats, politicians, clerks and bureaucrats
everywhere. It seems to me, now in retrospect, that the deaths most people talk
about, even the big stupid stars and such, are the entertainment people, the
rock and rollers, the legendary 'stars' of stage and screen. None of that ever
bothered me a bit. Al Jolsen dies, big deal. All those sleaze-bag rockers, big
deal. Hank Williams, Woody Guthrie; none of them meant anything to me in their
passings, and I still don't know what the big deal was. I hate pop culture. I
detest all those effete, sickening stars and personalities and all those lies
they tell. I've seen the house in Philadelphia where John Coltrane lived. I've
visited the places Charlie Parker lived, and the upper Fifth Ave., NYC place
where he died - some baroness's fancy apartment. He died while laughing himself
to death over some stupid TV show.
Back in the early 60's I remember the barber chair at Tom's Barber Shop,
and before that John's, the one with the 'dirty' magazines while you waited, and
then, before even that, Louie Gallo's - Italian immigrant guy on the back corner
by the underpass. On his barber-room's floor, in a big glass and wood case, was
a huge model of the Cunard liner he'd come over on, from Italy, years before.
His waiting room, his area, was impressive in an old-world way I'd not seen
before or since. Tiles, models and pictures, a big, old, reclining if you
wished, barber chair in the room's center, with white linens and cloths
everywhere around. He talked a lot, but I never remember now what he said.
John's was down the street, towards Rahway Ave., and had a totally different
feel : adult, sleazy, quiet, greasier, sneaky. Men's magazines all about -
pictures of women with bare breasts, close-cropped bathing shots, and the like.
Back then, it was a big deal, it's where I learned what tits were - you have to
remember that it wasn't until about 1970 that beaver-shots, pussy-photography,
total nudity and then spread-eagle and very graphic photography, hit the
magazine stands in the open. In fact, the guys coming home from Vietnam, I was
told, were pleased and shocked with their 'reading material' as supplied by the
government for them on those long plane-trips home. It was all new, not that
those guys needed a picture to know what there was. Ask any Vietnamese
pleasure-girl from the 60's. But, as I was saying before this, it was at Tom's
where most of this 'world-politics' absorption occurred. I'd be sitting there
and the Congo Wars, which were all then underway - breakaway Katanga Province
and all that - would be being reported on by the radio voices. Lumumba and Jomo
Kenyatta (by that name the personified Father of Kenya) too. Strange and poetic
names, things I picked up on - all those trails of people and refugees, the dead
and the slaughtered, the issues I was just getting knowledgeable about.
Remember, this was the very early 60's, and by '62 for sure I was gone from this
scene; but it was all there early on, pre-dated Vietnam by a few years. That was
the underlayment upon which the later carpet of Southeast Asia issues were put
on. All things build, and here they began building slowly. Of course, I knew as
little of these issues really as any of the local guys sitting around here did :
old barbershop cronies, old town guys, each with a story of their own. None of
them really knew what was going on and none of them, either, possessed the means
of the inclination to care. It was just there : a new President, a few new
issues, Africans killing each other, and the rest. For me, it was a slow film
playing the background of everything else.
When you're young, everything seems different; everything. The simplest
matters haven't yet taken shape - Summer seems forever, and anyone's idea of
paradise has berries and apples and fruit a plenty for the picking. But the
reality is - and you only realize this later - that there are seasons, that
everything takes time, and that nothing happens all at once or all together.
Those fruits and berries, they take a long time. Spring brings the flowers and
blossoms and buds, and then the season of warmth and light goes on, things
mature and grow to fruition, and then, only later, as the last result, have the
flowers and buds turned to seed - the seed which is really the fruit, the apple
with the seeds, and all the rest. What could be viewed as glorious - those fine
apples and fruits - is, another way, able to be viewed as a sad, lengthening
finishing, a tired running to the end. Young people don't have that grasp of
time. All things are awash in a 'Now' of some strange and un-substance place.
When I arrived in New York City, I suddenly realized that Life, and the world,
has a rhythm of its own I had been pretty much unaware of - the waves and waves
of people and vehicles brushing back and forth, all of that, had a
five-day-a-week feel to it, the inner crestings of days with their morning
rushes, their business hours, their lunchtimes, all those people swarming and
milling, eating, to and fro, and then the slow onrush of exit each evening. The
day itself was like a organism as it expanded, gorged and disgorged, absorbed,
moved and threw out its teeming minions. People talked and chatted, made noises
and scattered themselves about. Lines at the kiosks, delis, counters and
restaurants. Stores filled with people carrying their bags and packages - all
heedless of anything else, any other place that I could tell, as they stormed
through their day's rhythm; Monday, Tuesday, etc. I would see it all, again as
an outsider, and witness-to-realize the fabric of Life - not quite natural but
vibrant and strong nonetheless. All those other years, school kid stuff,
home-life, I had been pretty much inured to all that, not knowing much else
except the household timing of routines and the school bell timing of rigors and
dates. None of that really existed elsewhere - New York had a time and a feel of
its own, and a place - nothing of which I'd ever really been exposed to. Us
'painter kids' from the Studio School, we all had big heads and vain-glorious
ideas, but I do remember Steve Sloman, on Eighth Street with me, and his
girlfriend, commenting about the frenzied Weds. evening traffic all around us :
'Look at this! It's Wednesday, what do you expect - look at them all. If I had
to work a five-day hourly job I'd be crazy right now too; Wednesday, middle
night of the week, halfway through it, they're going nuts.' No, not really much
of a comment, but pretty indicative of what we were about and how we lived. All
those people, and all they're goings back and forth, they're all probably dead
by now, most of them - all that perspiration and agita, strife and frenzy, I do
hope it got them all what they wanted, and happiness and wisdom too. I never
shared it, and sometimes, right now, I still rue my 'other' path, which I
followed faithfully ever.
When I got to New York City I knew nothing about it - I had no clue as to
how other people lived, if their families often visited NYC or if they held some
knowledge of it, but all I knew was that my father and mother had never given
any exposure to it in my life. I'd been there a few times, in the family car, to
make childhood visits of one sort or another, but these only amounted to three
or four at most. I found myself thrown onto the streets in a momentous fashion
with very little backing me up. Each moment became a new rolling out of the
scroll to a deeper realization of where I was at and what being it demanded from
me. Experience, I guess, is a sometimes thing - there were people that I knew
right off who could sense I was a rube. None of that lasted long, because I
adapted quickly and well. Once it becomes apparent to a person that the
environment he is living in accepts, demands and presupposes certain things - or
else - you pretty much go along with that. I had my tough times. I've written
about them - other places and other formats - but they all occurred.
It was, I reiterate, a very strange time and a few very particular and
weird years. Wild turbulence breaking out, an almost-insurrection in various
parts of the land, the Vietnam War and its opposition both becoming violent,
nagging and sadistic, the fleeing from authorities, running from the draft,
fighting back or hiding out, having an illegal apartment set-up which processed,
harbored and filtered runaway military people, quite often who arrived with
varied stolen military things as well, routing them to Canada, running a front,
decoying an encroaching investigative opposition, and just managing with wits
enough to stay present and alive on the streets of the Lower East Side - not
yet, then, even really a proper noun. I stepped right into the middle of all
that, and became a component of it as well. There were a few deaths. There were
two or three particularly into which parts of my activity were involved. Nothing
came of anything, for me. The way it all went down, I never really knew what
happened or who got bagged, took raps, fled or did their times. I had learned
about invisibility, about secreting a life of one's own in the midst of a very
visible turmoil which also loved to garner people, take names and pin perfect
identities, like spotlights, over people's heads. Not for me, ever. I went
everywhere, did everything, knew people, but never in the light, not ever
seeking prominence. Billie Jo and Holly, for instance, a perfectly lovely hippy
couple above me on the next floor, on 11th Street : they ran a presentable
household, a little pot-smoked love-nest, filled with joy, spaciness and enough
'love' to go around. Both of them were poster-people for the hippy movement :
dresses, hair, hats, pot, drugs, food and animals. No babies, then. One time,
when my father and small sister came to visit, I took them upstairs, to meet
Billie Jo. He tried to turn my father onto pot-smoking, and tried, in his
presence, to hook me up with a supply. My father freaked, almost getting angry;
to Billie Jo and to Holly, it was all a great, fun, freak-show, seeing the
uptight Dad dude going antsy over something suspected. Only now can I laugh. At
the moment it occurred, it was pretty scary all around, knowing, as I did, my
father's temper and paranoia. Lucky for everyone, I was able to detour around
the entire scene, and we all left friends. Billie Jo and Holly had broken their
apartment (same floor plan as mine) into wondrous multi-level spaces, with
hangings and interior steps, and an elevated bed. As if the top portion of a
bunk bed, steps to get up, space beneath for desk, table, books, weed. It was
pretty paradisiacal, for them - and really pleasant to see, for me. One day, the
two of them just disappeared. They were gone. I don't know, to this day, what
happened. Everything was left in place, but no 'them'. It was sad, for me, to
see something so cool and sweet just dematerialize, as if a dream of something
that goes off in smoke. Just down the street, there were two more murders;
bodies found in a trunk, which just happened to be my grandmother's steamer
trunk with which her husband, my grandfather, had come over from 'the old
country' with. His belongings long ago gone, she'd kept the trunk for years, and
gave it to me, which I then used as my personal portmanteau as I eventually
settled into 509 e. 11th. In my absence, over time, it had somehow disappeared,
and only at this time did the chopped up two dead bodies (the press called it
'The Hippy Murders') turn up in it. Again, a lucky call somehow for me, since no
fellow-up ever came my way. I forget their names now, but I know the crime well.
It's documented in lots of places as the 'unsolved hippy murders.' A block down
from me, down at Avenue A, where I'd left off my cat, 'Blake', when I could no
longer care for him, with two girls I knew. They cared for him well, though I
never really saw him again. That cat, for a time, was my constant companion,
moved all about with me, and was a friend of sorts. I still hate myself for what
I did - an emotional thing to this day, the stupidity by which I was possessed
to lose him. Sounds wimpy and weak-willed all on my part, to be still ruing a
lost cat. But, too bad and fuck ya' then, if you don't get it. I tell people to
this day that I have some time due in Hell because of the way I treated various
pets early on. Not now. Now I dot and fawn and won't ever let go. Making amends;
making up for bad times.
Anyway, these two kids, this boy and girl, were killed by a crazed black
dude, angry and roving. In the deep middle of the night. He first fucked her
brains out, then killed them both. He was always on the make and the look for
drugs, drug money and any catch he could get. Whatever, pretty much, I knew of
509 e. 11th, he did too, from being around. He was a creep. Billie Jo and Holly
disappeared. Well I'll be. A little later, these two kids brutally murdered in
the furnace basement of a building by Ave. A and 11th, left there and
dismembered and then stuffed in a trunk, after being brutally stabbed and
killed. Any number of reasons come to the fore : drugs, drug money, IOU's,
sexual paybacks, IOU's some more, drugs, naivete, innocence, calumny, anger,
venom, fury, hatred. OK, let's throw in Vietnam avoidance, free food, free
shelter, somewhere to stay, promiscuity, drugs and money again. They're dead.
He's gone. End of story - unsolved hippy murders. Grandma's trunk in the
evidence file, and me on the run once more.
I had to think - what the fuck am I doing? I had to think - how can I keep
all this at bay, keep them away from me? As I said, I chose invisibility, went
to live in the real underground, the deep-level basement beneath the old Whitney
Mansion, which in the 1920's had absorbed two more brownstones, consolidated and
became the Whitney Museum of American Art. The first location - until that crazy
monstrosity was built uptown along Madison Ave. in the later years. What is it
they say, 'nice place, but I wouldn't want to live there.' That's funny. Funny
because I did live in the first one, quite nicely and joyously. Warmth, shelter
and everything else too. I hunkered down, went about my creative business,
stared writing things down, began working hard at writing, in fact, and art -
though, to be factual, I dwindled a bit on the art front as my wonderland of
interior work began pressing me in other ways : writing mostly, ideas and study
too. The idea of 'Art', like that, became too physical, too demanding, tangible.
It always needed borders, and reckoning. It took canvas, and stretcher bars,
paints and supplies. I found I could get by much fleeter with paper and pen. It
wasn't secret enough. It was 'product'. I stayed with it, and I learned too how
to get by doing just what I had to and not much more, as far as art and
productivity were concerned. It didn't bother me. I learned; I was immersed in
books and knowledge. I could talk a genius down from a bridge. I learned that
easily enough. I had become a ghost, living as a ghostly presence in the
basement of an ancient brownstone already crowded with the ghosts of art and
dead artists and rich people and landed gentry. New York's gilded upper crust.
How had I ended up here : by what masterful means was I able to switch times and
places and inhabit something completely other than what had been. I was
timeless, never in place, but I lived deeply in one, two, or more worlds;
talking the words with the people who spoke them - back and forth, nothing
material existed. I was ensconced darkly in a sulf'rous netherworld of spirits
and ghosts, messages and cryptic sayings and ideas - into the street before me,
back in to the rooms, out along the old alley in the back, and disappeared again
- just like any of that light and flame from any of those famed gas lanterns
along MacDougal Alley. I lived a ghostly grayness.
I liked the train yards. I liked getting off the train in the early morning
Monday light, on days when I'd have spent a Sunday back in Avenel, and arriving
in time to see all those people running about and the line-up of trains coming
and going. Outside the train station, behind the massive post-office, were the
open-air rail-yards. Just tons of track and trains, waiting, piled up, being
cleaned or repaired, trainmen scurrying about, workers and haulers and porters
and anything else. It was noisy and always busy. I loved all that. Tolstoy wrote
somewhere, referring to the monotony of train-travel, the repetition, the
carelessness, the sameness of all that and its 'contempt for harmony', that
'train travel, the railroad, is to travel as a whore is to love.' I never felt
that at all, in fact I was always invigorated and transfixed by all that went
before me. There was a spot along the way to NYC, in Elizabeth, NJ, where the
train would take me past an old section of that creaky, dull little NJ city - a
place not really worth much of anything - and from the west window I'd pass
these amazingly old, tumbled-looking old homes - gigantic homes from the 1880's.
They were fascinating to see - now all beat and dumpy looking, housing multiple
families all crammed in - but the grand houses were still there, proud and
defiant, from another time and place. I always referred to them as 'the Little
Rascal Houses' - meaning that they looked to me as the homes in that kid's show,
where ten or more kids per house would run about, creating havoc and situation
everywhere. It all seemed so distant and old, and right there too. The train
tracks hugged the yards, and I could only wonder when it was that the two met.
It's all gone now, of course; the last of them, a big, dark brown, hulking
structure, was taken down some ten years back, replaced now with a row of tacky,
government duplexes that gobbled up the yard and lands around it. I call it all
evil - Government Housing wherein to keep the poor and make sure they can beat
themselves down and not let 'Gov.' have to do it for them, and Government
Schooling, which is pretty much the same bowl of soup as is the housing. It's
all just another side of reality people don't usually see - or, if they see it,
they are so dull as to pass right over it, not noticing, blinded by their
insipid and personal boredom. Also, up past the meadows, right before the tracks
wound into the tunnel that took the train under the Hudson and into those train
yards, there was an enormous auto junkyard. It too is now gone; but this,
neglected, track-side end of that junkyard had, cluttered and clinging to the
cut trackside land, old 1930's cars, busted up, mounted headlamps and big,
bulbous fenders, just all a'jumble. Various shades of colored rust, purplish
windows, some doors ajar, tires flattened, tilted chassis, the whole bit. It was
amazing, and, of course, the train only allowed about ten seconds of viewing
time, but they were great. It was, again, another world - left-about and still
peeking into this one, but - I swear - only visible to a select few. I really
wanted to escape.
As I look around now, I can see how the world has changed. Everything, for
one thing, has been feminized, even men. The concerns that men peddle, and are
peddled, are weak and effete concerns. The world has, essentially, been taken
over by the weak - gay men, entertainment fags, homosexual designers designing
clothes for women, while hating women at the same time - thus their horrid
designs; the men in ads and commercials are all fags, weak-kneed, temperamental
babies, showing their hissy-fit streaks, their weak-knee'd ideas of things, the
over-emotive, female sides. It's all to the fore. From the Presidents, all of
them, on down. Weakness has taken over - legislation is all about concerns for
the weak, the straddling of others to take care of the weak and the stupid. The
best of society has been forced to slow down and trip up over concern for the
weakest and the slowest of society, while we should be, really, just speeding
along and letting them fall to their wayside. There's no toughness left, and I
don't much care about any of that, nor them. So call me stupid and call me evil,
and every man for himself.
40. I think one of the primary tenets of my 'adult'
existence turned out to be renunciation. Early on, I knew that - for me to best
make sense of the world - the real path had to be renouncing all things. The
place where I'd grown up was filled with people chasing things; little people,
people so stupid they weren't even aware that they could, in reality and by
comparison, get nothing at all - another cheap car, a swimming pool, new stereo,
a vacation here or there, a home entertainment center, any of those things
pretty much were the outside limits of their lives. And why bother? It was all
blather, thunder and fury for nothing. I knew that wasn't to be for me. As
unstructured as this phoney American society proclaimed itself to be, and
especially back then, there were so many unspoken divides and separations
between money classes, religious groups, livelihoods and the rest that anyone
who was not aware of their own limits simply had to be crazy. Getting a bank
note or a GI loan was easy enough, but after that came the really tough stuff :
second mortgages for that cabin by the lake, the car the wife wanted, the new
furniture, the clothes, the boat, the hunting-club membership. No matter.
Everyone, it seemed, who wanted something eventually got it - way over their
head or not - but it was all just 'stuff'. It dug the hole deeper, didn't change
a thing for the good, and still kept the unspoken divide between races,
stations, places, jobs and tenets all in place.
My idea in missionary work to Africa was my own, personal dream of getting
out of it all. The farther away the better. If it took a proselytizing, archaic
religion to get me there, then so be it. I never really fell for much of that
Holy Salvation stuff - all that Catholic hoo-hah about miracles and death and
virgin birth and the rest, topped off by resurrection, rules, laws and church
establishment laws. I could have cared less. Holy Trinity. Yeah, in my most
tender moments I felt Oneness with a God, of some sort, and a few Gods, if it
had to be - but mostly Trinity to me was an A-Bomb testing site in Almagordo,
New Mexico, I think it was, run by hundreds of self-righteous, military creeps.
I knew that any 'establishment structure', speaking with a voice and a
spokesperson, lied. Lied through its teeth, and kept lying to promulgate its
attachment to its own interests and to the lie which fostered those interests.
Anything else was pure bunko. All that high-flying New Frontier Kennedy stuff
was bullshit, and he got what they all deserve, as I saw it. Right on down the
line, they all deserved bullets - bullets for their duplicity, graft, crime and
corruption. Top to bottom. Right where I lived, Walter Zirpolo and Robert Jacks,
two local political leaders and a Mayor, they were all in on the take for years,
using corrupt money to buy land, then selling it right back to a Texas Pipeline
company which then again paid them off to get rights and passages to lay their
filthy eastern transmission gaslines everywhere - every meadow and hollow and
field and woods around had their little free-passage signs attesting to the
presence underground of their pipeline. Back before that it was
power-transmission stanchions everywhere. And after that, nowadays, it's the
same crap with cell-towers and crap everywhere - people selling off towers,
poles and rights - even church steeples - to get payment for cell tower sites.
Jacks and Zirpolo, thankfully, got long jail terms; but that was it - they kept
all their properties and homes, and, in place still, their families are yet.
Right after Zirpolo, the next Mayor, after Walter was carted away, was Ralph
Barone (about 1966), just as big a sleazebag and the others. Him I knew
personally and dealt with from my Appellate Printing job (the same one that took
me to Newark and Philadelphia often, the trips I wrote about previously here).
He was a sleazier greasebag than even the other two - small town politics are
the worst. I can't much put into words the things I saw and felt in that old
City Hall. It's gone now, Woodbridge having torn it down and built up a new one,
hideously proportioned and God knows the corruption and money payoffs and
laundering that went into that, during the McGreevey tenure as mayor. Another
idiot. I knew 'Jim' some fifteen years. He'd come out - when I was involved
heavily in NJ motorcycle politics during the 90's, and flutter about, speaking
and pandering to which ever group I'd assemble and throw before him - usually
100 or so motorcyclists, with family members - any vote is a good vote, to these
bums. Jimmy McGreevey would take questions, make a short, stupid speech about
something, and, in answering things often swerve the answers over to me ('ask
Gary, he knows, let him tell you') so that he'd not really have to 'commit', and
could not be quoted later as having this or that stance or quote.
These guys were all the same - local politcos running like kings their own
little fiefdoms. I knew any number of them - Vince Martino, Stanley Lease, The
local smug Republicans manuevering in Metuchen, State Sen. Lou Kosco, US Senator
Frank Pallone, interviews with Menendez when he was still Mayor of Paterson and
just getting started on his US Senate career, ex-Gov. Jim Florio, Ex. Governor
Christie Whitman. This little list could go on, but I won't do it. These folks
were all self-serving in ways that you couldn't quite get or see at first blush.
The fiefdoms they ran were in essence answerable primarily to themselves, and
then only after that to others. Nothing was real; the issues were all made up,
foisted onto people and then twisted into other issues. The concerns were always
money and vote. Not influence or worthiness, just money and vote. Continuation.
I ran, briefly, perhaps two weeks, on the Republican ticket for Mayor of
Metuchen; at their urging. I did the few interviews involved before the
screening committee, I got a shave and a haircut, all that drivel for them.
(This was 1998). They essentially needed a sacrificial lamb that year, to lose.
I said yes, and I thought to myself that if I was going to lose (Metuchen was
wholly Democrat) I was going to lose rightly. I thought that the only way to run
was to run a campaign as if to lose it. Speak my mind, Say the real issues
(Alas, there really were none, ever). What I didn't realize was that there was a
strict line to toe - a Republican candidate speaks as the Republican Committee
tells him, and not on his own or not independently. The first issue to come up
was the one that did me in, right off. Some woman in town had had a daughter who
died of AIDS. In honor of her daughter, for some reason that appeared valid to
her, she'd lobbied the school board into establishing a $71,000/yr. position for
something called a teacher of 'Tolerance'. It had to do somehow with this
daughter who'd died, and I guess the abuse or harassment she'd taken for being
gay. Whatever. I immediately and publicly piped up - letter to the editor, Home
News Tribune, etc the Republican candidate - with 'not with my tax dollar you
don't!' My position was that tolerance was a wonderful thing to teach one's
children at home, in their upbringing, but the taxable school dollar did not
need to be involved, especially not at a heavily union-sanctioned price of that
nature. The proverbial shit hit the fan the very next day. The local Republican
head, Attorney Fred Keiser, called me in, said 'I have people now who want your
head!', lectured me on the protocol I'd missed, and, eventually, sacked me from
the 'ticket'. In my stead, he ran....and lost. I didn't really care. I took a
one hundred dollar, box-ad out in the same local newspaper, explained my point
and what I'd done, apologized somewhat for not knowing better, and bowed out
gracefully, washing my hands entirely of such matters forever. I've never looked
back. What I learned was that people want to be led and locked. They want to be
taxed and told. No one cared either way what had transpired; I'd upset a very
quiet apple-cart somehow and that was it. It's a Minuet - a stately, slow and
elegant dance of its own insinuation - all those local, fund-raising and meet
the candidate luncheons and dinners, all the finest families of the town, with
their money and stories and influences, they all come out together to seed each
other. Outsiders are neither wanted nor, usually, brought in. I was - Stan Lease
was the agent of that, besides being something of an idiot in his own
right. Whether he and Fred ever really regretted me, or just dimly smiled at the
whole matter, I never knew. Stan Lease ran, at another time, for Mayor himself -
totally dim-witted, tongue-tied, and a torturer of language. It was funny. His
local forte was real-estate and absentee ownership of apartments and business
buildings. He was good at that. Keiser and the rest of the committee were jokes.
There was never any politics involved. Vincent Martino often came to visit me -
he was a local Port Reading/Woodbridge Councilman, Assemblyman, motorcycle rider
of some sort. In those days he was already in his mid-sixties, having retired
comfortably and with tons of money from the local sanitation department. He
always was on my side, boosting me along, pep-talking me to go ahead, do this or
that. Yet, he too ran for cover, and never really came across with anything for
me either. They were all cowards.
Enough of that. There's really no real to any of this. Jimmy McGreevey and
'Jo Jo' Martino (I always loved the way these grown men insisted on boyish
diminutives for their public references) got what they wanted, fleeced the
public, and managed. McGreevey is in seminary school at Union Theologic, NYC,
last I knew, making amends. Jo Jo is somewhere down the Jersey Shore, living
high. Vince, I don't know. Stanley Lease, still around, travels back and forth
to Britain (his forebears' Motherland) often. Everyone's doing fine. These guys
were pro's; they were all operatives who knew and accepted the game, understood
where the spigots were for money, success, power, and the going-along to get
along. No one bucked the system.
By the late 90's, things were getting messy. My motorcycle-legislative work
had by then morphed into a large operation handling some 2400 bikers, people
mostly who insisted as being seen as Bikers (capital B) - tough, mean, snarly
and dirty. I had a monthly newspaper, which I'd made into something of real
quality. I had fans and readers. I was surrounded by people, almost annoyingly
so - hardcore biker runs, speaking engagements, political fund-raisings,
hearings, votes, meetings statewide, etc. All Biker stuff and concerns and
people. The babes were plentiful and cheap, showy and touchable. The guys were
everything else. A lot of it, to be factual, was almost homo-eroticism. There
was a chiropractor guy from Asbury Park, NJ - as a for instance - Dr. Andy
Danielle - he insisted on wearing his leathers, leather chaps, and the rest,
almost all the time. He appeared darkly handsome and homosexual; enjoying the
motorcycling-life and parade if for nothing else than for the chance it allowed
him to be around tough boys, strut his stuff, and see and be seen with a
lumbering, leather crowd. It was pretty rampant - guys doing things for other
guys, the look, the swagger, the thug-talk, the knives and chains, the chrome
and polish, the parading and pretending, the decorating of motorcycles, the
finish and the clothing. For girls and women too it wasn't much different.
Sexuality was everywhere - girl on girl, guy on girl. Bare bodies, nudity,
strutting, strip-tease. Bands and live-music, southern rock and the blues. Jack
Daniels and Confederate flags. If there was actual guy on guy stuff, of course
it was kept hidden. There was a code. And part of that code, with the clubs,
related to violence - masochistic force, brutal. I can name at least ten
'brothers' of those days, Breed MC, Pagans MC, Hell's Angels MC, who are in
prison, and others who are dead. They would beat and kill for no real reason
except 'code' - a strange Biker code that needed to be maintained. Club turf
areas, towns and county areas, had to be defended. The look and feel of 'Power'
had to be maintained, through brutal enforcement. There were parties, bike runs,
swap meets, etc., where I'd see the enforcement - someone would come in,
something would go down, the wrong club shirt would be present, colors, a
motorcycle out of place, whatever - people would get dragged off, into the weeds
or woods, and beat savagely, spun around and beat again, or shot. One time, at
the Maple Tree, the Pagans had closed the men's room door while they
'disciplined' someone inside. Unbeknownst to him, some poor local outsider
wandered in, and after opening the door and stepping inside, thus interrupting
their sacred sanctum, he himself was beaten with a ball-peen hammer. He left the
place, dazed and bloody, and wandered off into the night. We didn't know if he
was dead or dying, who he was, if there was a family or whatever involved. Into
the wet night a number of us scrambled, trying to find this person before he
passed out or died. We never found him, but were told the next morning he'd made
it home, survived, and was OK but so frozen in fear (and also just plain frozen
by the cold - thankfully; it had stopped a lot of the bleeding) he'd not press
any form of charges, never speak of it again, and would pretend it never
happened. Another time, at a place in Keyport or Laurence Harbor or somewhere
like that, a Pagan named Pancho came across us and spent the afternoon with us,
drinking and carrying on. It wasn't out of friendship at all - he'd been sent
there that day because they knew that someone else would eventually be showing
up there. Club business of some sort, and we were to be the foil. When this guy
arrived, with his girlfriend, Pancho and a cohort swiftly and silently betook it
upon themselves to lay back, scout the location, gather this guy inside, and
beat the living shit out of him, and then leave, with us, commanding us to swarm
him and cover him with our own motorcycles. We did so. The guy and his
girlfriend were left there; him bleeding profusely. A third time (and I'll
stop), a Westfield fellow, a Pagan, named (moniker) TStone (for all I know his
name might have been Tom Stone, but no one ever got to the bottom of these
names), killed by gun a young guy at a bar in Manville. The guy was sitting
there with his girlfriend, with his motorcycle outside, having a meal and some
beers, but he was wearing - unfortunately for him - a Hell's Angels fundraiser
tee shirt, what's called a 'support shirt' - for which he was shot to death,
right there, at the bar. TStone was apprehended, tried and sentenced to some 15
or 20 years in prison - where he still may be; I do not know. I can give you
many other instances of this sort of bad, brutal behavior, in all parts of
Jersey, but I will not. I had begun representing these guys, somehow, speaking
for them, on their behalf. I'd been asked but declined (fortunately I'd been
able to say 'no'. If one says 'yes', it's for life, and for all the marbles;
there's no getting out, and the commands and tasks come fast and furious for the
newest members; just ask TStone) to become a member of, oddly enough, since they
were sworn enemies, the Pagans, through the sponsorship of someone whose name
right now escapes me, and also the Hell's Angels, though the sponsorship of a
new guy named Fred, and a veteran named Blues. I once testified in NYC against a
noise ordinance for lower Manahattan that would have banned motorcycles, or at
least loud pipes and 'Biker' motorcycles. I'd testified alongside the President
of the 3rd Street Hell's Angels NYC Chapter at a local community board hearing
over by NYU. Brandon somebody was his name. It had gotten me many points, and
they'd tried to turn it into membership - and lordy was I tempted too.
Eventually the muscle got too much. Mostly the Pagans, but the Breed MC
too, started demanding money. Forcing my hand for fund-raising and support,
pushing in on things, making it rough all around. Police, task forces, cops of
all descriptions began getting too close and prevalent. Then the IRS became a
problem - by the year 2000 I was fed up and finished. I didn't want to die or
get thrashed resisting, my mind certainly was no longer into it, and the people
I'd had to deal with all those years had finally worn me down - they looked, and
suddenly were, annoying and feeble, weak and girlish almost. All that scrambling
for brotherhood, all that group empathy, power politics of the low sort,
violence and vile behavior, drunkenness, lawlessness - all mixed here and there
with an astonishingly sickening and stupid levels of sentiment and bullshit -
patriotism, honoring veterans, saluting the flag, supporting causes, trying to
'look' good. At its heart it was all lawlessness and sex, and really that's all
it ever wanted to be - boys to men, men playing as men, diddling women as they
chose, cheap, stinky and plentiful. By this time I had six Harley-Davidsons,
which I slowly sold off, one after the other. It had reached a point where I
could no longer ride anywhere alone; there was always someone wanting to ride
with me, hang around, go somewhere, do something. People on my front porch,
bugging me; out front, waiting, and bugging me; in bars, always, groups waiting
- seemed as if everyone needed direction and a push, a catalyst to live, and I
had become it. I was making $560 a week from the organization I ran, with
side-money as needed for beer, booze and runs, all done as above-board and
legally, with an accountant, as could be done. It was difficult - there were
tax-problems, personal loans and outlays on my part to try to keep the thing
running, tax-bills and penalties I had to pay (am still paying off). I'd get
calls in the middle of the night from bikers in trouble, stone-deaf drunk
somewhere, in jail or at the police station, or near death in a hospital room or
in an ambulance. I had harrowing calls - one guy had my business card in his
wallet, that was all, and they needed life or death permission for him (Gary
Russo and his girlfriend Jackie) to live or die by having his leg cut off or
not. I had to find his parents, and establish the link. He lived, the
much-wounded leg was saved, but weak. Jackie lost use of her right arm. Another
time, a hysterical Karen Bialek called me in the middle of the night - her
husband, Mike, on his way to Rolling Thunder, in Washington D.C. - a yearly
motorcycle Vietnam Memorial event - had been clipped in a massive motorcycle
crash. She didn't know if he was going to live or die, she was crying, babbling
hysterically on the phone - how would she survive, manage, life, what was going
to happen to Mike, why, how? All these questions. I did the best I could, but I
had no answers.
A lot of this had to do with, amongst these Bikers, the prevalence of
alchohol, speed, cocaine, crack, amphetamines and pot. And booze. I'd seen it
all, it was everywhere. To be frank with you, I wanted nothing to do with
anything, nor could I afford it nor manage all these assholes with it or while
on it. I had to remain the 'designated' one, the stalwart leader, the mouthpiece
for all this shit - and at least it got me away from the drugs. Most of the bike
crashes (even my own couple) and deaths, had to do with driving rambunctiously
under the influence of a long day's worth of booze. No bones about it. These
people drank all day long, usually for free or as part of their entry, and then
by nightfall, staggered to their bikes and managed, or not, to ride home. there
were tragedies every two weeks, and there were miracles a hell of a lot more
times than that. 'How the fuck did he ever get home?'
The girls were worse than the guys. I've seen girls as passengers tumble
off bikes, stagger sideways over, dead drunk, jump off bikes in a fury, strip
clean naked in a swoon, show their tits, flash cars, suck dick, give hand jobs,
you name it, drunk on a speeding motorcycle. I myself, with Fred, stupidly and
massively drunk, have gone 110 miles per hour, careening madly between lanes and
between cars on the Garden State Parkway, just to show him how to get to the
Holland Tunnel via Rt. 22. And this is with him, with his girlfriend on the
back, deleriously trying to keep up with me. Thanks God I was solo. I was mad
like God. I've seen guys ram straight on into the sides of flatbed
trucks
41. The leader of the Pagans, out of South Jersey, was a guy named 'Egyptian'. John somebody - all these guys had real names, but they weren't often used. I only got to know them because I'd see the membership and subscription lists, and home addresses if given. He was a nice guy, actually, but ruthless. Not someone I'd want to cross. Shortly after our time together, he was caught up in some RICO Act scheme, and put away, after some time shackled at home under house arrest. The RICO act was a federal enactment, a targeted anti-motorcycle gang (1%'ers, they were called) which gave the Feds the rights and powers to break things up, bust heads as needed, and surveille and make arrest. It stood for something like 'Racketeering and Influencing Corruption' Act. What was weird about it was that it stated things like 'any group of six people wearing like clothing, if found together' constituted a gang, a corrupt mob, etc., and gave the Feds rights to do what they'd select. What was weird about it was, in actuality, that something like that could refer to a carload of priests or nuns, a baseball team or Boy Scouts, etc. It was wholesomely stupid. But, through it, many roundups and arrests took place. There would be trials, long investigations, trials again, sentencing, shut-downs, etc., and then it would all begin again, with newer guys. Each newer club guy, being younger, and stupider, knew less and less about the past and its traditions, so that, over time, the entire Biker game had turned dull, forceful, violent and rash. At the top of any of these syndicates there was a never a real brain. There were guys like Sandy Alexander, and others, who at least at one time showed some brain and gumption. One time we had a three-day camp-out festival, way down South Jersey somewhere, and the Pagans were all there in force. They were a real bunch - mean-spirited, evil-looking, and constantly on the prowl for infractions and/or what babe they could entice their way. They had their own stable of women, of course, but the word was always out for more. Lots of young girls and women really grooved on this stuff - I don't know if it was the danger, the outlaw stuff, the crazy sex, the group bangs, whatever, but there were always any number of girls or women ready to go. I had a friend, named Burglar, from up my way, and, amidst all this fearsome stuff, one day he did the funniest thing: the Pagans would wear, on their colors/jackets, a set of initials, as all clubs did, which signified their club as 'forever'. In this case it was PFFP, meaning 'Pagan forever, forever Pagan' - a kind of endorsement of the right to die by the sword for club honor, and worn proudly - by those who'd made it. Well, Burglar, not really hip to all this totally, when I introduced him to Egyptian, simply muttered, 'Hi Pepe, happy to meet ya'. He'd misread the PFFP patch and took it as a name patch for 'Pepe'. For one shuddering moment, truly, I thought it was all over for both of us; but they let it pass. Had they been inclined, such a flagrant infraction could have easily gotten us a beating. Sounds weird? No, that's how things were. Up in north Jersey, Central anyway, out by Union, the local Pagans chapter was run by perhaps the evilest looking person I'd ever seen - 'Landlord'. Again, his moniker. In his eyes lived Death - pure, unadulterated. If eyes alone could kill, these would - this guy was icy-cold, steely and powerful. As I got to know him later on, he was actually in many respects the nicest, family-oriented business- guy (heating and cooling truck) you'd meet. If you'd not known his club side, you'd probably never guess. But his pack of wolves was really nasty. I got to know them all, one by one. Landlord eventually, when all the shit with the RICO Act started coming down big (about 1995), backed off, moved into Pennsylvania with his family and business, and became a Pennsylvania Pagan - a much easier gig, since the Philly mob and the Pennsy Pagans worked hand in hand; it was well-known and of long-standing evidence. You can look that connection up for yourself. They were just a powerful, power-wielding, bunch. Both the Pagans and the Hell's Angels made legitimate money by operating small businesses, strip clubs, van and delivery service operations, small trucking companies. It enabled them to launder money, run their operations, while seeming legit, and at the same time cover for their amphetamine and contraband and firearms trade, and - it was said - their prostitution operations. The Hells' Angels 3rd Street NYC headquarters - a really cool place, by the way - was said to be both the most-armed arsenal in the city, and the safest street, as well, (east 3rd) to live on. They had their bikes out front, parked at the curb, a guard or two constantly posted, surveillance cameras scanning the street, and a lively trade, as well, of tee shirts and trinkets - if one was tough enough to inquire - out the front doorway. For both clubs, at different rank-levels, runs were mandatory (if they said you were riding to Baltimore all night, starting now, that's for sure what you'd be doing), as were the fights, battles, slayings and sacrifices they'd put you up to. Prospects and newest members got the worst deals - if there was battle or mayhem to do, they were the first to do it. You either earned your stripes, or you were in prison, maimed or wounded. If you balked, you were pretty much dead anyway. Like I said, I was never happier than the days I had the gumption to decline memberships. The one Pagan guy, from Elizabeth, who asked me in, said he'd sponsor me but it was on his head. If I'd fuck up and dirty his name by that sponsorship, I'd be dead because he'd have to kill me. I knew he meant it - he lived, that Summer, out in a field under a billboard over by the Goethals Bridge end of Elizabeth. He was a totally maniacal and ruthless mother-fucker. I do not know if he yet lives today. The same deal went for all these clubs - membership, possessions, women, time and lodging. The Hell's Angel's 3rd street clubhouse was an apartment house of sorts as well. It was just 'where' members lived. The club owned everything else - many possessions and, of course, motorcycle titles and ownerships, were turned over to the club. Those two guys I mentioned earlier, Fred, and 'Blues' (Dan Canale), moved into 3rd street and are still there for all I know. Houses, mortgages and family stuff and personal finances...I don't really know what transpired there. All I do know is that, like the rest of them, Egyptian, for instance, had a family, a regular suburban address, and a house. Blues had a grown son in Iselin. Most of the towns around kept to the code that no club colors could come through their town. If you were riding, you rode with no club insignias or vests, etc. It meant, otherwise, stopping, vehicle violations, noise and equipment violations, searches and seizures too. No fun. It never much mattered; they'd do it anyway. To this day, I still see packs of 1%'ers occasionally speeding along the Turnpike or other highway, club colors flying - Hell's Angels, Pagans (curiously enough, they use the possessive of something in their name. It shows always as Pagan's, not Pagans. I never figured that out, nor their weird little evil demon logo guy, who does have a name, by the way), Chicago Outlaws, Nomads, Ching-A-Lings, Iron Knights, etc. All these big clubs have farm-team seeder clubs, from which they float up some of their membership. You needed always to be aware of the affiliation of these feeder clubs too - a wrong move could get you killed or maimed. A weird case in point : Hoboken MC - although it was mostly cops and firemen, city worker guys from the Hoboken City center - was an affiliate of NYC 3rd Street Hell's Angels. Period. Nobody else need or better not attend their functions. (One of the beatings I took was there, over a crossed affiliation. I'd 'showed up' the security guard/bouncer guy at a Staten Island strip club by bringing 'your boys' (as he put it to me) to their location and allowing them to get unruly and drunk, thus showing him, and his 'authority' up. It was about a month later, but this guy and some cronies caught up with me at a Hoboken MC clubhouse party, and I went down, hard. Just like with Craig Bellina, it was first fists, and then boots and leather down on the ground. It wasn't the first, it wasn't the last.) That guy Pancho I'd mentioned before, he'd come into Metuchen to visit and spend some time with me at the writing office I kept, and brazenly ride in and out of Metuchen with straight pipes and colors on. No matter to him, and nothing ever happened. He honored nothing. He wouldn't have cared anyway. His buddy, another Pagan named 'Ming' - as in Ming the Merciless - often came with him. He was a swarthy, shaved-head, brute-looking silent killer type, and he kept me always in complete attention as to his moves, even just sitting down. They're both in prison now. One time Pancho came to me asking if I could help them set up a Pagan web-page (I didn't, but it was later done, and still exists, with a rogue's gallery too of imprisoned member portraits). His funny and curious complaint was that he couldn't ever call up the word Pagan's online without getting 'a bunch of religious shit instead'. Well, I thought it was funny. First off, it was not religion, sort of, instead, to opposite of it, and he wasn't aware anyway of the entire pre-history of the term Pagan, by any means. It must be great to live a life wherein, even at age 40, everything is new to you. First Exposure MC would have been a better name for these crackers. Anyway, I'm glad I'm still alive. And I have a whole roster of dead friends from this stuff too.
One guy, named 'Animal', was the sweetest pussycat of a fellow - big, hairy
Biker type, but it was all bluster. He'd be seen at every swap-meet behind his
vast array of old and cast-off parts, for rebuilds and custom jobs. He made his
living selling parts like that. At his house he had a garage, under double lock
and key, with tons of stuff stashed away. He'd break out this or that for
various meets and such. We got to know him over time; he was from Clifton, I
think it was, and always somehow managed to be on the edges of things, allowed
to sell and function, just outside of club radar. My friend John, and Ralph
Maglione (dead now, killed on a motorcycle locally, here, by Iselin, NJ) bought
a sidecar from him, and we had to go to pick it up. That was how I got to know
his home situation. He was Albanian or Lebanese or something - no, no Greek it
was - and lived at home with his two elderly parents. They doted on him. It was
funny. Anyway, one day he hung himself in that garage, and they had to be the
ones who found him.
Another guy was doing wheelies and show-off stuff on his motorcycle while
out on a trip to Washington D.C. or Virginia or somewhere. Right outside of the
bar where he was drinking. He flipped over, hot-dogging it, and everything
landed on his un-helmeted head (not that a helmet would have helped). He was
killed instantly. He never made it home. Another guy, and his wife, were out in
Las Vegas celebrating their anniversary of some year, ten or something. Late one
night they somehow rammed straight broadside in the side of a passing ambulance
truck. She was killed instantly, he survived. He had to come home here to face
the music - the girl's parents, his own loss, the mess of everything. People
came to me asking for a fund-raiser. I put one together, at the Maple Tree, like
so many other fund-raiser parties. We garnered $8000 that one afternoon. I was
never sure for what, or why he 'needed' a fundraiser, but I was too stupid, I
guess, or involved, to think it through or question what I was doing. Now, it
makes no sense at all.
A lot of this - both then and at this time too - I
didn't and don't know where it was leading. I was involved heavily in the middle
of something I was at first unsure of, but then easily able to take control
of and run with. The dumbest people in the world, really. Bikers. It was amazing
to me as well to what extent the politicians and such would stoop to even
pretend that this contingent of idiots meant something to them. That they
actually cared about this small, stupid and infinitesimal interest group. Dumb
as a hammer, most of them, and they're expected to know the issues they want to
take stands on? Incredibly manipulative and exploitative too on the part of
these political people. I'd see top-dog politicians and low-level snipes
preening like saints in front of 'Bikers' for their votes and influence. What a
crock. These people had no shame. I remember some loser woman, named Mykiah,
from Asbury Park, one time fawning all over Jim McGreevey at one of his
quest-for-Governor talks. As I said before, he was a pandering pig, full of good
cheer and nothing, and she asked him about 'supporting' the no-helmet law
passage - yeah, sure, blah, blah - what it came down to
was her saying, and it was really all that mattered to her, 'then when you're
Governor I want to know I can walk into your office, sit down with you, and
discuss the signing of the bill after it's passed.' Yeah, it was that simple.
People carry their own selves with them through all of their lives - the
smallest matters of childhood and upbringing continue to exert influences all
through our days. It can't be escaped. For Mykiah it was all this Barbie-Doll
neediness, a quest for both acceptance and love, for being singled out. For
others, especially the big, tough, wannabe-killer guys, it probably all stemmed
yet from unresolved conflicts with Dad - off comes the belt,
here's the lickin' due me, here's the parents' rage over my misdemeanor, bad
grades, wrecking the car, etc. - all that compensation for fear by
being the toughest, ugliest, most unpredictably murderous dude in the bunch. Too
bad the entire bunch was made up of like-minded losers on the same simple
quest. That's where the homo-eroticism came in : like a really bad Robert
Mapplethorpe scenario, these guys were stomping and preening, squeezing their
balls in front of one another to prove and to compensate for the psychic
shortcomings within - let alone the actual lack of any education. If
I had said, say 'Tom Sawyer' to any of them, they'd have replied, 'yeah? who's
he fuckin' ride with?', as if some brother in chains at the motorcycle level.
Yes, truly, it was that bad. One guy, whose name I actually do forget, and who
is in prison now on a bank-robbery conviction - something so stupid
like robbing the bank and then the car runs out of gas, or locking himself in
the bank, or something like that. He had the most interesting, intriguing and
beautiful girlfriend I'd ever seen amongst these people. He himself was a
low-level member of The Breed MC, a small, short guy with the demented face of a
twisted Pomeranian dog with long, flaxen blond hair, always under an engineer's
cap. His girlfriend, on the other hand, was a true beauty - tall,
maybe 5'9", which was about 5 or 6 inches more than the boyfriend had -
startling blue eyes, and always perfectly-painted red lips. She was always at
his side, which was, most of the time, at a bar. She never seemed to get drunk,
just more rich and deep. One time she called me over and simply said to me 'you
have a masterful command of the English language.' Tada! That's what came from
all those articles written - somebody actually read and noticed this
shit. I never thought it'd be her. At least I felt like something for that
moment.
Another time I'd written a long article that somehow had a lot to say about
Theodore Roosevelt, President around the turn of the 20th century and, later on,
around 1912, a candidate once again as the Bull Moose Party candidate
- this Biker guy of little merit sought me out to congratulate me on
writing, as he put it, 'one of the best things I've ever read on Teddy
Roosevelt, my favorite person in the entire world.' That was another surprise. I
did lots of weird things like that, articles, references, writing, and it wasn't
really often noticed; not ignored or forgotten, mind you, just never mentioned.
It all went unsaid - I figured mainly because none of these people
really had the right mental equipment to put together fact, reaction, and
feeling about what they'd 'read.' It's one thing to read something, you see, and
completely another to me mentally equipped with back-up knowledge to value,
evaluate and respond to the subject at hand. Some people just get scared off,
others gloss over instead of reading, some feel inadequate and others
- being reminded too much perhaps of 'school', just shun it all. Becoming
knowledgeable is a long, hard slog through information, reason, history,
language, grammar, judgment and self-awareness - and then comes
articulation, the need of enough articulation anyway to put across an idea. It's
not easy - and, to be honest with these cats, it's more work than
speed-racing or rebuilding and tuning, an engine, a chassis or a piece of
equipment. And bludgeoning somebody, by contrast, is a piece of cake, a real
idiot's delight.
About 1988 I was invited by the social secretary of Malcolm Forbes, of
Forbes Magazine, and family, fame, to ride with them. He had a motorcycle thing
he did, a small, fake, out-for-the-day 'club' called 'Capitalist Tools'. Everyone
was issued a red vest for the day, colors and the club name emblazoned on the
back, and - from Malcolm's stable of 55 motorcycles in the
motor-shed on his estate in Far Hills, NJ (Old York Road) - given the
choice of a motorcycle for the day, to ride, freely. He had one or two full-time
mechanics on duty and they kept everything in tip-top shape, clean and
ready - motorcycles, cars, limos, etc., even two hot-air balloons.
That appointed morning, we arrived (my wife Kathy and myself) to a field of
perhaps 35 other people, a big outdoor tent and a huge, quite expensive free
breakfast buffet session. Everyone mingled, looked around, selected a bike for
the day, and parked their own motorcycles over in the lot for retrieval later.
He gave a very brief welcoming speech and a few simple road rules. His
final advice was 'if you get lost, tough shit.' Verbatim. Once we got going I
realized these guys (and girls) rode, capital R. I never went that fast myself,
and here I was forced to keep up in a road-pack of 30 or more motorcycles
speeding through traffic brazenly. Intersections were mostly blocked, opened by
his security detail ahead of us, and the entire ride was filmed here and there
by a motorcycle-mounted camera-crew, with the passenger on the bike doing
nothing but filming through his lens. We rode about 300 total miles that
day. It was all probably done for tax-deduction purposes, etc., all proper and
above-board, but still a scam by a billionaire to avoid being fleeced without
maximum deductions. I didn't care; it was fun enough. When we got to the
end-site field, a place called 'Plain Jane's', which was about a fifty-acre area
and a stage and pavilion and food section, there were vendors around selling
things. Walking with Malcolm as he perused the offered goods, I remember him
laughing distinctly hard at two tee-shirt items with their slogans. I got a kick out
of watching this old guy get a chortle over some low-class biker shit. The
slogans on the shirts that caught his eyes were 'Lick Bush in '88' (it was
election year, Bush v. Clinton) and 'the Best Part of You Dribbled Down
Your Mother's Chin' - which I never did quite understand fully. It
was accompanied by a bawdily offensive illustration and seemed to refer to the
blowjob that dribbled out Mom's mouth; of course what that exactly has to do
with one's own insemination doesn't quite make sense, but whatever. He liked
it.
42. Living in Blackwood, back in those seminary days, had never really prepared
me for what I'd see, in the late 80's and early 90's of the South Jersey of that
day. Blackwood was on the fringes of the Pine Barrens, or so we were told
- it was, of course, mostly untrue; it kind of was, but it wasn't precisely. We were told to watch out for 'pineys'
- those strange inbred locals who'd be lurking and still dwelling deep in the
sandy pine woods around us. We were, in those days, granted, in the 'boonies'
and surrounded lonesomely by fir forests and woods, dirt roads and paths,
occasional cabins and the huts of old timers and others living alone deep in the
woods. But all was harmless. The worst thing we ever saw, in fact, and it wasn't
really so bad as much as fun, was the occasional pair of women's or girl's
panties dangling from a tree limb along the dirt roads and lanes. It was local
custom to post them at the spot where you or someone had de-flowered, or just
gotten lucky with, a girl; in a car. Parking spots, lover's lanes and the like.
So, after a wild Fri. or Sat. night, for instance, we'd find two or
three examples of this - believe me, no Victoria's Secret
stuff, just plain old girl's pink or white panties hanging from a tree. Some
weird sort of secret codification or signification was underway here. It was
difficult for me to imagine, actually, in 1964, a girl going home with nothing
on underneath - but I was young, times (for me) were yet naive,
and I barely understood the mechanics at work here. Some of this, later on, I saw as well as a clue into the odder thinking of those South Jersey bikers just mentioned previous. Now, much later, I came
to see that all these motorcycle guys from South Jersey really did comprise a
different sort - they were, by comparison to what I'd become used to
in the northern tier of NJ counties - more basic, steady, stronger and sterner,
but at the same time fiery, anxious and always ready to lash out. The
good-natured feel of so many things Bikers did seemed to take precedence here
too - charity runs, toy runs, fundraiser parties for cripples or
injured people; almost anything was used to bring out the motorcycling presence
visibly doing something 'good'. Which, by the way, brings me to another
interesting point. Back in the early 60's and before, when, with all the bad
publicity of the Hell's Angels versus the cops, all that stuff, was underway,
the Hell's Angels came up with the idea of staging a 'toy run' - something to
benefit children - a bright and inoffensive spirit. It would allow them to
gather, ride, and do something for the good and benefit of the public, with
coverage, etc, and would be, at the same time, a slap in the face of the
cops and authorities who were always underway with efforts to shut them down,
stop groups from riding or congregating. That's how the idea of a toy run began.
The cops were stymied, the newspapers happily covered the scene and the run,
interviewed poor kids and the evil Bikers giving them toys for free, and the
cops couldn't do a thing about it. Way too public and spirited. It worked...to
such an extent that eventually it too became sickeningly stupid to
have to see - all those runs and charities riding herd on bikers.
Mooching off them for money. Often just plain bogus. All these South Jersey guys
were perfect sops for this sort of thing. The local head of the Philly Toy Run ,
believe it or not, was a Biker with the bike-name 'Satan'. On all the Toy Run
flyers and public posters and announcements, incredibly, it would say something
like 'for tickets/info, contact Satan', with a phone number. It never seemed odd
or bizarre to anyone? How dull can one be? 'Satan' for pity's sake, Satan?
Everything was crazy.
No one really thought anything through. It was all appearances and the
means of doing something just for the doing. The camp-out with the Pagan's,
which I previously mentioned, well it came complete with a vendor
tent which was basically a pop-up porn shop, an adult sex shop
- dildos, DVD's, bondage equipment, whips, leather harnesses, masks, and
the usual assortment of base lingerie, flavored condoms, all that shit. The two
beasts running it, and the older guy with them, looked light freight train
remnants of the big crash; haggard, disgusting looking, and way overdone. Yet,
there they were, peddling sexuality like they were 19. It made me want to puke.
I don't know how much money they made, maybe lots, but it seemed they got more
lookers than real buyers, and they probably had to split it with the club
anyway. One other time, adding to the effect of vile behavior and unpredictable
chaos (?), there was, while we were riding along Rt. 9, a car which once or
twice seemed to try to outmaneuver us, threaten us with cut-off, and the usual
stupid Sunday driver stuff. This car had NY plates, probably Staten Island or
somewhere dumb, and was filled with 7 or 8 people, a few of them kids. My friend
Billy Walton (we'd all been drinking all afternoon) decided to take offense.
When traffic again tightened up, and this guy was stopped in his car waiting,
Billy pulled up to him, dismounted, and started going nuts on the guy's
car - kicking the doors in, smashing off the mirror, ripping out the
antenna, busting a light or two - the guy and his passengers were
horrified, Billy was screaming like 'that'll teach you, you fucking bastard!!'
and it was a rough scene. He got on his motorcycle, we all split the traffic,
and took off - he'd told his wife (his rider) to put her hands back over
the license plate, thus blocking out the numbers and ID, which she did, as we
rode off. The poor people in the car were left stunned. Another time, in NYC, at
Spring Street and Varick, in the usual jumble of traffic, we, once again
drinking all day at 'Hogs and Heifers', were involved in a melee
- a guy, in his car, had bumped someone's footpeg, innocently and in the
slow creep of traffic, and George (dead now), upon seeing this, leapt off his
bike, leaned into the guy's passenger side open window, and tore the headphones
and wires off the guy's head - everyone else then joined in and
within 30 seconds the guy's entire dashboard, wires and everything, had been
ripped to shreds. In a panic, the guy managed to squeeze between other cars and
sped off in a direction he hadn't intended, and the resultant mess of his car's
interior I guess made no difference. It was just that simple,
infiltrative, mob mentality that ruled. Violence, Anger, Bombast and
Bravado - that was our law firm, remember?
These southerner people had it all down pat. I would go there for meetings
and discussions and such, and always felt uncomfortable, as if something bad was
always about to happen. On me, as the outsider. It never did, but whatever. They
had a different temperament. Some of it was good - the laconic,
slower and more country-reasoning parts; others were not so - the
flash to temper, the rash acts. I kept away, as best I good, from both extremes,
yet I often found myself rolling backwards right into them -
finding something comforting in their manners of speech, the slower roll of
words and pronunciations; it reminded me a lot of the seminary; same people,
different things, that was all. They all had 'shops' and garages and places they
did things like welding, engine building, car repair. They all had lunks of junk
laying about (you want to say 'hunks', but I mean lunks) - in their
yards, on their driveways. It was old-show comfort; no worries, just relaxation.
The seminary people from down there, as well, they all had their ideological and
doctrinal shops and garages, places they put things and did things. It was all
the same. Must have been something in the air.
I was in breakaway mode: I hated that illicit, fucked-over stupidity and
whining that came from the Biker community. I hated the salacious and honey-ooze
of the bullshit I'd get from politicians. I spent a year or two working as a
stringer for The Star Ledger - NJ's big-time bullshit newspaper :
like a New York Times for dog poop. I'd cover - for 50 bucks a
night - town council meetings, variance and zoning board meetings,
board of ed meetings, and the like. I had about 16 towns on my assignment list,
and I'd choose or opt for one a night, depending on my interest, the travel
involved (the Oranges, West and East were the farthest off, the blackest,
and probably the strangest too. I only seldom did them). The idea of a stringer
is that of an outsider covering things under the auspices of, but not really
part of, the paper's journalistic stable. No by-line. I'd have to cover the
meeting, take down all the stupid facts and figures, comments and names,
proposals and what was passed and adopted, resolutions, proclamations, statutes,
etc. I'd have to listen to all the citizen comment, public-portions of the
meeting, treasury numbers, etc. It was tough and gruff - all those
committee reports, councilman reports, etc. It was all blowhard stuff
- little, low-lever politicians are the worst. They're full of themselves,
they pontificate, they shill, they get angry and spout, and I had to listen to
all this PLUS turn in a correct and proper report or article by 11:30pm
- which included dotting each 'i' and crossing each 't', confirming
treasury numbers, proofing quotes, and all the rest. It was grueling and
tiresome, in fact it sucked. Oftentimes, in the mid-90's it was a report written
and then phoned in from a phone booth at the last moment (or a phone on the wall
of a 7-11 or a Krauszer's, under the influence of coffee). Then there'd always
be a follow-up phone call by an editor to have me check a budget figure,
actually confirm a quote, or clarify something. All this usually then meant a
phone call to the home of one of the individuals involved, the Mayor or a
Councilman, explaining who I was and what I needed. Sometimes it was difficult
to even get names and/or phone numbers, which too more time. Once any of these
quacks realized they were about to be quoted or mentioned in the next day's Star
Ledger, it was like instant hard-on for them; more than willing to talk and add
more; not allowed asshole, I've covering the MEETING, you clown. And then a
quick phone-call back to the office. To quickest effect, it was good to know and
have a name-basis, chummy acquaintance with these low-level pols; which was
neither right nor considered normal, and 'neutral-observer status be damned.
Which is why 'journalism' is where it is today. Everyone kisses ass. I never did
that, and never wanted to know anyone either. My biggest flaw - and
for which reason, and the poorly paid five hours of work and travel I finally
gave it up - was that most of the time the issues and blowhard local
political types would anger me so much that I'd lose all objectivity and just
want to get involved and advocate. Couldn't do that - I'd always end
up rooting for the little guy, the one complaining about the ordinance to be, or
a budget item, or an approval given to some big-wig business type (payoffs) to
do what he wished and the public be damned. All these guys, and women, are
sleaze bags. The Board of Ed types are the worst. I once went to a Piscataway Board of Ed Meeting wherein the Superintendent of Schools for that district,
without knowing who I was, went on a complete and blistering tirade against the
'Press' - someone else, not me - which had been critical
of him or something he said or did. The guy was a little, vain piece of shit,
and should have been hog-tied and whipped for his vanity and over-weening
ambition - but they just let him go on, for twenty minutes this jerk
was loudly proclaiming, screaming and hollering, accusing and damning,
newspapers, reporters and coverage in general. Over what exactly, I never found
out. I was just really glad this little punk didn't know who I was sitting in
that small audience. I never wore a press badge or credentials, and was actually
never told to do so anyway. Invisibility has its benefits.
After a while I just grew tired of the entire gig. I'd go to the newsbox
the next morning, see my coverage printed - they had a small 'local
meetings' coverage box, listed by towns. They always had it exact and correct.
It was the nearest thing to anonymity a journalist could want, and I suppose
most 'journalists' wouldn't want that anyway. Eventually I just phoned in and
told them I couldn't do the job any more - conflict. No problem, see
ya'. It was too much work, that late at night, after a regular day of work too.
The gas being used back and forth, and all the scurrying around, was not paying
off. And I was bored stiff as well.
I realized that everything I got involved with that involved 'other' people
would just make me gag soon enough - no matter what. There just
wasn't really anything out there, ever, that made real sense for me. I never ran
around for money - it never seemed worth it. I was never on a career
path. My voices were all internal, and they were constantly pounding messages
into my head, whispering alternatives, scribing alternate realities and other
realms. That's all I cared, to keep it coming and make sure - to
listen to and to answer to it. Nothing anyone else could offer was ever worth
shit : money was wage exploitation, doing dirty work for someone other's gain,
the manipulation of both pride and opinion. People made alliances, and slept
with the rat that 'brung 'em'. I never did, and no one ever 'brung' me anywhere.
To this day, I've got nothing as a result. Nothing real or tangible anyway
- but I'll bet my bottom-ass hunch of reality against anything you others
could throw against me. And I know I'd win. A person has to be convinced of the
absolute rightness of what he or she is doing, or do nothing at all. Just look
around you - all those suits and skirts lapping it up at the
blood-pudding bowl of advancement, possession, sex and lucre. They're already
dead, and they don't even know it. A big dick, or a little bit of dick stuffing,
or a big wad of cash and promise may work for a while, but it all soon fades and
passes away - and you're left with nothing.
Character never fades. The things we remember the most are the authentic
things that pass us - I recall a million moments from my days, and
none of them are fancy, just authentic and never self-conscious. Someone once
said to me 'Oh my God, you write just like you talk. Reading you is the same as
listening to you.' That's called authenticity. Nothing anyone can get
- instruction, lessons, seminars, courses, workshops, is going to give
that to you. All crap - one's either 'got it' or one doesn't; (by
the way, I hate all that 'one' crap - it's a lousy writing
construction. But I just used it anyway - one never knows, do
one?).
Authentic things stand out : the old Bond Bread daily delivery guy, when I
was about 5 or so, he'd come daily or maybe every other day, down the street,
just to deliver a loaf of bread, Bond Bread, and whatever else people
ordered - donuts, other forms of baked goods, etc. He was a totally
talkative guy, babbled on to everyone, knew all the women and they each looked
forward to him. he was known as 'Goombah', because that's what he called
everyone, or the kids anyway. I remember how we all followed his little Divco
model bread truck. One time I had a cat who was slowly dying on my top step,
cellar stairway - a large, cancerous-looking wound festering on its
hind rump. No one knew where it had come from, whose cat it was, or what was
wrong. 'Goombah' came over, went to it, inspected, lifted it up, and took it
away - with an explanation of what the wound was, and a later
explanation of having brought the cat to medical attention and that it was
being helped and healed. Perhaps all fanciful, but nonetheless. There was
also a milkman of the same ilk. And a vegetable man, and a saw sharpener truck,
and a storm window installer - all these men were somehow so real,
plain, forceful and authentic. There wasn't a preacher's thimble load of
pretension about them, they weren't learned or puffed up. When they said
something, it stuck. As foolish as it may seem, when I think back I realize I'd
give a hundred dollars a minute now to be able to talk, to share notes, to
listen again, to any one of
them.
43. Sometime about 1959 or '60, a New Yorker named Paul Goodman published
'Growing Up Absurd.' I did not read it at the time, but a few years later, about
1967, an English teacher I had kept mentioning the book, prodding ever so gently
her students to read it. I finally then did. She should have made, really, more
of an effort to make her students read this - it should have been
mandated reading for the entire high school tier of students. During that
period, when this was written and current, many of the embroiling issues which
it covered, and more, were being formulated and worked through. Jane Jacobs (The
Life and Death of American Cities), and all of her activist Greenwich Village
cohorts were at the same time underway with protesting and stopping the works of
Robert Moses, who at that time - at his height - was
about to embark on yet another of his schemes (mostly now all realized); this
one would have truncated Greenwich Village, running a broad thoroughfare right
along the course of Seventh Ave, and cutting the area, basically, in two
- much like the Grand Concourse (in the Bronx), which had already
displaced many people and completed-to-rubble a once vibrant enclave, a real and
sincere place wherein people and families lived, which was now rolled over and
sacrificed to the automobile and all else be damned. Jacobs, flush with the
success of her book and her neighborhood organizing, worked along Hudson Street
and its area, from 555 Hudson Street managed to prove the case for a
certain urban sanctity to be given to storefront neighborhoods and senses of
place and belonging - all things which the fanatical anti-urban
mobster Robert Moses would know nothing of. Anyway, along with Jane Jacobs, Paul
Goodman too should have been mandatory reading. The then-forming youth revolt,
hippy-quake, rebellion-era - whatever you'd call it -
took much of its thematic noise from a lot of what Goodman wrote of; silently
and unknowingly, since most of these 'kids' hadn't a clue anyway about what they
were doing except for the seeking of the Pleasure Principle and, perhaps later,
the 'discovery' of the G-Spot - which I always thought would have been a
good name for a cafe.
One of the last things I'd done - and one which stayed with me as perhaps
the most telling and most effective way of breaking myself from all this and
realizing too that it was time to make that break - was a chilly, late October
motorcycle run (yet another) with perhaps fifteen people, to Hogs 'N Heifers, at
12 St. and Washington, in NYC. I'd gotten to know Allen Dell and Michelle over
time, bringing countless loads of drinkers and riders to their crazy bar, from
its beginnings right through its heyday (Allen died in the middle of it all,
from an overdose, Michelle, now with her girlfriends, stayed around). This time,
it was a long, dark, moon-lit night a day or two before Halloween itself, and
down from the Hogs'N Heifers corner there was taking place an all-night confab
of Wiccans, Druids, nature freaks and New Agers. This particular corner
(unrecognizable now) had been right smack in the middle of the west-side
meat-packing district. by day there were carcasses everywhere, hanging from
chains and hoists, motorized, and the ran right out over the curbside area where
various white-aproned and blood-stained butchers could be seen diligently and
intently chopping and hacking away at the carcasses to make the varied cuts of
meat. Refrigerated trucks stood nearby, disgorging freight and cargo or taking
away boxed and ready for distribution meat cuts. A regular restaurant-supply
meat row. as art students we'd visited this area often, pencils, charcoal and
sketchbooks in hand, doing our best Chaime Soutine imitations - drawing,
sketching and recording the scenes as best and as artfully as we could. This
night, however, was totally different. A few tents had been set up, a fire or
two on the ground and a barrel or two also with fire in them, a set or two of
klieg lights and battery packs, and a flatbed truck and a wagon or two also -
live animals, some nearly naked girls, men with tambourines and little drums,
dressed like medieval jesters or something. There, amidst all this odd lighting
and weird processional music and noise, was underway a strange Moon worship
festival, a Halloween Goddess ritual, a tribal manifestation - nothing troubling
to me at all, but rather uplifting, strange, eerie, other-worldly. It lifted me
up, took me away - companions or not, I was alone. I'd left all those other
drunken idiots where they were. There was something within me here and going on
here that I just could not communicate. A place like New York City has so many
levels underway at any one time that it's truly impossible to identify or pay
attention to them all - whichever of them is your concern, that's where your
attention goes. If something is not, let's say, on your radar, you'd never even
know it was going on, or present. This came at me like an explosive blow to the
face. These people had brought up and out from some weird, living depth, a
completely recognizable presence - the evidentiary proof of another realm of
thought and presence. A spirituality that I'd always before known existed but
could never quite find qualities for. I had now; this was it. Like learning
another language in an instant, I suddenly found myself completely versed and
fluent in this new, grand, magnificent tongue : spiritual presence of Life on
Earth. Words for all my urges. understanding for all mysteries. nothing more
need ever be spoken to me, no words ever again exchanged from the normal,
hum-drum, cruddy, run-of-the-mill world. it simply no longer existed. I had met
myself and, in full recognition of what I'd just met, I took it in and accepted
its identity as my own. That night, truly, marked the new beginning of a
different me, a different outlook and - once more - a revitalized and
strengthened self out of which I could operate. That's never left me. I just
wish I were stronger still.
The teacher's name was Sylvia Oettle. She was a small, perhaps 5-foot tall,
quite vocal and pushy (in her way) Jewish lady who somehow threw a lot of weight
in that school. I mention the 'Jewish' tag here only because she wore it loudly
and proudly, in both a religious and a secular manner, one which could not be
avoided (and thus I cannot avoid it in here describing her, to do her true
justice...let me go on). Paul Goodman himself, in the same way, was a New York
Jew (see book by Alfred Kazin, same title). He was also gay, and quite. There
was, in this time period as well, a roiling undercurrent of the nascent
homosexual/gay movement, both for rights and for visibility. Up until that
point - and there have been hundreds, thousands, of noted NY and not
NY writers, thinkers, artists, performers, etc, who were gay, homosexual,
lesbian, whatever - the onus of being gay was upon the person so
defined. Gay people were an underground, had to remain so, stay hidden, remain
'closeted' as is said. There was not yet any acceptance of them publicly
- at least not in the mass-acceptance, mass-media manner as we know it.
Oddly, this up and coming 'mass media' machine was for the most part
staffed and manipulated by gays and Jews anyway, and they all managed getting by
quite well while foisting their product, in a sort of underhanded, dark code,
upon the 'rabble' who purchased their magazines, shows, broadcasts and
songs unwittingly, not knowing at all what was behind they product they sought
and bought. Fashion, broadcasting, literature, music, song, film, and the rest
were a great and constant field of opportunity, in NYC and elsewhere, of which
these talented and wonderfully quirky (and enjoyable) people took advantage,
made great livings, and formed a vibrant local society. New York City, breaking
towards Stonewall, was a great haven, for both sexes (and sometimes the
'crossover-eithers') in what was, essentially, a very long and historic,
worldwide and Euro (see Jan Morris) set of people who've always been around.
Paul Goodman, by the way, was also bi-sexual and had, earlier even had two
children, with a wife. By late-on, however, he was known as a constant and pesky
seducer of young men.
At the time I knew little, really, of any of this. It was never taught,
never broached, and, in fact, Sylvia Oettle - in her annoyingly
passionate way of presenting this - never mentioned that angle at
all. I wouldn't have known, if she did, if it was through a history of personal
experience or just that world-wise and jaded thing she always portrayed. My
point here is that her point was missed - by not forthrightly
demanding we all read that book, and then discussed it (in her most teacherly
fashion), she really missed a grand opportunity to impart information and engage
into a curriculum, finally, something that would have mattered. She could be
passionate and witty, direct and nasty. There were all sort of interesting parts
of her. It never entirely came through because, in the end, she'd always revert
to what she, in essence, really was - a local schoolteacher who was gladly
part of the larger, suburban, Jewish, community - taking public
roles, knowing public people, and speaking out publicly on social issues to her
own crowd - always in the end with the most agreed-upon and
acceptable ways. no rebel, she, though she portrayed same. I had plenty of
run-ins with her; some good, some bad, some badder. She'd often contact my
mother - pressing for information, incredibly, poking around for
things she'd could learn about what made me tick, how she could 'enter' that
world and bring me, or some part of me she saw, forward. To my mother of all
people - the dense speaking, almost in another language, to the
denser or densest. It could almost have been funny. Our battles were
never-ending; I'd never cooperate, never fully do the work asked. I'd stay one
step outside the circle, never fully engaging or cooperating - but at the same
time never entirely shutting a door. In a way, it was a lucky game.
Her brother was Arthur Sills, at that time the Attorney General of New
Jersey. Perhaps Cahill was the Governor by then, or still Hughes; I
can't recall. Curiously, if you recall my earlier section about the political
people in the seminary, this was yet another connection - Richard
Hughes to William Cahill to Arthur Sills; Blackwood to Woodbridge to
Metuchen, NJ. Metuchen is the town where Arthur Sills lived, on Upland Avenue I
think it was, and also the town to which I moved in 1978. So the tight little
circle was closed. Sylvia Sills, his sister, known to me as the Woodbridge High
School English teacher most trying to press into my life, was his sister and my
'mentor' of sorts, for that brief Fall and Winter. She desperately wanted a poem
of mine, gibberish really, for the 'Literary' magazine the school published each
May. I refused; yet one was surreptitiously taken from me, given a double-page
treatment, illustrated wrongly by some art-goon Robert Van Bramer, and I had to
live with that, He also secreted curse words and phrases all within the cover's
graphics - hidden, swirly words like 'Fuck the Teachers' and
things like that. No one ever was in on the joke; I heard of it later - so maybe
he wasn't so bad. Mrs. Oettle, and her brother, are both dead now. Probably
marked in the local Woodbridge Jewish cemetery on Metropark Hill. They were
pretty big-time.
The whole thing of being gay, back then, meant pretty much to be 'sad,
lonely, and isolated.' There were no rules - public exposure was
just beginning, those in the know were, of course, aware of who was who
- Truman Capote and his masked ball and the rest, was so obviously,
wisecrackingly, gay that to be among the literati and then pretend no awareness
of the scene was stupid. Everyone was a fag at some level. Paul Goodman, in this
little (still wonderful) book struck the stance and stood the pose, yes, but all
the while did it with a perfect, wise and intelligent, almost eye-opening charm.
If reading this book, even for me, was enough of a summation of the way
things were going to be - on it's own level life-changing
- then so too could it have been for so many others. It's a shame she
never followed through. I probably would have sharpened up and listened. Erich
Hoffer, some longshoreman-philosopher-workingman-poet was another big favorite
of hers at that time. A Carl Sandburg of the San Francisco docks, she'd prattle
on about him too. For myself, I rebound to her with Blake, Dylan Thomas (Under
Milk Wood), some Eliot and Pound, and then Ferlinghetti, and leave it at that.
As I said, back then there was no aspect of gayness ever brought forth, even
though it existed. When I finally did arrive to NYC, my initial exposures were,
right off, pretty gay - the Baths at St. Mark's, a little of the
contemporary fag scene along Tompkins Square and the Village, the Ginsberg
stuff - all of that was prevalent and known. You may recall that
big, black guy schlonging me after a lunch offering - failed attempt
but what the hell, he tried hard (that's a joke). I've always liked women, every
one of their habits, secretions, moans and ways, every Venusian Mons about
them - there's never been anything gay about me - but I
will say that gay culture has always seemed liberating to me. I liked seeing
them, watching them distend themselves from society at large : that dark,
sickening and vaporous dead-reach of 1950's and 1960's society. They had a
rough, happy viewpoint amongst themselves, a devil-my-care aesthetic that
involved the simplest of things, things mostly overlooked by others; their
concerns were different and personal - the cigarette lighter, the
shirt, the manner of wearing socks, the glasses and vases and wall-colorings,
the loud talk, the dark moments fluttering with flamboyance. They were like 13
year old girls, everywhere; the packs of them you see on a subway platform or a
concert lobby, screaming or screeching over someone distant. It was
'enthusiased' emotion, everywhere. I took it in stride. Later on there was the
Stonewall Riot, which has its own fame and story that I won't get into now
- but suffice it to say that it was really after that point that the
'Movement' took form and shape enough to begin delineating, separately, an
active, vibrant, and now visible, culture. It was like another land, an outpost
of outliers, far-off, that had suddenly come to shore, and anchored. It became
so visible that - in retrospect - all that 1930's and
after movie-culture stuff became suddenly so obviously gay that one wondered how
it had ever been missed or covered. We were treated, surreptitiously, to an
entire wall of West Side Story gay-boy-dancer troupe back-stories.
Had Paul Goodman or any of the others - much of the old 'New
York School' of writers and critics and sociologist-cultural types
- worn their particular cloaks any differently, we'd have had a completely
different end-result to their restructural viewpoints. As it was, much of it
remained invisible unless really sought out. No matter, it was there. The
beginnings of a societal critique had been laid down since the 1940's
postwar blitz of returning soldiers hit, all of whom were seeking mates, places
and jobs. A mad frenzy ensued, as locations were developed, rows and rows
of homes were built, and the very generalized and invisibly suffocating
structural components were set into place - the kind of stuff I grew
up in and had to then learn to grow up and OUT of. All of this other stuff
- the Paul Goodman menagerie - had been out there, slowly
moving about and formulating itself. It was without form, sort of, and yet a
void. As it slowly transgressed and moved into consciousness, the world around
it had hardened - ad men, corporate manipulations of taste and
culture, entertainment moguls, dead-end careerists pushing financial success as
an end-all and a be-all of its own merit. All coarsely untrue, but it went on
nonetheless. That's the sort of stuff that peddled to us at school, lock, stock
and barrel, whether or not it had any value. Throughout New York City, in that
era, there were currents of turmoil - as I've mentioned, the
embroiling controversy of Robert Moses and all his sneering, illicit contractual
and governmental mechanization to force change, the resistance along Hudson
Street led by Jane Jacobs, a real force. The weird and strange folkie
traditions, youth-cult underpinnings, and generally non-conformist types making
things happen - the White Horse tavern, the Bleecker and MacDougal
Street cafe scenes, the clubs posted around the Village, all that stuff just
beginning to grow out and emit its loud noises. The world was changing. It was
very strange, and it came to me, personally, at 11 years old, in ribboned
layers, in the oddities I'd see around me, in the things I witness and then
question myself about - what did I just see? What did it mean? To
where was it going and to where could it be leading me? Funny thing was, in
Avenel - lowly, stinking, fetid, gross Avenel - my
dentist was gay: Dr. Robert Chrobat. He would come in each day, to his little
dental office right by the train station, and whether he took the Bay Shore
Local, from Penn Station, to Avenel or drove his car, he would arrive there to
treat and minister to the little Avenel children who flocked to his office, and
his crazy secretary, Rose Orlando (my neighbor), who'd give away all the treats
and prizes and goodies for kids who withstood their dental treatment. The local
6th grade teacher in the room next to the one I was in was gay - a
flaming, brutally liberal and theatrical gay man, Robert Roloff. He would come
to school - from Greenwich Village each day - in a
blazing pink 1959 Lincoln Continental. If you've ever seen one of these in
person, they were amazingly flamboyant, and yet amazingly misguided, cars. Then
picture one (a convertible, no less) in pink. That was Mr. Roloff -
whom kids feared and who introduced, in addition to the 6th grade
curricula - to the locals all the aspects of theater, art, music,
and aesthetics and criticism that the gay culture, privately thriving, had
taught him. He was an amazing, and crazed, individual. There were others as
well, but the point I make is that the bleed-through of cultures really was
underway. Paul Goodman would be only one aspect, one figure, of all this. I ate
it up and found myself understanding what was going on and what was happening to
me. It was easy.
A lot of the Catholic stuff, locally at St. Andrew's and not, was also
cloaked in a spectral gayness. We had local priests, like Father Genecki and
Father Gabriel, who just plain 'enjoyed' their time with local boys, whether in
small groups of two or three, or in a one-on-one situation. Little things,
like spending evening times alone in the sacristy, or going out in their autos
for ice-cream or a hamburger, a small fifteen-mile drive away to here or there.
It always involved a lot of closeness, smug joking, occasional (yes, really)
pinching or poking. I can speak here from personal experience, and can speak, as
well, for others. I was there. Father Gabriel drove a strange Rambler (a car
brand) of some sort, large and quirky. Once or twice he drove me all the
way down to the Jersey shore, as a day-trip together. I can remember his odd
habits. He'd like to talk about architecture and the shore homes we'd pass. He'd
point out to me, in the plain and simple homes we'd pass, what to look for so as
to determine 'quality'. Whether the roof-beams were straight across, or if,
instead, the house sagged or rose at the middle (bad sign). How the exterior
shakes or shingles were being kept up, whether moisture damage was visible, how
the foundations deteriorated or needed bolstering; things like that. It was an
odd interest, but at least something I found interesting. His brother owned a
Summer house down there, (that was where Father Gabriel said he'd gained most of
his knowledge about house structures; in the rehabilitating of his brother's
shore home) and that was to where we were going. Once arrived, I remember
being told to go into 'that' room and change into my bathing suit, which I did.
I don't know what any of that meant; when I emerged, he was already in his. I
recall we drove, a little further on, and arrived at a beach, into which we
walked, waded, and swam. That was that. Father Genecki mostly just liked the
little, local, evening food and milkshake drives. I recall one time, with one or
two other boys in the car, one of the more slovenly of the boys, fatter and more
sloppy that us, spilled his milkshake all over the front seat, and how the
ridicule and debasement, in a teasing way, was foisted upon him for the
remainder of the night, and Father Genecki's almost womanly craziness over
staining the seat (cloth). It was the odd things, like those, I recall the
most.
I don't know what most goes into the makeup of regular people's lives, but
I know that for me there was always a quotient of magic and superlative
attention to things. I dreamed of conquests and histories - far more
than of things involving defeat. I dreamed of being the man, or person, who
arrives in the nick of time, at the right time, to take hold of a bad situation
and right it - whether through some silly force, a punch, a
challenge, or ever armament. It all probably stemmed from the usual childhood
1950's fantasies of things like the Lone Ranger or Hopalong Cassidy or whoever
all that was - those lawmen and marshalls and loners out on the
western plains and prairies, stumbling into a town and twisting right whatever
wrongs were there underway. Winning each gunfight, hanging each evildoer after
proper and careful scrutiny and decided judgment. It was all very funny. It was
almost some psychological compensatory self-enforcement for character weaknesses
privately recognized : reticence, shyness, awkwardness, cowardice and fear, all
those things meshed into daydream and creative escape.
For many years, in NYC, along Bedford Street, I'd walk, looking for a place
called 'Chumley's.' It was an old tavern, actually an older, very, dairy
- from before the 1920's. Since that time, as part of the New York
Bohemian and Literary scene, it had become famed and notorious as a hangout for
the writerly in-crowd. Once I did locate it, I was always afraid, totally
fearful of even walking in, for fear of being called out as an interloper, a
non-insider, a faker or someone just not worth any literary salt. I was that
scared of striking out in the New York writer's scene (without really even bring
a New York writer) - for a really long time. I'd read about the
place, see it cited in stories and adventures of older New York, read of the
writers and insiders who hung there, who wrote books, or goodly portions of
their books, there, who became drunk and lustful, loud and arrogant, or just
downright quarrelsome there - the big names, the little names, the
famed and the not-so. For a time, in the same manner, ittook all I could do to
get myself to enter The White Horse, on Hudson Street - famed haunt
in much the same way as was Chumley's; even more famed, to be exact, for the
enactment of the last adventure of Dylan Thomas' famed and glorious American
Death. (By the way, for those of you from Avenel - no relation to
Danny Thomas, of 1950'sTV fame). Once I finally arrived, Chumley's itself was
anti-climactic. It did take a while, but before long I myself practically
had the run of the place, and was a regular fixture often enough, Saturdays and
Sundays anyway, and had become friendly with one or two of the barkeeps, a
waitress or two, and the owner himself, along with his two large dogs. My finest
friend there, after a long period of just casual acquaintance and nodding, was
Bobby Beddia (Robert). Over a period of some three years, Bobby became a quite
friendly fellow, and we spent any number of long-enough afternoons and evenings,
while in Chumleys, just sharing space - I with those I may have come
with, and Bobby as the regular barkeep, always at his post and always busy and
talkative, with everyone. As it turned out, Chumley's was quite more just a
regular old place, a drinker's bar, perhaps, with many book-covers on the walls,
of titles that had been written there - long-ago names, famed
writers, all with their peculiar stories. Bobby always offered me a spot on
those walls, should anything ever come through for me. Anne Adams, a poetess
from long ago, also lived in the adjacent apartment and - always
needing a friend - would come around. At first I was unsure of who
she was or what story about her was actually true; but I did find out more and
did look her up - she was, in actuality, a real, bonafide
writer-person with a story. The years I knew here, I'd guess she was 90, or
near. She died about 2004, not too long after, one Sunday afternoon, sitting
down with me, showing me some photos and talking, and asking me if I knew
anything about wills, or knew a lawyer who could help write one. She held out
for me a sheaf of hand-written papers and asked me to read. I began
- it was the start of a long, narrative-cum-poetry, in her hand, of her
story, her old days, and her adventures. Not knowing what she meant or was
getting at, I kindly turned the papers back to her and said I'd get her some
help. I did contact a lawyer, had gotten a few conversations started, and then
she was dead. Nothing more ever came of it, I did not know if she had kin or
family-connections or whatever, but not long after her place was emptied and all
trace of her and her name was gone. I'd never entered her place, though there
was one time when my wife Kathy and a friend named Donald did take her up on the
invitation and entered her warren - small, dark, dank two or three
rooms, cluttered and more dark, they reported to me. I'd stayed at Chumley's,
across the courtyard, reading the pages she'd given to me. In one very old
photo, she was seen as a surprisingly beautiful WWI nurse. Bobby had told me
some about her, saying she was once almost famed, a real-deal in her own work,
and a pleasant and treasured character whose attentions I should cherish. Death
takes who it will and, I guess, whenever it selects - inopportune or
not.
Chumley's, as I said, was once a dairy; and the rear portion of it, along
the bar and behind it, entered from the courtyard - which was
not really the 'front' entrance but more like a secreted 'other' entrance for
insiders or those of some regularity - still showed quite clearly
the stalls and farm-tiled (for ease of cleanliness) walls wherein the cows once
were kept and milked. This had all been turned into an alcove area of about 8
tables and seating for, perhaps 30 people. It was most often either filled with
drinkers and diners, or nearly so, with people coming and going in clumps,
usually, of four or six. The other, front, area, with a blazing, open fireplace
(Wintertime) was very nicely done, and cozy. A waitress or two served the twenty
or so tables; small, distinct, linen-covered. The menu was OK (I never really
delved) and whatever food did come around usually looked OK by me. The
clientele, for the most part, was young Villagers, couples on dates, or friends
of sorts meeting for a re-union type rendezvous or jut to touch base once again.
Mid-section, where Bobby was and where the courtyard door was (which also
happened to front the door to the far right, which was Anne Adams ground-floor
apartment), was the bar. Big tap handles on the wall, booze and liquor beneath,
on the bar shelves. Standing at the bar were usually the loud people, the
half-drunk regulars, etc. It was a favorite haunt of firemen, college-partiers,
and those who liked drinking, period. Bobby Beddia was a favorite of all these
people, and - in addition - he was also a fireman over on Seventh Ave, in the
Village. He lived on Staten Island, in a bungalow house, and had a very cherry
Alfa Romeo which he treasured. Being a fireman, when on duty Bobbie was usually
away, posted to the house, or on some firehouse chore (one time he'd told me of
delivering a tanker-truck full of water to Edison, NJ, the next town to where I
lived. I never knew exactly why he had to do that, but it had been that day's
chore for him, driving the fire-rig, its tank filled with water, to New Jersey;
we compared notes on roadways and scenery). All this sort of thing went on very
well; we got on nicely. My wife always said the Bobby looked like Gene
Kelley - some dancing guy, a spry, diminutive figure with nice
moves. I never saw that myself. Once the World Trade Center towers went down,
amidst all that flame and carnage, Bobby disappeared for months. I always
worried, but never asked, if he was OK, or perhaps one of the casualties
- I never knew how to find out, nor had the gumption to bring up the
subject. I always scanned the dead-lists as they were published, but never saw
his name. As it turned out, some six or seven months later, walking into
Chumley's we walked right to Bobby Beddia once more behind the bar. His
comment, right off, was 'this gives a whole new meaning to the phrase 'nice to
see you.'' He'd been posted to the Trade Center site, constantly, for some three
months, and then had been taken to a counseling and rehab center (for such
personnel) and kept there for a month or two getting screwed back all together,
mentally. He said it had been brutal, and someday maybe we'd talk about it. Not
much else was ever mentioned. He'd survived, we'd all met up again, and things
were OK. All that famed mystique of Chumley's, at Barrow and Bedford Streets,
had disappeared for me a long time ago - I was a regular, an
accepted personality in the place. It had a front-section doorway and a
rear-court doorway ('in one door and out the other'), and in its Prohibition era
days as a speakeasy it had generated the phrase ('86 it'), which is restaurant
lingo now means 'dump it' or throw something away. Back then it meant 'here come
the police, a raid is underway, 86 it!...', which meant to exit out the back,
courtyard door, through 86 Barrow Street, so as to escape the cops.
As it ended up, the survival of Bobby - and all that sadness
and all that gladness - was short lived. Perhaps but three years
later he died in a fire in the Deutschebank Building, across from the old Trade
Center site - a building which had survived but been ruined and was
awaiting its own demolition. More oddly than ever, to make it worse, that
Saturday afternoon fire was witnessed by me. Unbeknownst to myself and the two
other people I was with, as we looked up at the flames and saw the trucks and
equipment racing to the site, little did we know that at that very moment,
unable to breath for lack of water and pressure for oxygen, Bobby and another
fireman were breathing their very last on an upper floor of that blazing
building. He died in place, exhausted and without air - the
demolition operation for the building had severed the services he'd so badly
needed that day to survive. It was all a huge, nasty, deadly mistake. Bobby
paid with his life, in his own line of duty. I was appalled and made humble,
once more, by the loss of a friend and the way it had happened -
and, just as well, shocked and beleaguered by the fact of the happenstance of
myself having been present at that moment, looking up, just wondering what was
going on. I yet grieve anew as I'm thinking about it.
My life is, in fact, a sad spectacle, and one that doesn't really deserve
much scrutiny; certainly not the scrutiny I'm currently giving it -
yet, I vow to continue.
For the decade of the nineties, and a little before and a little after, I
lived weirdly in a world of my own creation - a world of motorcycles, thieves,
drunks, addicts, cranks and hazards. Everyone knew it, and so did I. I was
amidst danger most and very often, mostly with others along but sometimes alone
too. I faced off many difficult and different situations - slyly computing and
figuring my ways and means of survival and connivance. For every week I lived,
there were three or four meetings a week in far-flung New Jersey locations I
needed to attend, prepare and run - not even just attend. I had to create the
issues of concern, work on them, organize others to work on them, do field work,
gather the reports, add to and detract from the funding and distribution of
monies splashed all over the state. It was grueling and often just plain stupid
work. People seemed to either hate or love me, dispel my attractions or welcome
them. Different parts of the state were completely at variance with each other.
In addition, I had to maintain and fund an actual office, one with 14 districts,
and I had to write, edit, paste and produce a rather glamorous monthly newspaper
- and then distribute, section, label and mail all of it, by specific dates; no
leeway, no free time. I had 2400 people underneath me - riders and cohorts, and
I had perhaps forty people, during the course of any month, with whom I'd have
to discourse, argue, cajole, piss off, placate and listen to, and direct. None
of it was easy. In addition, at all times people were dying, getting maimed and
sick, having personal problems big time, fleeing or fighting the law, going to
jail, going to trial or awaiting hospital and insurance and legal issues needing
additional attention. The only 'comic' relief (and it wasn't really) were the
constant stream of runs, parties, rallies, meetings and shows I, in addition,
had to put on, plan, finance, organize, pull off, and terminate and account for.
I did all this for $570+, give or take a week, clear, with no insurance or
benefits. Try that some day. See how you like it. The only benefit, if any, was
in the people, all sides, all types, law and lawless, that I'd deal with. It was
truly amazing. All those long Summer nights, long weekends, runs, rides and
trips, in every season; under constant operation. Being seen and recognized in
many places, wherever I went somewhere, became a complete nuisance, and
something I began avoiding. There came a point when I could do nothing alone -
everywhere I went there were at least three or four others - acting as
accomplices, helpers, aides, bodyguards, lookouts. Yes, yes, it was that stupid.
I grew to know every inch of New Jersey. To help myself and, I thought, others
as well, I began to take 'organized' rides with people completely unaccustomed
to anything outside of their little realms, to many of the places, hangouts and
bars and taverns I'd known in Manhattan. It became the only safety valve I had.
I can fairly say that I enriched greatly the lives of many, by expanding their
experience horizons, introducing them to new and different things, and never
shying from talking and pointing out to them the differences and unique
qualities they were underway with and in the new middle of. I was a small king,
somewhere, with a tribe in the field with me.
There was never anything I could do that would be 'inadvertent'. I was
intensely position to be at the center of a constant firestorm, one that most of
the time I myself had created - it was all an experience of stepping on toes,
being where I shouldn't have been, doing something that others claimed some
proprietary right to do. All bullshit, all around. Behind each corner there were
cranks and fools - the endless drivel about POW/MIA and all that 'veterans'
stuff and 'support our troops'. All crap - the truth was these people were in
the employ of their own insatiable demands for self-satisfaction : the cry-baby
veterans themselves coming home and just never letting go, saluting at every
chance and every flag, lecturing others on things of no import at all,
procedural matters and protocols, and then attempting to piggy-back upon the
'open hearts' of Bikers. They took it upon themselves the incredible belief that
others could be made to care - actually they did, but no one did so with any
real smidgeon of education or knowledge about the historical situations of which
they partook. Everything was groundless, and from that non-ground all else grew.
These guys were always lurking, they used the naivete of the 'Biker' crowd as a
jolt to get their undiminished military attentions once more thrown to the
forefront - they were afraid to let it go, afraid their own past would die. They
wanted credit for something. Little did it matter to them that the U.S.
Government of their famed adoration was a version of organized crime, a polluted
satrapy of thieves, boners and bastards on the make. Far me it from them to ever
consider that the land was being raped and despoiled, the country which they
spouted so much for was tragically being cut and sundered, slowly dying, from
issues and philosophies they knew nothing of and were too stupid to try and
investigate. It was all disgusting and worshipful militarism at its diarrheic
worst. These people were fucking idiots - crybabies, to be more exact. They
wanted memorials, memorial runs, special attention, dispensations; they were
ball-less and putrid, the sick, loose-end of war, war that never goes away.
Their fake motorcycle stance was a shield and a barrier to any real learning. I
had to tread carefully, every step of the way - if it wasn't the likes of these
control-freak idiots, it was the club-monster guys gunning for me, finding turf
infractions, dis-allowing me (or attempting to dis-allow) to take other 'bikers'
from NJ into NYC because that was someone else's 'territory' - Hell's Angels vs.
Pagan's, all that same shit all over again, over and over. Paterson had the
Pagans, the Mountain Rest Inn, was theirs. North Bergen had the newer influx of
Hells Angels trying to backdoor themselves into NJ by means of ersatz
cover-clubs like 'Satan's Sinners', etc. NYC was Hells Angels. Philadelphia was
Pagan's. You Jane it, everyone had a patch or a beef or a concern. All of South
Jersey itself was a minefield of Pagan's, Breed (Jersey shore), and later
Outlaws and the rest. Every move seemed to be connected to something else.
Garbage in, garbage out. But one had to know all this, be cognizant of it, and
aware - with each move - of what false 'geography' was being traversed. It was
like that everywhere - the motorcycle world was a boondoggle for misfits, fools,
criminals and low-lives. In truth, there was no goodness anywhere, but there I
was smack in the middle of it, having created by pretty much my own doing a
monstrous edifice serving that entire shit-stupid community. Even the smarter
ones were blowhards and fools. I had a friend named Bob, an ironworker, sitting
on loads of money, living like white trash, doing nothing and knowing less. He'd
bury, literally just bury, wads of money in his yard. One of his girlfriends,
Grace, knew of the hiding spots and, after a nasty breakup, knew enough to dig
up what she wanted for herself. He was livid. She got a pickup truck with the
wet dough. The talk at B&D Motorcycle (the Harley dealer), was that Bob
would buy his new bike, each time, for cash, with money still damp from being
underground, in the soil. I had another friend, Pete, whose characteristic it
was to shit in every new toilet he'd go, whether office, house, tavern, bar,
whatever, and leave his huge turds, unflushed, in the the toilet. He did this
most everywhere. I never understood it; it always amazed me how he could make it
happen. But, that's what he did - and, yes, his girlfriend(s) knew of it and
just laughed it off with a roll of the eyes. (I've left last names off here, for
their own propriety; but for twenty dollars I'll supply them to you). During
these years, as well, there was cocaine and other drugs everywhere - at the
Pioneer Tavern in Iselin, NJ, the white powder would be lined out on the toilet
tops and people would stride in and get their set-up. I'd see how people visibly
changed in twenty minutes of arriving at the bar - become manic talkers, take on
nervous attributes, and the rest. Motorcycle stunts in the parking lot, loud and
boisterous behavior, aggressiveness towards others. The entire gamut would begin
happening.
At one level, the endless biker parties, rallies and runs were fun in their
way. They led me to many characters and people I'd have otherwise avoided - an
entire other section of a really low-level society, upbringing and education.
Hard to pin, but there. The one way I dealt with a lot of it was by comic
relief, being the jokester, clowning. A lot of the girls, for instance, were
simple exhibitionists who liked taking their clothes off or showing their
breasts and what else. I'd engage them, converse, bring things out - a snippet
of instruction and extra attention. The men around them could be crude or brutal
- not that anyone really ever minded. It was all part of a simple, weird
hierarchy and turf. I'd give everyone a name. I'd open with lines like this,
leading to the sorts of vignette that follows: -- 'So then, tell me a bit about
yourself"....I had remembered her mentioning to me that she was here from the
north of Florida, visiting. That had totally thrown me off, my directional
geography, because it all sounded so strange - not that I really knew much about
southern places, but that to me sounded as if one was saying 'I am from the
north of the south, or would it be the south of the north' - see, anyway. I was
totally made confused - against my wishes too - by that statement and was
therefore not sure how to approach Miss Caliber. I called her that because she
once had given me a lecture of sorts, or at least a seminar, on rifles and
armaments, and - yes - the various 'calibers' of bullets and ammunition; things
I really knew nothing about but with which she was quite familiar having grown
up, as she said, on a rural farm road where her 'daddy' had taken many liberties
- out there in the country - with everything from liquor and untaxed sales and
trading, to arms sales and gun-running and trading off passes and permits for
money and services with very many of the local 'authorities' and officials,
those elected and those appointed. I was not too sure about any of that really,
but as she portrayed it the countryside thereabouts to where she'd been raised
was a hotbed of pursuit, intrique and illegality too. Caught my interest, did
this Miss Caliber. Whose real and entire name was Jeramayan Emileen White. It
sometimes appears that people are born into their station and place in this life
- born without any control on their part and then further impressed into the
service of their role by the name or names they've been given. It seemed this
way with Miss Caliber - whatever her parents had in mind, whoever they really
were, and - hell - for that matter whoever her mother was and what sort of
presence she was in this young girl's life (never spoken about, never present, a
complete absence) there had to be in their own characters an inkling of what
they'd gone through or meant for and by naming that little baby girl as they
did. Perhaps it was the mother's own name or a family name. Perhaps it all
belonged to Daddy. You know how rural southerners are with that stuff. I had a
friend who was born and reared in Arkansas and he used to say (being able, as he
was, to laugh at himself, which is, I still believe, a might good trait to have)
that he'd investigated his family tree and found out it was 'all trunk, no
branches' - what he meant to say, of course,was that 'my daddy was my uncle and
my mother was my sister and my aunt was my mother too.' It all made no sense,
but everyone always got Billy's point, and a good, happy laugh, at his expense,
always went around. Now I'd heard lots of names in my day, but in so many
respects that seemed to me, immediately upon hearing it, as one of if not the
most pretty and authentic names I'd ever before heard. I just had to learn more.
I could be madcap at the drop of the hat - I was always in service and in demand
to take the stage, take the microphone, do the intro's, carry the crowd. A
regular one-man stand-up routine was I. It all made no sense, but I did it
nonetheless, as honed and perfected as a secure stand-up comic. I had fun with
the likes of Miss Caliber and her ilk. Her boyfriend's name was Billy - and if
people didn't always get her point, everyone always got her pal Billy's point,
and a good, happy laugh, at his expense, always went around. Billy was a
character anyway - it never much mattered what did or did not happen around him.
He'd go with it. He claimed he was once 'fired from my job at the sperm bank,
for drinking on the job.' Just the kind of person he was. There was a fiery side
to him as well - justifying his time in jail, believe me - but for the most part
it was always under control. Miss Caliber, during the time I knew her, fit right
in with all of this - she took her place immediately among the pantheon of
little Goddesses I toyed with - the girl who came to the biker Halloween Bash as
Pocahantas, and to whom I referred ever after, and at the microphone that night,
as 'Poke Her Heinie'. Girls, or at least these girls, at this level - young,
pert, experimentative, exploring, drifting through the 'Biker' world - seemed
ready to put up with anything. My role at the time was to somehow make all of
this work - the personalities of the rash, brutal old-timers as well as the
protective needs of these new kids. Guys as well. Many times the 'boys' in this
mix, the newcomers, were just as weak and unformed as the girls - fey, almost.
Involved very curiously with things of their own devise, in almost an arts and
crafts manner of moving forward - beads, belt-buckles, tattoos - these young
boys too were often just this side of feminine, or at least trying hard to find
a way of growing out of it. There's something about a motorcycle that's a
swamp-like infective for people's irrational souls - they let it carry a
symbolism for them, and then quickly find themselves overwhelmed; as I had, in
fact. First it's the motorcycle; then some weird image begins arising, and it's
the boots, the need for the vest, the chains, the belt, then the replacement
helmet - all of a sudden ruder, smaller, less protective. You could tell
immediately the ones upon whom this was all working - the others, with whom it
never really set in - they would remain as outsiders, fringe characters on their
safety bikes, extra padding, safe clothing, big helmets, safety-riding courses,
all that. No one ever really bothered with them. It was the other part of that
extreme spectrum - which I'd address from my side. I wrote an article about that
once, and published it as one of my many monthly columns in the motorcycle press
- I called it 'Bob Likes Lunch'. It was a big hit - it covered this fictional
Bob guy who gets a bike, starts riding, likes to ride to diners and restaurants,
eating, meets up with another biker friend, begins riding with him, seeing the
more hard-core 'other' side of the motorcycle world - still stopping everywhere
to eat, he gradually begins changing; less family, less wife, less gentility.
Bob goes hardcore, leaves it all behind, runs on, but still likes 'Lunch!'. It
was a profile of deterioration. Those two different sides never really gel. And
by the way, Jeramayan is dead now - she had her chest ripped open by a highway
guardrail and died on the spot while riding her boyfriend's motorcycle, by which
I mean driving it, solo'ing, thinking she had it all under control. Somehow she
accelerated madly off the roadway and into the slicing guardrail. Ripped her
tits right off. Just one road-fatality of way too many.
You recall how my message originally was to go to Africa as a worker-priest
and minister to the 'natives', well - in so many respects - that's exactly what
I ended up doing with all of this. The 'Bikers' I here mention were my
unconverted masses - to whom I played, ministered, gave confession, distributed
sacraments, all that. I know it sounds odd, but it's exactly what I was doing at
that point : the emergency calls in the night for the injured or dead and dying,
the police-station calls and problems needing arranging and administering, the
house-calls on families both needy and/or hurting, the broken homes, the poor
with no joy or food or toys - believe me, and ask anyone who would know - for
some ten years of my life that's what I was given over to : secular sainthood by
degree. I learned how to see, how to recognize what I see, how to get inside
people's heads, and how to get back out of them, after leaving my mark, while
remaining whole, solitary and sanctified. Of course, my mission was not at all
doctrine or catechism or church propaganda. Fuck the church. By contrast, it was
a preachment towards letting people know that they could break away, rip
themselves free, find creativity and singularity and just be themselves. Forget
the rules. To all extremes, yes, this was taken wrongly or out of context
sometimes - all those gangs and head-busters and lawless thugs - but so much of
all that was blanketed too in a gentleness and complacency just calling out for
help and direction. I took the opportunity whenever I could. The entire message
was garbled and confused, and those people wouldn't really have recognized it
anyway, but I was amidst the longest, strangest group of unschooled and unaware
people I'd ever had been able to imagine - and for the time I was, I did well to
keep all of that, my own knowledge and traits, well hid. I lived within two
worlds, I straddled them both as best I could - and maybe, by doing so,
compromised away whatever best chance of a real life I had.
These were people whose idea of 'high-culture' was most probably listening
to a live Johnny Cash CD of his concert at Folsom Prison, in California (one of
the worst things I've ever heard). Try it out sometime, give it a listen.
Someone had it all figured out, and got Johnny Cash, the singing whore, as a
foil to perform for them - a grown man, with vague pretensions of literacy and
country-elegance, singing and caterwauling with an audience of
prison-freak-commandos doing time for serious offenses. He plays right to them,
panders in fact : cheap references, acknowledgments of rank and protocol, and
the rest - and he does absolutely nothing, really, for the men he was using.
It's pretty sad. I don't know how people listen to that shit. The rest of it was
pretty much all the same : fucking, stupid Biker music : Allman Brothers,
Lynyard Skynnard, or whatever it was; a real bunch of crap for outdoor rallies,
tee-shirt contests, party nudity and crass stupidity. Oh, I left out the
drunkeness.
Eventually I realized I had to get away, return to what I was, what I'd
been working hard at and keeping under wraps all those years. My own office
space had gradually been coming cluttered with the actual opposite of whatever
you'd think these people expected. it would just draw quizzical looks from them,
nothing more. My paintings on the walls, my constructs on tables, sheaves of
writing and notebooks on the bookshelves - in addition to a growing assortment
of books. After a year or two, once my mind was made up that I wanted out, it was so apparent that my head was elsewhere that
it no longer mattered. It just became too much, and I walked. I've never looked
back either, except maybe just now. I'd left others behind to finish the work
for me, and at the end of one more year, as I gradually weaned myself from it
all and them from me, I closed it all down : newspaper, office, motorcycles,
connections and the rest. I simply stopped everything dead where it last
was.
45. When I was about 10 or 11, 1959 or 60, my father cut off his thumb. It was
a work accident, in a frame shop for furniture where he worked - something with
a band-saw; he pushed the locked wood in place along the whirring saw blade and
took off, as well, with that blade, the thumb with which he was holding it in
place. Just below the middle thumb joint - thus leaving him with a stub only. He
said he'd not realized it was even cut off, just saw the blood, bent down and
picked up his thumb. They took him to the hospital, and two days later he came
home with a big, gauze-white thumb. Later, when I saw it, it looked pretty gross
but did eventually heal over to a nice rounded nothing. I wasn't even sure what
a band-saw was, until later, he showed me. It had nothing to do with music.
Funny thing was, in the 1940's, during the war, in Bayonne, my mother
(working as a 19-year old in a 'defense plant') had cut off her middle finger in
somewhat the same way - caught in some machine part, mangled and severed. She
too had only a stump of a middle-finger, right hand. So now they sort of
'matched', this Andy and Mary team. My mother, in later years, would often put
the stump to her nostril, so as to make it look as if the rest of the finger
(gone, actually) was up her nose. Big joke, all the time.
Funny it is, too, how things stay with you. The first song I can remember
that really socked me was one I heard most usually on a small 12-transistor
Emerson radio my parents had bought me. I think it was Ben E. King, something
called 'A Rose in Spanish Harlem'. ("There is a red rose up in Spanish
Harlem...it grows up to the street, right up through the concrete'...etc).The
song, whatever it was, completely startled me, at about age 9. For multi-level
reasons, I was taken away by it - by the thought of some other place, another
location where people lived and things really were different. The guy's voice
and the odd beat of the song - all of that did something to me, inside. I really
hate to be one of those gibberish clowns who can proclaim that their life
changed when they heard this or that song, the words, that moment, and all that.
It's most usually said about a rock and roll song some smattering nabob runs
with and uses as the formative moment of his or her life. This was entirely
different. I don't know what genre it's called, where it came from or anything,
in fact, about Ben E. King, or Bennie King, or whatever it was. I just know that
the song brought me to another place - a city place, a black, urban street,
where the downtrodden and seemingly underprivileged were still able to eke out
existence and beauty from their crummy lives; where fine things grew out of
concrete and were strong enough to overcome bounds and obstacles; where miracles
and spectacular changes could take place, against all odds. I never even really
knew if it was all symbolic anyway of a 'girl' named Rose, or Rosalita or
Roseanna, or if it indeed was just a flower, a plain old red rose. If they
existed there too in that manner, then so be it. To me it was powerful romance,
a fearsome force, something to be reckoned with. Just listening to it, whenever
it was played and whenever I could - I'd walk the Inman Avenue stupid suburban
tract housing sidewalk with this silly radio playing loud or to my ear, just to
be able to be taken away and transfixed by the images it conjured for me - was
enough. I remember, one time, asking my father, while we were riding somewhere
in the car, just the two of us, with the radio playing, why people only wrote
about love, and love songs. He answered, 'well, son, what else is there to write
about, really?' In 1959 or whenever that was, I suppose that point of view was
OK enough to be prevalent. At my father's cultural level, of course - which left
out all the nihilism and bleak cabaret songs and the rest of the likes of Brecht
and Kurt Weil, and the dadaists, and all the rest of that Lotte Lenya scrunch
crowd. Edith Piaf only accented even moreso the point. Nothing or no one was, as
of then, yet global enough for any real thinking. That all only came later, in a
few years, and when it did, yes, it exploded and culturally changed (not so much
for the better either) the cultural climate we all swam in. Kids and boisterous
vamp songs, Jew rock 'n roll businessmen scheming to make money and milk what
they could, unsuspecting and stupid kids falling for it, and the entire media
structure of a nervous, twisty nation chiming in to make it work, and make
millions off of it. It was all manufactured junk - I could have just as easily
said 'dad, why doesn't anyone sing or do anything real and authentic?' I don't
know what he would have answered. It was too late. It was, by that point, well
past the beginning of the end.
A part of me says 'stop'. Another part says 'go on'. I have mixed feelings
but know what I wish to say : we live in a culture of shit right now, Everything
has been debased. From the very first time I heard that song, from that very
moment, I should have, must have, did, know that we as a whole, a 'society',
were headed for the finish line. No one else around me ever mentioned any of
this to me - they'd not know Harlem from a rat's ass at that time. The only
media portrayals of it were subsumed in the usual crime-stories, rat-infested
black slums, Negro problems, sex and violence. The USA had already let itself
been twirled around the finger of the manipulators who'd overtaken, by that time
already, the conglomerates and the influence peddlers who were slowly
transforming and ruining, and running things. Back then too I read Vance
Packard's books, and they wiped me out - 'The Status Seekers',' The
Wastemakers', 'Hidden Persuaders'. These were each just pretty simple, almost
'pop' psychology; sociology running adrift of its purpose and, instead,
critiquing a society on the make. But it was all real, and all made sense to me.
Thorstein Veblen and all his 'conspicuous consumption' ideas; I loved all that
as well. It was all happening around me - the transformational society was about
to begin, wordlessly shredding whatever values Truth and tradition may once have
had. The whole shooting match was about to change, targets were being taken
down, new ones being put in place, and no one was onto it, no one cared, and no
one was ever told. Crap culture and mass consumption was about to be goaded into
action. Wars and politics and detractors and persuaders would son somehow all be
working together : the results were to be carnage. Vietnam battlefield carnage
was to be just one part of it, and that, in turn , would lead eventually to the
entire overhaul of the world we knew. This transistor radio song-scheme, a
gentle tune about Spanish Harlem, was about to be knocked over by a tidal wave
of ineptitude - an ineptitude that was, from that point on, continually
applauded, pushed into action, and fed to grow.
I lived in a household that didn't know anything of this stuff - Ed
Sullivan presented 'entertainment' on whatever night that was, Saturday, I
guess. Milton Berle and all that other shameless stuff, it was all presented
without comment, just force-fed out through the newer medium of television and
then popular-broadcasting as 'individual' personalities too things over. The
William B. Williams's of the world - who was NOT related, in any way, to William
Carlos Williams (who, to my friendly mind, would be the poet William C.
Williams). Nobody anyway would ever know what I was talking about. I look back
on those years now and realize what a solitary little crud I was - enmeshed in
gears not of my making, but rejecting them all and trying to run. It was almost
as if getting hit by a train was one solution to the problem I'd found myself
in. That too, I guess, didn't fully work - although I, in my heart, really do
know that it allowed me to go back, or be called back, from wherever it was I'd
sourced from, and be re-jetted, fine-tuned, returned as something different upon
this earth. If there's any difference between Life and Death - and I don't often
think there actually is; it's all the same, it's all just running on - then I
experienced it and came back to be re-staged. I'd already had it up to my ass
with what I'd seen. This was to be second try, and I was in the middle of it and
off and running. I'd look at people, adults, and try to figure what was making
someone tick - how in the world had they allowed themselves to become that? I
would try and think it through; knowing really little about the world or
anything else. I couldn't understand the words and, instead, it was all a mime
show - people acting and twirling, being this or being that, in some awesome
stage-show of their own selections and their own makings. To no avail and
certainly to no ends. For a new white fence? For another station wagon and a
trip to the ocean, or a ride to Rhode Island? Sand, boats, beaches, cities? The
first time my parents drove me down Broad Street, Newark (it had to be 1958) to
visit my aunts and uncles in Rutherford and Lyndhurst, NJ, I was stunned.
Awestruck by the pure power of that which I witnessed. A street where something
lived and went on. Buildings bigger than a shed, taller than two stories, a
teeming business and shopping street, clutches of people, all different, all
brash, all loud - black, white, Spanish and Puerto Rican and whatever. The
lights reflected the street, and all those merchants and storefronts, tall
insurance company buildings, sound-stages and entertainment halls, schools and a
college. What a way to get somewhere else. And then, just as astonishing, along
River Road, near to where my aunt lived, was Rutherford - the home of Dr.
William Carlos Williams himself! Stunned, I retreated into my own grand silence.
Paterson! The Falls! The lights across the meadows and the pig farms which
stretched to NYC. That too is all gone - it's all gone now and sham culture had
reduced it to a shambles of stores, stadiums, sports arenas, rock-concert halls,
condominium housing and all the rest. Graft, corruption and badly-seeded money
and payoffs, crawling local politicians on the take, making deals, swapping spit
and stories, everyone on the take. The world is, by these means, ruined - and no
one says a word, no one knows a thing. Ask Senator Menendez - not man enough to
own up to anything, he'll dissemble and waver and wiggle. Forget him; come ask
me. Lautenberg, before his cruddy self dies, ask him; come see me (OK, now he's just died). I know all
the bodies and where they've been put. These bastards all lie. And just before
they run and hide they grant the permissions needed to further despoil our
world. They should die. See, all this started with a rose somewhere in Spanish
Harlem. I knew I shouldn't have gone here.
Only years later did I read 'Paterson' - which I found to be a great read.
I read 'In the American Grain', and felt the same way. I dug Williams; it was
all so different. Later, as well, I stumbled over to Ginsberg and his own
personal Paterson connection; went there, visited, learned the place, and saw it
too turn to shit. I think back now, and wish back then I'd just walked up to
Williams's front door and, as a twelve year old kid, knocked and introduced
myself. What the hell, it had to be better than playing yet another pick-up
baseball game. I felt always as if I was in the wrong skin and people were
talking at me in another tongue. Nothing I understood. Which isn't the same as
saying 'I understood nothing.'
Hundreds of things go into the making up of 'character'. Small things mixed
all together, memories and influences, as well as individual traits and family
lineage. It all comes out in the wash, and there's really no denying that. The
curious connection here with Spanish Harlem, unknown to my young mind yet
influential somehow enough, was that Spanish Harlem, earlier Italian Harlem
(116th street, east side, 1st and 2nd aves.), was the very same place my
father's father had gone to - leaving family and wife behind. It was only years
later that my father told me the one time he'd met his father was there, 116th
street. His father, now some sort of local hoodlum Mafia mob leader, had somehow
summoned his 'son' from Bayonne, to meet him, to see him. A person had been
dispatched by car to Bayonne and somehow young 'Andy' was brought up to 116th
street - in my father's re-telling of this mysterious tale, he was led into a
large room centered by a long, wooden table around which sat various men. At the
head of that table, in a white coat and a hat of some sort, sat my father's
father, to whom he was led. A hand was extended, whether a shook hand or a
kissed hand I cannot recall, and the young boy thus was introduced formally to
his father. He was then returned home to Bayonne - which was, in essence, really
no home at all. But, whatever - the gigantic mysteriousness and archetypal
ponderous of this story struck me hard. There really had been a connection to
'Harlem' - the same Harlem in which the Italians had now been supplanted by
Hispanics; thus the 'Rose of Spanish Harlem.' Stunning? No, perhaps, yes, maybe.
You figure.
It was the 60's, late. It was the 70's, early. All that crazy shit had
begun piling up - weirdly distended nightspots with the collections of new rock
and roll people just converging - punk clubs forming, the new a formative years
of fools and cretins like Patti Smith, Lou Reed, Bob Dylan, David Johansson -
all that crap - coming back together again for a new a second life. The thing
about that sort of music scene is repudiation. These people are always
repudiating their previous selves, the music, the sound and the stuff they'd
done before, so as to make their 'present' the more exciting, fresh , buyable
)of course) and wisest. It's a form of scam marketing that they're all good at.
Darkness rules that edge of town, believe you me. The entire package was coming
together in a fashion plate of verve and excitement, manufactured mostly, as I
said, by a vast, Jewish Vaudevillian machine working behind the scenes.
(Remember, my first days in NYC had been above the old Second Avenue Theater -
Jewish Burlesque, Vaudeville and the rest of that - it all still seeped. My
father would have known nothing of this - not even the operatic arias and their
equivalents could have prepared him for what was coming - but here, now, to me
it was all clear. We are being hi-jacked by a swarm of mosquitos. Uneducated,
shallow, and liars to boot. The country had fallen, and fallen hard, and these
rats were jumping into the dirty cellar all what was left. I demanded that I
stay clear. Even today its leftover junk-politics lives on - tawdriness, simple
couplet-rhymes set to junk music, drone-pop, beat-techno crap, nothing real.
It's in overdrive, and it's all living off the past, or a dream of the past
anyway. That's cultural imperialism nowadays, and the whole, entire, fucking
world has caught it.
I've learned lots of things : I've learned that sentimentality kills, that
rote learning is no learning at all, that the best of intentions amount to
nothing. I've learned that it's all bullshit, trust no one, All these things
came easy, and seemingly they each came on time. I seemed to know just the when
and the how of each lesson. So much of what is imparted to us is just plain
wrong - the concepts and the language we use : there is no 'sky' 'above' us,
that's all cracker-barrel shit. We are the sky; it's here and it's now, all
around us. There's no dimensional difference, and the word we use, the words we
use, all impart nothing precise at all. The idea for 'sky' and the word that
encompasses it, encompasses nothing of it all. Same with 'space'. Same with
'here' and 'there' - all nothings, all incorrect, all wanting. Why construct a
world around such glitteringly wrong concepts? Or if you do, don't talk to me
about it.
I've never been too steady about the everyday stuff of our world. It just
never seemed to matter - I went along, foraging as if for ideas to equal food,
and I always came back with something. It's difficult now to understand how a
simple, plain kid, at my age, was precocious or incautious enough to do things
like begin reading, at the tiny little Mrs. Muccilli (she was the librarian, a
lady I knew, and she had two kids in school with me, Philip and John. Perfectly
ordinary, pious and devout kids I've completely lost track of, a lifetime ago)
Avenel Library, the slim, new volumes of poetry they'd somehow keep getting -
Berryman's Dream Songs, some early Ashbery stuff, and other items that seem
still pretty startling to me. I read Baldwin, tried my hand at Thomas Wolfe;
lots of stuff - it's amazing to think that a little junk-hole library like that
could afford the resources for a crazy mind like mine to feed off of. But it did
- no words were ever spoken, but the silent message was loud and clear for
everyone. I didn't need translation. I did not need anyone else's hand into my
gray matter - inclining or directing it to something other than what it was
after. I had my own stars in my own night-time sky, and all the rest be damned.
I'd go home again and suddenly find myself back in a Hell of a different
imagining. Plastic crucifixes on the wall, portraits of Christ and his Mother,
as if they were present and had sat for the sketch - all garbage. Nothing had a
complexion and nothing really 'came' from anywhere else. No Heaven, no Jesus
interceding - it was all just developed outward, not even so much inward -
outward from a person's own, quiet, personal orbit. I didn't need anyone, and I
wondered who really did.
One of the problems people make for themselves is in believing that
everyone else is viewing the world on the same terms they are and, because of
that, everything can be told and witnessed to, any words can be spoken, everyone
will know and understand what you're saying, the point of view which you put
forth - and which you feel is the same point of view as everyone else. Well, it
most often isn't, and most often people don't really wish to hear from you
anyway. That's the writer's silent gift : it's a gift to his self, his own
personal Golgotha or cemetery, or birthing room too, I guess - where things are
brought forth, where ideas come out of their hiding and hibernation and turn
into the fruition of some magical, intangible dream of being - just like our own
dreams of being. There are, really, no words for any of this - and it was
Wittgenstein who spoke that famous dictum that things that cannot be explained
should be then left unsaid. Or something near to that. It's pretty sacred stuff.
It's about an insufferable silence that comes forth from us to drape over the
gigantic, awesome concepts too large yet for our stupid brains. Context here is
everything - this dumb, Earth-bound place is our context, and once we escape
that, the tiny little things we live off of and of which we then find ourselves
dependent, mean really nothing at all.
Around about 1978, something like that, it was finally decided that the
elevated Westside Highway had to be closed, was in need of repair. I'd spent a
lot of time underneath that expanse, all along the Hudson piers, haunting in
those long, dark nights the cargo holds, the sheds and storage areas and the
workyards and truckyards of the then-still-active docks. All those gruff guys
and all their foul language and boisterous bonhomie and bravado - like walking
about with your dick out, but better than that, with a hard-on too. That's what
they were like. I knew, I could sense, they were all doomed, and they're most
probably all dead now anyway - and with them passeth another world and an entire
other way of life. Funny thing about the highway: the thing that really did it
in was when a truck fell through the highway and crashed to the ground below -
funny because that truck was carrying the cement to be used for repairs. The
Executioner, in this case, became the same as the Executee, or however that
goes. That truck going down was the last straw; the highway was closed forever
and soon after dismantling began. Actually, I have film I made of that endeavor, about 20 minutes of old Super 8, which
I took amidst the rubble and destruction of the elevated highway coming down.
Fun stuff, worth nothing, but fun anyway. What it somehow all amounted to was,
by like 1980, the end of the old New York City that had begun way back when Five
Points, in the same manner, was dismantled and done away with. Whenever any
sacred ground goes down it's always Government, with a capital G, that moves in
: Five Points was replaced with all those welfare halls, government agencies,
courthouses and jails - as if Government itself was insecure of its own presence
and reality and needed to overcompensate for itself. Here, along the westside,
it's now all civic stuff too : parkside walks, jogger paths, bikes paths, grassy
viewing places, and at the southern terminus, on new land created from landfill,
gigantic towers, Battery Park City stuff, buildings and schools - an entire and
new other city created on rubble once poured into the river. The old harbors and
docks are all gone - everything's been re-shaped, scoured and cleansed. There's
not a trace of the old days, or my stories or any of the stories these friends
would tell, left to be seen. It's all over, like an instant backfire from the
rear-end of some monster eating machine engorged and stuffing itself with
everything it can find. For some time there, that area was my second home : I
knew the turf pretty well, all the Freds and Frankies who were there : I'd get a
few bucks here and there changing tires on trucks, or dropping oil, or moving
boxes. I'd know who came and went at what times, how shifts changed and who was
doing the night shift, what was coming in, from where, all that. It was the dark
backside of New York City, and it had - just the same - its double on the east
side, East River, Fulton Fish Market area. I've written a lot about that too. I
frequented both sides of town, and they were both entirely different, like fish
versus meat. The East River side was never as threatened - although it too is
now gone and pretty much the same crap happened to it, maybe even worse. On the
westside I got to know the old, abandoned trucks and trailers - the ones who
that had people living in them, of a sort, the ones where certain 'business' was
transacted, the whores and the hookers and the runaways and the druggies and the
near-dead. It was like some cheap-ass trailer court, one where the lights never
came on and they just carted the dead away under the pleasant cover of that
darkness. I'd seen blood and marrow, spit, puke, shit and guts. It was
everywhere. Guys fucking guys at the backs of trucks, a hundred different girls
sucking dick for ten bucks or less. There was a gigantic fag district hereabouts
as well, places with names like Wild West or Outback - places where gay men
walked around naked except for cowboy-leather chaps on their legs; all stupid
and all signifying horrible shit. Police didn't care - they did nothing unless
provoked or forced - most probably half of them were on the take anyway, or
snoozing in their stupid Plymouths, or just sitting, talking, idling time, or
playing pussy with some girl's twat themselves. The fat dirigible of
overcompensation was afloat here, everywhere - scabby runaways still mad at the
world, guys on the lam, running from the law, or being chased. Everywhere was a
dark, black, very weird anarchy afoot. This was, pretty much, where the streets
ended. It was still New York City, but there were, really, no streets and, thus,
nothing responsible for anything.
46. Bank Street was (is) a rather small but very
interesting street in lower Manhattan, the sort of street that still held
open its own book of curious and immediate post-Civil-War era moments
- old stables now garages, odd couplings of coal chutes to walls to rooms
to docks and bays to apartments. The entire area had been landslided into more
commonplace use since then - auto and truck use for sure
- but it still held its very weird feel, and a feel that seemed preserved
and which I loved to wallow in. In the years of the 1970's it would take on a
panache of its own, a rugged elan - something we now try to
call 'hipster chic' or somesuch phrase. Patti Smith scrounged there for a
while (#24), John and Yoko had their place there - the last place of
theirs before the universal removal, after citizenship, into The Dakota, uptown.
Various artists were there (Brice Marden had his studio). It was just another
one of those places, something like Great Jones Street, that I was attracted to
without any ostensible reason or means of knowing why - something in
the air, something effusive and imbued with past and future potential, some
chemistry within place and time drawing me in. I never really know.
They talk of vortexes of energy, whatever that really is, as being places
which draw kindred spirits into their potential, into their real, or more real,
space. I can understand that, somehow. It actually makes sense; I guess
only if you know how to draw it out. I myself most recently again have felt that
sense of presence/being, that 'vortex' when visiting the grave of Mark Twain, in
Elmira, for the first time in over thirty five years. Just this past Fall, it
was still there, drawing me in - not the visible, plain me, no
- rather that part of the spirit-me that is writer and creator. I know it.
I feel it just as well when visiting Stephen Crane, in Elizabeth, or Allen
Ginsberg, in Newark, or Delmore Schwartz, in Westwood, NJ. Believe me, I know
what I'm talking about. I'd always felt, along this line, that Bank
Street itself might have something underneath it, something ancient, from
those pre-settlement or very-early settlement days, just screaming out to be
released. Who knows? There are places like that, and I've been to a few of them.
I felt it. Places like this often brought me back to them. I liked the shadow
and the dark, the infestation of half-light and half-worlds into them
- it was something I could follow. The great canyon of Broadway, down
below 8th Street, as it lowers and dips straight, always was magic to me. I'd
walk or bicycle, even in the midst of the most dense 1960's traffic
- when not too many others did - and take my chances just to
be amidst all of that. A really strange energy, something emitted gracelessly
and in which other things existed. All those grand and upward endings. And each
of these places had their stories as well - the old days, the larks
and travails, the workings and changings of individuals whose stories and
experiences had by now permeated my life : certain people got on early with me,
and never really left. A few: Delmore Schwartz, Hart Crane, Walt Whitman,
Stepehen Crane, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, just a few of many others. I
really didn't care, and still don't, about the exploits now of the
far-readier-to-access media types, all those rock stars and flame-veterans of
stage, screen, and TV, all those magazine bright-lights. They mean nothing to
me. Whatever they did on these streets, whether it was yesterday, today, or ten
years ago, means nothing to me. I'm talking a whole other, deeper and far more
authentic, strata still represented by these streets.
Of course, the Bowery itself had claim to all this; as did the area of
Corlears Hook, now mostly gone - all that old ship-building feeling,
those beat old structures, the little coves and inlets. It gave one the feel of
the old, ancient and original Manahatta, places undiscovered, when the shoreline
and the river was yet real, an actual shoreline and a landing to which and into
which, one could walk. Next to Corlears Hook, where that feel was very vibrant
(then taken away by the endless projects and ghetto parks that replaced all
this) was, as I said, the Bowery. Along the Bowery everything old, everything
dead, everything dark and wasted, still lived. Never died, never
disappeared. Its buildings and alleys had echoes, undying echoes of
everything that had gone before. At one end, the lone figure, say, of Abraham
Lincoln could still be found, and heard, addressing the assembled crowd
- his speech outward from Cooper Union, speaking back down to the
Bowery - still resounded.
Phil Fried was one of a couple other guys with whom I used to haunt
the upper west side and the Gotham Book Mart. Phil's father was an IBM or
something millionaire. He lived a wealthy man's life, as did Phil and his
sister. Columbia University people, Phil and myself, and a few others,
constantly wrote and scrapped and argued over 'Poetry', writing, authors, and
the rest. Like crazy fellows. Kathy, now my wife, used to hang with Mona
Molarsky, who eventually married Frank Beck, another of the 'poetry' boys, after
living with Paul Montazzoli, first, for years, They stole from each other, in
the girl department. It was sorrowful. Paul's dead now, died in Brooklyn about
three years ago, after having been a small time editor, and he also wrote
introductions and prefaces for those cheap, pulpy Barnes & Noble Classics
you see, little crap editions of things such as A Tale of Two Cities, and
Jane Eyre, stuff like that. We shared the same birthday. He was adopted. He
threw me that 30th birthday party weird bash on the docks and at the White
Horse, announcing that if we wasn't famous by 30 he'd kill himself. Never
happened,. He died at like 56 of some smoker's ailment or a cancer. He
chain-smoked pitifully. I still often now walk the streets of Brooklyn, in the
doing of other things, and think of Paul, sensing his presence or otherwise
somehow reading his being there. Phil was the quiet kingpin of this little
group. He's still vastly wealthy, smug and superior. He writes and publishes,
once or twice a year, these self-published little poetry groups, and throws book
parties at libraries and such for them. His poetry, once grand and exalted, has
basically degenerated into soft humor, irony and insider jokes. Upon his
request, I had read him once at the Princeton Bookstore. His sister and brother in
law live right here, by where I gather each day - I see her around town
often. Very haughty, wealthy (need I say) Jewish folk. Two Lexus cars, grand
house. But a nice enough girl. I have no idea what she thinks of me, except,
like most, as a solitary madman, crazed and haunted, around town. Phil's a nice
guy. He has way too much high-end people and stuff going for my shitty-taste. I
saw Frank and Mona at the last one I went to at the Princeton Library. That was,
like, last Summer, before last ('10, I guess). They're fine, older and Mona
turned into pretty much a Jewish mama wreck. (You can find her online. By
punching in her name, she writes for an upper westside city-guide newspaper,
about parties and parades and concerts and such). They live on 110th St. Her
picture is usually posted. Phil and his sister, lucky schmucks, got all dad's
millions. He was a big, late, drug-phase John Lennon fan too, Phil was. All that
eastern stuff. Travels a lot. But his work is all always too-glib and funny for
me. He's very much like an older 1950-60's poet who was named Kenneth Koch, and
wrote a lot of the same stuff. Koch came to Elmira College when I was there, and
stayed a bit. He was pretty much, by 1970, a curious ex-beat clown personality,
but an OK poet, though nothing real deep. I think Phil took a lot of that. It
must be nice to be able to publish your own little library at will. He has about
6 or 8 books, little skinny poetry volumes, but whatever. He also runs a little
magazine, for a long time, which we all started together (mine was called
'Transom'). His is Manhattan Review. Pretty decent and small-successful, again
with dad's money originally. I never had that leg up. My little magazine, called
'Transom', in reference to getting a 'found' manuscript in your office,
unsolicited, (in the publishing industry it was called an 'over the transom'
item, an unsolicited, found manuscript turned in sometimes surreptitiously, by
an unknown author - something that turned out to be a surprise). A
'transom', in the old days, was the window panel, usually hinged to go out or in
for air, that was high above the doroway to an inner office door -
thus, a manuscript, in this reference, would be 'thrown', over the transom).
Anyway, my own little magazine, for the year and a half or so I kept it going,
was - in its own little way - wondrous enough for me.
The small things do matter. I was the first person to publish the work of a
young kid from Westfield, NJ, Peter Gadol. Privileged kid, he'd written two or
three poems for his girlfriend (Shantih Clemans) during the time he was in
Paris. I accepted them and illustrated them and printed them in one of my
issues. Peter is now in LA somewhere, the successful author, already, these
years later, of some three or four books. We've had contact a few times, and
have talked of those earlier days. The jazz trumpeter, Robert Andre, had a son,
Carl, whose work I printed. He gave me a signed photograph of John Lennon and
him, sitting crazily drunk and slumped, at Max's Kansas City. I still have it,
somewhere. I printed work by Jeff Gordon, with whom I later did two art/record
albums for Polygram Records, in 1985/6. These were real heavy projects, with the
work of other artists in them, Tom Wesselman, Italo Scanga, and others. They
sold for 2,500 dollars each, and we produced 250 of them, still collectible
today. Transom never 'made' money, per se, and it was never about that
- I just wanted to work, to print, edit and publish. It got me around,
opened a door here and there, brought me to meet numerous new people, learn
things, and, as well, got me a venue for First Wednsday readings at the Barron
Arts Center, in Woodbridge, NJ - which operation I made into a
quite successful and popular monthly series. Frank Beck and I, along with Kathy
and Mona, once staged a grand reading of Our Town, by Thornton Wilder, there. Or
at least I think that's what it was. It might have been 'The Skin of Our Teeth.' I remember fearing that I would stumble
over the pronunciation of the word 'erudite' as I had to speak it in one of
my parts. I went over and over that pronunciation with Mona, who'd told me the
correct way to say it, and quite clearly and soundly too. It was about this time
too that I truly realized that I loved creative work - and that all
the other stupid drudgery of what people do with their time, and all their work
for money and its pursuit, was nothing but stupid shit - even for
necessities, stupid. People put all sorts of glosses on what they do
- they dress up their work-pursuits in terms and words that beg for you to
be impressed: pure endeavors, class and style, scarcity and gentility and
intelligence and learning. It's all bunko. It's all big, twisty words for saying
the same dumb things. Paychecks by which to survive, on Fridays; or huge
successes and piles of money, which then allows that person only to end up in
the same, dismal hole as the poor slob before him, doing the same thing, just
that the rich person uses bigger numbers for the same simple sum at the end.
Death and Nothingness, let's call it. The rest is illusion anyway; time-scale
relativity, and a perspective of One.
I've always believed that if a person didn't have a total commitment to
what he or she was doing - a complete and nearly uncompromising
belief in the rightness of the 'cause' so to speak, of oneself - then
the rest of it all becomes junk. Outside of all the parameters of right and
reason, logic and/or referential comparisons, it's that which comes from within
the person, that which is intuited, that makes the rightness work. From that
point come dedication and commitment to the work itself - the same sort of
things that allows someone to drive 250 miles to look at something or revisit a
memory, or stay up most all night scribbling or revising the words of an idea, a
page of story, or a poem. Crazy commitment, a commitment that isolates and
coddles, blankets and swarms around the person in the midst of the doing. No
words suffice, and it's an all-consuming affair. Outside of that, there's so
much glib unworthiness in everything else that it's just not worth getting
involved. Do you know how difficult it is to live a life with all these ideas in
place? It makes for a difficult time, in that the world around us is certainly
not set up to work with the comportment of a creative person - I
mean creative, not pop-creative or entertainment-quality creative, not the sort
of dawdle-faces who go on screen and babble on and on , about themselves and all
their silly work. For them the world is custom made, and people eat it up. I
call them the dawdlers.
When I used to do the Barron Arts Center work, it was funny the sorts of
people we'd attract. This was small-town civic stuff, funded as was the 'Arts
Center' by the local Cultural and Arts Commission, town and county -
small time people who could have doubled as faux-cultural 'hoodlums' on the
make. People like Anna Ashkenes, who thought nothing of striding, career-wise,
through taxpayer monies and local fundings in order to put some weird veneer of
acceptability on what would or could otherwise have gone as 'unacceptable' and
therefore not fit for exposure, art. The criteria were all hers. She'd glom, I'm
sure, back then, a cool thirty-grand a year from the county Cultural Arts
commission by pretending to be in the know about what 'art' was, all its
histories and presentations, and the where's and the how's by which it all
should be shown. Essentially, she'd roust up enough venues, sponsorship and
additional fundings to show, whether indoor or outdoor, any or all of this
'art' - parkland art expos, in the good weather, celebrating this or
that socially-accepted thing (Indian/Native heritages, old waterfront history,
New Brunswick/Rutgers art and culture stuff) - to celebrate the old
factory-work ethic of a place and time now long gone, nay destroyed, by the very
same people and entities who employed her. Indoor venues - things
like the Barron Arts Center, countywide - she'd tithe and
put together so that the 'locals' could continue it and carry it all on as
representative of the cultural vibrancy of their little towns; Woodbridge
here being a larger one of those. On our monthly Wednesday night presentations,
or the occasional, larger one we did on Saturdays, there'd be an assortment of
basic misfits - writers, poets, dancers, music folk, rebels, Goths,
self-proclaimed wizards and witches, bizarre old eccentrics, and a myriad of
turned-in shy and ultra-gentle emoters and people otherwise unsure of themselves
both sexually and gender-wise. It was quite weird spectacle, and for the 1980's
it represented almost a cross-section of what was happening elsewhere and
everywhere. Punks and hackers, start-ups, all about. I learned to deal with
them, talk to them on the fly, and make it all work. Bringing them out, and
giving something back. One girl, named Marrta Rose (exactly as she put it,
whether real name or not, I never knew), was a sullen, strange and dark girl
from Montclair or Maplewood or somewhere - she bespoke darkness in a
young but strong and wise way - Gothic sensibilities, just learning
about herself, with a touch a smirk and violence in the recited work
- someone always named as 'lover' getting stabbed, smeared, meeting fate,
or otherwise darkly besmirched. I did hear her, much later on, fronting of band
of the same name (Marrta Rose), whose music was being played on WFMU, about
1988. Don't know what ever came of that, or her. At each of these Barron Arts
Center events, I'd introduce the assembled, open the floor for readers, and
generally make sure that - in addition to my own stuff getting
read - the proceedings moved along, and then coffee, wine and
pastries too came out. Most of them moved along well and were successful. One or
two stood out as complete flops. In addition, the Barron Arts Center, back then
in its fledgling days, had a strange staff of its own, people with whom I also
became familiar and who then moved on. I've been told by others that our names
and those original, early days, are still spoken of in high regard and in awe.
I've met a few of the successors over the years, and they too eventually have
moved on (Joe Weil, for instance, ran a successful Poetry night, with his kids
from Middlesex County College, and he's since moved on himself to Binghamton
University in Binghamton, NY, where he's an English Professor, or at least a
Program Director). Susan Sofran Crotty and Edie Eustace also come to mind.
Susan's husband, or maybe boyfriend back then, wanted to open a small diner-type
restaurant on Main Street, Woodbridge - which eventually opened. It was
named - Big's - after him, and we decorated the interior for a few nights
with paint and fixtures. It lasted a while, not long, but a while. The walls
were painted in a festive though high-schoolish fashion, lots of color, swirls
and butterfly-flower-bird motives. This guy 'Big' was pretty sure of himself,
took the lease on an old Main Street restaurant frontage which had been there
forever serving the usual Greek diner walk-in type fare, and figured he could
make a go doing what he did - which was more 'chef' stuff;
commonplace today but no so in 1982. Lavish attention to food and quality and
presentation hadn't even entered the mainstream yet. People still wanted piles
of stuff - meatloafs and potatoes, mounds of mash, gravies and
strong tastes, etc. Subtlety and small portions and aesthetics had not been
considered. And even if it had, a small-town Main Street walk-in diner, adjacent
to a Woolworth's and a pizza joint, wasn't quite in the style of the day. It was
all, really, just a bunch of stalwart nut-cases, out to prove something: Susan
Sofran-Crotty, that her odd name, so portentous, was to mean something; and that her
boyfriend 'Big' - that he could power-play his way into infusions of cash by
running a special-spoon roadside diner, except it wasn't to be any of that. He
needed a highway, he needed a ratty parking lot. All he got instead was a
two-meter frontage on some really stupid, small-town Main Street. They'd rented
a big, rambling and run-down old house across from and adjacent to, the Barron
Arts Center. It was one gigantic, strangely painted, flea-bag crash pad
- the kind of place there used to be; cushions, fat, saggy chairs, a lamp
or two, record albums in crates, hangings and junk on the walls, sweet or weird
smells always around, candles, incense, all that burning stuff to ward off other
stuff. You know the idea. They had all this intense desire to be different, be
from somewhere other, far-off, and then, in reality, they chuck it all somehow
and decide to open a restaurant of whatever sorts, and further decide to decorate
that with the painted markings of their friends - we'd been asked to paint
happy, simple things like flowers, clouds, birds, trees! Can you believe the
simplicity? Truly and really, it was so indicative of that world -
and is so still today : a sort of trumped-up overture towards normalcy and
towards the happy, so as to conceal or cover up whatever discrepancy is
underneath it. Is that anger? Or duplicity? Or just some strange childish
stupidity and wishing for lightweight acceptance? Like a little kid, who won't
shut up, on the rug, in the middle of the room, screaming or doing whatever so
as to get attention and draw the crowd. It's a vain self-idolatry, and
- unless any creative person is not careful - can beset
everyone who makes or creates art of any sort. A mixed-up confusion, as it's
been put.
47. It's a long lunge to go from simple growing up to a
growing up in which a person considers that they have a gift, or have been given
at least a responsibility to do something, a talent for which they'd been gifted
with. That makes it all so much more complicated. It's not like hearing voices
from above or any of that - I read plenty enough of my share of all those books
and stories of starry-eyed saints (and sinners) who'd been convinced that they'd
been spoken to by Gods or Spirits - all those Joan of Arc's of the heart, male
and female, who, rather and instead, usually end up destroying themselves, or
things, or other people, all in the name of that 'voice' and 'mission'. I stayed
clear of that; but I was instilled with my own sort of fire, and just calmly
stayed with it - dedication and intensity, kind of tied together. I simply
'knew' what I was after, and I set out to do it. My life has always been a sort
of accidental fury anyway - losing things, putting things down and forgetting
them, scribbling on pieces of paper then quickly misplaced. That made it very
difficult to, once started, keep things going. But I did. in many ways I
was merely a case of arrested development anyway, never having jumped on the
bandwagons that others had jumped on - deep dedication to schooling and
certificates in advance of career and money; lawyers and stock-certifiers,
clerks and bondsmen, scientists and doctors. It was instead as if I was always
just stuck in my same Melville-rut, and never really out of it : any darkness I
found myself in, I just eventually always 'wrote' my way out of. It was a
different world, this world of mine, and I just stayed in it - it's not modern
in any way, and it doesn't much bear the effects of the modern day nor era. Put
simply, I don't understand much of anything anymore. I don't even often know
what people are saying, their terms and qualifications all just seem 'off' to
me.
Woodbridge, NJ - my stupid, little home-town of sorts - by the mid-sixties
was growing its way out of one thing and into another. It slowly began turning
into (mostly through corruption and trumped-up importance) a large bundle of
small places, each of which it eventually obliterated in its spread and growth
over them. One large police force served the 8 or 9 places joined into
'Woodbridge'; one over-weening school district, pulling in kids from everywhere
and one, at the same and together; a new sense of some bawdy civic pride racing
about as sprawl, shopping centers and ugly sameness, a sameness filled with
bland, bad, often loud, and mediocre people, all blended. It was truly a mix of
nothing, making a new nothing, and I found it very annoying. One Mayor after
another helped wreck the place. in the 50's it was Mayor Adams, a sort of
Eisenhower recherche for a place such as this - then, by 1961, the real,
modern-era corruption set in: Walter Zirpolo, Robert Jacks, and a myriad of
other clowns and buffoons, Chamber of Commerce types with car-dealerships, small
stores and little empires of their own. Larry Campion, an old-timer whom I'd
known for a long time, right through the 1980's until his death, was a good
example. This guy knew where every body was buried, and how it had gotten there.
He had money, he had connections, and betrayed connections. He ran a small-time,
but not so small, and not without influence, Woodbridge weekly called 'The
Independent Leader'. Just as it sounded, it carried a sort of wheelhouse power
and clout - he could essentially make or break anyone by the reaction of that
paper to that person or that person's interests, rising or falling. Larry was a
good guy, soft-spoken yet tough. Yet, it too really led nothing. He was slimy
enough to work with the county powers and power-brokers, election board
officials, zoning and engineering men - he knew when condemnations of property
or re-zonings of junk land for commercial uses were about to happen. He wasn't
afraid to jump in, and get his share of the rake-off either. Financially astute,
wise in his ways, discrete and yet respected and powerful, Larry was happy in
that capacity. He covered the scandals, the heights and the depths. By the end,
when his daughter had stepped in some and sort of taken the reins from him, the
entire scene had changed, and he'd somehow survived. Zirpolo and Jacks both were
sent away and did time for theft and embezzlement, having made big deals with
the Texas Eastern Transcontinental Pipeline Company which, through pay-offs
and big money-drops and cuts of profits for these guys and others, managed to
lay gas-line pipe underground through most everywhere in Woodbridge (they made
their money 'connecting' their Texas gas fields, nationwide, to all points, in
this case a subsidiary called 'Eastern Transmission Pipeline co.' or some such).
The captive audience for all this was the local citizenry - which had to live
with the pipeline cuts and all that underground gas transmission. You just have
to face it, in these sorts of living conditions no one really knew what was
up - there were so many newcomers coming in at all times,
developments and rows of houses cutting through woods and swamps -
that only the inveterate old-timer would have really known where things stood at
origination. None of them were around any more, and those that were seemed eager
to fall into the same pattern as the new; making money, or finding ways to get
something out of all the new. Who could blame them, it was the 'American' way.
All that was offered to us, as kids, was frolic and pastime - local
Little League games a town away, Boy Scouts and camporees, the usual stupid
patriotism and lies of school and church. Everything was truncated and set
apart - each little category had its accepted truth and version and
only that was what we were expected to swallow and learn. It's no wonder that by
the mid-sixties the entire edifice was falling apart - as we grew
into our own uncomfortability, the appearances of what distortion we'd been
fed until then began peeling away. One by one it hit us each - ' this
is all crap!'. The vile aspects then of the 'youth' movement took off, soon
corrupted anew by money-seeking and venomous Jew-men and the usual advertising
and dealmaking bastards who come in to scap up the crumbs of such feasts.
Marketing. Salesmanship. Idols. Hand-picked entertainment lies. And then,
topping it all off, the manic expressiveness of Vietnam, lopping guys heads,
futures and balls off one by one. Those dumb enough yet to stay with the
plan ended up there, dead or maimed they struggled back. Not so different from,
once more, the other 'origination' that had started the place to begin
with - WWII veterans, all our fathers and uncles, clamoring back
with all their damned psychic scars and wounds, not to mention physical ones,
and their sexual appetites still running on the wartime fly, making all these
kids and forcing all these new places to live while yet embodied by the strange
nightmares and stupid versions of the war they'd just fought - the
why and the how of it, all garbled together into errant messages of tidy homes,
big cars, paddling the new neighbors' wives if it could be done, or jerking off
into an infinity of possibilities and dreams. The entire, small world here was
twisted and, even to this day, no one really knows how long the line of feint
and premise was that ran from those WWII veterans' mistakes to the foibles of
Vietnam and homemaking together.
It was pretty much that sort of mess, which I'd recognized early on, that
led me at first to get away - to the seminary in Blackwood in 1962.
I saw that as a refuge, an away-from-the-world place where I could, I thought,
at least think. The dictates and processes of all that religious stuff I figured
I could put up with; it wasn't so bad and I'd be doing it anyway at home
- church, all that Sunday stuff, CYO, organized events and the rest of
that crud. I tried avoiding it all, but it would always seem the same
- the Boy Scouts ended up being the same fathers and sons as the Little
League was the same fathers and sons as the church stuff was the same fathers
and sons, endlessly on. There were no new lesson to be learned and nothing
really new or different to be seen. This was a small, stupid nowhere place of
nothing, a fake newness carved out of the blank of what had been there before
it, now also disappeared and forgotten, and populated by the rigorous
statesmanship of sameness that all the dads and Moms of postwar, nearly
illiterate, re-location brought with it. Television. Swing-sets. Lawns and
hoses. American cars. A strait-laced, one of a kind one-way thinking. A scoffing
towards anything new and distant. Jiffy-Pop and Buffalo Bob. Superman and
Batman. It just never ended. I used to watch the ring-necked pheasants as they's
alight in the rear of my yard, out along the railroad tracks, and I listen to
their metallic, clothesline cackle and wonder about the world - what
part of it was I in, how did I land there, what did it mean that all this was
disappearing around me. The railroad tracks cut right straight along the
back-line of our rear yard, covered only slightly by a smattering of trees that
had been left in place by the developers as a shield from the trains and their
noise and presence. But we never thought one way or the other about it. They
were just there. I knew that this land had long before been sundered and sold
out to the railroads, first, and then only later to the denizens of house and
home who would take these woods and swamps and cut or fill them so as to line
endless look alike homes in a row and sell them. On the other side of the tracks
were the farm fields and work-lots of Rahway Prison - the goodness
of which was that, whatever else it was, it served for as to bring a currency
and a presence of farm fields, some wildlife, cornfields, tractors and the rest
that we'd otherwise have had no inkling of whatsoever. By 1966, even that was
gone, replaced by the mad gaggle of a government-sponsored and run school for
the developmentally disabled.
Originally our street was a pebbly road with an underlayment of tar. As
cars drove by on their varied ways to and from Route One, accessible at the
street's end, the speed of the cars going by (most often excessive, or at least
in excess of the 25 mph expected), the pebbles would be thrown off and the
roadway bared again in a few months, with the thrown off pebbles accumulating
two or three inches deep at the edgings of the road on either side.
Eventually the town trucks would come by with a crew, and the pebbles would be
raked back into place on the roadway. After about ten years of that, sometime
again around 1966, I came back home for a visit and the roadway had been graded
and fully paved with full, black roadway macadam. Everything seemed so
wide and large and brutal when I first saw that. And, after that point, it just
became a macadam speedway anyway, for those cars and trucks cutting through on
their was to acces Route One at the end of the block. Incidental factors
- such as 'people live on this street, call it home' - wound
up meaning nothing. I can recall walking out, in my teens or so, to Route
One, and just looking out at all those cars and headlights while wondering about
all those poeple, all of them with somewhere to go, heading to or from, driving
along wildly dismissive of anything else. Little did I realize, of course,
how much even I myself, in later years, would use that corridor to get to and
from Manhattan and points north, and Princeton and points south. The world is
funny like that, I guess. We each wind up using what we must of it, good or bad
or both, and simply rationalizing all the core values away. In a way, hard as it
is to say or realize, they simply don't really matter.
48.
Living in the art world as I was, I look today at the re-purposing, as its
called, of old industrial sites - only one among them, say, the
Brooklyn Navy Yard - into themed and orchestrated artist studio
areas, and I flinch. This is going on everywhere, not just there, and it seems
to have conjoined itself with the slow degeneration of the art these places
produce as well. The idea here is to join together - the idea, in
fact, even includes the joint ownership of things like lathes and kilns and
metal-working equipment; shared time periods for use, and ownership. I can see
that. It can all be explained away easily enough, and it is. But it ruins
everything. Deeply engrained in me - in my training and in my
personal professing of 'Art' as a creative capital - is and always
has been the idea of solitary, stern and solid pursuit, of a muse, a dream, an
idea, call it whatever. There would never be a way, in fact, as I look at it,
that the likes of Jim Tomberg and myself would even be tolerated in today's
'art-world' - schlepping around like bums, dragging steel and metal
protuberances to and fro, staying half-drunk in time enough to make the moves
needed, staggering about with an idea, working at all hours, foul, loud and
profane. This communitarian crap that seems now pervasive has a way of seeping
in and taking over - I've seen it in any of the 'Open Studio' things
I've gone to - the insipid art drying on the old industrial flat
roofs, the fired clay, the painting of mathematical grids, the flowers and the
decorations, the Art, in fact, in search of nothing much but to be Art and sold
as such - rotating frames of mid-life women and men -
fairly conservative, in fact - tiring their 'hobbies' away while
churning them then into publicly presentable art. Art without any rancor or
seasoning. Nice people all, wonderful ladies with their teas and waters and
precious business cards and the like. Men like (feminized, sensitive) women,
garishly toeing some imagined Art line, servicing both sexes equally. Men seem,
really men, all gone, long ago dissolved away. When you put the 'Mission' or
message of the 'Art' in front of the art itself, you've already gone wrong
- it's like a very poor mission-creep that debases and alters everything.
Message first, hewing to an ideology, a line, and then Art. Like some Soviet
Social realism crap or the ideological pretension of Chinese art today
- wherein things have to be couched in secreted messages, rotational myths
and the like, to be brought into the modern day and - with the
not-so-subtle understanding and nod of the viewer, understood. Over at Princeton
University right now there's a line of twelve or whatever it is, large zodiacal
pedestal scupltures on outdoor view at Woodrow Wilson Plaza, by Ai Wei Wei, one
of the particular artist-cases I just described - they're nice
enough, done OK, up to all the right standards, and yet - to me
anyway - pretty meaningless. All they amount to is some message art
by means of referencing a throwback factor of Chinese history (its mythology,
its past, it ghostly presence) that throws up, by its very nature, a challenge
to the pathetic authority in control there today. Art, sort of, wasted on Art.
Anyway, Wei Wei, a cause celeb, is under house arrest, in big trouble on trumped
up tax charges - so he has enough of his own problems. I guess the
Authorities win. So, as I was saying, Art in the use of message, I just don't
know about that.
When I think back instead to the ways of people like Jim Tomberg and others from that 1967 era, those from whom I learned my stuff (let's not call them 'Mentors' either, because that's all part of today's 'jumble-speak' of shit meaninglessness) I realize the vast cultural difference now that separates my world from the world I'm living amidst. I was still living amidst the trickle and run-off of the hot years of abstraction and the New York school, of the poetry and attitude of those years - that sneering indifference to anything but the art, that one-directed mission-stance that made mad, sexual predators and drunken alcoholic monsters, if you will, of men and women of the period, intent oas they were, upon nothing more than pushing forward, completing their work, staying with the effort and disregarding anything off the course : endless madness moments, binges, mad love-betrayals, the gamut. It may only 'seem' dastardly in today's world of standards and judgments, because today's world is dastardly - make no mistake. (Now, Art is used for therapy, in fact). Back then, of course, the smoke was still curling from two successive world wars, extermination camps, border fights and squabbles, ideologies built around murder and death. Subconsciously, all of that had to be, was, taken in and absorbed by the effective and working body-politic of the time. Yes, far past intent, the art and creative community of writers, philosophers, artists and classically-trained musicians of the time all took this in, absorbed and re-worked it, and made 'product' - the remnants of which are still with us, revered, talked about and treasured. Not the schlock and sex-value of today's stuff, fraught as it is with piggy-values of cuteness and flowers and irony - all those flower-puppies and place-settings and nude bodies and bleeding vaginas and tents and walk-throughs of plasticized figures and warped body-castes. Art is, pretty much today, a value-added joke. The value being added is money - pure re-sale lucre, the likes of which the Leonardo DiCaprios of today's world sit back and watch while the world they've arranged gets auctioned away. If possession is nine-tenths of the law, these people already have possession and, in turn, already own the law. When I stalked Eighth Street there was little of this. Men were authentic - flamboyant and crazy, first or second-generation Europeans with an ace and a chip, and something to prove. They regarded nothing more than what they did and their doing of it - and the consequences be damned. There was no mannered politeness, no segmented tiering of finance and place, position and power. Galleries came and went, were thrown up in this week's 10th Street loft, and closed and forgotten the next week, after having made their point. Jim Tomberg could teach anyone today a few things about art-toughness, and I'd like to be there when and if that ever occurs, before we die.
It just seems as if, no matter how you approach it, everything is different now. They used to say 'the end of History' and all that - and I figure that's pretty much true. The references, having all changed, and the attention spans and the awarenesses, they too being so changed, everything else has pretty much dropped into the refuse bin of what-once-was, like men in suits and hats, or those weird ladies in old films - mannered, taut, and curiously dressed to the nines.
I mentioned' Authority' just before. One thing I've learned over and all-through the years, is that Authority is shit. It's a complete fakery, a blandishment for those people who would fall for that - status, rank, listings, rigor and logic. I've read any number of books about the primitive, pre-illumination, mind and the center core of the mind, the reptilian core, is the part that, firstly, enlightened man has grown out of and, secondly, base and primal (normal) man still lives with - most especially those involved with the clawing and fighting to 'get' somewhere, make rank, make money, get a name. The Reptilian Brain, when still operative, is dense and evil, sour and twisted; it seeks lines and it seeks stacks of things to climb - things listed by logic and merit and counted off one by one - way-stations to be checked off along the way - along the way to, well, Nothing at all really. I'm not saying be a bomb-thrower and a rebel just for the sake of doing that - no, not at all. It's up to each of us personally to find the comfort-level we wish to live within. I don't preach, and I don't really care either. You do what you'd like. When I was in 6th grade, I remember how assumptive everything was. People like Mr. Ziccardi and others, teaching rank lies, espousing things that were not, and just going on as if they were meant to instill all that crap in our heads. Which, essentially, they did. There would be moments when, for instance, something would be said and then he'd pipe up with 'and for you boys here, you'll find that it'll be very important if you're aware of and know these things when you're in the military.' On the face of it nothing much, just a stupid sentence. Yet, to me then, and now - if you delve a little - it's nothing but a murderous, rash assumption, and for a teacher to say something like that, not once but such things over and over, to sixth grade kids, it's atrocious and an affront. The quality of 'things assumed' is one of the more salient qualities that go into pushing society and its controls along - and it all still goes on. We just 'assume' the poise and the stance of others. The beg-to-differ difference is that I never did that, and it was always apparent and clear to me what was going on as it was going on. I knew somehow that I'd been sabotaged or sand-bagged, let's call it; placed somehow wrongly in a blind society of no real value to me. No creative essence, just instead bland stupidities and moronic people in 1950's roles of parents and teachers - people who went along, people who mouthed what they'd been told, who watered lawns, and worried about furniture and pools and houses and situations, who shopped at 'shopping centers', as if it all had to be 'centered' to be right. I, by contrast, was off-center from day one, as was the way I saw everything.
I've had my moments, all along, of self-doubt and constant turmoil. It's occasionally been said that I seem always steadfast and perfectly poised and targeted towards my goals and for my own efforts, thus exuding and strength and a command and a charisma of some sort which drags others in. If others only knew - any validity in that statement would have to be the subjective validity of the person saying it because I'm just never in operation in that sedate and serious of manner. I am turmoil, I inhabit the winds of fury and doubt and confusion and change. Though I may try not to, it just is that way. I can't remember what it was like exactly when I was growing up, but I can sense the moods and the fissures within the environments I inhabited; and there were many. Childhood friends - that entire strange mix of people who had moved into the 'development' I lived in at Inman - they each seemed from somewhere different and somewhere else - differently defined and still bearing different accents and traits from my own. There were families who each represented, to me anyway, different eras and geographies of space and time that were always foreign to me - even the smells and the layouts and decorations of the places they lived represented differences. Some places were straight and neat, strict and orderly - while others just seemed to roll in an anarchic fashion of accumulations, debris, broken down things, unkempt items, and a more general disarray. And all of these things were then reflected in the people who lived therein - the quiet kids, with their severe mothers and disciplined family lives; the crazy-quilt larger families, with things all over, people talking atop one another, words and energies rolling all around. Things got done by shortcut, and a certain lawlessness. In some houses, the back door was always open, even ajar, in full use with things and people coming and going at all times. Other houses had doorways and entries that were pretty much silent and strict and closed, as if guarded over by a sentry who only allowed certain things to happen at certain times. It was a rigorous world, and in between all those fits, I had to find my own means of getting through and getting by - with friends and their families, schoolkids and churchkids and all the rest. It was sometimes challenging.
When I think back instead to the ways of people like Jim Tomberg and others from that 1967 era, those from whom I learned my stuff (let's not call them 'Mentors' either, because that's all part of today's 'jumble-speak' of shit meaninglessness) I realize the vast cultural difference now that separates my world from the world I'm living amidst. I was still living amidst the trickle and run-off of the hot years of abstraction and the New York school, of the poetry and attitude of those years - that sneering indifference to anything but the art, that one-directed mission-stance that made mad, sexual predators and drunken alcoholic monsters, if you will, of men and women of the period, intent oas they were, upon nothing more than pushing forward, completing their work, staying with the effort and disregarding anything off the course : endless madness moments, binges, mad love-betrayals, the gamut. It may only 'seem' dastardly in today's world of standards and judgments, because today's world is dastardly - make no mistake. (Now, Art is used for therapy, in fact). Back then, of course, the smoke was still curling from two successive world wars, extermination camps, border fights and squabbles, ideologies built around murder and death. Subconsciously, all of that had to be, was, taken in and absorbed by the effective and working body-politic of the time. Yes, far past intent, the art and creative community of writers, philosophers, artists and classically-trained musicians of the time all took this in, absorbed and re-worked it, and made 'product' - the remnants of which are still with us, revered, talked about and treasured. Not the schlock and sex-value of today's stuff, fraught as it is with piggy-values of cuteness and flowers and irony - all those flower-puppies and place-settings and nude bodies and bleeding vaginas and tents and walk-throughs of plasticized figures and warped body-castes. Art is, pretty much today, a value-added joke. The value being added is money - pure re-sale lucre, the likes of which the Leonardo DiCaprios of today's world sit back and watch while the world they've arranged gets auctioned away. If possession is nine-tenths of the law, these people already have possession and, in turn, already own the law. When I stalked Eighth Street there was little of this. Men were authentic - flamboyant and crazy, first or second-generation Europeans with an ace and a chip, and something to prove. They regarded nothing more than what they did and their doing of it - and the consequences be damned. There was no mannered politeness, no segmented tiering of finance and place, position and power. Galleries came and went, were thrown up in this week's 10th Street loft, and closed and forgotten the next week, after having made their point. Jim Tomberg could teach anyone today a few things about art-toughness, and I'd like to be there when and if that ever occurs, before we die.
It just seems as if, no matter how you approach it, everything is different now. They used to say 'the end of History' and all that - and I figure that's pretty much true. The references, having all changed, and the attention spans and the awarenesses, they too being so changed, everything else has pretty much dropped into the refuse bin of what-once-was, like men in suits and hats, or those weird ladies in old films - mannered, taut, and curiously dressed to the nines.
I mentioned' Authority' just before. One thing I've learned over and all-through the years, is that Authority is shit. It's a complete fakery, a blandishment for those people who would fall for that - status, rank, listings, rigor and logic. I've read any number of books about the primitive, pre-illumination, mind and the center core of the mind, the reptilian core, is the part that, firstly, enlightened man has grown out of and, secondly, base and primal (normal) man still lives with - most especially those involved with the clawing and fighting to 'get' somewhere, make rank, make money, get a name. The Reptilian Brain, when still operative, is dense and evil, sour and twisted; it seeks lines and it seeks stacks of things to climb - things listed by logic and merit and counted off one by one - way-stations to be checked off along the way - along the way to, well, Nothing at all really. I'm not saying be a bomb-thrower and a rebel just for the sake of doing that - no, not at all. It's up to each of us personally to find the comfort-level we wish to live within. I don't preach, and I don't really care either. You do what you'd like. When I was in 6th grade, I remember how assumptive everything was. People like Mr. Ziccardi and others, teaching rank lies, espousing things that were not, and just going on as if they were meant to instill all that crap in our heads. Which, essentially, they did. There would be moments when, for instance, something would be said and then he'd pipe up with 'and for you boys here, you'll find that it'll be very important if you're aware of and know these things when you're in the military.' On the face of it nothing much, just a stupid sentence. Yet, to me then, and now - if you delve a little - it's nothing but a murderous, rash assumption, and for a teacher to say something like that, not once but such things over and over, to sixth grade kids, it's atrocious and an affront. The quality of 'things assumed' is one of the more salient qualities that go into pushing society and its controls along - and it all still goes on. We just 'assume' the poise and the stance of others. The beg-to-differ difference is that I never did that, and it was always apparent and clear to me what was going on as it was going on. I knew somehow that I'd been sabotaged or sand-bagged, let's call it; placed somehow wrongly in a blind society of no real value to me. No creative essence, just instead bland stupidities and moronic people in 1950's roles of parents and teachers - people who went along, people who mouthed what they'd been told, who watered lawns, and worried about furniture and pools and houses and situations, who shopped at 'shopping centers', as if it all had to be 'centered' to be right. I, by contrast, was off-center from day one, as was the way I saw everything.
I've had my moments, all along, of self-doubt and constant turmoil. It's occasionally been said that I seem always steadfast and perfectly poised and targeted towards my goals and for my own efforts, thus exuding and strength and a command and a charisma of some sort which drags others in. If others only knew - any validity in that statement would have to be the subjective validity of the person saying it because I'm just never in operation in that sedate and serious of manner. I am turmoil, I inhabit the winds of fury and doubt and confusion and change. Though I may try not to, it just is that way. I can't remember what it was like exactly when I was growing up, but I can sense the moods and the fissures within the environments I inhabited; and there were many. Childhood friends - that entire strange mix of people who had moved into the 'development' I lived in at Inman - they each seemed from somewhere different and somewhere else - differently defined and still bearing different accents and traits from my own. There were families who each represented, to me anyway, different eras and geographies of space and time that were always foreign to me - even the smells and the layouts and decorations of the places they lived represented differences. Some places were straight and neat, strict and orderly - while others just seemed to roll in an anarchic fashion of accumulations, debris, broken down things, unkempt items, and a more general disarray. And all of these things were then reflected in the people who lived therein - the quiet kids, with their severe mothers and disciplined family lives; the crazy-quilt larger families, with things all over, people talking atop one another, words and energies rolling all around. Things got done by shortcut, and a certain lawlessness. In some houses, the back door was always open, even ajar, in full use with things and people coming and going at all times. Other houses had doorways and entries that were pretty much silent and strict and closed, as if guarded over by a sentry who only allowed certain things to happen at certain times. It was a rigorous world, and in between all those fits, I had to find my own means of getting through and getting by - with friends and their families, schoolkids and churchkids and all the rest. It was sometimes challenging.
It seemed like I always was working at getting
away - I can't say what I mean by that, but it was just a
feeling and now, as I look back at a lot of this, it seems pretty apparent. The
train wreck, the hospital stuff, the seminary and then, finally, leaving for
good in '67, it all came to seem as if my lifelong effort was in nothing more
than finding a way out of that too-tight and closely-quartered box I'd been born
into. It's been written that the greater oversoul of each of us selects its time
and place - selects in some grand mystical fashion the experiences
and the families into which we are born, some greater Mind that puts us into
motion and play, already knowing what we will undergo and what lessons and how
we will draw from it all - if that's the case, it's easy enough to
ask, with that all being known beforehand, then why bother? Yet, that's another
question for another time. It's been said, in the same vein, that the social
groups and the friends and associates with whom we undergo experiences are the
same group(s) with which we've lived other experiences, already known to one
another - the same groups recurring through time, not fully
cognizant of each other in these ever-different roles, but drawing inklings and
clues that linger all through time, each time. My friend or acquaintance right
here, next to me, may have been as well, my year 1134 friend-cavalier a'bounding
on some Crusade across the vast seas of the dark Medieval ages - still
sharing those shapes and experiences of time and place, so different, so same,
so predestined and so chancy too. Reincarnation, if you will, with its own
tophat : all those great composers, all together, once,
as buglers in some stupid, rag-tag feudal army. Those are the sorts of
things that haunted me - walking alone through a quiet snowy field,
the stubble of cornstalks underfoot, a few crows squawking about, the wall up
ahead of the prison itself as I traipsed the prison-farm fields abutting the
tracks abutting my yard. I was re-entering time, dreaming of lonesome days,
knight-errant, wandering fool, outcast misfit, homeless drudge on those weird
fields of a thousand years before. It was really no wonder at all that I
couldn't communicate.
And than - smack! - right back
into the flying maw of some dumb 6th-grade teacher telling me the Fertile
Crescent and all those things in Mesopotamia were the beginning and the
foundations of all the time we ever knew and will ever know; that Time was
nothing indeed if not limitations; that we were trapped into pre-selected roles
put in place by others and out of which we could never break; that the mores and
manners of the past were the ones that truly counted; that the current world
could be neatly divided into us and them, the good and the bad, the working and
the non-working; that a functioning God was at the helm, steering things for us
and in our behalf; that it was OK to kill and maim for the cause of
continuation, nothing more - 'continuation'. A real spin on nothing
worth anything at all.
When I was in seventh grade, just beginning then what was
called 'Junior High School' by outlook and attitude was pretty much already
formed. I held most things in contempt - saw through what I
perceived as lies and distortions and unimportant 'chicken-shit' rules and
procedures and respects for various levels of authority, privilege and respect.
It seemed as if everything was a facade, and the energy that people expended was
just a play-act to extend the illusion of that facade - about things
being important or vital or high-up and elevated. For an instance -
the school Science Fair. Presented yearly by the seventh and eighth
grade science classes, each year it would take over the gymnasium for three or
four days, including a Saturday, when all these little, individual 'projects'
were on separate, table-top displays for walk-through and exhibition by
teachers, students, parents and anyone else. Each exhibit was a private project,
and was supposed to be something a person could see, and read about
- by the use of an explanatory board or some otherwise keyed
reference-poster to what was being exhibited. Some kids went crazy way-out, with
months of preparation, vivid displays, deep explanations, high-sounding
idealistic motivations - things like abolishing famine, extending
crop yield, better utilizing water-power, finding good uses for radiation as
energy, all sorts of things like that. It seemed that, yes, there as a certain
talent pool of kids who were science-perfect for this stuff - who
saw the world clearly, with all its proper dividing lines and delineations,
things in order, all their utility and possibility on perfect display. And then
there were others who, as always, were just a shambles, who would not put up
anything, who would fail, get a failing grade for the project, mutter and then
just walk away. It was an important deal. For myself, I hadn't a clue; I wasn't
sure what I wanted to do, if I cared to do anything, nor how and when I'd
do it. It all seemed but a game, and my mind was elsewhere - anyway,
I'd rather have looked up some flat-chested girl's dress than do this stuff, and
at least I knew it and admitted to it. What I wound up doing, almost on an
emergency basis (but it worked!) was, the night before deadline, taking my
mother's colander (like a spaghetti-strainer drain-bowl, with holes for water
drainage) and cover it completely with plain old aluminum foil, prop it up on
its edge, run a few wires from it to beneath the table, and then write up some
completely bullshit poster-board tale of how this was the prototype for a
solar-energy collector the likes of which, at some point in the future, would be
dotting the hillsides and meadows of towns and villages everywhere, freely
collecting the sun's energy for free dispersal to individual homes and
businesses everywhere. It was all a wing and a prayer, so to speak, on my part,
and all pretty much fabricated. The display managed to get me a 'C', as I
recall, and it got me, as well, over the dreaded assignment hump for which I'd
really had no other interest or motivation. If it was comedy, it might have been
funny. As it was a science project, it merely underscored to me the bogus nature
of all this stuff being peddled at me. A utopian fantasy of energy and
freely-utilized good-will, the likes of which the world will never see. Even
though I'd not approached in that manner, looking back today I see how glibly I
was able to weave the 'ideals' which were then considered warming and correct,
into a tritely sympathetic old-America version of communal cause and effect,
village camaraderie and town-square unity - thus playing off that
idea into the very faces of people intent, in their enforced specializations and
'growth' potential ideas of the Nation itself, on destroying every glimmer of
all that what-once-was heritage.
Let's say, then, that I believed none of this at all. It
was about this time, in that same gymnasium-hall actually, that I
ran across (I guess this was, perhaps early 1961), for the first time
- and was completely captivated by - what was called an
'electric' piano. There was a music group setting up for some Friday or Saturday
night dance/social, nothing of which I was interested. Mostly for the 8th and
9th graders, it consisted of recorded pop-music and dance-music of the day, and
as a bonus (this was just the very beginning of local boys and their at-home
garage-bands and such) included a live-music segment - a few teens
with guitars and drums going at it. This particular group had, in addition, what
appeared to be a regular piano but wasn't - they'd rolled in what they called an
'electric piano'. Whether that was a real name of a manufactured thing, or
something they'd somehow rigged up, I didn't know - but
anyway it was a regular piano which they plugged into the wall and into which
were plugged an amplifier cord or two. The effect was stunning, in fact
mind-blowingly engrossing, to me. I couldn't steal away from this, nor the
rehearsal sounds I heard coming from it. It was probably the most primitive
sound you'd think of, by today's multi-layered and syntho-effect electronic
keyboards, but coming from this hulk of an old, regular piano, it mesmerized
me - I was stunned; first by how these guys, or someone, figured to
rig this thing up, transport it around, and get it to work; second by the
majesty and power of the sound I heard coming from it; thirdly by how
much promise and meaning it could hold (I just thought of all that music waiting
to be tried on it); and, fourthly, why these stupid guys would waste all this
fine effort to play a few more tired versions of 'moon-June love me like forever
tomorrow' schlock songs on it. Oh, little did I know the brave new world
that awaited birthing in the near future on that count. So, anyway, I got hit
totally broadside by the idea of an 'electric' piano in the very same gymnasium
where my bogus facsimile of a serious 'science-project' passed muster with the
head-in-their-ass authorities who should have surely seen right through me and
known better. But, I think, the better point to them was simply that fact that I
been cowed and awed enough (fear and intimidation) to follow slavishly their
stupid dictates, no matter the value, and churn some product, at least. Science
by damned, and perhaps the idea that 'something' was better than 'nothing'.
I never knew much about much else. I remember a science teacher in seventh grade - her name escapes me now, but it was a gentle, mellifluous name and it was an instance of those times when I'd suddenly see something and realize how apt it was; in this case her name (which until now I've remembered all these years : until now, when I want to), which seemed perfectly suited to her personality and being. She too was gentle, sweet, mellifluous to my seventh-grade mind. How does one retrieve something like that? Is there someplace I can go to see a teachers' list from 1961 in Iselin junior High School to find that? I was struck straight on by the realization that there are times when such things - name/being/personality - come perfectly together. Anyway, the point I was to make was that I remember when she introduced the subject-matter for a certain upcoming topic - it was a February, and it was cold and chilling - and that subject was to be 'Weather'. We were to do a preliminary study of weather patterns and the science of meteorology, etc. I was immediately inquisitive - and on this more than anything else (I couldn't really have cared less about the 'weather' idea) as to how and why the 'weather' we were to be studying differed from the word 'whether' which preposition or whatever it was had always intrigued me. Even back then my primary allegiance seemed always to be to words and language and use - here weather vs. whether more than held my attention, even though I went along because I was captivated by this teacher, whoever she was. 'So', I used to think, 'this is what school's about? Taking someone like me and stuffing me into a classroom for 7 or 8 hours a day adrift and apart from all else in the world around me, so that it can be listed, described, charted, given names, organized and made both logical and boring, all the while torturing me with the complete infatuation with a 30-year old female presence of some sort in the front of the room from whom I could not take my eyes nor my attention.' Funny use of things, and it all made me just more confused - in a strange, cornball silence I'd listen to her and watch her, seeing the clothes and the fabrics she wore, watching her movement and postures, gestures and reach, listening to the softer than usual intonations of her words and phrases. i was all so different, so strikingly reserved, so perfect - different, in any case, from anything else I'd seen or realized. By contrast, in that same corridor I has a Math teacher named Miss Matey; she was about 50, rough-skinned, pale, coarse, with a dense, haggard smoker's voice that sounded near-masculine. Her body was thick and solid and dense, her posture was gruff and manlike. She totally freaked me. I never knew where she could have come from - though only now, all these years later, do I realize she was most probably my first exposure to a lesbian, from which premise I now see all else makes sense. It little mattered then, nor does it matter now; just a point. She made Mathematics seem jarring and tough, threatening and nasty.
I never knew much about much else. I remember a science teacher in seventh grade - her name escapes me now, but it was a gentle, mellifluous name and it was an instance of those times when I'd suddenly see something and realize how apt it was; in this case her name (which until now I've remembered all these years : until now, when I want to), which seemed perfectly suited to her personality and being. She too was gentle, sweet, mellifluous to my seventh-grade mind. How does one retrieve something like that? Is there someplace I can go to see a teachers' list from 1961 in Iselin junior High School to find that? I was struck straight on by the realization that there are times when such things - name/being/personality - come perfectly together. Anyway, the point I was to make was that I remember when she introduced the subject-matter for a certain upcoming topic - it was a February, and it was cold and chilling - and that subject was to be 'Weather'. We were to do a preliminary study of weather patterns and the science of meteorology, etc. I was immediately inquisitive - and on this more than anything else (I couldn't really have cared less about the 'weather' idea) as to how and why the 'weather' we were to be studying differed from the word 'whether' which preposition or whatever it was had always intrigued me. Even back then my primary allegiance seemed always to be to words and language and use - here weather vs. whether more than held my attention, even though I went along because I was captivated by this teacher, whoever she was. 'So', I used to think, 'this is what school's about? Taking someone like me and stuffing me into a classroom for 7 or 8 hours a day adrift and apart from all else in the world around me, so that it can be listed, described, charted, given names, organized and made both logical and boring, all the while torturing me with the complete infatuation with a 30-year old female presence of some sort in the front of the room from whom I could not take my eyes nor my attention.' Funny use of things, and it all made me just more confused - in a strange, cornball silence I'd listen to her and watch her, seeing the clothes and the fabrics she wore, watching her movement and postures, gestures and reach, listening to the softer than usual intonations of her words and phrases. i was all so different, so strikingly reserved, so perfect - different, in any case, from anything else I'd seen or realized. By contrast, in that same corridor I has a Math teacher named Miss Matey; she was about 50, rough-skinned, pale, coarse, with a dense, haggard smoker's voice that sounded near-masculine. Her body was thick and solid and dense, her posture was gruff and manlike. She totally freaked me. I never knew where she could have come from - though only now, all these years later, do I realize she was most probably my first exposure to a lesbian, from which premise I now see all else makes sense. It little mattered then, nor does it matter now; just a point. She made Mathematics seem jarring and tough, threatening and nasty.
49. One
friend of my later days now is Charles Folds - an elderly fellow who
plays a nice piano Monday-Friday, something like noon to three at Park
Plaza, right next to the Lever Building along Park Avenue. Funny how
it occurred : this fat, black rent-a-cop came at me one day for
taking photographs at the Lever House - an outdoor, outside eating
area at the Lever Building Plaza - people sitting around (many tables
and chairs, lunchtime, informal crowding, people just gazing out). With
parts of the building itself as a nice backdrop, it all made for some
nice photo-taking, no spectacular details or bother, just quick clicks,
as the usual, of facades, reflections and people, from the sidewalk
area. I saw this cheap cop guy schmoozing with some office-worker lunch
babe at the railing, and thought to myself something like 'yeah, the
uniform gets them every time' and at just that moment the same guy
comes up to me and aggressively starts saying 'no photos from this
sidewalk, if you have to take them you can do it from a distance or go
across the street.' Fair enough, and I figured if that's today's play at
security and private property (even of 'public plazas' for which
easements the developer and property-owner has promised open access) it
didn't bother me any. I just sort of sneered back into his face, said
'yeah, yeah' and moved along. Crossing the street, southerly, right
there is Park Plaza, or Park Ave. Plaza or somesuch. I took a few more
photos from that vantage (good shots high-up, of the building and
overhang, etc.) and went inside to get a coffee from the Starbucks
kiosk within. On my way in, I noticed the very nice baby grand piano,
and then the poster and then the old guy playing it - everyone else
seemed unmindful of him. His tip cup had perhaps 8 or 10 dollar bills in
it, and he was displaying a CD and a short bio-sheet of himself and
his past career. I got my coffee and went back over to the piano to
just stand there as sole attentive audience. I watched his hands (great
skin, the whitened and transparent skin of an old person, perhaps 75
years old, through which veins and white patches and age marks can be
seen). Nice pianist's nails - and a fleeting, soft and ready
familiarity with the keyboard he was playing. His touch - playing
piano myself I am aware of the touch and the hammer, the percussive
attributes and the magical soft-grace with which it really can be done
right - rang true. His fingers ran soft and smoothly along the trills
and arpeggios of his work; no harshness, no banging, just a softened,
fleshy tone of warmth. It is a big room, be aware, and he is softly at
the enter of it, elevated perhaps three steps up, with no amplification
or an amplification level I was unaware of or could not see. He's an
old jazz guy, perhaps of a 1960's heyday, as there are photos of the
usual 'greats' around on the corridor walls leading to the bookshop
which sold his CD - Gillespie, Ellington, Armstrong, and others, men
and women alike - and, oddly as well, a nice shot of a young Lou Reed
and an almost-curious shot of the young Brothers Gibb looking as if
they'd just landed from an Australian-Mars. When he took a break I
asked Charles about things - how was that piano, how fared the sound
and the touch, did he like the room, how often did he play, what
selection of tunes, etc. Just basic questions which he answered with
great aplomb and finesse - about the piano, which he thought was
just-almost 'not rugged enough' to take a beating ('it couldn't take
it, you're not going to play Rachmaninoff on this') but 'just right for
this room, where 'the acoustics are soft and the sound nicely carries.'
He then said 'recognize that last tune?' (no, I did not) - 'theme to
Gone With the Wind'. Well, anyway, that's how it started. Now I make
it a point often enough when I can, to stop and see Charles, who's
usually always there. Slowly, slowly, slowly do I work through a
hundred question I have to ask him. We talk. He's always expansive and
alive to me - and alone. I've never seen him with anyone, which kind
of bothers me in its way - all these chippish people about, sitting
and yapping, cell-phones and computer tablets running on, eating,
drinking, lost away in the maw of a great unholy city, and there -
right with them - sits a part of the vast past of the place, of which
they know nothing and apparently seem not to care to know. As reader,
yes, I can already imagine the more smug of you entitling yourself to
attack me for presumptive attributes - 'how do you know they don't
know of the past? how can you say they don't care to? how do you know
he's alone?', as such. To which I already reply 'rubbish!' I know it
because I see it and I can say it. As for the rest, shove it. Charles
Folds - (any musical relation to Ben Folds? Son? I do not know, nor
care) - is my representation here of what I'm trying to say : that we
have already zoned out any makings of the real past and soundness of
the life that went before us and cleansed our selves and our societies
of any of the marvelous overflows these pasts provide, merely so that
we can 'successfully' and with ease sink into the present state of
mopey affairs whereby the new and the latest pap has precedence over
any other story or storyline. It's that same gummy
pap which entitles any cheap rent-a-cop guard to sidle up to people
and declaim spaces as 'off-limits' to normal activities. Knowing
nothing of the larger situation behind the agreements and deals entered
into to sacrifice such urban space and place into plazas and gathering
points of a popular urban use - 'you can have our land, but you can't
cut us off.' It's like that Woody Guthrie song with the verse that
never gets sung - 'This Land Is You Land', etc. You have to read the
lyrics, or perhaps find a really true rendition of it, one that's not
just happy-talk boosterism, that talks about 'off-limits' and private
property and the 'us' in USA being cut out of and forbidden from our
own lands and places. Someday listen to it.
When I first got to NYC, it was pretty much just like that, at my
level - all the danger and all the lethal combined. Little did I know
what I had stepped into, and just as little did I know about what to
expect. I think in some ways the body, or the psyche or whatever, numbs
itself, inures itself, against bad outcomes by achieving some sort of
distance from the awareness of what one is living through - it is
only later that it is all recollected. At the moment, what takes over
is an unawareness, a climb of numbness, going through the motions of
the experience. Or maybe anyway. I know that, for myself, as I look
back through things that I experienced or undertook, I realize,
sincerely and in earnest to myself, that I was numb; that so very much
passed me by. Which is really too bad, but towards which nothing can be
done now. On the other hand, had I been totally involved, within the
moment and caught up in the forefront-frenzy, I'd be dead. There's no
other way of looking at it. The dilemma, as it presented itself to me,
was in how to get by without becoming part of. It's an odd status. It's
probably been unwittingly done by hundreds of thousands who have gone
on to other scenes, better lives and situations, and who probably only
very little today think back on what went on as they experienced. Like
- where are all those hippy kids? Where are all those Long Island
girls now who were, back then, so intent on freeing up their personal
space and time so as to free up, as well, the universe? How did they
wither, and where did they end? What are those naked Digger babes
digging now? Three kids later, now, seventy years old, married three
times and tired and weary? And the guys? All those strongly boisterous
young men from the boroughs and New Jersey and Connecticut, the
forceful, the bold and the brave and the strong-mouthed - graduated
long ago from someplace worthy and gone on to be the bankers and brokers
and financiers who've ruined the world in the last thirty or forty
years while perfectly accommodating themselves and their mates and
families and friends and cronies? All that business acumen and the
cronies it brings, all dying off, slowly and together, en masse on a
march to diminishment? Do they regret regretting? Or do they - in the
deep, dark nights of their souls, regret for regretting nothing? How
does it go, wayfaring stranger? We were all children once, those
children - doing what we were taught, learning the lessons given to
us, and finding ways to appease the hurt and the anger we, in turn, had
to stuff deep inside ourselves and carry on without thinking or
becoming possessed of.
I
find that I've already written most of this down - pieces are
everywhere, I just have to find them, gather them, and continue putting
it together as I write or re-write this newer format. Each time I
enter the realm of a new thought or begin patterning the section of a
new recollection or subject, a chink in my mind opens up yet another
vista and I find myself saying 'wait, I have covered this! Yes!' It's a
very strange feeling. When I lived in Elmira, I became friends with
someone named Jane Roberts, and her artist-husband Robert Butts. This
all came to be because of yet another friend - a wonderful girl of
about my age then, perhaps 25 or so - named Sue Watkins. (No
relation, in any way, to the rather bizarre character of Jim Watkins
written about earlier). At this time Sue was still married, in the
midst of a breakup, and had a young son. We would sometimes take a
half-hour lunch and walk and talk (she worked in the same place I did).
She had recently become part of a group that met once or twice a week,
in the evenings, at the Water Street apartment of Jane and Rob - she
often asked me to come, to attend, to see what it was about, meet and
learn. At that time I never did go - part of another world entirely, I
lived 30 miles away, had to travel, had 12 acres and a huge house to
try and maintain (try), and had a wife and a one-year old at home.
Actually, at that point I cared more about all of that then of meeting
her group and learning their secrets - they represented, right then,
to me some other section of the universe. A scratchy, urban set,
unsettled and yearning. Edgy. Part of the reason I'd moved all that way
to these distant and hilly hinterlands was to get away from all of
that, to retell my own story in a rural way, go natural, return to the
wild. The last thing I felt I wanted was logic, reason, recitation and
conjecture. Sue and I were good friends, talked about lots of things,
read the New York Times together, discussed articles, argued on work
time about things, played word games and teased, but then, one day -
just like that - she was gone. Her new boyfriend had just gotten some
sort of metal-work sculpture - a kind of rolling-ball grid (you've
see then, I'm sure) wherein a few chrome balls roll around, follow
twisted and curved tracks, flip about, jump tracks, run water,fly and
land, etc., all by the rolling energy generated by the carefully
thought-out sculpture trail of the metalwork runners - accepted and
contracted for with Hammacher-Schlemmer (back then a name for peculiar,
expensive, thoughtful and odd items. I don't know if they are still
around as a company or store-chain at all). It was break enough for them to move on - she and he moved up to by Cortland, or Dundee, or one and then the other of those places. I
don't exactly recall. I did receive a note from her, by mail, many
years later, in response to my longer note to her. She couldn't really
even recall who I was - asking simply if I'd been 'one of the New
York boy's' who'd come to Jane's - there was a group
of, exactly that, New York City boys who would drive or take a bus once
a week or so to be sure to make their presence at these
meetings. Her not remembering me was actually OK with me - the same
thing had happened with Christina Rosner, who is about 80 now and has
someone taking care of her - so forgetfulness is not so odd in that
case (I sent her a very nice German language book about the fine art of
papermaking; just sent it to her out of the blue, in 2012, with a small note saying hi and reintroducing myself to her, for memory's
sake. I got a note back effusively thanking me for the act and the
thought, but asking numerous questions seeking to determine who I was. I
just let it go). Same with Sue Watkins - and anyway, all this has been 40 years back.
Sue Watkins has had a few books published now - books about the Jane Roberts' sessions, the atmosphere, the people, and a book or two, in fact, advancing the work with new material. Pretty nice. I guess she's doing fine, and she seems a personality in her own right (In her own write, by contrast, would also be true but would be a referential throwback to a John Lennon title, a reference I didn't wish really to make but just did anyway. Now I'll have to start writing on that too). This Jane Roberts section is going to be tough, tedious and probably long. Bear with me : The year was 1971, and then 1972. Right up through, I guess, 1974. Those dour, sad, silly years of Jimmy Carter (what an asshole!), really crass culture, lots of media crap, things running like from 'Maude' to 'Taxi Driver' and such on the mass-media destruction scale - and we were, as it turned out, only just then getting started. I am going to just have to roll-over now into my 'remote-control' mode and simply write down the dictation of the voice as it comes to me, through me, to explain this material. Pull up an easy chair, sit back, and have a go....
Jane Roberts started out, in Elmira, as a small-time little poetess (that was the word then). She would go to readings and open-forum events and shout out her poetry, in a most demonstrative fashion, mostly - from what I gleaned - alienating her listeners greatly (certainly one 'Bernice Martelli', of my acquaintance). She was, at the same time, through Prentiss-Hall Publishers (Fort Lee, NJ), a published science-fiction author, most notable title then being 'The Education of Oversoul Seven.' Considered fanciful, but not really so if one looks further along the (her) continuum. There came a point - all this is well delineated - when that somehow evolved into her receiving 'messages' (words) from another entity, a personalized, out-of-time character called Seth. The groups of people who met at this time were the initial audiences for this introductory and slowly evolving format of message/dictation. It all eventually grew into a much larger thing, numerous books and writings, investigations, paintings, memories, etc. It became, for me, a totally fascinating, vivid and true endeavor. Long after Sue was gone, had moved on, I remained involved in the dense reading and following of all this. I would often see Jane and Rob (Jane never left the car, usually sitting within it, staying behind, as Rob went to the nearby bookstore or grocer's), and soon became friends. After they moved from the initial Water Street apartment and purchased a very nice single-family home in the upper reaches of Elmira proper ('Hill House', they called it), I visited. The impetus for the move, the granular selection of the new home, the emotion realities brought forth for it and from it, the psycho-messaged entities and presences therein - all of that is very well documented in one of the Seth books. I don't recall which one now - there are about seven. It all went on and on, interesting sidebars, delving into physics, multi-planar and multi-dimensional realities, the varied natures of time and place, the ideas and the messages overlapping, the congruencies of mapped strategies for reality, the dip and angle of presence and personality, the continuance of life, the non-linearity of time, the depth of what we call temporal ideas, the overlap, the multi-varied places, spaces, times and eras we inhabit, the words, memories, voices and stalkings we use to both recall and foretell, the way we make up our reality (realities), the concurrence of adventure and experience, the ideas of loss and sorrow, value and gain. I could go on. It brought me great and lasting knowledge and awareness. I found that those who could not deal with this (once again using Bernice Martelli as my example) were weaklings caught up in other traps of their own devise. It was all, and still is all, very clear to me, and - as Jane once put it - whether or not you believe in this will not change one iota of the reality of what it is. Jane was a small, twisted, strange looking little woman - almost eerie. Rob was much taller, very aloof, distanced and quiet. His specialty accompanying these realities was in painting scenes they'd experience - past lives, past places. The manner in which they lived, the house in which they lived, was not anything like you'd probably expect; except for the larger back room filled with transcribed files and boxed and carton'd transcripts. Rob would 'do the dictation' while the voice of Seth would come through Jane, during those times called Rupert. I really don't know how much of a recognition factor there was between me and them, or to whom I was talking when I talked to either of them, nor of what they saw me as, what sort of reading they got from me, what 'entity' and place they saw me as emitting from. But, I must say, here, in all earnestness, much of this is the foundation of my life, the underpinnings of a lot of my thought and the spacious repose of all the work that I do - the writing, the varied sorts of varies, all the styles, words and voices, and the painted and photographed images. These all come from Seth, in the same way the ideas and images and voices I'd seen all came through Rupert, as Jane, from Seth. It's all quite startling, and was and still is unworldly, but more worldly, for sure, than this one ever is or can be. Jane died some years back, of the advancement of whatever that disease was that had her all twisted up. Rob sent me a postcard in his own, red ink'd, scrawly hand, telling me of her death. Last I knew, I think, Rob too was dead, or apparently so, or whatever form either of their life-experience bodies now take. I guess 'dead' covers it as concept enough anyway. Go ahead, then, look up Jane Roberts for yourself; then ask me questions.
One funny thing, inside Jane's house, which always surprised me, the coffee table-tops were always cluttered with TV and fan magazines, really and perfectly ordinary stuff - the reason for which she would say was that she was 'she' first, the plain, old ordinary human that walked around and did chores, and all the rest was the productified fruition of a timeless core-life, of which she was merely the conduit-recipient, nothing more. Funny, how it is then, when we attempt to rationalize our own small and boring lives away. There was, somehow, an endearing side to he because of all that. Her editor at Prentiss, Tom Mossman, I often wondered, must have had his own difficult time dealing with these dimensional things as well - who was it, really, he;d been assigned, and what were all the dictated words he was overseeing. no matter now, for it all somehow powerfully worked. I remember many various 'incidentialies' of this time. I loved 'The World View Of Paul Cezanne', and I loved 'The Afterlife Journal of William James', or whatever it was called. 'Psychic Politics' was another good one. Massive books, all in addition to the 'Seth' titles, which too just kept coming. When she was in character-seance, Rob had to sift through all these words and - with a sort of journal shorthand all of his own devise - took down all of it, for further sifting and cleaning up later - her eyes, when she was possessed of Seth, would bulge, there were long pauses between, often, words and phrases, her voice would boom out, she'd twist around, cigarettes would be smoked, all sorts of odd things possessing the figment of her which one was 'allowed' to share. Rob, in his turn, remained aloof, careful and silent; his paintings of ancient, old Romans and old 14th century fishermen and such, adorned the walls - all past-life vestiges of both him and Jane. The only real animated being was their cat, who would occasionally start, jump, run around, and generally enter moments of craziness, which would then, eventually, pass. Otherwise, the rooms were still, the car noises outside (on the Walnut Street bridge, when they lived in the apartment) just went on. The Walnut Street bridge was wiped out in the 1972 June flood of Hurricane Agnes, which totally devastated Elmira, the Chemung River, and all the surrounding valleys and areas. Trying to get home during that time, we were detoured off the road and directed to a Red cCoss Station instead, where we had to stay until the storm was over and the washed-out roads became again passable. We were returning from NYCity, driving through this brutal weather. The vehicle has lost its windshield wipers, which had blown off from the rain/gales and, in addition, we had with us my young sister, about 12 years old, who was coming out with us to spend a month or so 'vacationing' at our farmhouse and land. It all turned pretty crazy. Elmira itself, when we did finally - after getting ourselves home to Pennsylvania (across the border, about 30 miles off) - make it there, was a shambles. Water was everywhere, something like 16 feet high; most buildings kept markers showing, later on, where their 8-foot or 6-foot water-level lines had been. Stuff was everywhere, homes and businesses ruined, broken glass and shattered storefronts, mud on everything, a gross and mucky smell, and - in point of fact - caskets and washed out gravesites had floated along the streets, along with everything else. I have a booklet, later purchased when the Elmira Star-Gazette printed and published it, of portfolio-sized photos and a pictorial history of the time of this flood. The flood, as I said, washed out the Walnut Street Bridge (rebuilt about 2 years later) and precipitated the looking for a new home and a relocation for Jane and Rob (and Seth). Even though they'd been on the second floor, and really had lost nothing, the building itself was ruined. When I was there recently (Elmira), it seemed that Walnut Street had now been turned to a one-way, southerly (I think), drive. I remember it being, as I recall, a two-way street. It is lined with fairly preposterous homes and house, all dating from a long-ago era, and almost unworldy too, but kept up mostly quite well. I can only imagine, with all the exodus of business and commerce from the Chemung Valley (meaning, in essence, that there's very little money or income left in Elmira) that the money behind all these homes must come from Elmira College personnel, or perhaps Corning Glass Works.
50. The momentary ruination of Elmira after the '72 Agnes storm was pretty complete. People go around saying - based on their 'expertise' - that this or that was a 'hundred-year storm', which means somehow to them that it won't occur except every hundred years or so, based on weather histories and experience, etc. They're 'experts' so they know. I found that to be, and still see it operative falsely today as, all bunk. A storm happens whenever it damn well happens, and the only predictability about it is that some jerk is going to start 'predicting' again as soon as it's over. Having someone say 'this won't happen again like this for another hundred years' does nothing at all to satisfy the broken mind and heart - possessions and homes, ruined, people dead, businesses and streets gone, recognizable landscapes and landmarks savaged. There's always a sort of subconscious 'comfort level' (hate that concept and wording) by which the body and mind work together to fit their 'person' into the world around them : it's all we know, and it's different for everyone, which is why a rich person can just shake his or her head and say - of the poor - 'how do thy live that way? I'll never know', and why the poor person, in their own manner, says the same about the wealthy, mixed of course with envy and want and anger. (On the same spectrum, I don't think the rich person extends much envy or guilt or anger over their situation as it reflects back upon the poor - all their biblical cit-chat and evangelical and Episcopal, etc., charity notwithstanding). Anyway, the devastation of Elmira was pretty complete. We were still living out in the far country, but coming across the Susquehanna at Towanda, it all became unpassable, Route 6 was shut, gone. The Red Cross Station basically made it worse, although they tried. It was a large shed, not much more, plunked in the middle of some wet meadow somehow just off the road - a gravel parking lot and lots of driving rain and more and more mud. Any car which had been on the roadway (and there were some, don't know why, locals too - but mostly people like us, on their way to or fro and caught by happenstance). Coffee, sandwiches, folding chairs, maybe a little TV, I forget, and some kid toys and bathroom stuff. Rudimentary emergency scene - with a couple of confused and distracted people who'd been assigned to the scene. Now a then a State Policeman would come by. Route 6, at this juncture, between places like Wysox, Waverly, Towanda, Athens, Sayre, it moves around a lot - 's' curves and backtracks and things, so it's difficult to plot directly any trajectory. For the few miles involved here, it was just better - in such raging and high water - to sit it out. I don't remember much or how long (I think we had a dog with us too) but eventually things lightened up and we were once again let out. We did finally make it home, where the intervening week had produced crazy-high grass, matted-down-by-rain areas and patches of wet, overflow ponding, a few downed limbs and things - but on the whole even our dirt road was passable without assistance, and we got through. Once back in the house, we made sure everything worked, all power was on, lights and the rest, and just settled in. All around had been, and continued to be, a disaster scene. I never knew how used to any of this the average Bradford County and environs farmer was - most of them had family legacy places going back 150 years and more - but really no one seemed to care too much. Water goes away, roofs and things can be fixed, livestock reacts in its own way and can be moved about and re-directed. Everything returns to its normal ways - only 'city people' get crazed and upset. Elmira wasn't certainly much of a 'city' (it once had made a noble manufacturing effort at same, but that was long ago), but that's the way these country folk referred to it anyway. Driving out there, to them, was like going to Aspen or New York City or any other distant and different long trek. It was only perhaps 25-30 miles, taking the long way. But, no matter, it was the far 'city' - stores in a row, little traffic jams, lights and avenues. Pretty funny actually. The city folk, yes, were 'different'. I guess they just defined things differently, even in their very small-city ways. Their viewpoints and outlooks were different. They knew the clock and the idea of punctuality; jobs and time clocks, small manufacture, little routines, churches on the corner, various denominations plugging it out to attract each their own, places where you could drive in, park, and get and eat food all in one place, schools with fenced yards in town, policemen roving about - none of that sounds like much, but it was all part of the prevalence. Entertainment - things like radio stations with strong signals and record stores even - they were situated here and covered the entire few valleys around - Chemung Valley, Corning, Bradford County, all those reaches in each direction for 60 miles. That was 'power' in some weird and unstated way - the elegance and strength of 'big-town' living. To a dirt-farmer dairy guy and his family, living way out on some crooked hillside or wooded juncture of two dirt roads far into the hills some miles away, that meant a lot - that meant mystery and wildness, magic and evocative meanings, sex and madness too - loose ways, looser living. I know that's how they used to talk to me about it when I'd tell them I worked there and went every day. I know it sounds overstated, but it's not.
My only idea was in making it work - I somehow had to make the
manner my own, the way I would mix the two. Country/farm, small town/job, a
daily commute, a magical trip, each day. By this time I had already tried the
farm only routine, doing the dairy farm work, and was getting well along. As
that flood hit, and Elmira was essentially wiped out and shut down for near
a year, I lost all of that and that's when I rolled back into the solid, at home
routine of working Warren's farm, long and crazy hours, getting my PA
truck-driving license, which allowed me to drive a schoolbus and some heavy farm
equipment, also as part of these new, needed 'at-home' jobs, (Elmira was gone),
taking care of the local schoolhouse (I was contracted for that at $4200 a year,
and mostly, in fact, neglected my duties as much as I could), keeping my own
land and property up and running, staying warm, staying watered and full. All
that went on as Elmira took the task of re-building itself, a long, slow and
laborious process. By a year later, they were back enough - my old
job place had re-opened, took me back (Whitehall Printing and Mailing, on First
Street, downtown Elmira), and I began my 'commute' format once again.
In Elmira itself, the immediate aftermath of the storm was nasty
- mud caked everything, in some places inches and in others a foot thick.
The three bridges over the Chemung were in trouble, the Walnut Street Bridge in
particular having washed away. Only one small crossing over the river was left,
a lane and a half in each direction. I remember, about this time too, there was
some Burt Reynolds movie out, Smokey and the Bandit, or some sort of
cross-country car-race movie or something (I could be wrong on any of
this), with the woman playing the lead alongside him, with whom he'd later be or
was at that time romantically involved (Sally Fields), and him on one or
two smarty-ass billboards showing speed, fun and a great ease of traffic as part
of the movie's claim - it all seemed too wrong and different from
the mess in Elmira itself, like a parody, or a cruel joke, of reality's real
pain being inflicted on people and not the Hollywood stupid flash-glamour of
big-screen fantasy. I'd sit there and find myself wondering why. In addition,
there were countless houses off their foundations, yards and lots buckled and
ruined, as I said already, cemeteries thrown asunder, schools and businesses
simply gone, all of that radio and entertainment stuff out of commission, food
and fuel and water and drink only available sporadically on the higher portions
of town ('Elmira Heights', as it went). This went on for long, long months :
relief trucks, food wagons, Red Cross and Emergency Management encampments.
Elmira has already been poor and rundown, though with a little pride left. Now
all that was over. The Southside, which was the poor quarter of town
- hugging the river, the muddy, delta part of the river - fens
and swamps, mosquitos and heat-slime - already a lowland, had of
course taken it all the worst. There was nothing left. I don't know where all
those poor families went, or how they ended up, but I do know it was gone.
Numerous people had died too. It was a shambles, and I hate to sound
redundant - but it's necessary.
All that was enough to drive right out of my head any portions or ideas of
the old NYCity living of my most-recent past. In NYC this was the time of great
things - the aftermath of the hippie sixties, the birth of new art
and music, the arrival of the punk scene. For a while it went back and forth for
me - a bus trip was about 40 bucks, as I recall, and less if taken
from Binghamton (75 miles east, shortening the busride and the fare). My shift
of cars was somewhat reliable, though we can recall numerous instances of
breakdowns, repairs, and the like on both ends of the trips. Gas was cheap, we
had money coming in, bills were paid. My wife and I would often enough brave it
all anyway - with a three or four year old bouncing around on the
console, between the seats, or sleeping in the backseat or between us on the bus
ride. Back and forth it went. There was a lot new and a lot not new; regularity,
like candy, is pretty predictable. You sort of just knew what was coming by the
scene itself - the names and personalities involved. There were
plenty of people, like me, who just abandoned the ship for a while, laid low,
went on to other places and pursuits. It was a carefree time - there
were as yet none of the paranoid or neurotic things that run people's lives now,
and people, in addition, had not yet been inured to accept such controls
willingly. Airbags, seat belts, all that sort of crap was still just talk
- the only thing mandatory was 'get the fuck out of my life.' Now it's all
different, and people have happily backed into the dead-man's corner of coercion
and regulation. I still don't wear a seatbelt, and I won't. (I was reading just
the other day, in one of those dumb newspaper profiles of the Founding Fathers
(4th of July prattle), each, - rife with all the usual twisted
platitudes and attitudes which pass today for opinion and knowledge
- that Benjamin Franklin's suggestion for the National Motto, for which he
pushed hard for adoption, was 'Mind Your Business.' It's interesting and a bit
confusing too - because it's not 'mind your own business', which is
what your mind first thinks of, as in a completely libertine setting, but just
'mind your business' which in its way could just as well be a cover for the
small tradesman version of America. Funny stuff.)...No matter. Some people never
came back - they just ended up in other places, different coasts,
other lines; they made it big-time or they disappeared. The field is littered,
and a lot of them now, myself included, all these years later are still
stragglers and idlers, living out profuse lives, leftover in time from other
times and adventures, places and things. Some just never fit. It's a quiet
blame, not much noise. The only ones with the noise are the big-mouth yappers,
the ones with their betrayals worn as badges of honor, the sell-outs and the
creeps; some still bellow and hound, name-dropping, pretending that things all
went their way. The only way for the proof in the pudding to tell is to see the
pudding being eaten. Otherwise it's just someone's story about pudding. Mostly,
that never happens - distance and circumstance prevents it all, and
there's nothing to stop anyone from making shit up, going on madly uncontained
about things that don't exist. Who cares anyway? Certainly not me. Most people
who do this, like Jeff Gordon, say, or Steve Sloman, Norman Turner or
Chuck O' Connor, you can find them out, simply - their achievements
and work are on line and accompanied by proper graphic and bio. reference and
history. Others, well, let's just say for others none of that exists
- it's all self-referential, fake photos, made-up stuff. A long, long
reach for men with little arms.
This was, anyway, Indian land - as near two-hundred years before this, a smarter and tighter band of people roamed and roared through here, the Susquehanna Indians, the Algonquins, all those transient and roving pieces of greater tribes - they knew the locus and the fabric of this place much better and much more all-around. They lived naturally within the unbroken splendor of the setting, the environment. if these things had happened before - and they very well might have - their 'societal' structure took it in better stride than ours, fell back only upon itself, didn't scream for help and money and artificial means, more and more, to re-establish the artificial places ruined. There was a certain, 'other' level of reality involved. It's difficult to understand and apply, but I think that's the sort of picture-breaking that this 'Seth' entity had been bringing through Jane; a little blip popping up onto the screen of humanity, readable and understandable by those noticing and those putting in some time to absorb. So, for me it was all full circle: it was a lesson to be learned and from which to continually keep learning. Not the facts and figures and dollars and dullards of the paper-world mentality of representation and rote (terms and accountings; remember, even things like 'Algonquin', 'Susquehanna', or 'society' were just 'our' feeble names, given to things, applied to matter we couldn't otherwise fathom. We had to call it something), but instead the multi-faceted and roving density of a 'Reality' still forming and charting itself - it was Creative Life, once more rearing its head. I'd come from a nowhere-settlement, an Avenel and a Bayonne of meager means, and rolled all of that over into a much more massive New York City experience, and then that too was taken, through me, and brought to another presence as a rural and demonstrative experience deeper and wiser - and it had, in turn, created this rival world of multi-dimensional and Seth/Jane/Rob exposure for me, already, by 1974 totally locked and loaded. Set to run.
So then such quick change would be nice, yes, but it never happens, and I'd be willing to bet, were I to see him now or find him again, that for all his predelictions of wonderment and zest back then even David has settled into regular life, with all those rules and strictures of time and place set comfortably in place. It's just the way it is. He used to be very embarrassed (he always managed to bring it up) by how large (fat) his mother was. He would say it in such an off-hand 'oh have I mentioned?' manner, over and over. She was, in fact, about 300 pounds and quite sedentary. His father, on the other hand, was compact, spry and energetic. Davidn had a little brother, about 11 or 12, who was in a constant overdrive, totally energetic, all over the place. David had an over-weening interest, at this time, in tea. I took him, once or twice, to NYC by car to search out and shop meticulously for certain and various teas and blends he was after. His girlfriend, the bright sexual wonder of his days, was often given gifts of tea and/or things he'd written - to the point, I recall, of him once stealing someone else's title for something, 'Smilla's Sense of Snow', as I recall it was, a book title or something and replacing the name Smilla with his girlfriend's name and saying it was his work, written for her. A poem or something. He'd come back, other times, with the precise amount of time, hours and minutes, they'd spent that weekend making love, gradually turning it into full-blown intercourse over the month or so it took them to fully break in and learn each other's body. It was nuts to witness by the re-telling, and second handedly, all of this. He'd talk of the 'odor' of the room after they'd spent the entire afternoon in it, closed up, having sex. He'd point out each quirk and characteristic of the love-session. He was in wonderment and awe-struck by it all. It was the most curious, down-home thing to witness. Odd, I thought, what a blissful and untroubled life a peacetime aura can bring to a young man - there was, back then anyway, for him, no turmoil, no sense of danger, none of the immanent fatique and trouble which had presented itself, for instance, to me and, for that matter, myself and others, in those perilous early Vietnam years. I probably dwell here too much, but these were, day-by-day, life transforming and vitally important issues. People such as David had no fear to run from, nothing haunted them; and certainly there was, in 1999, no all-pervasive Vietnam type horror taking time and energy from these kids' lives.
Face it, no one cared, certainly not Avenel. Any of these suburban shit-holes had no pipeline into anything and were only expected to pleasantly pass people along, like shit out some rectum, to proceed to the next level of 'same', just larger. There was a stunning lack of content and clarity to be found, anywhere, from my perspective. The 'product' produced was just supposed to creep along to the next level of consumerism, buying up the next excess product made - jobs, cars, houses, carriages, cribs, foods and all the rest. It's funny, but back then (you have to imagine too the behind-it-all slowly increasing background noise welling up of death and carnage (Vietnam) just getting ready to settle in and overtake it all) people actually talked about how each 'generation' ended up better and richer and happier than the generation before it, of their parents. This ever-increasing threshold of happiness, this ever-ascending arc, was paraded as the American way, the end-product of a wise and blissful consumerism which was supposed to only and continually improve all lifestyles, fortunes, destinies and happiness - better weddings, more blissful sex, bigger homes and gardens, wilder pleasures, more healthy endings. It was, of course, all total bullshit, all manufactured Jew-sham advertising crap, a lie of utterly-deep dimensions. No one ever barked back, no one said a word; the 'Silent Generation' of the 1950's though occasionally criticized for a passivity, slowly acceded into becoming the crazed whip-masters of the death and carnage beginning to fall. Gotta' love those beatniks, at least, for blowing the whistle early on, or attempting too. And, anyway, I was already in intellectual 'love' with Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who seemed to live and write and 'execute' Life exactly as I wanted to be.
So this entire Gulf of Tonkin thing was, for me, pretty much a last straw, really the final nail driven into that proverbial coffin which was 'life as it was supposed to be' for me. I was d-o-n-e. From this point on, any handwriting on the wall was going to be my handwriting and no one else's, nor the scawl now marred chicken-scratch of anyone else. if it meant inventing a new language, I'd do hat. if it meant stepping out, walking on log-floes in rough or in patchy water, I'd do it. From this Summer on my path was to be, I swore, cut from new ground, slanted through a new forest, cut with a bold machete of iron and a glinting steel not yet discovered nor gorged. Over-the-top allegiance to intellectual dreams, outlandish adherence to self-sustaining outlooks and beliefs - those things wee to be mine. I was done with father-talk. All those gung-ho, go-get-'em types were beginning to make me sick. Those guys rushing off to join the army, get their chops in killing gooks, selling their stupid hot-dick GTO's, or putting their hot rods and motorcycles in deep storage while they went and served their country, they could all drop dead around me and I step over their dead bodies. I saw the mother as they talked among themselves - about their sons and their fears, about the military and how nice a finished product came out of service, the fathers, just like my own regaling others with tales of military derring-do and the grand experiences of WWII - all of that was grub-stake now. Garbage to the ears. I'd moved on. I'd seen through their mirror and realized its backing was chipped, flaking, false and - in addition - no longer reflecting back anything real at all.
--
'[Lever House, designed by Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill and located at 390 Park Avenue in New York City, is a seminal glass-box skyscraper built in the International style according to the design principles of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Completed in 1952, it was the second curtain wall skyscraper in New York City after the United Nations Secretariat Building.[3] The 307-foot-tall (94 m) building features an innovative courtyard and public space.
The construction of Lever House marked a transition point for Park Avenue in the Midtown Manhattan
district, changing from a boulevard of masonry apartment buildings to
one of glass towers as other corporations adopted the International
Style for new headquarters. In 1961 the building was copied as the Terminal Sud of Paris-Orly and in 1965 as the highrise of the Europa-Center in Berlin. The building was designated a New York City landmark in 1982 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.
The Lever House was built in 1951-1952 to be the American headquarters of the British soap company Lever Brothers.
It was the pet project of Lever Brothers president Charles Luckman, who had been identified on the cover of Time Magazine
as a "Boy Wonder". Luckman would leave the company before the
building's completion to achieve a notable architecture career on his
own, including the design of Madison Square Garden, the Theme Building and master plan for Los Angeles International Airport, Aon Centre and initial buildings of the Kennedy Space Center and Johnson Space Center.
In 1916, New York City had passed zoning laws designed to prevent new skyscrapers from overwhelming the streets with their sheer bulk. It required buildings to have setbacks
as they rose, creating a sense of space and allowing sunlight to reach
the street level. However, these setbacks were not required if the
building occupied 25% or less of its lot, and it was this provision
which allowed Lever House, and the other glass boxes which followed it,
to be built in the form of a vertical slab.
The building featured a glimmering 24-story blue-green heat-resistant glass and stainless steel curtain-wall.
The curtain-wall was designed to reduce the cost of operating and
maintaining the property. Its curtain-wall is completely sealed with no
operating windows. This meant that much less dirt from the city would
get into the building. The heat resistant nature of the glass also
helped to keep air conditioning costs down. Additionally, the property
featured a roof-top window-washing gondola that moved about the parapet
wall on tracks. The curtain wall was fabricated and installed by
General Bronze Corp, the same facade contractor that had recently
finished the Secretariat Building curtain wall at the UN Headquarters.
The ground floor contained no tenants. Instead, it featured an open
plaza with garden and pedestrian walkways. Only a small portion of the
ground floor was enclosed in glass and marble. The ground floor
featured space for displays and waiting visitors, a demonstration
kitchen and an auditorium. The second and largest floor contained the
employees' lounge, medical suite, and general office facilities. On the
third floor was the employees' cafeteria and terrace. The offices of
Lever Brothers and its subsidiaries occupied the remaining floors with
the executive penthouse on the 21st floor. The top three stories
contained most of the property's mechanical space.]'
--
It may be no big matter, as perhaps I make too much of it, or 'doth protest too much' or any of that, but - as is said - 'iconic' places sometimes cause their own displacement. The Lever House, to my mind, should not now be the sort of place contained by simpletons such as this part-duty security guy. On the face of it, the entire situation is shameless, and that's all I'm going to say - you can leave it to yourself to make up your own mind about what portions of our legacy and heritage we've turned over to stupidity, paranoia, fear and unknowing control. And then, once you've done that and, perhaps, decided that all of that is OK with you, then at least take a look at the quality of the shits we've turned it over to, those knuckleheads and know-nothings advancing and promoting (and enforcing) this situation.
So, as I said, that brought me to the across-the-street location which presented Charles Folds to me. There's also a bookstore, of sorts, antiquarian, collectible, etc., within that plaza, on the same concourse, which - as I mentioned - was selling Folds' CDs, for 12 dollars - which Charles had already mentioned to me. At his piano top, on a small table, was a small display of his bio, photo, and a memoriam to someone (name I didn't catch) from the recent past, a jazzman, who'd recently died and to whom Charles was dedicating his work and effort. I didn't really get into that, but plan to. The bookstore, this day, was featuring Winston Churchill - in their little window they had autographs, autographed manuscript pages, hand-written pages, all sorts of things by Winston Churchill. It was one of those places which, in addition to being a 'bookstore' of the old-school sort - (not the ridiculous prancing and mass-marketing dancing of such as Barnes & Noble - which, though once fine, has long, long ago diluted a worthwhile name and endeavor. This is Chartwell Books, 55 e52nd) - sold autographs, collectible memorabilia, signed objects, etc. - all very nice and high-up and stuffy, yet pleasant. I mosied around a bit this day, and the focus was, for whatever reason, on Winston Churchill. I remember when he died - I was in the seminary, it was about 1964, perhaps, and it was the very first instance I had of getting one of those 'instant' books. The New York Times had very quickly come up - after his funeral and all those orations - with an of-the-moment, 'instant' biographical volume of his life and work and of 'Him' himself. A small volume, about a half-inch thick, black and white printed on a marginal quality paper - it got the job done : all those momentous occasions when he acted as 'cheerleader' to the world for his beleaguered nation, all that wartime 'we must stay with it' stuff, the bleakness of the endeavor, the dourness of the times, his forbearance, his cigars, his Lady Churchill. But, no matter; for a 13-year old doing all that stuff was basically play-acting anyway. What did I know of that bleak glumness of air raids and wartime? Why pretend? All that hoo-hah which was important and held meaning back then but which, in today's world, is seen as idle rubbish and with no more meaning than the spittle with which envelopes and stamps were once sealed, closed and sent off. Myself, I was never a big Churchill fan, but people revered him - lots of respect for a supposed doggedness and strength, maintaining all that John Bull stuff during the dark days of the war - aerial bombardments, air raids, shelters, discipline, sirens, air-raid alerts, the famed Underground, and all the rest, with Churchill's voice always prattling on about staying with it. Until, that is, his own people threw him out. And then took him back. And then threw him out again. The whole story is the whole story; I don't know the ins and outs and am not about to try and retell. Go look it up for yourself. But be aware that back in the days of which I'm speaking, it did once mean something, and a lot .'Mean' in the use of the words that is never in use today; when nothing means anything at all, when everything has been diluted and worked away to meaninglessness, to a virtual facade covering a virtual reality so a virtual Czar can't see the virtual Potemkin Village his virtual ass is passing by. Yes, it's that bad.
Neither am I big on indoor plazas or atria, etc. A real urban
street, a real city life, would have none of it. They are for people
who want to 'be' within a city but not partake of it - who can
somehow deny the existing of the rubric within urbanity which
encompasses, darkness, crime, grim, filth, decay, and the rest. These
are the people who must always have things their own way, and right by
that : well-lit, clean, pointed towards well-being, wealth, and with
all the right goods on sale, and on sale at a premium so as to make it
all the more believable, even as it is not believable, really at all.
Who would turn away from a street-crime or a murder scene, but would, as
well, only so gladly and willingly watch it televised as a drama or a
re-telling by drama - imparting to them the encoded messages and
subliminal hints planted therein by those who put it together and who,
just as well, buy, sell, and arrange the 'airtime' wherein this is
shown. For myself, I'd rather the grit and the blood and mayhem the
real city transfers across the scrim. At least it's real and there's no
pain-in-the-but person trying to shill you for something otherwise
disguised.
It may be no big matter, as perhaps I make too much of it, or 'doth protest too much' or any of that, but - as is said - 'iconic' places sometimes cause their own displacement. The Lever House, to my mind, should not now be the sort of place contained by simpletons such as this part-duty security guy. On the face of it, the entire situation is shameless, and that's all I'm going to say - you can leave it to yourself to make up your own mind about what portions of our legacy and heritage we've turned over to stupidity, paranoia, fear and unknowing control. And then, once you've done that and, perhaps, decided that all of that is OK with you, then at least take a look at the quality of the shits we've turned it over to, those knuckleheads and know-nothings advancing and promoting (and enforcing) this situation.
So, as I said, that brought me to the across-the-street location which presented Charles Folds to me. There's also a bookstore, of sorts, antiquarian, collectible, etc., within that plaza, on the same concourse, which - as I mentioned - was selling Folds' CDs, for 12 dollars - which Charles had already mentioned to me. At his piano top, on a small table, was a small display of his bio, photo, and a memoriam to someone (name I didn't catch) from the recent past, a jazzman, who'd recently died and to whom Charles was dedicating his work and effort. I didn't really get into that, but plan to. The bookstore, this day, was featuring Winston Churchill - in their little window they had autographs, autographed manuscript pages, hand-written pages, all sorts of things by Winston Churchill. It was one of those places which, in addition to being a 'bookstore' of the old-school sort - (not the ridiculous prancing and mass-marketing dancing of such as Barnes & Noble - which, though once fine, has long, long ago diluted a worthwhile name and endeavor. This is Chartwell Books, 55 e52nd) - sold autographs, collectible memorabilia, signed objects, etc. - all very nice and high-up and stuffy, yet pleasant. I mosied around a bit this day, and the focus was, for whatever reason, on Winston Churchill. I remember when he died - I was in the seminary, it was about 1964, perhaps, and it was the very first instance I had of getting one of those 'instant' books. The New York Times had very quickly come up - after his funeral and all those orations - with an of-the-moment, 'instant' biographical volume of his life and work and of 'Him' himself. A small volume, about a half-inch thick, black and white printed on a marginal quality paper - it got the job done : all those momentous occasions when he acted as 'cheerleader' to the world for his beleaguered nation, all that wartime 'we must stay with it' stuff, the bleakness of the endeavor, the dourness of the times, his forbearance, his cigars, his Lady Churchill. But, no matter; for a 13-year old doing all that stuff was basically play-acting anyway. What did I know of that bleak glumness of air raids and wartime? Why pretend? All that hoo-hah which was important and held meaning back then but which, in today's world, is seen as idle rubbish and with no more meaning than the spittle with which envelopes and stamps were once sealed, closed and sent off. Myself, I was never a big Churchill fan, but people revered him - lots of respect for a supposed doggedness and strength, maintaining all that John Bull stuff during the dark days of the war - aerial bombardments, air raids, shelters, discipline, sirens, air-raid alerts, the famed Underground, and all the rest, with Churchill's voice always prattling on about staying with it. Until, that is, his own people threw him out. And then took him back. And then threw him out again. The whole story is the whole story; I don't know the ins and outs and am not about to try and retell. Go look it up for yourself. But be aware that back in the days of which I'm speaking, it did once mean something, and a lot .'Mean' in the use of the words that is never in use today; when nothing means anything at all, when everything has been diluted and worked away to meaninglessness, to a virtual facade covering a virtual reality so a virtual Czar can't see the virtual Potemkin Village his virtual ass is passing by. Yes, it's that bad.
Sue Watkins has had a few books published now - books about the Jane Roberts' sessions, the atmosphere, the people, and a book or two, in fact, advancing the work with new material. Pretty nice. I guess she's doing fine, and she seems a personality in her own right (In her own write, by contrast, would also be true but would be a referential throwback to a John Lennon title, a reference I didn't wish really to make but just did anyway. Now I'll have to start writing on that too). This Jane Roberts section is going to be tough, tedious and probably long. Bear with me : The year was 1971, and then 1972. Right up through, I guess, 1974. Those dour, sad, silly years of Jimmy Carter (what an asshole!), really crass culture, lots of media crap, things running like from 'Maude' to 'Taxi Driver' and such on the mass-media destruction scale - and we were, as it turned out, only just then getting started. I am going to just have to roll-over now into my 'remote-control' mode and simply write down the dictation of the voice as it comes to me, through me, to explain this material. Pull up an easy chair, sit back, and have a go....
'[Jane Roberts (May 8, 1929 – September 5, 1984) was an American author, poet, psychic and spirit medium, who said she had "channeled" a personality who called himself "Seth". Her publication of the Seth texts, known as the "Seth Material", established her as one of the preeminent figures in the world of paranormal phenomena. The Yale University Library Manuscripts and Archives maintains a collection entitled Jane Roberts Papers (MS 1090),
which documents the career and personal life of Jane Roberts, including
journals, poetry, correspondence, audio and video recordings and other
materials donated after her death by Roberts' husband and other
individuals and organizations.]'
Jane Roberts started out, in Elmira, as a small-time little poetess (that was the word then). She would go to readings and open-forum events and shout out her poetry, in a most demonstrative fashion, mostly - from what I gleaned - alienating her listeners greatly (certainly one 'Bernice Martelli', of my acquaintance). She was, at the same time, through Prentiss-Hall Publishers (Fort Lee, NJ), a published science-fiction author, most notable title then being 'The Education of Oversoul Seven.' Considered fanciful, but not really so if one looks further along the (her) continuum. There came a point - all this is well delineated - when that somehow evolved into her receiving 'messages' (words) from another entity, a personalized, out-of-time character called Seth. The groups of people who met at this time were the initial audiences for this introductory and slowly evolving format of message/dictation. It all eventually grew into a much larger thing, numerous books and writings, investigations, paintings, memories, etc. It became, for me, a totally fascinating, vivid and true endeavor. Long after Sue was gone, had moved on, I remained involved in the dense reading and following of all this. I would often see Jane and Rob (Jane never left the car, usually sitting within it, staying behind, as Rob went to the nearby bookstore or grocer's), and soon became friends. After they moved from the initial Water Street apartment and purchased a very nice single-family home in the upper reaches of Elmira proper ('Hill House', they called it), I visited. The impetus for the move, the granular selection of the new home, the emotion realities brought forth for it and from it, the psycho-messaged entities and presences therein - all of that is very well documented in one of the Seth books. I don't recall which one now - there are about seven. It all went on and on, interesting sidebars, delving into physics, multi-planar and multi-dimensional realities, the varied natures of time and place, the ideas and the messages overlapping, the congruencies of mapped strategies for reality, the dip and angle of presence and personality, the continuance of life, the non-linearity of time, the depth of what we call temporal ideas, the overlap, the multi-varied places, spaces, times and eras we inhabit, the words, memories, voices and stalkings we use to both recall and foretell, the way we make up our reality (realities), the concurrence of adventure and experience, the ideas of loss and sorrow, value and gain. I could go on. It brought me great and lasting knowledge and awareness. I found that those who could not deal with this (once again using Bernice Martelli as my example) were weaklings caught up in other traps of their own devise. It was all, and still is all, very clear to me, and - as Jane once put it - whether or not you believe in this will not change one iota of the reality of what it is. Jane was a small, twisted, strange looking little woman - almost eerie. Rob was much taller, very aloof, distanced and quiet. His specialty accompanying these realities was in painting scenes they'd experience - past lives, past places. The manner in which they lived, the house in which they lived, was not anything like you'd probably expect; except for the larger back room filled with transcribed files and boxed and carton'd transcripts. Rob would 'do the dictation' while the voice of Seth would come through Jane, during those times called Rupert. I really don't know how much of a recognition factor there was between me and them, or to whom I was talking when I talked to either of them, nor of what they saw me as, what sort of reading they got from me, what 'entity' and place they saw me as emitting from. But, I must say, here, in all earnestness, much of this is the foundation of my life, the underpinnings of a lot of my thought and the spacious repose of all the work that I do - the writing, the varied sorts of varies, all the styles, words and voices, and the painted and photographed images. These all come from Seth, in the same way the ideas and images and voices I'd seen all came through Rupert, as Jane, from Seth. It's all quite startling, and was and still is unworldly, but more worldly, for sure, than this one ever is or can be. Jane died some years back, of the advancement of whatever that disease was that had her all twisted up. Rob sent me a postcard in his own, red ink'd, scrawly hand, telling me of her death. Last I knew, I think, Rob too was dead, or apparently so, or whatever form either of their life-experience bodies now take. I guess 'dead' covers it as concept enough anyway. Go ahead, then, look up Jane Roberts for yourself; then ask me questions.
One funny thing, inside Jane's house, which always surprised me, the coffee table-tops were always cluttered with TV and fan magazines, really and perfectly ordinary stuff - the reason for which she would say was that she was 'she' first, the plain, old ordinary human that walked around and did chores, and all the rest was the productified fruition of a timeless core-life, of which she was merely the conduit-recipient, nothing more. Funny, how it is then, when we attempt to rationalize our own small and boring lives away. There was, somehow, an endearing side to he because of all that. Her editor at Prentiss, Tom Mossman, I often wondered, must have had his own difficult time dealing with these dimensional things as well - who was it, really, he;d been assigned, and what were all the dictated words he was overseeing. no matter now, for it all somehow powerfully worked. I remember many various 'incidentialies' of this time. I loved 'The World View Of Paul Cezanne', and I loved 'The Afterlife Journal of William James', or whatever it was called. 'Psychic Politics' was another good one. Massive books, all in addition to the 'Seth' titles, which too just kept coming. When she was in character-seance, Rob had to sift through all these words and - with a sort of journal shorthand all of his own devise - took down all of it, for further sifting and cleaning up later - her eyes, when she was possessed of Seth, would bulge, there were long pauses between, often, words and phrases, her voice would boom out, she'd twist around, cigarettes would be smoked, all sorts of odd things possessing the figment of her which one was 'allowed' to share. Rob, in his turn, remained aloof, careful and silent; his paintings of ancient, old Romans and old 14th century fishermen and such, adorned the walls - all past-life vestiges of both him and Jane. The only real animated being was their cat, who would occasionally start, jump, run around, and generally enter moments of craziness, which would then, eventually, pass. Otherwise, the rooms were still, the car noises outside (on the Walnut Street bridge, when they lived in the apartment) just went on. The Walnut Street bridge was wiped out in the 1972 June flood of Hurricane Agnes, which totally devastated Elmira, the Chemung River, and all the surrounding valleys and areas. Trying to get home during that time, we were detoured off the road and directed to a Red cCoss Station instead, where we had to stay until the storm was over and the washed-out roads became again passable. We were returning from NYCity, driving through this brutal weather. The vehicle has lost its windshield wipers, which had blown off from the rain/gales and, in addition, we had with us my young sister, about 12 years old, who was coming out with us to spend a month or so 'vacationing' at our farmhouse and land. It all turned pretty crazy. Elmira itself, when we did finally - after getting ourselves home to Pennsylvania (across the border, about 30 miles off) - make it there, was a shambles. Water was everywhere, something like 16 feet high; most buildings kept markers showing, later on, where their 8-foot or 6-foot water-level lines had been. Stuff was everywhere, homes and businesses ruined, broken glass and shattered storefronts, mud on everything, a gross and mucky smell, and - in point of fact - caskets and washed out gravesites had floated along the streets, along with everything else. I have a booklet, later purchased when the Elmira Star-Gazette printed and published it, of portfolio-sized photos and a pictorial history of the time of this flood. The flood, as I said, washed out the Walnut Street Bridge (rebuilt about 2 years later) and precipitated the looking for a new home and a relocation for Jane and Rob (and Seth). Even though they'd been on the second floor, and really had lost nothing, the building itself was ruined. When I was there recently (Elmira), it seemed that Walnut Street had now been turned to a one-way, southerly (I think), drive. I remember it being, as I recall, a two-way street. It is lined with fairly preposterous homes and house, all dating from a long-ago era, and almost unworldy too, but kept up mostly quite well. I can only imagine, with all the exodus of business and commerce from the Chemung Valley (meaning, in essence, that there's very little money or income left in Elmira) that the money behind all these homes must come from Elmira College personnel, or perhaps Corning Glass Works.
50. The momentary ruination of Elmira after the '72 Agnes storm was pretty complete. People go around saying - based on their 'expertise' - that this or that was a 'hundred-year storm', which means somehow to them that it won't occur except every hundred years or so, based on weather histories and experience, etc. They're 'experts' so they know. I found that to be, and still see it operative falsely today as, all bunk. A storm happens whenever it damn well happens, and the only predictability about it is that some jerk is going to start 'predicting' again as soon as it's over. Having someone say 'this won't happen again like this for another hundred years' does nothing at all to satisfy the broken mind and heart - possessions and homes, ruined, people dead, businesses and streets gone, recognizable landscapes and landmarks savaged. There's always a sort of subconscious 'comfort level' (hate that concept and wording) by which the body and mind work together to fit their 'person' into the world around them : it's all we know, and it's different for everyone, which is why a rich person can just shake his or her head and say - of the poor - 'how do thy live that way? I'll never know', and why the poor person, in their own manner, says the same about the wealthy, mixed of course with envy and want and anger. (On the same spectrum, I don't think the rich person extends much envy or guilt or anger over their situation as it reflects back upon the poor - all their biblical cit-chat and evangelical and Episcopal, etc., charity notwithstanding). Anyway, the devastation of Elmira was pretty complete. We were still living out in the far country, but coming across the Susquehanna at Towanda, it all became unpassable, Route 6 was shut, gone. The Red Cross Station basically made it worse, although they tried. It was a large shed, not much more, plunked in the middle of some wet meadow somehow just off the road - a gravel parking lot and lots of driving rain and more and more mud. Any car which had been on the roadway (and there were some, don't know why, locals too - but mostly people like us, on their way to or fro and caught by happenstance). Coffee, sandwiches, folding chairs, maybe a little TV, I forget, and some kid toys and bathroom stuff. Rudimentary emergency scene - with a couple of confused and distracted people who'd been assigned to the scene. Now a then a State Policeman would come by. Route 6, at this juncture, between places like Wysox, Waverly, Towanda, Athens, Sayre, it moves around a lot - 's' curves and backtracks and things, so it's difficult to plot directly any trajectory. For the few miles involved here, it was just better - in such raging and high water - to sit it out. I don't remember much or how long (I think we had a dog with us too) but eventually things lightened up and we were once again let out. We did finally make it home, where the intervening week had produced crazy-high grass, matted-down-by-rain areas and patches of wet, overflow ponding, a few downed limbs and things - but on the whole even our dirt road was passable without assistance, and we got through. Once back in the house, we made sure everything worked, all power was on, lights and the rest, and just settled in. All around had been, and continued to be, a disaster scene. I never knew how used to any of this the average Bradford County and environs farmer was - most of them had family legacy places going back 150 years and more - but really no one seemed to care too much. Water goes away, roofs and things can be fixed, livestock reacts in its own way and can be moved about and re-directed. Everything returns to its normal ways - only 'city people' get crazed and upset. Elmira wasn't certainly much of a 'city' (it once had made a noble manufacturing effort at same, but that was long ago), but that's the way these country folk referred to it anyway. Driving out there, to them, was like going to Aspen or New York City or any other distant and different long trek. It was only perhaps 25-30 miles, taking the long way. But, no matter, it was the far 'city' - stores in a row, little traffic jams, lights and avenues. Pretty funny actually. The city folk, yes, were 'different'. I guess they just defined things differently, even in their very small-city ways. Their viewpoints and outlooks were different. They knew the clock and the idea of punctuality; jobs and time clocks, small manufacture, little routines, churches on the corner, various denominations plugging it out to attract each their own, places where you could drive in, park, and get and eat food all in one place, schools with fenced yards in town, policemen roving about - none of that sounds like much, but it was all part of the prevalence. Entertainment - things like radio stations with strong signals and record stores even - they were situated here and covered the entire few valleys around - Chemung Valley, Corning, Bradford County, all those reaches in each direction for 60 miles. That was 'power' in some weird and unstated way - the elegance and strength of 'big-town' living. To a dirt-farmer dairy guy and his family, living way out on some crooked hillside or wooded juncture of two dirt roads far into the hills some miles away, that meant a lot - that meant mystery and wildness, magic and evocative meanings, sex and madness too - loose ways, looser living. I know that's how they used to talk to me about it when I'd tell them I worked there and went every day. I know it sounds overstated, but it's not.
One thing I take with me from this is that such places like Columbia
Crossroads, and Elmira too, were authentic and real places. This was the 70's,
and I was all over the place, but this location in particular was a transfixing,
'return-to' location. I had made it my base, 250 miles, almost to the nose, from
anywhere. 75 miles to Binghamton (a nowhere back then), 75 miles from Scranton,
25 miles from Ithaca and Cornell. it all went together. things were happening
everywhere, yet the world itself was still a darker and more dirty place
- none of today's finer rules and slave-regulations. If a person lives
through real places and authentic scenes, he (or she) remembers them. I harbor
within me yet almost every bit of the experience I lived - there was
no falsity, no gimmickry, no pretense. When I saw all of this suddenly ruined
and jeopardized with the destruction and the ruin of floodwaters, I had to step
back a bit and look things over. The country I was living in was stronger than
all this - the forests and woods would survive; the places, if they
had to go, were all man-made and could be re-done, or brought back or
reconstructed if and as needed - and much of it just wasn't needed,
but came back anyway in its other incarnation - the
little stores and hot dog diners and bus depots and taxi stands; the new stores
and supply shops and highway wing-dings. None of it was about money. The
funny thing is, in a 'real' world, a world of tactile and physical sensation,
money - the having of, the pursuit of, the worship of, the seeking
of - is the least important and the least, for sure, authentic thing
around. Strivers, in these situations, are seen simply for what they really are
: losers, after something ephemeral and false. A chimera, a figment that's
always ruined and sundered their minds and lives. It can't be that there's any
substance or 'reality' to money. It erects and sustains falsity, not much else.
The getting and the having, in the end, are really nothing at all. I knew, for
instance, that those folks I saw and met in the Red Cross Station, at that
moment and in that time, had real concerns and needs and problems. No Burt
Reynolds, John Ford, John Wayne or Jack Lemmon ('Hold That Tiger', as I recall,
was a Jack Lemmon marquee title around then, and considered a finer achievement
than most films), junk was going to save them, billboards
notwithstanding - but it too held nothing to reality. All it did was
reflect scheming and manipulation, once again, in the tacky boardrooms and
centers of Hollywood and Vine. This place was nothing about that -
the roaring waters of the Chemung, the crazy exertions of the Susquehanna, all
those streams and local tributaries running into these two larger rivers, had
momentarily lost their ways, merged and clashed, swelled and furrowed their new
ways - no matter where and what was in their way - to
where they and it damn-well pleased. The idea of 'Man' here was just a
temporary malfeasance, a something that happened in spite of the
presence or just as much because of the presence of these rivers. Now these
rivers had taken back their toll - with past-due value and
interest sought. It was mighty, and it was scary. Everyone staring straight
out in that Red Cross Station knew what had just happened - it
was as if a huge noise had been let off, and some form of fire had ripped
through reality - casting houses over, trees onto their sides, walls
and bridges down. Suddenly, all over again, there was no meaning to anything. It
all had to be charted anew.
This was, anyway, Indian land - as near two-hundred years before this, a smarter and tighter band of people roamed and roared through here, the Susquehanna Indians, the Algonquins, all those transient and roving pieces of greater tribes - they knew the locus and the fabric of this place much better and much more all-around. They lived naturally within the unbroken splendor of the setting, the environment. if these things had happened before - and they very well might have - their 'societal' structure took it in better stride than ours, fell back only upon itself, didn't scream for help and money and artificial means, more and more, to re-establish the artificial places ruined. There was a certain, 'other' level of reality involved. It's difficult to understand and apply, but I think that's the sort of picture-breaking that this 'Seth' entity had been bringing through Jane; a little blip popping up onto the screen of humanity, readable and understandable by those noticing and those putting in some time to absorb. So, for me it was all full circle: it was a lesson to be learned and from which to continually keep learning. Not the facts and figures and dollars and dullards of the paper-world mentality of representation and rote (terms and accountings; remember, even things like 'Algonquin', 'Susquehanna', or 'society' were just 'our' feeble names, given to things, applied to matter we couldn't otherwise fathom. We had to call it something), but instead the multi-faceted and roving density of a 'Reality' still forming and charting itself - it was Creative Life, once more rearing its head. I'd come from a nowhere-settlement, an Avenel and a Bayonne of meager means, and rolled all of that over into a much more massive New York City experience, and then that too was taken, through me, and brought to another presence as a rural and demonstrative experience deeper and wiser - and it had, in turn, created this rival world of multi-dimensional and Seth/Jane/Rob exposure for me, already, by 1974 totally locked and loaded. Set to run.
51. Sometimes, is seems, the society one is 'trapped'
within just does things, holds you in place for a moment here, a moment there,
and if you don't break out of them, any of those moments can lock on you and
keep you there, set in place forever. It's like a young kid I once knew, David Katz, who remarked to me once that he could always tell by the clothes people
wore (he was here actually referencing his grandmother) what period was the
high-mark of their lives because that was the style and mode of clothing they
stayed with - out of style, passe, or whatever. His point, in some
ways valid and a good observation for a kid, was that they 'froze' themselves in
place, sort of, at that 'best' moment, content to live out their days in that
style, whatever it may have been. David was a funny guy - young (I
was 50, he was 20) and just coming up on so many things. (There was a time
in the late 1990's where - in one of the jobs I had - he
was one of the young hires I was given to work with). He was, in his way,
energetic and fresh, with a certain drive, never stopping. I remember his
first sexual experiences, since he spoke about them quite openly to anyone who'd
listen. His comment, funny at the time, was, of his new-found look on Life :
'It's all about the vag.' [soft 'g', as in 'vagina']. Ah, all outlooks should
shift so quickly,
no?
So then such quick change would be nice, yes, but it never happens, and I'd be willing to bet, were I to see him now or find him again, that for all his predelictions of wonderment and zest back then even David has settled into regular life, with all those rules and strictures of time and place set comfortably in place. It's just the way it is. He used to be very embarrassed (he always managed to bring it up) by how large (fat) his mother was. He would say it in such an off-hand 'oh have I mentioned?' manner, over and over. She was, in fact, about 300 pounds and quite sedentary. His father, on the other hand, was compact, spry and energetic. Davidn had a little brother, about 11 or 12, who was in a constant overdrive, totally energetic, all over the place. David had an over-weening interest, at this time, in tea. I took him, once or twice, to NYC by car to search out and shop meticulously for certain and various teas and blends he was after. His girlfriend, the bright sexual wonder of his days, was often given gifts of tea and/or things he'd written - to the point, I recall, of him once stealing someone else's title for something, 'Smilla's Sense of Snow', as I recall it was, a book title or something and replacing the name Smilla with his girlfriend's name and saying it was his work, written for her. A poem or something. He'd come back, other times, with the precise amount of time, hours and minutes, they'd spent that weekend making love, gradually turning it into full-blown intercourse over the month or so it took them to fully break in and learn each other's body. It was nuts to witness by the re-telling, and second handedly, all of this. He'd talk of the 'odor' of the room after they'd spent the entire afternoon in it, closed up, having sex. He'd point out each quirk and characteristic of the love-session. He was in wonderment and awe-struck by it all. It was the most curious, down-home thing to witness. Odd, I thought, what a blissful and untroubled life a peacetime aura can bring to a young man - there was, back then anyway, for him, no turmoil, no sense of danger, none of the immanent fatique and trouble which had presented itself, for instance, to me and, for that matter, myself and others, in those perilous early Vietnam years. I probably dwell here too much, but these were, day-by-day, life transforming and vitally important issues. People such as David had no fear to run from, nothing haunted them; and certainly there was, in 1999, no all-pervasive Vietnam type horror taking time and energy from these kids' lives.
Another fellow,
in the same boat as David - yet completely opposite -
was named Rand Karmen. he was, by comparison, a complete basket case. A
neurotic wreck, at 27-35, in those years, still virginal, still living at home,
still with obsessive and controlling doting Jewish parents. He was twisted and
forlorn; in fear of everything and in anguish - pure, physical
anguish - over each aspect of life. He claimed he 'did not do that',
referring to the 'disgust' of shit, or taking a shit; He was, in all essence,
probably a latent homosexual, yet obsessed with girls and all things female. He
doted on, from a distance, a different girl each week, fantasizing sexual
moments, crawling in his own skin over getting close, or talking to, or even
getting a smile from, any one of them. He kept, he'd admit without qualms, to a
fairly precise masturbation schedule, visualizing any of these ideals
- all women were but ideals to him - from pop star icons
(Nico, Blondie), to the lowliest check-out clerk or cashier he'd run across. His
only approach to girls was through pornography - he did not want to
deal with the smells, the hair, the aromas, the fluids, etc., of real females.
Couldn't handle it as a 'breach' of the idealized feminine amidst which he
dwelt. I had to hear about all of this too - plus I had to witness
and control the taunting of him by the co-workers around him, who thought him
perverse, twisted, weird and sick. I recall one guy, later arrested and jailed
for have a veritable marijuana farm in his basement - grow lamps,
heat-lighting, driers, etc., the whole bit - who went at Rand
mercilessly, telling him 'Wake up, Brad! Get out of your fantasy world
- real girls have hair, they stink, they fart! Jesus Rand, they fucking
come! They're messy!' It was just that sort of thing - again brought
on by living in isolation, in a fantasy of virtual things - images,
movies, music, no problems, everything taken care of. He was afraid of
things - birds in the sky, the wind, all that unsettled him. He'd
never read anything - even though somehow Rutgers had given him a BA
in English (he claimed it was for 'writing' not reading). He wrote songs,
lyrics, lovelorn swoons about untouchable girls and women, and he sang them
accompanied by his guitar playing. He was completely lost amidst all of his
idealized, self-referential stuff. I tried to help, but even after a while that
fell apart. It was, as was David's, all the result of complete forms of
pristine living, untouched or untroubled by reality. In Rand's case, it was, as
well, just arrested development, a very primitive, low-level base thinking, up
from which he just never came. Living without war? Just think of the
possibilities. If this is so, peacetime is, by contrast, a true peril? A
destroyer of souls? Was my father and all his rugged, militant, manliness stuff,
more correct that I'd ever
imagined?
One time Rand was
shattered, literally without function, for days. His parents had him mow the
grass, and he somehow managed, while going over a rabbit hole in the lawn, to
clip off a young rabbit's head, which he saw then just sitting there,
severed, on the lawn. He dropped everything, and ran into the house screaming.
He was inconsolable for days, and just couldn't do a thing. Another time, his
parents had gone to Florida, on a vacation. Leaving him home alone, they'd not
told him they'd arranged for a contractor to rebuild the concrete of the front
steps. The guy came by, having the key, and entered the front of the house to
hook up extension cords, etc. Rand, cowering in his room, thought he was being
burgled, called the cops, 'there's a man breaking into my house', etc., and of
course a big scene ensued. Another time, home alone again, the neighbors had to
take him in because he'd somehow locked himself out, bungled the task of
entering through a window, had broken a window, etc., and was just a wreck from
the entire experience. Another episode with Rand (OK, the last two, not one) was
the time when he'd somehow gotten in his car to drive home (from work, about
2004, as I was a back-end supervisor at a large Barnes & Noble store, and
he, like the others, was one of my 'Receiving' staff young(er) workers). His
father was a real car nut, and kept Rand in a nearly new car, well-kept and
always polished, at all times. Completely oblivious to any of this, of course,
was Rand, having utterly no interest in cars, motoring, mechanical things,
functional stuff, reality. He'd gotten into the car, it somehow had 'locked'
behind him, and whatever sequence he was wrongly doing made him think the
battery had died. He figured he'd be 'trapped' forever, locked in a deadly, hot
car. (He could have tripped a lock switch or something, but it never crossed his
mind). Instead, he kicked out, in a frenzy, the driver's door window
- and never thinking even to just put his arm outside then and open the
door through the broken window, he crawled and twisted his way out through the
window, came back into the store whimpering and all a'frenzied. He had us call
his father, who of course drove by to get him and solve this situation.
In the meantime, I'd gone out to try and help. When his father arrived and
flipped open the trunk, I was amazed to see, completely set up and with
everything in place, a fully organized doll-house, yard and fence scene in the
trunk, all perfectly fixed and settled. Bedazzled by it, I gaped. Brad, feeling
a little strange I'd think, quickly muttered it was for his niece and that he
kept it set up there for her to play with. I simply said, 'Oh, OK'. I just let
it go - Rand did have a quite successful older brother, older by
some ten years, adopted first, who had a family, lived in North Jersey, and was
a quite successful stockbroker with a grand income and a successful career,
large home, with a wife and children as well. So, perhaps it all was possible,
about the neice, etc.. At work, Rand was near to useless - slow,
insipid, characterless, almost zombie-like in these years. I do not know what
he's like now, and have not seen him for years. There were other Rand
experiences I won't retell here - the last of these is when his
parents decided he needed a 'real' job, a career. He learned what's called
'medical coding' (which is the same job his mother had). Insurance companies use
medical coding for claims; each illness or malady has a number that identifies
it, and the claims are processed after being translated into that number-ese,
for quicker reference on paper, phone and computer. It was a cubicle job, and
after, on his first day, he freaked out, literally going slobberingly and
whimperingly mad because of the confinement and close-quarters of the cubicle
and the room. A few hours later, his mother walked him back in, by the back
door, to my work area and begged for us to take Rand back. He was crying for his
old job back, realizing he could not function in any other situation. He claimed
to miss me, already, in four hours, and to not be able to work without me at his
side. The world is, I guess, to the vague and innocent, a nasty, worldly
challenge and struggle.
Anyway, he was another one of those cases of a person I'd take up with, in
the guise of help, assisting or moving along, as they showed a willing interest
in learning my character. This happened often enough - mostly,
actually, with girls even more than boys. There were a few instances of girls
showing up at my house here or there, fleeing their broken marriage, even
bringing their young child, seeking company, shelter, help or just an ear. It
all happened and bore much the same attributes, as these David and Rand
experiences. Always helpful and innocent, in case you're thinking otherwise.
Nothing untoward ever occurred. Troubled by something, and finding something in
me that brought them comfort or a sense of emotional and intellectual
camaraderie or bliss, they just came by.
Summer of '66, I guess it was, I was still living at home, for but another
moment. There wasn't much going on.
I'd somehow taken my position as the odd oldest child, the son, back
living at home for a while in the last Summer of his years before graduation
from high school. A pit stop, momentary. (Having been quickly exited from the seminary after some three+ years). It's a fairly simple scenario, you'd think. Two years before
this, on August 4th, ('64) for instance, I was also home, on a sort of quick
Summer leave from that same seminary - those who
lived close enough to go home for a bit were allowed to do so
(there were others from more distant parts of the country who did not leave, or
went home with someone else as a visitor. I sometimes thought,
myself, that I'd much rather stay at the emptied out seminary - all
that land and the grounds, the crews of vegetable-pickers roaming
through, the silence and the 'Freedom' that even such close-quartered living
brought. But, I went home), and just remain in place without having
to leave. I'd spend the time at home, as I recall, doing
little - I no longer fit, it was a bad mix and, to be sure, having
been away since a young age, my presence back in the house made little sense nor
had I an understanding of much that went on - and what I did see, I
didn't like anyway. My mother was all mixed up with her lady friends, the church
groups and 'sodalities'. I never really knew what
that was, but later found it all out to be very strange, very
medieval. I doubt really that any of these youngish suburban Catholic moms even
knew or gleaned a clue how old and driven the idea behind it was -
newly-cut churches in the midst of newly-cut suburban areas filled with piddling
housewifey types and distant husbands, or Catholic men anyway who went about
their own business, undertaking ancient and almost feudal missions and drives
to maintain the poor do good works by bolstering and reinforcing
the structural and ritualistic inanities of America's newly-arrived-at church 'secularism'. Totally bizarre stuff - social leanings
amidst the hierarchical and preponderant demands and strictures of crazed men in
Vatican robes, ruling from afar, really afar. It was the craziest thing, and I
am sure that not one of these women knew what they were doing. Anyway, it was,
and probably all still is, part and parcel of the workings of the
'Church'.
-------
'[A sodality, also known as a "union of prayer" or "confraternity," is an older designation for a lay ecclesial movement or organization in the Roman Catholic Church. In many Christian religions, "modality" refers to the structure and organization of the local or universal church, composed of pastors or priests. By contrast, parachurch organizations are termed sodalities. These include missionary organizations and Christian charities or fraternities not linked to specific churches. Some theologians would include denominations, schools of theology, and other multi-congregational efforts in the sodality category. Catholic sodalities can include orders, monasteries, and convents.
-------
'[A sodality, also known as a "union of prayer" or "confraternity," is an older designation for a lay ecclesial movement or organization in the Roman Catholic Church. In many Christian religions, "modality" refers to the structure and organization of the local or universal church, composed of pastors or priests. By contrast, parachurch organizations are termed sodalities. These include missionary organizations and Christian charities or fraternities not linked to specific churches. Some theologians would include denominations, schools of theology, and other multi-congregational efforts in the sodality category. Catholic sodalities can include orders, monasteries, and convents.
The sodalities of the Church are pious
associations and are included among the confraternities and
archconfraternities. But, the Catholic Encyclopedia:Sodality writes that it would not be
possible to give a definition making a clear distinction between the sodalities
and other confraternities. Confraternities and sodalities had their
beginnings after the rise of the confraternities of prayer in the early Middle Ages
(around 400–1000 AD), and developed rapidly from the end of the 12th
century.
The British historian and social writer, William
Lecky (1880), notes that around 1200 AD:
- "Christianity for the first time made charity a rudimentary virtue, giving it a leading place in the moral type, and in the exhortation of its teachers. Besides its general influence in stimulating the affections, it effected a complete revolution in this sphere, by regarding the poor as the special representatives of the Christian Founder, and thus making the love of Christ, rather than the love of man the principle of charity... A vast organization of charity, presided over by Bishops, and actively directed by the deacons, soon ramified over Christendom, till the bond of charity became the bond of unity, and the most distant sections of the Christian Church corresponded by the interchange of mercy."
The quote above reflects the start of organized Hharitable work in the Christian world
in the Middle Ages.
It was a major break in theological thinking and it was brokered by the Catholic
Church. Prior to this acts of charity were usually small and adhoc, and aimed at
specific needy members of the community. Thus, the Catholic Church became
involved and motivated for intervention on religious grounds. Various
organisations sprang up that were aimed at helping and evangelising the poor and
supporting other groups within the Catholic Church. These organisations were the
first sodalities that were aimed at good deeds and charitable work. During the Middle Ages,
many of these pious associations placed themselves under the special protection
of the Blessed
Virgin and chose her as their patron. The main object and duty of these
societies were, above all, the practice of piety and works of charity. By the end of the Middle Ages
(around 1400AD), the Church experienced a crisis and lost power and influence.
Two hundred years later, in the 16th century, the Church rose to renewed
prosperity and the many new religious congregations and associations gave birth
to numerous new confraternities and sodalities which worked with great success
are, today, often still effective Catholic Encyclopedia:Sodality.
The situation becomes even more confused when certain sodalities are
sanctioned and accepted by the Church. While others, especially the newer more
evangelical
ones, are struggling to find their place and a champion within the Catholic
Church.]'
--------
My
younger sisters where in grade school, while the sister one or two years behind
me was mixed up, in her way, with all her local friends - budding
breasts on budding girls, so to speak. I didn't know
how to react, what to say or do, or where even to sit or
stand. My father just generally went to work, came home, went to work again, in pretty much that sequence. Little was passed between us, and I was never sure
anyway if I made any sense to him. Some weird mirror-image of my
reaction to him was his reaction to me. What is it that fathers want? A son
to box and spar with, or a son who
represents incomplete promise or manhood? Someone who agrees with everything the father says and
does, who mimics the Dad's pretense and effort, or the son who remains aloof and
strange, distant and suspicious of everything being thrown at him. Did I want this world being presented? Had I really to take a role in it? Couldn't I just
disappear? Thus, I suppose, the conflict grew - I took
no place nor quarter.
I well remember, actually, that morning of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, or at least the Aug. 4, 1964 purported 'attack'. I was sitting around in the living room, reading something (those were the days of 'Deer Park', perhaps, by Norman Mailer, or something by James Baldwin perhaps, or some poetry of Berryman ('Dream Songs'), or whatever). It was on the television news, pushed along as a bulletin of some sort, back in the day when a crawler in black and white along the bottom of the screen would announce something like 'Bulletin' and the cursory details of some story. The words, for instance 'breaking news' weren't even in use yet, nor any of that flapping, endless news coverage and all those channels of today's news world. The idea here, as was immediately apparent to me, was an advancement - through lies - of the situation in Vietnam. 1964 was early enough that any of this, I suppose, could have been altered or stopped. Instead, through McNamara and Rusk and Johnson and the Joint Chiefs and the CIA, and the Bill Moyers, McGeorge Bundy and George Romney types - to name but a few of the crazed, mad, insane, senators and Congressmen already behind this delirious fluff - the footing of American society was once again to be shifted - far past anything foreseen. 60,000 plus American men and boys, and at least thirty times that amount of Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians, Chinese and the rest, would soon testify to this with their dead bodies. It was brutalism of a political sort not quite yet seen - the global engendering of an American war machine on a scale before unheard, before never even dreamed of. Monsanto, Dow Chemical, steel companies, all of them had just stepped in, found conditions to their liking, knew what best buttons to push, paid off the machinery needed, bought politicians and markets and sourced the pipelines for new, global money streams of chemicals, medicines, guns, bombs, vehicles, steel, concrete, death, power, corruption, pay-offs and the rest right on down the line. From dead Kennedy to dead Diem, it was all the same and all a continuing saga of corruption and deceit. That was the situation in August '64, for anyone who witnessed it - anyone, even at age 14, with half enough of a brain to see that our country was being pillaged and ransacked, that lying bastards like Johnson and Lewis Hershey and senators and congressman of appalling gall, the singing goofball antics of John Wayne America-first types, the moronic Senator Everett Dirkson, the ineffective dalliances of Hubert Humphrey and the rest-all of those chicken shit murderers - every last one of them dead and buried in their own slime. What we have now is no better, no, but it's advanced and progressed to this only because of these disgusting beginnings, engendered by the offspring of these rats. In Aug. 1964, I could sit there and watch this begin, knowing full well that somewhere down the lines the entire sewer-line was going to explode or be exploded. Two years later, as I said, by 1966, it had all been moved along.
I well remember, actually, that morning of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, or at least the Aug. 4, 1964 purported 'attack'. I was sitting around in the living room, reading something (those were the days of 'Deer Park', perhaps, by Norman Mailer, or something by James Baldwin perhaps, or some poetry of Berryman ('Dream Songs'), or whatever). It was on the television news, pushed along as a bulletin of some sort, back in the day when a crawler in black and white along the bottom of the screen would announce something like 'Bulletin' and the cursory details of some story. The words, for instance 'breaking news' weren't even in use yet, nor any of that flapping, endless news coverage and all those channels of today's news world. The idea here, as was immediately apparent to me, was an advancement - through lies - of the situation in Vietnam. 1964 was early enough that any of this, I suppose, could have been altered or stopped. Instead, through McNamara and Rusk and Johnson and the Joint Chiefs and the CIA, and the Bill Moyers, McGeorge Bundy and George Romney types - to name but a few of the crazed, mad, insane, senators and Congressmen already behind this delirious fluff - the footing of American society was once again to be shifted - far past anything foreseen. 60,000 plus American men and boys, and at least thirty times that amount of Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians, Chinese and the rest, would soon testify to this with their dead bodies. It was brutalism of a political sort not quite yet seen - the global engendering of an American war machine on a scale before unheard, before never even dreamed of. Monsanto, Dow Chemical, steel companies, all of them had just stepped in, found conditions to their liking, knew what best buttons to push, paid off the machinery needed, bought politicians and markets and sourced the pipelines for new, global money streams of chemicals, medicines, guns, bombs, vehicles, steel, concrete, death, power, corruption, pay-offs and the rest right on down the line. From dead Kennedy to dead Diem, it was all the same and all a continuing saga of corruption and deceit. That was the situation in August '64, for anyone who witnessed it - anyone, even at age 14, with half enough of a brain to see that our country was being pillaged and ransacked, that lying bastards like Johnson and Lewis Hershey and senators and congressman of appalling gall, the singing goofball antics of John Wayne America-first types, the moronic Senator Everett Dirkson, the ineffective dalliances of Hubert Humphrey and the rest-all of those chicken shit murderers - every last one of them dead and buried in their own slime. What we have now is no better, no, but it's advanced and progressed to this only because of these disgusting beginnings, engendered by the offspring of these rats. In Aug. 1964, I could sit there and watch this begin, knowing full well that somewhere down the lines the entire sewer-line was going to explode or be exploded. Two years later, as I said, by 1966, it had all been moved along.
I was
ready to move on. I'd begun painting in my parents' basement -
crazy-looking, wild canvases which I'd hang from the rafters in the far corner
of the basement. It was as if I had a suspended art gallery of my very own
junk - color paintings, a style called 'organic' - in
that everything had the shapes and forms of dimensions like body parts, kidneys,
lungs, swirls and circles, like bacteria or mold as it grows on rocks and trees.
It was a style of my own, it didn't last, and I guess it was all tryout, though
it is the 'style' I presented to the Studio School for my entry, and it got me
in. I guess, by some stretch and with some quick talk to back it up, it could
have been (and was) accepted into some form of derivative outgrowth
idea of NYSchool abstract expressionism for a bizarre 1930's through 1950's
look. Think somehow of Art Deco blended with crank modernism, 1960's style.
Later on, after I'd left home, all of it was trashed; my mother and my sister,
in cleaning the place out, simply dumped all my things. I had original,
early-year issues of the Village Voice, the earliest ones included, with Norman Mailer and Cat Strrrr on the
masthead - I'd traded a bicycle and an old camera for about 50 of them, or
more. I had treasured books and all those early paintings, I had found objects
and more. Apparently it all meant nothing in a bland, suburban household having
no input into any intellectual currents outside of perhaps Green Acres, Twilight
Zone and I Love Lucy. Looking back now, the way I felt was probably murderous.
by the mid-1980's, I always chuckled, time had taken its toll on all this
- Sodality and all its ass-licking papist attributes
had given way to Solidarity, in Poland, with the workers and the
streets-fighters and, surprisingly coming full circle somehow, a Polish Pope
who'd slept, as a younger man, with
women!
Face it, no one cared, certainly not Avenel. Any of these suburban shit-holes had no pipeline into anything and were only expected to pleasantly pass people along, like shit out some rectum, to proceed to the next level of 'same', just larger. There was a stunning lack of content and clarity to be found, anywhere, from my perspective. The 'product' produced was just supposed to creep along to the next level of consumerism, buying up the next excess product made - jobs, cars, houses, carriages, cribs, foods and all the rest. It's funny, but back then (you have to imagine too the behind-it-all slowly increasing background noise welling up of death and carnage (Vietnam) just getting ready to settle in and overtake it all) people actually talked about how each 'generation' ended up better and richer and happier than the generation before it, of their parents. This ever-increasing threshold of happiness, this ever-ascending arc, was paraded as the American way, the end-product of a wise and blissful consumerism which was supposed to only and continually improve all lifestyles, fortunes, destinies and happiness - better weddings, more blissful sex, bigger homes and gardens, wilder pleasures, more healthy endings. It was, of course, all total bullshit, all manufactured Jew-sham advertising crap, a lie of utterly-deep dimensions. No one ever barked back, no one said a word; the 'Silent Generation' of the 1950's though occasionally criticized for a passivity, slowly acceded into becoming the crazed whip-masters of the death and carnage beginning to fall. Gotta' love those beatniks, at least, for blowing the whistle early on, or attempting too. And, anyway, I was already in intellectual 'love' with Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who seemed to live and write and 'execute' Life exactly as I wanted to be.
So this entire Gulf of Tonkin thing was, for me, pretty much a last straw, really the final nail driven into that proverbial coffin which was 'life as it was supposed to be' for me. I was d-o-n-e. From this point on, any handwriting on the wall was going to be my handwriting and no one else's, nor the scawl now marred chicken-scratch of anyone else. if it meant inventing a new language, I'd do hat. if it meant stepping out, walking on log-floes in rough or in patchy water, I'd do it. From this Summer on my path was to be, I swore, cut from new ground, slanted through a new forest, cut with a bold machete of iron and a glinting steel not yet discovered nor gorged. Over-the-top allegiance to intellectual dreams, outlandish adherence to self-sustaining outlooks and beliefs - those things wee to be mine. I was done with father-talk. All those gung-ho, go-get-'em types were beginning to make me sick. Those guys rushing off to join the army, get their chops in killing gooks, selling their stupid hot-dick GTO's, or putting their hot rods and motorcycles in deep storage while they went and served their country, they could all drop dead around me and I step over their dead bodies. I saw the mother as they talked among themselves - about their sons and their fears, about the military and how nice a finished product came out of service, the fathers, just like my own regaling others with tales of military derring-do and the grand experiences of WWII - all of that was grub-stake now. Garbage to the ears. I'd moved on. I'd seen through their mirror and realized its backing was chipped, flaking, false and - in addition - no longer reflecting back anything real at all.
Do you wonder how war - that kind of war
anyway - ruins minds and destroys people? It wasn't really to be about anything at all except advancing the march of disgusting
materialism and a staid rationality that made zombies out of people. the mass of
ordinary men, for the most part, are simple assholes. They fall, or can fall for
the literal cant and 'truth' of what's presented to them as that, if the
pressure and the propaganda is on and it's done right. Look
at today's world, where everyone is at constant edge about some peril or
another - perils manufactured, issues that don't really exist
- perched on the edges of their chairs with new medical syndromes to be
wary off, watching themselves for the clues and symptoms of
this or that, heeding advice from moronic people just out to make a buck
- in so many ways it's no different except by scale from any of the old
prairie-wagon quacks who once roamed the countryside of America, proclaiming this or that
- elixir, miracle, religion, medicine, condition or
talent for cure - to the open and wondrous ears of a flaccid and
'moral' populace scattered about. It's all the same now
except each of the concentrations are different and denser - people
are massed, the message is precise and compacted to be formulated
well in sixty-second soundbites or half-hour infomercials, which distraction
works better at that moment's need. We worry and we cry through the loam of our
days - now directed ever moreso by crooks and
morons. That's the way the Vietnam War
suddenly presented itself to me - a operational undertaking to
alter, steal, and transform America. And it worked.
And I wanted no part of it.
At this point, the USA was playing a form of global power-chess with any
portion of the world it chose. The killing of Diem and the backing of the other
stalwart Vietnamese leaders and generals was all done so as to further the
expansion and advancement of US involvement there - global and
strategic politics to be played on the backs of millions of dead locals, tens of
thousands of dead American soldiers, decimation of lands and properties,
chemical and carpet-bomb warfare. All of this was, again I must reiterate, taken
under the fabric of lies, distortion and misrepresentation. History was simply
re-written to fit the newer scope of the current rifle-barrel. For a fourteen or
a sixteen year old kid, such as I was right then, recognizing all of this was a
shocking eye opener. I remember when Johnson sent the Marines into the Dominican
Republic. It didn't take much to see what was happening - all
around, Cuba, Venezuela and Aruba, the Congo, Algeria, all of Asia, Russia. You
could pretty much pick your spot and find a re-alignment of the world as we knew
it being manipulated by American and American Corporate power - it's
worse now, by far and - remember as well - all of this
was before today's world of Wiki leaks, Internet mass communications as well as
frivolities and crazed material culture. It was all just beginning.
Goldwater, try as I might to make sense of his policy (I read 'Conscience
of a Conservative' to learn what I could of this man, but he seemed a snail, a
rational, boring dullard with not a creative spark of any sort. I don't think
there's anything as 'Conservative pizzazz or glamour). I remember, in the
seminary, the Atlantic City Goldwater Convention, a coronation of sorts for the
'right wing' extremists, as the were thought to be, of that day. Nothing of the
sort, of course. It was just the same enforced politics of he powers that always
were, now trying to retrench from all that LBJ stuff; as they saw it, it was all
an endangerment for their business interests and self-power-politics. Two
years later, it was pretty much an exchanged premise - the
triumphant LBJ faction pretty much doing what the Goldwater faction would have
wound up doing anyway. No one dropped nukes, granted, but then
- that was all media hype anyway - no one ever really planned
to. It was a black and white fantasy - all those deep, serious
men of politics, bloviating and speaking to cameras and microphones whenever
they could - both sides, media and pols, playing hard to the camera,
trying to establish (and they did) a public/media presence soon to rule the
nation : manufactured news bites, false-front issues, double-speak, excuses,
stealing, theft and obfuscation. Really, really, I just wanted to scream. I used
to sit around in the seminary library with that little book, as mentioned
'Conscience of a Conservative' - it never ended up meaning
anything to me, nor making any sense of any consequence. All insider talk from a
wild, Indian-lands half Jewish guy from Arizona, with weird black-rimmed glasses
and a really hard face. He was right up there with his doppelganger,
mirror-image of sorts, a New York version of Goldwater - though
'Liberal' - Arthur Goldberg, later appointed to the Supreme
Court, I believe by Johnson. The best part of it all was when that guy in
Atlantic City, overlooking the ocean, climbed the billboard on Convention Hall
to change it from 'In Your Heart You Know He's Right' by adding the
addendum 'Yes, Extreme Right.' Pretty funny it was to see that reprinted broadly
in all the newspapers.
Between myself and all that I made up of the world around me -
the little ideological struggles I involved myself with - the issues
I faced all seemed important. As I mentioned, to be one of those today-kids, or
at least their 1990's version, would be so vastly different. The
informational-level is completely not the same, the idea of interaction,
activism and sense of self, seems to now completely alter the parameters. It
sort of had to be - after all it was soon to be my own life in the
balance; the precipice I faced was the one that would affect and alter my
days - I had to fight it, and I had to take stance. Steadily,
and quickly.
52. Well now I guess so many things are so different for
me that at times there's a haze of incongruity through which I must peer so as
to be able to see the past I am viewing. It's all there, solid and ponderous
truth, all that of what had been, but - like some non-human interloper viewing
a backstory through someone else's pilfered lens - I have to stare long and
hard at what I'm seeing.
I once visited, in Doylestown, PA, the James Michener museum :
----------------------
['The James A. Michener Art Museum is a private,
non-profit museum in Doylestown, Bucks County,
Pennsylvania founded in
1988 and named for the Pulitzer Prize–winning writer James A. Michener, a
Doylestown resident. It is situated within the old stone walls of a historic
19th-century prison and houses a collection of Bucks County visual arts, along
with holdings of 19th- and 20th-century American art. It is noted for its Pennsylvania
Impressionism collection, an art colony centered in nearby New Hope during
the early 20th century.mThe Museum has 35,400 square feet
(3,290 m2) of space, with a landscaped courtyard, an outdoor
sculpture garden and terrace built in the original prison yard, seminar and
conference facilities, a museum shop and café, and the George Nakashima Reading
Room. The Martin Wing includes preparation areas and collection storage
spaces.]'
-----------------------
It's just a collection of very reverential stuff, put together by
Doylestown locals to commemorate a local - someone and something the likes of
which, unless an individual were specifically setting out to focus upon -
would be overlooked 50 miles away. It's solid, polite and serious - books,
paintings, collected materials, guns, pens, hats, oddities, the writing desk and
area left in exactly the way it was when he died (so they say), clothing,
magazines, awards, endlessly on. The grounds are nice (evidently once a prison
too) - and amidst all this high dudgeon a visitor gets the nice, correct feel
of respect and high-minded feeling, but what a metaphor as well for the
'captive' writer's life. What was it in that Eagles' song - 'we are all just
prisoners here, of our own devise.'
I keep listings of things - phrases, paragraphs of this or that, quotes
that I run across - and these are often at some latter date quite interesting
and insightful to me, almost in ways so that I wish to sometimes 'congratulate'
myself for picking out and saving. I always seem to be able to then find a
location into which to use them, or cite them. Other times there are, of course,
when slips of paper found in old pockets or whatever, stashed in old envelopes,
bear the scribbled, quick notation of someone or thing that I can hardly even
read to decipher and, if I do, cannot for the life of me find the reason for it
ever having been saved. The twin dichotomy of living and preserving, and dying
and forgetting, all at the same time. If things have no use, does that then
automatically make them useless? One I recently saw re-surfacing I'm about to
use here, as a lead-in for myriad other items to be discussed but beginning with
the idea of the total and almost obscene commitment I'd given myself to break
away and get off the ride - keep myself totally separate and of a jaundiced,
non-believing eye - for the rest of 'Society', its ways and means, it mores
and its moneys; all of it - career path nil, out the window until. A total
commitment to writing, and to the creative life of the mind, the artist
'staking; his being, all of it, on the act of write and create, the force of
that work, such an artist, as Samuel Beckett put it - 'is from nowhere and has
no kin.' I thought that was perfect, apropos and fitting. My own people (parents
and family) have often looked at me and said 'Where did you come from? How did
you get these ideas?' Having no kin sums it up well enough. A few years ago I
had a train-riding friend by the name of Audra. We'd see each other nearly each
day, do the waiting and take the ride most often together (she was an acting
student at one or another of the Stella Adler schools in NYC, in addition to her
other work), and there'd be days that we'd do her script-work together - if
that night she had to 'do' a scene or whatever, we'd read aloud to each other
the script she had with her - she in her role, as in rehearsal, and me reading
the other character's lines, or more than one other if it came to that. After
one afternoon, discussing something, she simply stopped, looked at me, and -
using I guess one of the most hoary and cliched TV lines or whatever on me -
said 'Who are you, Gary Introne; who are you really?' I just shrugged and said I
had no answer to that, and if I knew I'd 'probably be in worse shape than I am
now.' It's just about knowing one's own life, I guess. That total commitment,
the 'lesson learning catching up with itself', that feeling of being totally
convinced of the truth and rightfulness of the cause you were doing, yes, that's
what the creative person's rant is about. At least for me, as I know it and feel
it - it's very tough, and I still shy from confrontation or admitting, but you
have to be totally convinced of the rightness of your cause or, no go. All of
that probably seeped in very early for me, whether while I was racked up in a
hospital bed for way too long, very young and early on, or when, during those
years in the seminary, the curiosity of madness and delusion was blasted deep
into my heart and mind - leading me to a crisis of faith - but not only
that - a crisis also of belief and sensibility, a disbelief, in fact, of the
entire world of made-up 'Reality' supposedly around me. I was a particle
physicist nearly before there was such a thing, and I'd already lived and delved
deeply into my own theories of quantum being, charmed quarks, relative
time/space and a string theory of my own devising.
The mention in the previous section, about the 'Sodality' stuff, leads me
here to mention also 'The Legion Of Mary', another Catholic premise of something
into which my mother was involved. In a book by Edna O'Brien, a memoir (which I
here highly recommend - very deft, telling and dear and a wonderful book),
entitled 'Country Girl', there's a quick little description, in the opening part
of the book, (Section 2, page 88 thru 96) - a description of sorts of the type
of adulation, veneration and devotion that Catholic women of Ireland put
themselves through. It seems, as well, an apt description of these same
misguided attempts at something by the newly suburban housemothers in Avenel
fawning over things at St. Andrew's, and believing most anything : It was kind
of like this for all my early life. I regret having to say this, don't get me
wrong, but it occurs to me that such is the way. There was a mystery-religion
aspect to all of this. All religions are mystery religions and, truth be told,
they all exchange Gods in much the same manner; and the women and families I was
exposed to in those days all carried sternly the idea of whatever that
encapsulated : prayer, expectation, a listening God who can be effected by works
and intentions, a morose sense of sin and despair and guilt, a bright-sided
gilding of ordinary things - little children, the stories of miracles, all of
that. Inasmuch as there may be nothing wrong, per se, with those things the
offense I took was with the mis-application of those things towards the regular
groundings of reality. How gross an offense must it be to take and use these
'religious/Catholic or whatever' items and de-categorize them into the secular
terror of regular living? Quite simply it has to be called a callous and
offensive lie. One cannot serve two masters, as is said. One cannot profess one
thing on Sunday (or, hell, now even Saturday night) and do something completely
at odds and different the other 6 days. Especially galling to me has always been
all this adulation of Mary stuff. The Catholic Church is especially egregious on
this count - the Mary enigma is self-manufactured, made up along the way, as
the 'nationalisitic' aspects of the church took root. To see people go on about
'Our Lady' - which crappy phrase I heard right along, professed by people
you'd think knew better - was pretty pathetic, and - once more - medieval.
Edna O'Brien points out a instance of women adulating the Legion of Mary stuff,
and then, with their fingers, wetting the red-dyed covers of the booklets and
using the rub-off as their version of rouge for their cheeks. Completely absurd.
She also, most thankfully for me, makes another point - one having
nothing to do with religion - it being that in her 'personal' calling as a
writer she always felt the words were already there, already written, just
waiting for her to pluck them out. I loved that idea, and understood it
perfectly well. It fit. I am very thankful to have read her book.
There are four or five books I try regularly to reread - yearly or
whatever. It sounds obsessive perhaps or even stupid, but it's not, and of
course four or five are never enough - squeezed in as they are among my regular
reading. It's a trite list, but the exposure, over and over, begins to mean a
lot. It's also an ever-expanding list, which means of course that four or five
never cuts it and it's all a lie - I do not actually get to them all. A basic
box-of-books list, something to which probably most people wouldn't own up to or
consider in this manner, is, by definition, foolish and truncated, and - in
this case - modern and American. (By the regularity of the read, however, the
'writer' within this tight little environment, by the re-reading, learns to see
even the simplest things - use of a word, a diversion, a reference, a sidebar
or subplot - the works and crafts of other 'writers' doing their numbingly
simple, sometimes, things - and not so. A 'Reader' reads as a reader. A
'writer' reads as a writer. Scenes and situations, and voices, become familiar
and referential, they enter in as part of your regular, daily make-up, based on
re-reading and awareness. 'Catcher In the Rye', a simpleton's book, thought
banal and trite, but read it and watch. 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn',
two books in one, actually - chapter 1-15 as one book, and 16-end as another.
Learn it and see. 'The Great Gatsby', really not much, except for that great
59th Street Bidge driving scene, and those Negro faces; find the scenes, one by
one, learn them. 'Herzog'. 'Mr. Sammler's Planet', 'Humboldt's Gift', 'Seize the
Day', all by Bellow, all that grand Bellow stuff. Read the 'USA Trilogy', by Dos
Passos, 'Manhattan Transfer' and all that. Read all those old Newark books of
Philip Roth; an entire 'American Pastora'l series. Read The 'Poorhouse Fair', or
'Of The Farm', by John Updike - these are all just starters, and, yes, for now
all male. A man's adventure time. Read (not 'American') 'Istanbu'l, by Orhan
Pamuk - a wonderful memoir. 'The Book of Disquietude', by Fernando Pessoa,
'The Savage Detectives', by Roberto Bolano. Every one of these books - and, my
God, these are but perhaps ten, offer something grand and unique - passages
into writing, into the ways and means of writing and composition as done by
other writers - you can see, and stay abreast - for your own work, if so -
how they've approached problems, set things up, used language, illustrated
points, gotten lost in discursive sallies, come back, advanced plots and ideas
through the mechanization of things within, reflected personal quirks and tics,
embodied them and brought forth personas and personalities within them, amassed
problems and worked them out, broken through, blistered the air with words. You
should absorb 'Moby Dick'. You should work through 'Walden', one word at a time,
and constantly too. Read everything you can about and by Delmore Schwartz. Be
afraid, thereby, of nothing.
When I read 'Country Girl' by Edna O'Brien, I was pretty taken - it's one
of those breezy but rich kind of narratives-of-self of the sort I'd wish to
write (and hope I have been), in which one individual - granted, of
achievement and standing, with recognizable mentions and names within it -
making it, yes, different than mine, but, in its own way, I think, then, less
interesting because of the names - in which and through which the entire idea
of 'Memoir' can be seen to work perfectly. There's a lot of bias, right now,
against 'memoir' - it's said too many people now write them, everyone's got
them, whether of some note or not, regular people and stars fighting it
out. 'The unexamined life not being worth living', however, I rather like, the
idea. The rest be damned. It doesn't matter to me whether you're rich and famous
or noted and notable, or possessing a renowned voice of some sort. I make better
and more powerful use, by myself, of the unknown names and people and places.
They carry no baggage, and no one is star-struck by the reading of it.
The whole idea of reading is strange anyway. I once knew a guy who -
picking up on some strand of alienated forbearance he'd gotten from somewhere
- went about spewing how he'd foresworn reading, just walked away from it and
wanted to simply live his life without ever again reading. His point was that it
'removes' you from Life, not bringing you 'to' life in any way. He'd say he'd
rather dig a hole in his backyard, by hand, with a shovel - the biggest hole
he could dig - then spend that time, whatever time it took, reading. I
remember telling him, coyly, facetiously, that the shovel he'd buy would
probably come with operating and safety instructions that he'd have to read. The
premise of his idea - this was 1969, and such 'drop-out' ideas were quite
prevalent - was that the success of his or anyone's building an authentic
character of self was contingent upon how much it was to be done without outside
influences, without the gravity of the solitary and self-reflective aspects
'reading' would bring into that 'character' being built. Well, those are my own
words interpreting his, but that's pretty much how we articulated it between us.
We talked like this a lot back then. (He's dead now; end of that convesation).
Problem was, he'd be letting all sorts of other influences in without a care :
he was, for instance, a pot-smoker of some achievement, was quite vocal in
opining and ridiculing thigs he didn't like, felt that societal achievement was
- while nothing to be aspired to - something nonetheless that could be
achieved if one learned the ways and means of both cheating and getting around
the system - which he felt was where 'wisdom' dwelt - being the ousider who
knows how to game the system. Maybe so, maybe not - I never fully grasped that
anyway. He would also go on about the uselessness of 'money' as currency, and
the need for returning to the, or a, barter system. We never quite worked out
the means of that - ten gazillion people each wanting butter and toothpaste
and a car but deciding only that - instead of currency or cash - they have
something of their own, some skill or craft or product or service, to swap for
this or that item. An obviously unworkable situation. The other main point was
that schooling should stop after, perhaps, 4th grade - once the preliminaries
of ABC and 123, and - I'd suppose as well - the most basic forms of judgment
and right vs. wrong are 'instilled', if that's the word. It always seemed to me
that one would need to go back to an almost insular society for any of that to
work - even based, if it were to be, on the premises of 'Walden' or something
of Emerson's more 'biblical' utopianism. Either way. I always felt that we've
let the shambles go on far too long for any real solution without killing or
getting rid of millions of excess people first. Everything has just grown too
large; I suppose, the success of the human experiment has been enough to kill
it. Or that humanity's favorite pastime is 'procreation.' Hmmm.
What struck me the most was the brazen worldliness of these opinions -
this fellow, Joe, (I've written of him before; blew his brains out) - had gone
to San Francisco for two years, at the Art Institute and, before fist dropping
out and then returning to it so as to graduate, picked up and brought back to
Avenel many attitudes and opinions I found strikingly distant, or at least
foreign to him before; the long haranque about barter being just one example. It
all began to seem like one big, west coast or California-ized Utopianism fueled
as it were, in his own words, by pot-smoking and hallucinogens. He would make
the precise distinctions between Los Angeles and San Francisco - the former
being an illicit, secondary, junk city of potheads, while San Francisco, by
contrast, was the true hippie-headquartered, acid-headed, LSD sucking capitol of
all that was good and right. The heartbeat of the new world. I took that to be a
distinction based within a narrow form of self-absorption and local boosterism.
Without much validity. As if I myself had begun banging Baltimore for being a
bunch of fish-soup mongers as opposed to Manhattan's high gentility of fine wine
and food. Not worth much as a distinction, but good for him. He had a friend of
whom he always talked, Mahaffey (I forget the first name, Bill or Bob or
something) whose evident claim-to-fame in his eyes was his peculiar habit of
going up to everyone, as a greeting or upon first meeting, or whatever, and
simply saying 'you Jew?' Yes, you read that right. 'You Jew?', as if the answer
to that was somehow the key to all further interactions - this was a highlight
of Joe's storytelling. Funny thing is that, as an example of the person
fingering 'Jews', he - you would have thought - was one of those who should
have smugly been asserting that they didn't need to ask, they could just tell by
looking. Weird process, that. And the other part of the Mahaffey story, equally
xurious, was that whenever he drove the San Francisco Art Institute's
Maintenance Crew truck he'd ride always with his foot resting on the clutch, to
the extent that it was always partially engaged - so much so that after any 20
minute drive with Mahaffey at the helm the clutch would be smoking hot. Both of
these were enticing and absorbing stories to me, and they became redolent with
the aura and exotica that went, in my mind,. somehow with the whole idead of
going to San Francisco - all that flora and fauna, the Spanish influences of
both the architecture and ambience of the Art Institute, all that flowery
rhetoric, direct engagement with environment and redwoods and outdoorsy grand
weather and a natural and strictly enforced bohemianism (?) that carried over
into everything. I would take out an atlas of the USA and, laying a string
straight across from the San Francisco area always be amazed to see that it was
parallel not to New York City as I'd always thought, but instead to Virginia. A
latitudinal difference I found surprising. Of course, I was self-creating an
exoticism that didn't really exist, and this was part of it - Coit Tower to
North Beach to Fisherman's Wharf to Haight Ashberry. It was all just place, and
'place' has, always a very strange vibe to it. Not ever knowing what alternate
reality I'd missed or missed out on or avoided, years later I'd sit and think of
my decision instead to stay with the dark matter of New York City and the east
- all that sadness and struggle and darkness - and wonder which result had
more bearing for me. Obviously, the one I was 'in' not the one I'd avoided, no
matter the outcome. Yet I was always, and still am, happy for the choice I made
and enriched - I believe - more by it than the other.
Well, something to be said for Freedom, I guess. The Freedom to take one's
own life was sort of always lurking down the end of his road anyway - which I
think now probably accounted for so much of his irony. Nothing was taken
seriously enough to really have consequences; everything, each person's quirk or
action or outlook, could be held up, like a bug or something on a microscope
slide, and inspected and ridiculed and made light of. That was weird to me, very
weird, because my personal outlook was always in the complete other direction
- and that in itself was hard to live with : everything remained serious and
solid, fraught with meaning, dubious, dangerous, filled with portent. I often
wished I could simply straighten up from my dark, philosopher's crouch and just
flay about and laugh things off. I so often rued my self-applied shackles and
limitations. It was just my character; whereas that of him and his friends
tended to veer off into other directions - more fantastical, frothy,
imaginative and light. I was always imaginative, but it was a dark imagination.
Still is, I guess. Leastways I'm the one still here.
Getting back to the idea of books and all this reading - for me it could
never be isolated from the work going on inside my head. They were both somehow
one and the same, of the same cloth and cut. Words. The idea of 'reading'
removing me from life never seemed to apply. It was my life, and it applied to
my life. Getting back to the idea of books and all this reading - for me it
could never be isolated from the work going on inside my head. They were both
somehow one and the same, of the same cloth and cut. Words. The idea of
'reading' removing me from life never seemed to apply. It was my life, and it
applied to my life. I love to read something, something simple - let's use
Joseph Conrad's 'Secret Sharer' here as example (also on my preferred 're-read'
list, at all times). As I do with so many of the things I read, I mark them out
as I go along, in this case especially, since Conrad was not a native speaker
of English, grew up and spoke Polish, but wrote his works in English. It always
amazes me to locate that facility in the idea of multi-lingual approaches. The
opening pages are grand in the way things get presented, the wonderful set-up of
scene and locus. Right in the opening scene, the first page, his ringing use of
adjectives, though not the way I would have done it at all, is useful to me to
bring forth the working premise of what 'description' really should be. Here's
the line : 'And when I turned my head to take a parting glance at the tug, which
had just left us anchored outside the bar, I saw the straight line of the flat
shore joined to the stable sea, edge to edge, with a perfect and unmarked
closeness, in one leveled floor half brown, half blue under the enormous dome of
the sky.' Quite the ripe sentence, no? Everything has the adjective appended
telling of what 'sort' of thing it was - the straight line, the
flat shore, the stable sea, the leveled floor, the
enormous dome. And that doesn't even touch upon the 'half brown/half
blue' part. It's very preliminary stuff, a very basic use of one-word adjectival
modification, almost primitive. As I read it anyway, it pounds me in the head,
making me want to say - ' No, no don't do it that way. It's hard and
voluminous, stark and heavy, almost boring.' One word to one word ratios
everywhere. Conrad is like that - this short and simple tale ('Secret
Sharer'), however, well rewards the examiner - there are folds of rich and
surprising things within it : 'devious curves of the stream', 'tide of
darkness', 'swarm of stars'. You don't get all that with a quick and cursory
one-read read just because you have to - by assignment or whatever. There's
got to be love in that read, over and over, all of them. There's nothing in this
tale that isn't there to advance the plot; that has not been placed there by the
author precisely so that the maneuver and the action can get along on its way.
On this 'particular' night, the new captain takes a 5-hour overnight watch, much
to the surprise of his chief mate. Had he, of course, not done this, the action
could not have occurred, since it all takes place on this 'surprise' watch'. The
captain, sleuthing around in order to better 'learn' his new ship, is seen,
oddly, in his 'pajamas', which same garb, of course, once introduced, become the
very same extra pair of cloths the naked sailor gets put in - so that the
double-image of the two of them, the 'twin' sharer, the 'other' can be put in
place for the remainder of the tale - the 'L' shaped cabin room, also
precisely introduced, is there only because it has to be - with it, the
configuration of the steward's movement within and without the cabin, and the
hiding of the cast-off sailor, all fit perfectly. The peculiar attributes of
this L-shaped cabin, and its bathroom, are used perfectly throughout - the
idea of suspense, the waiting for 'surprise', the expectation of exposure, etc.,
and are integral to the story. The fact that the sea-rope ladder just 'happened'
to be left out, dangling that night - each of these is put in place, thought
through and selected, by the author writing. none of this, nothing in any of
these books, just 'happens' accidentally. A careful inspection of this entire
little plot - with the addition of its wonderful language and action - is
totally regarding and, as well, filled with observations and lessons for a
writer to take from it. There's so much more there; see for yourself.
All those little people who'd migrated to Avenel - those fathers and
mothers who thought they were making a 'place' there - I'd think of them as I
worked through these oddments of my own mental existence. Would would any of
them have had, after all, if this idea of 'barter' (primitive and medieval) had
ever been put to use? It would be a disaster, everywhere. At one extreme, on
Avenel Street in 1956, Joe's Meat Market was seen to be advancing and taking
great leaps into the modern, ease-filled day by opening and expanding as
'Shop-Rite', and then opening and expanding yet again as still a larger, cooler,
even more modern 1958 version of Shop-Rite. The whole town cheered this on -
mothers were amazed at the rows of goods, the cooling cabinets, the freezer
bins, the stacks of soda, candy, cereal, meats and breads. America had long ago
left that corral where, perhaps, the very old horses of barter and single-owner
proprietorship were still tied. Avenel was just doing its part, the catch-up to
the burgeoning of the Eisenhower years of silent bliss, dumb luck, and passive
enjoyment. All those Holiday Lake water-skiing passes and decals on the rear
windows of those '56 Buicks and '55 Chevies and - yes - even '55 Oldsmobile
Holidays themselves. They meant something, and it wasn't the old ways. This was
a newer form of representational reality setting into place and taking over
anything in its way - vestiges of the old and wooded lands had to go - even
if, as in the case of Avenel - they were replaced by scrap-metal yards, auto
junkyards, tanker farms, trailer courts and roadways to warehouses and truck
terminals, and - lastly and perhaps most importantly - a string of quickie,
'hot-sheet' roadside motels. Love waits for no man. Route One ruled. It cut
right through this place, sundered into two - both sides almost having
different personalities too. The highway and the underpass - in the same
manner was Avenel Street cut into two - the railrway underpass leaving one
scetion of town, in fact, almost abandoned, and left to wither. The only barter
there was 'we gave you something. We got nothing in return.'
Had there been a writer in place in Avenel at that time ('writer? what's
that?') I wonder what we'd have seen. There were functionaries and reporters,
I'm aware of - people who toiled for the local newspapers, small town presses
nearby, teachers and history buffs who tried to gather and recollect only the
most-sweet aspects of the collective local past - but they left out all the
real of the reality of what was going on. They sweetened and candy-coated all
those old groups, women's clubs, veterans' organizations and marches and
picnics. Nowhere was there the power and the reality of danger and destruction
- simply because, in their small and closed mind-set, they didn't see it, they
didn't live their lives that way. You see, that's what it takes - the
'distancing' of a real writer. It needs the power, and the power-of-attorney
too, of a 'real' writer taking the pen from others and signing for things -
placing names and items and numbers and values onto things which are otherwise
left unsorted, without value, misplaced and forgotten. That's what writing does,
can do, should do. For sure, it should be like fire. A 'Memoir' can do that -
especially now that all fiction anyway has been turned into irony, pleasurable
jest, weird catalogings of strange social and economic groups self-absorbed
within themselves or the ever-present idea of 'possible' movie-treatment use
later on. To wit, one word, JUNK! We've been butt-fucked and fictioned to death.
No one needs it anymore. The world has become devalued as the guttersnipes have
been allowed to take the reins and steer everything downward into their own
preferred sewer. An entire pipeline of sewer. A memoir format works perfectly
- it sums up and it allows voice and reflection, backwards, from over-under,
the twisted ansd turnaround of language and new sensation revealed as old
sensation made new. Certain memoirs have floored me, surprised the hell out of
me : Jerry Lewis 'Dean and Me' - a real surprise. Bob Dylan 'Chronicles' - a
perfect, rich wipe-out. Patty Smith 'Just Kids'. These are but a few, lonely,
singular examples of a rich mine-field you should look at to help guide you
through your own times. To your own work. We all bask in something, we all come
from numerous places, and we all have different reactions to different things.
Color the world with your colors - leave the lines and the blank spots to
others. It's an amazing world once you open the door.
53. So many things just are, occur, exist, be. For the most part,
any section of a life consists of responding to a stimulus - whether it's a
thought or an event or the weaving of the idea of either of those. Most of the
really big things, as they occur, just pass us by anyway - often without even
being noticed or remarked upon until much later, after the time that they've
taken their position as 'important.' We simply do not see what we do not see.
Eventually, as things amass, a person can get overload - overload means that
one either shuts down and simply accepts-to-stop where you are at that moment
(Something like David's old-clothing-style theory) or faces up to the situation
and realizes it's time to strike out, breakaway, do a double-time. It's an
essential, simple and solid way of getting by.
I suppose that's exactly what I did - especially the
breakaway part, except that I did it with a form of anger that included removal
and certainly included alienation. Back then, the idea of alienation was what,
in these days I suppose, would be categorized as 'hip'. It came in a million
different forms - and not one of those forms resided, believe me, in Avenel or
any of those other spots much like it all around. Even the high-houses on the
hill stunk of it; a certain regularity of spirit, a deadened spunk, an
atmosphere of crud, predominated. I never understood the poor bet that people
had made to get there. I often rued that fact that my parents had opted out of
'urban' atmosphere for this rather, by comparison, stilted beachhead. I
remember well, about 1960, my Aunt Mae and Uncle Walter (he of the German Army
escape through Hapag Loyd Line, previously written of) harboring in their home
in Rutherford a German fellow, about 20 or so, named Pieter. He was fascinating
- I never fully got the story, but the gist was that Pieter was somehow on the
run from, again, some form of German military service, had fled and was being
harbored by my Aunt and Uncle (perhaps some Miller family connection in Germany.
I do not know.), as he hid out in this country. He grew over time to represent
to me absolutely everything that this country and this Avenel suburban living
was not. They'd visit, and Pieter and I would take out through the farmfields
and woods around the prison and behind the tracks and the area behind the houses
making up my development - still yet wild and somewhat undeveloped. We'd walk,
as if on a high German meadow, just talking and going on. Obviously, being
twice+ a bit my age, he had the most to say - telling me of things, his life,
his home, his country, his schooling. Things I was captivated by, swept away,
taken with. Pieter and I would look carefully at the large map of the world I'd
tacked up on my wall - he'd point out the places he knew, places he'd been to,
near and around to Germany. And then, finally, one day he showed me the careful
mapping of a place called Aruba, an island off the top of South America. Aruba!
Alas, it was to be the place he was going - some faraway place of exile where
he intended to spend his life, all his energies and knowledge, and the rest of
his days too. And then he was gone. Aruba. I've never heard again of or from
Pieter.
Most of the world baffled and confused me - things were
personified by the likes of Pieter; his mysterious intrique and his odd
placement, jutted into my life, for but a moment and then gone. No choices, no
deliberation, just...poof! No one ever asked me if I'd wanted to go to Aruba.
There was another fellow, same household, Aunt Mae, Uncle Walter - this
fellow's name was Aldo, from Italy. It was about 1961 and, again, he was staying
with them while visiting 'USA' - an extremely heavy and broken-English accent,
natty dresser, clothes, a predeliction for fine things - food, women, places.
He just totally and fully enjoyed himself. He'd come back, as we visited, and
sit with us, telling of his exploits and adventures in New York City all that
time. For all I know it may have been but one long Summer. I don't really
remember; but he was representative of Euro-suave to me, another world entire,
leathers and silks, ties and pointed shoes. The funniest thing about Aldo -
very strange for 1960 America, I guess : Aldo had a perfect goatee. Perfect; he
was proud of it and tended to it nicely. It somehow got in the craw of the
uncles and aunts assembled, and they harangued him constantly, one entire day,
over it - in fact put up some money, a few dollars, a few more than that
perhaps, for him to shave it off, get rid of it. He was adamant, yes, until late
in the day - a few cocktails later, perhaps. He went into the bathroom, to the
hoots and hollers of laughter, and came out 15 minutes later, without the
goatee. I was aghast! He'd caved. He did it! All that exoticism itself wasn't
able to hold up against the onslaught.
So it all went. Avenel was nothing to me except, in its
manner, a big street-lamp. The nasty streets, wide and torn or narrow and old,
were separated all by light - an artificial, neighborhood light, to the extent
that, even, the old or at least 'older' parts of town had no contact with or
awareness of, any of the newer parts of town. The situation was odd and
hopeless - there were parts of older Avenel, the 1920's parts, with
large-sized bungalows, houses of somewhat older and traditional looks, which
never seemed to come out of themselves to join with or agree to the newer
parts - and since it was all a jumble anyway none of it mattered a bit. The
old parts, funny to see, had all old people in them - single elders, paired as
husbands and wives with their homes emptied of the kids who may have once lived
within and grown out of - onto other things - these were the great elders of
the larger, tree'd quieter parts of town. Or no town. It was quiet and older,
more staid and solid. Nothing ever happened - the old men died off and,
usually, what was left were widows, single old women, living alone, living out
their post-husband lives without being able to take out their garbage, rake
their leaves, burn their leaves (it was still allowed), shovel their walks from
snow - we'd do all that, knocking door to door, for a quarter or a dollar,
some hot chocolate or candy, whatever. One time I recall a few of us raking the
Autumn leaves form some elderly couple's vast yard - bringing them to the curb
to burn (controlled open fire), and the old man coming out to us with a large
handful of potatoes, wrapped, as I recall, perhaps, in foil. He proceeded to
show us how to put them into the fire and thereby cook or roast them (whatever
it's called) in that fire as the leaves burned. He said that, in his youth, that
was pretty much how they often ate. By God, by the time we were done that chilly
long-late afternoon, those were the very best roasted potatoes of any sort I'd
ever tasted, nay, feasted upon. (This was down towards the end of 'Fifth
Avenue', a section where there were yet a few large houses which then petered
out again in size to the end, where was located 'Avenel Park', back in the
1950's a run-down, afterthought, leftover spectacle of a town park, adjacent to
swamps and meadows and bogs and, oddly enough, a cinder block 'American Legion'
building, which just never seemed to get finished. Old, wiry men, walking
around, entering and leaving, in their strange old cars). As I think back now,
looking over the past, of those days - which was just as close to the First
World War era and before (1910, say) than 1960 is to now, as I write - these
old folks that we knew, men in their late 70's and entering their 80's, in 1960
- were born in something like 1885, lived through a time when everything we
know of now was inconceivable to them then, and were most probably veterans, if
so, of World War I. On the whole of itself, perhaps that might not mean much,
but in retrospect now it was, or I see as if it was, me looking through a
porthole at a fading past which was quickly getting smaller as the contemporary
ship I was riding (not theirs) was getting farther from the shore (theirs). It
can be said, yes, to be confusing, but if you look at it clearly, it wasn't. It
was just another time living over into our time - these were people who
tendered yet their reservations about the automobile, had rickety, after-thought
garages put up in the rear of their yards - utilized as well as tool-sheds, in
which they kept a weird assortment of manual things - large scissor-like hedge
trimmers, saws (I can recall, in fact, my father himself going on, in almost a
reverie, about saws. He was a major Henry Disston saw fan - a brand he swore
by; all about saws), metal tools, manual things - no plastic anywhere -
boxes of nails (they each size and each use), one, old, fabric-insulated
extension cord (again, nothing plastic, not even the cord coatings), hand drills
and boxes of drill bits, canvas bags, push mowers, heavy potato sacks, steel garbage cans,
power-cords with lights on the end - lights in protective cages. I could list
more, for it all just went on, and went back as well into the recesses, truly,
of another world right then ceasing slowly to exist. Everything was changing
focus, speeding up or being sped up into a more accelerated time and all the
accelerated meanings and definitions of things which went with it : they did not
take part in that change, though they were not, at the same time, cognizant of
resisting it. It just never entered their thoughts; it was how things were. That
guy who showed us the potato-bake thing used wooden-strike-anywhere matches, and
just talked right through everything. He'd not know anything about a discourse
on safety matches, or even the reverse-positioning of the strike-panel on
regular matchbooks that took place in the late 60's (it used to be on the other
side, the same side as the flipped-up open match top, exposing the matches, all,
to the danger of flaring up when the strike panel was struck and perhaps
produced a spark (sometimes happened, the spark, but I'd never seen matches
flare up in anyone's hand). Yet, that was perhaps the first or one of the first
of those endless alleviate-for-safety things which began happening around that
time; it soon got much worse. I'm sure those folks must have just scratched
their heads. I think what it is that is so different, between these times now
and theirs, is the idea of 'efficiency.' It's a new and more modern concept -
the idea of streamlining for cost and efficiency, perhaps once used for
industrial purposes initially. Over time, and as it was 'professionalized' into
some form of business acumen, efficiency spread its ugly glove and began seeping
into the national fabric. More and more was 'Modernism' praised for its
efficiency. These people, on the other hand, were leftovers from an era when
none of that really mattered - what mattered more was the presence of being,
the location of the experience, the slow, plodding work of developing a Life.
I am reminded here, again using Joseph Conrad as a source, of
something I read in 'Heart of Darkness' - I'll put it in place here as
referring to the settlement of the American lands too, even though in Conrad's
placement within the story he wrote it has nothing to do with America : 'What
saves us is efficiency - the devotion to efficiency....conquerors only want
brute force, nothing to boast of, just that, since strength is just an accident
arising from the weakness of others. They grabbed what they could just for the
sake of what was to be got. It was just robbery with violence, aggravated murder
on a great scale, and men going at it blind - as is very proper for those who
tackle a darkness. The conquest of the Earth, which mostly means the taking away
from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than
ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it
is the idea only. An idea at the back of it; not a sentimental presence but an
idea - something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice
to...' Those old people that I was just here talking of, they still lived with a
foot, at least one, still firmly planted in a much older world - shades and
distinctions we'd not think of - the darning of a sock or the re-sewing of a
button; the idea of waiting for a communication, and responding in turn; the
semblance of an understanding that times and seasons, though ever-present, do
change and can be waited out; illness not as fashion, but as illness; Death as a
finality, not to be avoided, but always lurking - the shades and images of the
shadow and doubt of all life, the cat which will die, the dog who will not
outlast you, the freedom of that 'friskiness', running on the lawn; the blade
that had to be sharpened and honed, kept without rust and moisture, the bales
and the things wrapped in twine, bundled and kept; the old wooden loft atop the
grain-shed where the bags of seed and corn, perhaps, were kept; the slow coiling
of the old, green hose. I think, I hope you get it - the 'Idea' that comes
first, the settled arrangement we make with Life.
I think everything is fantasy, actually. I have a hard time
finding the reality of anything - Life is illusionary and passing, and I or
anyone else good can convince another of anything, and vice versa, for we all
see alone. We all see with our lens. The great seers and saints, all that drivel
we read of and hear about, their 'altruism' went as far as the end of their
noses - because first and most important to them was the idea of convincing
themselves of what they saw and said. That's where it begins and that's where it
ends. Worlds colliding, endless monads bumping up against each other, the
heaviest and the densest of them settling in and making their way with progress
along earth and Life. The others, more flighty and fantastical, involve
themselves with other things and other realms. 'In the world, but not of it', so
to speak. Artists. Dreamers. Creative people. The world cannot really hold them.
Conrad's quote makes mention of the 'idea' - not a sentimental presence, but
the idea. The world speaks to itself in cheap cliches and sentimental claptrap
so as to make things comfortable. That comfort produces images, cheap and
tawdry, but images. Those are the ones most people live by. The fantasy that is
made is the fantasy of progress and speed and efficiency and the awful shortcut
of 'Mind' that ruins everything it touches. All of Life becomes a mere prop -
symbolic things we pick up and idolize, just to form a better or more
comfortable understanding. Consider this : at a stop light, in the truck next to
you, the driver yells out 'Where is Route 440? Have I passed the turn for 440?'
He is yelling and, at first, you do not know what he wants or what he means. Then
consider the same sequence, but with the driver (a smarter driver, knowing this)
while yelling to you window-to-window, holding in his hand the Manifest, the
paperwork for his delivery. It's instantly clearer and more obvious what he
wants - that's a prop - just the fact that he's holding something relevant
to his quest makes it more clear. It's short for 'Property', and it's an old
theater word for the stuff that needs to be brought out from the theater's
storage or construction areas to be used, to make up the 'set' the bring across
the idea and illusion of the story being told. That's what I'm getting at -
all that we do, in one sense, is meaningful only as a prop, one to another, a
symbolic item showing what it is we are doing.
I realized early on that most of what I was witnessing were
the props of other people - those who had grown up some and moved from their
urban growing areas, maybe, into this newer suburban flux being built, nay,
being thrown down wily-nilly over everything across - in this case - a sort
of east-central New Jersey which otherwise had no meaning, was not much of
anything - swamp, fen, wetland, mosquito-ridden, hard red clay or dirt-pack,
disposable woods, leftover patches of wooded ground, farmland quickly
disappearing, in the drier spots anyway, roadways, highways, transportation
routes over the most ugly of land, flat land - turnpikes and parkways falling
into place, soon to be connected to shopping malls and plazas, stadiums and
arenas. These close-by hinterlands, still in the shadow of a magnificent - if
it could just hold - New York City urban kingdom, had to be used, filled up,
peopled by a sort of newer refuse of those teeming shores of which Emma Lazarus
once wrote - it was all the same, the broad, mighty prop had descended,
hundreds and thousands of props, to make up a new stage-set that would grow and
transform into a new reality for everything. Those old people are gone now, and
with them their memories and ideas. Their houses, if still standing, have been
done over, reconditioned, made modern, sub-divided into multi-occupancy, all of
those things that happen for money and gain and investment. Had I not here
mentioned them, you'd not ever know.
Einstein's quest for a 'unified field theory' by which to
underscore and 'prop up' the idea of existence or the behind-the-scenes,
fluctuating oneness of all things has many of these same attributes - the
'what' of what he was searching for, the idea of time twisted and turning,
tumbling over and affected by speed and form and light and all the velocities
and stretchings that go with it, the very fabric of 'Reality', if you will,
stretched taut and shaped-by-form over whatever framework it is put - all of
that is so very close to what I've just here described - the old; the old of
people and places, the old of that-what-is, or was, going away and, during its
transformation yet again into the 'now', leaving traces, clues and small
portions of itself behind, for others to pick through as they too are sped along
by Consciousness and the translating of light and time and speed into yet again
'Reality'. Time like that, yes, it repeats itself, over and over again,
endlessly in a newer garb each time.
Coming as I did out of 'Avenel' - which is just the sort of
no-place that shouldn't be which you'd imagine, almost everything of 'normal'
family ways and places floored me. Other towns offered somehow a sense of
location, a place - even though Avenel was a stop on the railroad, next to
Rahway on the Bayshore Line it never carried any of that 'bedroom community'
stuff that other towns, acting as railroad/commuter stops did. When you come
right down to it, there aren't that many towns on the rail-lines which enter NYC
direct, maybe 20 or 30, all through this railroad-served portion of NJ, and to
be living in one today is considered quite the bonus - wake up, get dressed,
get to the station, there's your commute. Even better, of course, are the
mainline towns, like Metuchen, where I am now, that are direct link-rails to
Penn Station. Avenel required most often a special schedule for the connection
to, otherwise, a fairly simple switch at Rahway, next stop up; but, whatever. No
one, it seemed prided themselves on this location. Perhaps just because, in my
situation, I didn't really know anyone who commuted, Manhattan or Newark bound,
each day. All my parents' people were car-friend connections, driving to and
from work wherever. One or two guys (Mr. Lordi, and Mr. Kaisen - both
previously mentioned, were NYC workers). Train. Location. Bonus. I've already
gone over how a lot of that supposed 'air' really wrankled my father, seeing
these suited and top-hatted train guys walking home. It was funny, almost - he
really harbored a grudge, as if they'd broken some working-class code of Inman
Avenue drudgery, in which the besotted male has to trudge off to a dreary,
working-class job (aren't they all?), in a working-class car, and drive back for
a 'normal' hungry-guy 5:30pm meal. None of it ever much made sense to me, and I
couldn't figure out how all these guys did it. I know now, after these years,
that most of them really were working class stiffs, but with a peculiar edge -
they were, in some sense too, 'proprietors' of their little places, which my
father never was. Perhaps that's what bugged him, the taking orders or the
working for others. They 'owned' their gas stations and car shops, floor-waxing
businesses, tile-stores, etc. I suppose, in some lesser degree, to those who
make these precise distinctions, there is a difference there. In 1946-7, after
the war, my father and a 'buddy' of his did have a Cities
Service gas station and garage, a going concern of sorts for them, but they lost
it when the Turnpike Authority came through and took, by some form of eminent
domain, the ground beneath it for the Bayonne interchange and toll booth
approaches. Perhaps that was the root of some deep-seated unsatisfied anger. I
kind of sensed it wasn't going to be for me, although in actuality that's how it
all ended up anyway - I worked, regular hours, steady job, 40 hour weeks, and
all that, for 30 years myself; yes, in varied locations, different places, but
pretty much it was, for all practical purposes, the same sort of work routine
that I'd been exposed to here, early on. I've always had to eke out, on the
side, some strange time, spare time, extra time, to do what I feel I must (more
importantly) do - write, paint, doodle, whatever. Even the 'piano' music
aspect has taken its allotment. It's always given me a stranger sort of
alliance, in feeling, with those guys like Wallace Stevens and William
Carlos Williams, Charles Ives, T. S. Eliot, and others - writers and artists
who've done their time at regular, boring day jobs as well - insurance
companies, doctor practices, publishing houses, etc. Very much kind of funny,
in a way - as opposed to others who've sworn to not work a day in their lives,
make the craft work totally for them, and all that - I never knew if their
adherence to principal was more noble and had better results for them, (I'm sure
many, many of them just flamed out, burned out, staggered and died, starved to
death, etc., too, the ones you never heard of), or if the way I stayed with was,
by some odd comparison, worth something as well. Crap shoot? 'Six of one, half
dozen of the other?' - as that pat phrase puts it.
54. I've often thought, or realized to
myself, that the things one really tries for, goes out of the way to achieve,
never really happen. It all becomes bluster and public representation, showing
off the effort and not the things. Instead, it seems much better to work at it
in silence, plugging along, making sure something is amassed and that you've
'got' the product well on its way - large, catalogued, prepared and ready at a
moment's notice to show or put forward. It's kind of like that 'idea' thing of
Conrad - not the show, just the idea into fruition. Be prepared, so to speak.
Life, to be peaceful and steady, to be right, takes a certain quiet form of
deliberation - and I think that's most important. Deliberation is like a
quietude, a steadiness; less the flash, less the brilliance, less the noise and
swagger. That all passes, and once it's gone you'd better hope you've got the
product to show for it.
When the homes we moved to were first finished, in Avenel,
they were completed and sold without any storm windows. As an example of
deliberation - it always stood out to me - there was this quiet, strong,
steady type of guy, referred to by everyone as 'Whitey', perhaps his last name
was 'White' or something. He went pretty much door to door and contracted, or
was able to contract with, each homeowner pretty much, though not all, for storm
doors and windows. He had a old pick-up truck. He'd come to work each day with
the truck loaded with another batch of aluminum storm windows and doors, and set
to work. I don't know how long any of this took him per house or whatever -
maybe he did two a day - but before real long he'd done a lot. House by house,
installed, were storm windows and screen, on runners - the early, first
metal-gray aluminum ones, not today's modern, colored enamel ones - just
regular, basic slide widows and screens, and a storm door or two. Often the
front storm door was fitted with a metal grill into the center of which was the
letter, the initial letter, of the occupant family's last name. Most people got
that. It was an odd job, but this Whitey fellow, in his stern and workman-like
deliberation, went about the task and got the jobs done. He had the product to
show - no bombast, no bluster. It always stayed with me; and the memory of him
working, hunched and long busy all hours, has always stayed with me. I guess he
saw an opportunity, realized his opportunities, figured his costs and his odds,
and made the dare, took the chance. We should all be so steady.
From that, I took the idea that making great plans, shouting
from the rooftops about them, mercilessly devoting time and energy in making
contacts and connections and show-and-tell stuff in order to 'prove' the
attestation that you can be what you say you are, that it can work out, is a
fool's game. If there's something 'there', it's going to come out one way or the
other - what you instead need to do is make sure you honor that inner code,
that responsibility, first, of bringing out that which is. Producing, amassing,
and working 'deliberately' and with slow, plodding deliberation, the finished
work of which you yourself (and only you yourself) are conscious of and
know-to-feel is a'borning within. It really can't be done any other way. All the
other stories you hear, the 'sudden' discoveries, the accidental and major
finds, they don't just happen. They've first been prepared for, silently, in
hard work and drudgery. A Confederacy of Dunces (Toolen) to Gone With the Wind
(Mitchell), they all have their little tales and myths behind them, but in
reality what they were, outside of anything else, were the end-product of
steely, plodding, steady determination and value and work, within hardships and
toil, no matter what else. That shines, first and foremost, like a diamond in
all the dreck around it. Don't listen to the noise. It's just noise. You must,
instead, just say 'I was born for this', and do it.
Peter Whitaker (Petey) was a wild, crazy
kid who used to terrorize the local girls, my sister's
little clique among them, in that small, grubby woods
behind the old Avenel 4&5 incinerator. Yelling at them, screeching, running,
lofting pebbles and things in their direction. That
little patch of trees went right up to Inman Ave. - he
was often in there, like a wild, jungle-animal, just going at any person or
group (of kids, I guess) who short-cutted through there. It's funny how 'Developers' go - they use up the land needed by them, and
then at all the endings or little oddments of triangle or leftover space they
just leave things; so that, upon arrival, one can often still get a glimpse of
the scrub-woods or grassy and weeded lots and places which once stood. They go
unused, that is until others begin getting the idea that they can dump or leave
refuse or park a truck or wagon there. These little forgotten spots, in a most
intensely human fashion, and one which I've always loved to see - because they
act as witness to the Human presence, the primitive habit
within us and which has never left us, tribally, archaically and almost
intuitively by survival - eventually get worn paths through and upon the areas
people walk - usually cut-angles, shortcuts, straight-line paths through or
even around things. The human propensity both for habit/repeat and for
walking/travel come to the fore. This is the primitive, wild world within us
coming out. Even a 'Developer' cannot stop that. Peter Whitaker, it
always seemed to me - wild-child, crazy kid - somehow was able, as an 8 year
old, to dwell perfectly within that - he was the wild wolf, somehow, of that
small patch of woods. He'd run around screaming and yelling, verbally accosting
people,a wail, a shout, 'I'll kill you!' 'I can rip your arms out!' 'This is my
forest!' - and then, one day, after that trip he was blind. He became quiet,
reserved, no one knew what to do. He'd walk around, eventually, with a
blind-person cane, and glasses, never speaking. It became pretty sad - strange
at first, but then just sad, to see a completely transformed and silenced blind
kid where before this wild-child had been. No one ever really spoke of it. I
knew we never really did - among my sisters and her friends, it became
legendary, Before all this, I knew him pretty well, from a kid on Monica Court
named Robert Noon. We were all wee friends (across the street from Jimmy
Englert, and next from Dennis McCaffery). Then, when he had his accident and
returned months later blind, he was a totally different person. During this
time, his father was the Museum of Natural History archeological and archeology
digs safari guy. He'd go on trips and come back with bones, essentially. He was
particular and precise. Odd fellow. I don't remember, or can't, if this stuff
was after or before my train accident ocurring. He and his family went to
Florida for a vacation (obviously Petey was the child, of whom I'm speaking. I
mention the father only as father) - back then, I don't know if there was
Disneyland and all that crap, but they went to 'Florida'. He fell, from high
atop a diving board, to the concrete below, really tragic, and came back, months
later, blind - with a big scar and stuff on his skull, but otherwise OK.
As I've also said, it completely changed him, totally, personality wise. I
suppose this was about 1957. Perhaps second grade for me. And then, frankly, it
wasn't but by maybe age 10, that I seem to have lost all awareness, touch and
contact of him. That as well goes for Robert Noon - early on, again at about
age 7, he invited me to a party in his basement - his birthday or something.
It was , to my recollection, the very first time I'd been invited to and went to
something like this, alone and on my own. I was frightened to death. I remember
freezing in place behind a cellar support post, while all others around me
talked and went on like friends. It was almost sad, especially now as I look
back. I remember there was a girl there too, also from Madison Ave., Jenette
Small, I think was her name. I was totally infatuated with her. And she had an
older sister too. But I didn't move, just was completely out of it and probably
anti-social. I was a lame youth. Madison Ave, that little strip of a block adjacent to the
newly-built church was a weird street too - a real bunch of oddities lived
there. It was a small, straight line of a street, connected to the new church
building. As a street, it always seemed lifeless and dull, with nothing ever
happening - anyone we 'met' from that street, friended or whatever, it was
never 'on' that street; they were always someplace else, or else on
ours. I often sensed, somehow, that that street was probably
a last, leftover opportunity for the developer to get another twelve homes in on
the plans - a last, straight-line of a street, connecting to a pre-existing
section leading Avenel Street, and, of course, as well the safety of the two
churches (Catholic and Presbyterian, already there). It worked, yes, but the
street just never came to life. It's funny when things are artificial contexts,
put-together pastiches of place; nothing which ever grew over time or took on a
natural 'rhythm' of the people who lived there, amidst streams and woods and
shallows. That was three-quarters of a century ago, and the same thing has
happened ten million times over since - hills and valleys combined. People
defend it all by saying it provided life and place for kids and families and
generations. OK, so what if it did? That's like the same people who speak of how
all those pigs and cows brutally slaughtered for meat and the rest should
be thankful to us because at least, because of it, they lived. If we had no need
for them as slaughter-product, they'd never have been given a life.
Whatever, I can't let, or won't let, this stuff drive me
crazy. It easily could do so. I have to preserve myself, and to do that I have
to stop dwelling on things of this nature. Supposedly - but that's like
telling Cezanne to stop making harsh and angular lines in portraying his world.
Funny thing about Cezanne actually - a very weird and telling view, which
startled me and had my total understanding as soon as I read it - Paul Cezanne
had a feel for artifice. The 'greenness', say, of a painting
was meant to show the greenness : everything in the picture was treated with the
same importance or lack of importance, every slab or flick of color mattered as
much as every other, that's how the painting made its shapes, and how it
mattered that it was a painting - something made. Cezanne had wanted
people who saw it to see how it was formed out of paint, made of color, made of
surface, before they even thought about trees or a lake. Artifice was what made
the place in the picture - as well as the picture - truly alive. That way,
through Cezanne, we knew it was telling us no lies, it was not deluding us, it
was real.
That stunned me, privately anyway - it drove right to the
heart and matter of what I was searching for. All my work and art, I knew then,
would have to be detailed and made so as to present the trueness of the
'represented' reality with which I was working. All these homes and places, all
these silly places like Avenel, what suburban, low-class domesticated and
developed woods and vales they were, they themselves, unwittingly and in
ignorance, were nothing more than artifice. They were being built as artifice,
yet people took them seriously, as if for real. Years later, through Pop Art and
all that crap, the idea of, the irony of, 'Artifice' as concept would make
people millions. It would self-manufacture an art industry, one of perverts and
doyennes, sleazeballs and puppeteers, who would cling to and hang onto the mess
they created, the muck and the mire of their own entrails - all those Brillo
boxes and naked kisses, those splash paintings and big dots and rocket ships and
spaghetti-headed people : Robert Indiana, Larry Poons, Robert Rauschenberg :
worked; it worked because, again, they were doing it at one level - with a
philosophical underpinning, an art-history referential imperative behind it,
but those viewing it, the know-nothings, the society folk, the hipsters viewing,
buying, gawking, partying to it, they knew little of that behind-the-scene
theorizing. They were as ignorant as newspapers. My take on all this pretty much
settled upon the idea of the 'artifact' - I guess, in my way. it's part pf
where I got stalled. I found myself unable to deal with the, let's call it,
'fakery' (artifice) needed to seem to care about, and play the form-game with,
those people in position who made or broke the personages of their dumb little
industry of Art. Just couldn't do it, for myself, or with them. Merchandising
one's self, it always seemed to me, was not doing one's 'art'; the time spent
was lost. And rearing it's own ugly head, in the midst of all this, was 'irony',
that very dreaded disease. American culture at that point, having caught up to
its own gist and presence, had begun merchandising itself, fully aware of the
'wink-wink' aspect of the self-referential and anti-historical (through play)
ironic aspect, from that point on, of everything it did. Rainy Day Woman #12
& 35, anything by the Beatles, any Dean Martin Celebrity Roast, any TV
cavalcade of star-studded humor, Laugh-In to Carol Burnett, Pop Art to dance and
theater, song and speech - all had turned to a wickedly broad sense of irony,
inimical to itself and all of art history at the same time. Inbred. Going
nowhere. Dedicated to the dollar. Exploited by jewel-mongers, media thieves and
disingenuous moguls. Fake art.
The idea of artifice was striking - to see it brought up and
dealt with. It always seemed that so many things were left unsaid as they
went along their ways : no one ever turned to another, in Avenel, and just said
something to the effect 'all this is pretty just fake. Should we have a police
force, a school system, a community organization to then cover this fakery? Yes,
let's.' There's a word about, (there is also, I suppose, the eternal monotony of
passion to be dealt with - how all this enthusiasm for things becomes, after a
while, one big meaningless bore). I always liked to think of the Roman historian
Sallust, in his saying (on storytelling and myth) about the paradox when fiction
meets time, 'these things never happened, but are always.' Opposed to that,
flipping it over, if you will, is the writer JG Ballard, suggesting all these
centuries later that the relationship between time and artful fictiveness has
flayed itself inside out (1973 novel, 'Crash', introduction), he describes this
upside-down world, opposite of Sallust - 'these things happen, but never
were', referencing this present day : we now 'live inside an enormous novel, a
world ruled by fictions of every kind - mass merchandising, advertising,
politics conducted as a branch of advertising, the pre-empting of any original
response to experience by the television screen.' Now we need novellas to
'invent' the reality; novels ticking like time bombs.
These sorts of things were always running through my mind -
this new, strange place, sort of without meaning and yet unformed, being formed.
Peter Whitaker, trouncing in and out of his raging woods, perhaps as it were a
place known and seen only to him - the same woods others walked to, in and out
of each day, but easily passed through; the woods that had, instead, somehow
caught him and from which, within them, he'd never escaped - hounding and
screaming at the world from a strange nether-land of half-way, as if somehow,
something missed by the developers, there was some weird time-hole, gap, black
hole of space and void into which he'd fallen or been placed only to roam and
rage and which they'd never covered over. Something like that which the writer
Ali Smith portrays as 'liminal space' - a kind of space in-between, a place we
get transported to, like when you look at a piece of art or listen to a piece of
music and realize that for a while you've actually been somewhere else. Limino
Limbo. (A Doris day song from the very early 1960's, deemed sexually offensive
and kept off of her released record albums, too close to sex - 'Let the little
girl limbo...', an Afro-Caribbean beat, too close to an ethnic border, back
then, for a marketing man to take a chance on in the early 60's. The Limbo was
one of the all-the-rage dances for a short time about then, a sexually
suggestive, down-low, erotic-zone focusing dance crouch; the realities of which,
of course, no one ever owned up to but about as close to 'erotic' as most
Americans then got to, outside of National Geographic flim-flam, or should that
be film-flam, for photos?). As such, oddities abound. In Oliver Twist, in fact,
Charles Dickens portrays very well another of these 'half-states' we all
experience : '...a drowsy state, between sleeping and waking, when you dream
more in five minutes with your eyes half open, and yourself half conscious of
everything that is passing around you, than you would in five nights with your
eyes fast closed and your sense wrapped in perfect unconsciousness. At such
time, a mortal knows just enough of what his mind is doing, to form some
glimmering conception of its mighty powers, its bounding from earth and spurning
time and space, when freed from the restraint of its corporeal associate.' I
found myself living that, each moment, self-aware, as well. Here's to Peter,
wherever he may be - wiped and cleaned, silenced and destroyed, somehow, by
the same raging masters of some weird anti-Avenel he inhabited; those half-Gods,
half-Demons, once then ruling his realm - and he, having come back silenced
and shut, ruined and boxed, like any other one of his father's dug-up and
uncovered artifacts or bleached, ruined bones.
55. A lot of things about my father, I just
never knew or was not told. I almost want to say 'found out', but - well after
he died - I made it a point to find out some. There was one time I went to the
local church where his neighborhood used to be - an old Italian enclave now
replaced and destroyed by the approaches and roadways for the Lincoln Tunnel,
westside midtown. It's actually a different church - a neighboring parish
which, upon the destruction of the actual church, half a block west took all its
parish records and history, photos and the rest. That particular church, now a
Serbo-Croatian parish, still had them - we walked in, after being admitted by
a crotchety, elderly woman. She reluctantly and eventually showed us a series of
floor-level wooden shelving units in which were stored file and ledger books,
one after the other, all nicely hand-inked, written in a very fanciful cursive
with old-style writing and fountain-pen blue ink - an entire treasure trove of
names, events, dates, addresses and places of people - all through the first 3
decades anyway, of the 1900's. My father's name was in there, as well as his
brother Joe's (older by a some 6 or 7 years) - Baptismal records anyway.
Nothing much at all past that; but for others there were confirmations, wedding
records, children, and deaths - entire reams of family passages. The
neighborhood, she said, had been razed a long time back, and this church had
taken over everything but then, over time, the bulk of all the Italian community
was dead or gone, and it just dwindled away - now no one even ever looked at
these records and she wasn't sure how much longer they'd be kept. It was all
Serbs and Croats now, in this place - in fact, the church itself pretty much
stood alone on a small isle of what once may have been a vibrant block - all
around were the rings and ramps for the Lincoln Tunnel, traffic backed up and
honking, a Fed Ex depot nearby, a car dealership or two, all expansive and
bustling and car-oriented. It was really too bad - this entire far west end of
42nd street and environs had been gobbled up in these few blocks. I still go
there often - in fact it's from where I got my beloved dog Sam (a 46th Street
Serbian dive). Whatever else it is, these Serbs and Croats and others
thereabouts still keep their own community vibrant in these mid-40's and above.
The lady in the church, by the way, showed us lots of pictures as well -
photographs, some framed and hanging in the lobby, of the old Italian
neighborhood days - festival days, Saint's days, processionals, parades,
streets and curbs teeming with people, crosses, priests and bishops in
procession, old cars, brownstones with stoops and nicely decorated fronts, etc.,
bakers, small storefronts, and the like. It really did seem to once have been a
grand Italianate ghetto. My father's family broke up from here; his Mafia hood
dad taking it all up to the transplanted Italian ghetto at e.116th Street back
then, at which time he'd abandoned all of them anyway and the family itself,
kids and mother, were broken up, foster-parented out to places like Jersey City,
Hudson City and Bayonne and Brooklyn. Their mother (my grandmother from Greystone) lived in Bayonne as well, until which time
she was committed to the asylum after the suicide attempt.
She died in the nuthouse, and my father's father, the Mafia
guy, after prison and after death, ended up buried in some huge burial ground in
Queens. In January, 2012, I rented a new FIAT and on a freezing cold Saturday, and
then the next day, Sunday, decided I would not return until I'd
located, from various clues, that grave. My wife and I went, with a friend, and
spent nearly the entire day searching - among numerous cemeteries out that
way, amidst truck depots, junkyards and car-parts and repair shops. we did,
eventually, locate (and I photographed) his grave - he's buried under his
Italian name, Giuseppe Entrona, which I'd never seen used before, and oddly
enough is the #3 person, weirdly added, to the gravestone. He's with two other
people, male and female, with the same 'Entrona' last name - no one is sure in
telling me who or what that can be; a second family and the two children of it,
or a son or daughter with a another spouse. But, anyway, someone took him in for burial
- his own wife, of course, Nunziata, is buried along in a Newark Archdiocese
grave, all by herself, in Livingston NJ or somewhere like that. It's all pretty
sad - she lost her husband when he abandoned her, here in a new country for
them both, then she lost her children, one by one to foster homes and the like
after her attempted suicide, after which she was eventually committed and never
let out again - this 'husband' guy refusing all entreaties over the years to
bring her back out. The neighborhood of which I'm referring here, remember, was
all lost to the Lincoln Tunnel. After that, much of the Italian population,
whatever it was, had transplanted itself to yet another, or third, Italian
section in what is referred to as East Harlem now : Pleasant Avenue in the east
100's, right up thru 116th street. Small remnants of it yet survive - in
addition to things like 'Rao's' and 'Patsy's'. Let us not forget 'Claudio's
Barber Shop'. The area still holds the yearly 'Giglio' - a procession in which
a huge tower is upheld by the shoulders of many men as it is paraded through the
streets; the 'lifters' are in crews, each with a lieutenant and a 'Capo'
(captain), all wearing white caps, white tee shirts, and neckerchiefs,
a Mass begins the day, at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church,
fireworks, sausage stands, music bands, marchers and procession. All of this is
somehow in 'honor' of St. Anthony of Padua. I'm not going to start all over
again, harping about this or that, but I'll suffice it to say that I can't
believe that any of this paltry Italian, church-oriented, peasant and pagan
traditional junk still flourishes, anywhere. It's all very nice that people can
still believe, or say they believe in this stuff (I honestly don't believe they
do), but street processionals in close-cranked neighborhoods, or memories of
such neighborhoods don't cut it. They are remnants of things of the past - the
same sorts of things (I'm afraid to say) that cause accidents like 'Avenel' -
trans-suburban offshoots of places that lose perspective, breed flashy-eyed
people looking for bigger, looser things. They move away and somehow take all
this engrained stuff with them - churches, schools, social clubs, they all
reek of it. Each nationality has it - I once spent a very long day with the
Malone family, erstwhile Irish neighbors on Inman Ave., at a Hibernian Society
picnic, and it was not any different. Neither, by much, was there any difference
at the Anguillan festival I once attended, with a friend Dave McGrath, in Perth
Amboy - still another large, active group of transplanted people. My father
and his family members may have, yes, lost their neighborhoods and places and
people, but it seems that not much ever did come from it except a weird
fragmentation that left everyone unsettled, nervous and confused. Literally, a
high-wire act upon some new form of American soil to which no one was yet
accustomed even as they were making it. It's a paradox - outsiders blindly
becoming insiders, making the places they didn't know of at all, almost unaware
of what they were doing. When I lived in the basement of the Studio School, one
of the guys there - a better-off and older fellow student - lived on e.1st
street, in a multi-storied tenement (he had a spacious apartment on the topmost
floor) of which he was superintendent - I guess that meant living for free if
you took care of the place. There was a period of time when he'd pay me, give me
money weekly, to do work that he was supposed to be doing. I'd go over, mop the
hallways, dust the floors, check on light bulbs, thing like that. The best thing
about it was that with the job came the key to his apartment - nothing that I
ever stayed in or went through, mind you, but it was always extended to me as an
extra place where I could while away time, use the bathroom (in fact a pretty
important plus, if you think of it - public restrooms and art school bathrooms
not being the very best of amenities). this place was, by my standards, gold.
This fellow had a certain excess of money, so that all around were cool things
- music magazines, books and record albums, footstools, one or two really nice
easy chairs - all the dumb, dumpy stuff you'd think would impress a wayward,
lost voyager like me. It was never a task, doing this work, always fun. I'd walk
over to 1st Street in mid-or late afternoons, the mostly Hispanic other families
in the place would be hanging around - little kids drooped over the front
stairs, the interior stairwells, food and cooking smells, housewives in their
housewifey dresses and aprons and all that old-world (by comparison) stuff. It
was always 'long and quiet', oddly enough. never any blaring noises, no TV
sounds bleeding through, the impeccably tiled, black and white lobby and long
halls in incredibly good shape - big shape - a sort of use of space never
in play in the modern day - these old tenements always had a small lobby with
the mail-boxes and buzzers, an entryway and an alcove, then an open, center area
(tiles) and then the open beginnings of the grand, massive but straight and
undecorated stairwell which took you from floor to floor. I can't remember if
this place even had an elevator - I don't think it did. It wasn't that style
- it was a late 1800's tenement, about 10 or 15 families, maybe 4 floors, tops,
and a little rooftop thing you could enter. The 'transplanted' neighborhoods I
was just speaking of, the Italian and Irish, Hungarian and German, Serb and
Croat too, they all had places such as this - perfectly normal, NYC immigrant
housing. Somewhere, stuck in my head, was the idea that I was crossing barriers,
boundaries, in all these places. I'd luxuriate in all the fine glory of the
top-floor and rooftop stuff. I'd sit in his chairs after my work was done,
reading, looking at things, paging through art magazines and portfolio books and
the like, watching out the rear windows at the traffic going to and from
wherever - Houston Street, the East River, those bridges taking people to and
through other destinations, people going home from their business jobs in the
vast, sprawling, stinking, ugly city around me - jewelers caterwauling,
vendors hawking things, business people - all their deals and talk and
contracted Tarantellas, the slow, twisting pirouette of daily business and life.
I'd realize I was there, in and of it, but having nothing whatsoever to do with
any of it - a spectacular observer from an equally spectacular observation
post, taking things as they came, accepting the bountifuls and the gifts as they
came my way - freedoms and liberties, the kind of things that, if you think of
it and can utilize, are just the flip sides of the poverty coin - amassing
nothing except the pleasure of Being. Deliberate Being. Master of all I survey,
all that sort of stuff. I had nothing of the storm and stress, (the well-vaunted
'Sturm und Drang' of all those nutty Romantic artists and writers of the past)
that went with the immigrant experience; people moving on the May Day moves,
swarms of people whose leases ran out, switching apartments, re-locating,
changing venues, none of the destruction and loss that went with removal, new
building coming in to sweep out all the old, the transplanting of places and
people. All that new 'American' onslaught of things, that tuxedo of commerce in
full wearing and full operation, ever touched me. Instead, I lived on, in the
remnants and remainders, the cracks and fissures of all that it had left behind.
What was I ever doing, for and myself, at will, on 1st Street, I never could
fathom. Just accepted it instead, took it in, absorbed all that was given to me,
and kept moving along.
The funny thing was, as I reflect now, yes, but it was odd to
me even then, that in looking out that window and seeing the traffic going
across the East River, the young kid that I was had no real inkling of where
those cars and people were going. In a sense I'd simply transplanted my own
'personal' horizon - instead of Avenel and the ten miles around it, now it
was, evidently, Houston Street. I'd slid the scale of my own perimeter, but just
to somewhere else. Over those bridges, I hadn't really any further idea. I
figured these people were Long Island businessmen ( very dumb, simplistic
assumption), suburbanites with lawns and garages, swim clubs, parties and
schools too. And they may well have been; but for myself the actual 'place' or
geography or locus, whether it actually was Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx,
Connecticut, or whatever, was all unknown to me. My horizons were still quite
narrow and small - one step, one new inkling at a time perhaps, I was
expanding, yes, but it all was yet very close-cropped. This little Avenel
sensation, with its tied-in perimeter of thought, place, understanding and
feeling, was only just now, within myself, realizing the rest of the land I
walked. I had my hands more than full enough anyway with just Manhattan Island,
so I didn't really delve or expand past that back then.
It was a different world - I mentioned before the
'housewifey' dresses. That was true; today's non-fashion schema of people
walking around in junk clothes, tied and spattered leisure clothing, sweatsuits,
shorts, pants, and all the rest - let alone the tattoos and piercings and
shavings and outlandish stuff - didn't actually 'exist' or at least was yet
apparent in full vogue, in any way. The people I'd see, poor or well-off alike,
all stayed within a certain range of propriety - a range, an ides of things
that's now long gone. Down at the corner of 1st was a simple Gulf gasoline
station (still there last I looked; very small, compact city gasoline station.
I'm not sure it's still a 'Gulf' brand station however), and even the pump guys
wore Gulf shirts, emblazoned with brand-name and their own name or moniker,
whether 'Chet', 'Chief', 'Mike' or 'Rico'. There existed a point of decorum,
some line over which things never went. It was odd and invisible, and - in a
vaguely even East-European way - it kept everyone in check, aware of their
status in an invisible, and maybe unwise, pecking order. But no one minded and
there was little carping - many of these delicious little Spanish wives and
girls, even in there dresses, plodding over stove or crib, kitchen or laundry,
stayed within their realms - neat, quiet, and sometimes almost formally,
dressed. Another world entire. Have I not said that before? You've all seen it
anyway, and I don't have to press - old magazines and the ads within such
magazines are filled with this - all evidences of a world that's left us.
My father's point of view in most things was, I think, pride.
It was a simple pride, a forceful pride. He had, in his own eyes, brought up
from nowhere a 'something' he could stand by. Of course, here, from my point of
view, I can't share that vantage point. My father's view was 'behind' that,
seeing it all out before, pride of ownership, getting that new, small house,
bringing his family out of the 'city', as they termed it. My point of view is in
'front' of all that, seeing it, instead, arrayed all about behind me. Two
different worlds - and easy it is for me to simply say 'no' to all that. But
he never could. His sensitivity was of a different kind. One of the first
things he did, once in Avenel, was hand build a perfectly proper, ornate, white
wooden picket fence around his property - all of it. With a broad double-gate
for the driveway and car, and, to the left of it, a separate entrance gate for
those entering the walk. As if it all were a decorous ten-acre landman's spread.
Seeing all this on and around a house built just like all the others, in a row,
the same, was pretty odd, very curious. It was his own effort at showing
something - some radiant force from inside, a pride of his achievement, as stated. He had a metal, gas-flamed lamppost installed out front too. On it was
suspended a plaque which read The 'Introne's' - just like that, actually a
mis-spelled possessive if you look. It never mattered. Over the years he also
went through about 4 or 5 different determinations for trees out front, on the
curb and lawn. He had a few huge, sprawling oaks, one of which he used to
measure against my height, over those early years; at first equal, it soon
enough out grew me. He had a sycamore or two, and a dogwood. They all were
eventually cut down, as some other fashion, or whatever, of broad lawn took
over. He hated the sycamores, calling them 'dirty trees' for the way they shed
their bark onto the ground each July and August. The oaks never grew 'straight'
enough for him' they too were removed. The dogwood blossoms eventually, as well,
proved too much. Before too many decades, all again was bare.
Swedenborg put it thusly: 'The visible world and the relation
of its parts, is the dial plate of the invisible - the axioms of physics
translate the laws of ethics.' There are certain correspondences between the
little and the large, the inner world of self and the outer world of Nature. To
me it always all added up. Within the first year of our moving there (I was
halfway between age 4 and 5, just like the schools I went to - Avenel 4&5)
my father had planted a long row of hedges (privets) down the side of the rear
yard, all the way to the back. They were about three feet high, in a long line
down the property. It represented, again, to him some particular form of
division, of dividing and claiming his space. I can recall the long, night
sounds of the crickets, blaring out back, amongst these hedges - all that
mysterious darkness and black, open space. I looked up and somehow seemed to
understand the sky - yes, there were stars, not that many, but more than now
by hundreds. I saw deep space, I was able to pick out constellations and many of
those weirdly, odd old figures and personifications of the night sky : Greek
stories, bizarre mythologies, and even an occasional - very modern -
satellite. High, high up in the night sky. I tried to understand crickets and
Nature. In part, I instantly did - my small-person way inhabited all of the
world around me - the woods and cosmos, the land and the water. It all went
unsaid; I shared with no one, because I was unable to. My solicitude was in my
own quietude. I early on found my own satisfactions.
Over all these years now I've accumulated another world -
one of an entire different set of qualifiers and collectivizations. I know what
I can say, and I can (mostly) see double saying it - for nothing is what it
seems it is; nothing compares back to itself. I will talk only of what I know.
'A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he
can afford to let alone.' Thoreau said that. This evidently included sex, since
he also wrote, 'the generative energy, which, when we are loose, dissipates and
makes us unclean, when we are continent invigorates and inspires us.' So much
then for procreation along Inman Avenue. 'Love your life, poor as it is. Thoreau
again.
I've pretty much lived with despair all my life - in spite
of all this, I've seen things clearly. That's what Life is anyway - coming to
the terms you need to live well. Are there absolutes, things universal that
everyone must live by? I really don't know. It's too difficult for me to say if
there's one, absolute, 'yes' or 'no' for all things. And, frankly anyway, I
don't care. I remember lots of things, many things that startle me yet. That's
what I live with - no matter to any of it what I say or where I come from. I
remember realizing that, in those early impressionists, there was the first
inclusion of industrial smokestacks in a painting. Was that reality, or some
super-reality portraying the world in a new way? Or was it simply 'what was
there, so I painted it?' To me, that was a telling question, one I couldn't
really get over. And then, in Edvard Munch, 'The Scream' - viewing that it hit
me that all that Romanticism of the past had been blown away - and all its
truths and winded certainties - by the insistent human personality embedded in
the idea of Munch's - turning all those spectral, despairing persons usually
seen gazing out to sea, turning one of those, instead, right into the viewer's
eye, having the one, staring screamer, face the viewer! Wham! In an instant all
changed - a factual humanity had entered the scene, and had entered my
personal education, art and otherwise. All the learning by rote, all the
experience of living, Inman Avenue and Avenel all together allowed me the
beginnings of seeing things differently. And I no longer really cared what or if
other people thought of it. Like Mrs. Kuzmiak, the local notions and drygoods
store lady said to my mother about 1966, much to my mother's chagrin - and
which I had to hear about forever, as if I'd caused some ort of caste-demotion
by association, 'what's happened to Gary?', no one much knew what was up. I'd
jumped off a cliff, one they'd not even known existed. I was gone.
Early on, we had a black shaggy dog; named by us, 'Jet', for
his color. Then, after Jet died (I guess, but don't remember), we had another,
named 'Rinny', short for Rin-Tin-Tin, which was a TV dog, as I recall. Funny
thing was, back then, both these dogs were kept outside. People did that then.
My father built a large, serviceable doghouse, a little flap at the entrance and
all, and that's where the poor dog stayed, running and wearing out a circular
area where he lived. It represented the perimeter of the dogs' own, sad circles.
I think back on it now, and I cringe and just get sad. Later on, after Rinny was
gone, I remember that forlorn-looking sad old dog house just sitting out there
in all the weathers. The dogs were gone. I was sad inside, but not sure what had
occurred. They'd never been let in the house. I certainly had never watered or
tended them. I remember pouring water on Gravy Train dog food. It made,
supposedly, some sort of 'gravy' dogs loved. I guess I fed them. I know that if
we went through 2 dogs in succession in a quick number of years, maybe 5 at
most, something was up I wasn't aware of. No one else can tell me either. My
father also built, right next to the doghouse, a first generation shed (he later
built a much larger, farther back in the yard, generation two shed, as I called
it). In it we kept our bicycles, and my father kept lawn supplies, a mower, etc.
It had swing-out double doors and was slope-roofed and quite low. One could not
stand up in it, adults anyway. Everything required a crouch. Later on, about
1959, that too was taken down - and with the loss of it and the doghouse, all
remnants of the early, original construction house and yard, were gone. Later
came the house's expansion rearward, a cellar entrance, the larger shed, a
swimming pool, and the rest. I probably mentioned all this before but my father
seethed when others began getting actual garages in their yards, and making it
worse by having them built, not building them themselves. His simple sheds and
doghouses suddenly began looking shabby and shanty-town by contrast. It's hard
for me to put all in words, but there was always an internal politicking going
on within him - gauging and ranking things, making claims to better and
more.
56. I remember first reading Walden. In it he
(Thoreau) speaks of awakening very early and before all his other townsmen, in
Concord I guess, and how upon returning, he'd see them all just starting out,
feeling as if he'd already lived another day before they'd even started theirs
- and of their surprise in seeing him coming in, from the other way, already
long underway with a day while theirs was just beginning. It's a funny, odd
passage, and in actuality only speaks of a certain self-absorption on Thoreau's
part, but, nonetheless. The little tale stayed with me and I'd often walk about,
stupidly as it was, up or down Avenel Street or Inman Avenue, thinking myself
another Thoreau, sure of showing others how much they'd lost by not being up and
risen, walking, with me at 5am. (Probably all crazy stuff on my part, akin to
Benjamin Franklin, dead broke, arriving in Philadelphia and walking the 1770
streets with but a long loaf of bread in his hands). Everyone's situation has a
different yardstick; some men work, work early; others work too, but just work
later. The self-appointed drivel I was putting across reeked. I'm glad it
stopped. I'd think, also, that should Thoreau have come across me, in 1966,
doing what I'd been doing, he'd not have known what to make of any of it anyway
- the world would simply be too foreign and distant to him, without a basic
sense. He talked of how men were not free, even in 1845, being in tow to their
creditors, in debt (pages 6 thru 10, appx.) : '...I have no doubt that some of
you who read this book are unable to pay for all the dinners which you have
actually eaten, or for the coats and shoes which are fast wearing or are already
worn out, and have come to this page to spend borrowed or stolen time, robbing
your creditors of an hour. It is very evident what mean and sneaking lives many
of you live, for my sight has been whetted by experience; always on the limits,
trying to get into business and trying to get out of debt, a very ancient
slough, called by the Latins, aes alienum, another's brass, for some of their
coins were made of brass; still living, and dying, and buried by this other's
brass; always promising to pay, promising to pay, tomorrow, and dying today,
insolvent; seeking to curry favor, to get custom, by how many modes, only non
state-prison offences; lying, flattering, voting, contradicting yourselves into
a nutshell of civility, or dilating into an atmosphere of thin and vaporous
generosity, that you may persuade your neighbor to let you make his shoes, or
his hat, or his coat, or his carriage, or import his groceries for him; making
yourselves sick, that you may lay up something against a sick day, something to
be tucked away in an old chest, or in a stocking behind the plastering or, more
safely, in the brick bank; no matter where, no matter how much or how little.'
Now, that's OK for today, even more startling for 1845, and the he follows it
up, even better, by this weird tie-in to 'slavery': 'I sometimes wonder that we
can be so frivolous, I may almost say, as to attend to the gross but somewhat
foreign form of servitude called Negro slavery, there are so many keen and
subtle masters that enslave both north and south. It is hard to have a southern
overseer; it is worse to have a northern one, but worst of all when you are the
slave-driver of yourself. Talk of a divinity in man! Look at the teamster on the
highway, wending to the market day or night; does any divinity stir within him?
Has highest duty to fodder and water his horses!....Public opinion is a weak
tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself,
that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate. Self emancipation
even in the West Indian provinces of the fancy and imagination...Think, also, of
the ladies of the land weaving toilet cushions against the last day, not to
betray too green an interest in their fates! As if you could kill time without
injuring eternity. The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is
called resignation is confirmed desperation.' I loved that stuff, even then. I
couldn't get over it, in light of how, a hundred and twenty years later,
everything had progressed and moved the scale along into my present day -
lines of look-alike homes extended to returning veterans at favorable
(considered so) bank rates - mortgages to the hilt, but agreeably so. Incoming
debt was the sweet measure of the day, and only the faint, fading though
resonant echo of words such as Thoreau's yet countered that fact. But no one
listened, because life had to go on, things had changed, everywhere. The sexual
drive was everywhere making babies - and they all had families, and they all
needed places to stay, to live, to be. Ah, what a tangled web we weave when
first we set out to concieve.
I'm not saying, by any means, that at some point I was
Avenel's version of Thoreau's Walden; but I was the defiant outsider, to be
sure, walking back through town - even though there wasn't any 'town' to speak
of. It had no 'place', no center locus, no hub. Whatever hub there may once have
been - and there could be a few candidates for that - had long ago been
subsumed by both commerce and progress, in the rudest sorts of ways. Route One,
after being so named (it had originally been Route 25), cut through the center
of 'town' in its new, widened, automobile-oriented format, and the rest be
damned. The area of the train station and (now) the underpass - a section that
once boasted a not-so-shabby train station, waiting room, ticket depot, and
lending library - had been reduced to a commercial lumber yard/home supplies
place (Abbe Lumber), the 'other' side of the street (Avenel Street) and its five
or six or more storefronts now facing nothing but a cinder-block wall, and a
Connecticut-based armaments factory. It all had been ruined, as a town center
with any semblance of place, a sewer grate and a swamp whistle would have had
more claim to it. The chip on my shoulder came from a young man's self-knowledge
of being nowhere at all, and detesting that fact. This was more like a small
prairie stop where only occasional wagons stop, with most of them, instead,
passing right through. One hundred years after Thoreau, (in 1945, when all this
began) after all, I had to realize, my father was mustering out of the Navy,
after a few years in the South Pacific, and my father-in-law to be was finally
finding military freedom as a POW who was marched across Europe by his German
captors just in front of the advancing, and liberating, Soviet troops after,
incredibly enough, truth be told, bombing the smithereens out of Monte Cassino,
that sacred and revered site, from the air, as a tail-gunner; shot down there,
and captured. One hundred measly years, and the vast scenery of the vast,
turning scene had so incredibly altered. That was what I walked
through.
It's almost as if to me, through me, Thoreau was speaking
psychologically and not of the 'real' world. Most men do walk through a late
sleep of their own making - dazed, drowsy and disabled. Not noting differences
and shapes, forms and angles, the oblique way in which so many things really do
connect to each other, how one occurrence, first entered affects another and
that in turn another, and thus makes a world. Everything in a gulf of motion and
possibility. Just like an early-morning feint. I, like Thoreau, walked through
that early light while others of all Mankind slept or watch, mute, in a dull
wonderment - as if there even is such a thing or should be. No one told me
'Face it all, son, you're going to go through school and their just going to
kill all that within you, leaving it all sleep-dead. Get ready'. It's like,
'Here it is, hope your already happy with the result, because when we're done
with you this is all you'll get - that one dimension we've told you about.'
Whew, painful stuff! I can't recall if I've told this before or not, but the
school parking area of the old, early days at Avenel #4&5 schools, instead
of being tar-paved were covered with the cinders and hard ash chunks of the coal
furnace - making a crunchy, noisy, moveable surface as and for the cars moving
over it. My mother and I, when I was still not yet even in school, I guess just
about 5, were walking over this surface one day, on the way to the grocer at the
corner, and I asked about it. I remember it well. I asked about this school,
this place I'd be going to in a month or so - her answer, so trite, so simple,
yet so awesomely graceful and unified too - was to tell me how 'school' would
teach me things, I'd learn about things - and then she pointed to the cinders
we were walking over and said, 'In school they'll teach you how to make things,
like this gravel we're walking on, how to do things with it.' A totally,
massively, utilitarian and prosaic answer. A perfect reflection of a
well-trodden world view. Even back then, again, I was taken away in a form of
amazement. 'So, that's it! This world can be transformed!' thought
I.
I realize Thoreau has become a cliche. For me to talk about
Walden here is trite - everyone claims to know it, have read it, taken it to
heart, but - really - few do anything about it or to show it. I use it only
because, as I mentioned earlier, it's one of those books I return to - a very
pleasurable re-entry into another realm, slightly off-center, just askew. After
all, here's a guy who takes pride in having disproved, by taking his own depth
soundings and diagramming, showing, and explaining them, that Walden Pond was
not, as commonly thought by his farmer kinsmen, bottomless! Nor did it extend
all the way to China! It actually bottomed at 102 feet, (page 286) by weird
Henry's own soundings. Be all that as it may, I thrive onward, pushing my own
envelope and exposing to you, as reader, the things that are/were dear and vital
to me. It's all part of my explanation for Time and Being. My own -recall
- Unified Field Theory. A book such as Walden, while not a story nor a tale, is
a surprising and eccentric amalgam of someone's singular approach to the world
around him. That's good enough for me. Of late, again against all prevailing
opinion, I have become enamored by the genre or format referred to as 'memoir'.
A crummy word for it, but we'll deal so. Fiction writers abound, with all their
stories and tales and inclusions and hip facts and places and lingo, occurrences
sometimes beyond believe, factualizations made essentially for teleplay or in
the hopes for later riches and fame as a film - whatever - that's too easy.
Anyone can make situations up, have everything then fit perfectly for plot and
climax and rectification, because it's all their devise. Good for them. Enjoy
the tale, ride the story, feed the vampire or the angel. Memoirs, if I must use
that word, are different. If you think of the timeline of storyline writing (the
mass of writers write lives of quiet desperation, while probably leading them
too), that line projects outward towards an open infinity - 'Hey! It's
fiction! I can do whatever I want; Mary can lose her skirts and do the whole
family, while Angela and Biff can ride the gun-laden armored car into traffic to
blow up Smeadley's old garage in which had been hiding, remember, Edgar Wendel,
the escaped mad surgeon who'd been spreading a deadly bacterial virus throughout
the county...' And thus it goes.
The 'Memoir' however is different. It's, to me, a sidebox just
off to the side of reality's timeline - a setting point, a box for the
investigation, after placement, of all various facts and figures, deeds and
flavors. It's solid and staid, far more substantial and can serve all three
dimensions of Time at once - past, present and future, so to speak, coming
together as one inference, filtered back, cleared and cleaned, or not, through
the writer's mind. All referential items are real, and mean something. You can't
just 'do' it, and you probably can't, as well, make this shit up. It all, after
all, has to fit all of Reality's perfect assorting. There's no bullshit within
it. Better even than Borges-type magical fiction, this takes everything one or
two steps farther along, all while being real and dipping back into the World's
all-resourced memory bank for material and sensibility. Remember how, a long
time ago, that lady said to someone, about me, after reading some stuff I'd
written (Her name was Sue Moskel, at Barnes & Noble) 'He writes just like he
talks! Oh my God, it's really something.' Well, she got it then, and it's still
underway. That's how I rank the 'Memoir' as a value.
Yesterday I was sitting at a bench, just watching out - the
Perth Amboy waterfront was stretched before me, a rare free day not in NYCity.
The waterway was busy with sailboats and pleasure craft. The Raritan Yacht Club
busy with dining and sailing - a pleasure of a day, in an offhand manner and
an offhand place. People sat about, staring out, benches were filled as others
walked by. Way down at the other end, some dismal, deafening noise was underway
- the clamor of drums, booming, and the noise of Salsa music, and crowds of
locals at some Hispanic Festival or other about a half-mile off (thankfully). A
fellow strolled past me, nodded, stopped, and turned back to say hello. A young
guy, about 30, with a sloppy satchel on his shoulder, he turned and said hello.
I replied 'Hi, how are you', and his response went thusly - 'How am I? Well,
how good can someone be who left a house in Florida to be homeless in New
Jersey? How am I? I don't know yet, I'll let you know.' In a minute, my mind was
gone. I wondered what he was really trying to say. People are on the move. To
all I know, there's an entire other underclass of people underway with this sort
of activity - yes, there's an underclass (see 'Perth Amboy') of people in
place with their poverty and problems, that we know - but this apparently
represented a case of the 'poverty on the move' class of people I'd not really
known of, or seen yet. I guess they're out there, an undercurrent, like a slushy
river, rolling along mostly unknown. Where this fellow came from, I do not know.
My follow-up to him was wan and without effect. Just the other day, in pretty
much the same area, while in a car waiting at a light, I saw two indigents
nearby on a bench at streetside (business district, main thoroughfare). My dog
beside me, one of the men shouted from the bench for a quarter or two. I nodded,
and he came over to my open window - gutsy enough, on his part, in light of
the unknown dog beside me. I gave him a dollar bill; the light changed and I
went on. The men at the bench cheered. It was a happy enough policy, it seemed.
Is there a slipstream into which these people get caught? Is there a sort of
'cloud' of diverse poverty and dire situations rolling around everywhere
unheard? I don't know. Thoreau wouldn't know, or have known, either. Unknown to
him, we have layers and layers of fallback and cushion now for these people,
food banks and soup kitchens and all the financial rest of it - in addition,
for others, we have layers and layers of credit, money and financial resources
always available and, mostly, open and available to everyone, if and as they
want it. It's very loose and very open. It seems, perhaps, no one needs
to be in poverty. Not to say it's a choice, it does seem, rather, an oversight
to get caught into that realm - perhaps these are just people not that sharp,
not quite smart enough with whom one or two bad breaks ruined everything. I
don't know. All my life, I've sort of been insulated, one way or the other -
never rich, never even one-tenth close to that. but insulated anyway. I've tried
to make it sure, always, that my currency was intellect and not much
else.
'Blind obedience to a blundering oracle.' That's another
Thoreau phrase. I really like that one. I think if you can read pages 92-101 of
Walden without being affected and without getting any real-world sense from it,
you probably shouldn't be reading this anyway. It seems so odd to me, but it's
somehow true, that I've moved along the macadam and crap streets of a place like
Avenel, New Jersey and Inman Avenue and all this upbringing I've been relating,
and it's brought me to a very farther shore - a shore which really bears no
relation to today. Thoreau's Walden catches it very well. Around me, all the
woods went down, the waters became soiled and poisoned, industry and sham took
over everything, and there I was - still solid and settled, reading ancient
tomes, by comparison. At a certain level, in going through school systems and
all the drudgery that goes with them, you could - because you had to - be
exposed to the likes of Emerson, Thoreau, Lake District poetry, the
Transcendentalists, Wordsworth, all those elegies and Pre-Raphaelite and German
Romanticism things and yet get away with none of it bothering you or affecting
you. It had to be that way - mainly because the last thing anyone wanted was
for that stuff to have any effect. ('Please no; we teach this only because we
have to).' None of this had anything to do with Avenel, except me - walking
the tortured - already - woods, the skunk-cabbage swamps out behind the
park, the whizzing rim of the stupid highway, the strip of cheap and by-the-hour
motels ('Dutch Maid', 'Americana', 'Hideaway' ringed with cinder-block walls and
discrete parking). It was all a holy mess, there was a school and a church
system trying to enforce it, a police force and local government underway
turning the screws, and every other small sort of civic discomfort working hard
to enforce a discipline. No one said a peep. Uncles and aunts would visit,
adults would sit around, talking about work and homes and children, and not let
on to anything at all. How was anyone supposed to understand anything enough to
break away, to forfeit the chains and tortures due them, and coming? Had I a
time-chance, I'd have gladly slinked through the wormhole to sit in that cabin
- for all of my forevers - with the likes of Thoreau, cursing the rest : 'Our
life is like a German Confederacy, made up of petty states, with its boundary
forever fluctuating, so that even a German cannot tell you how it is bounded at
any moment....If railroads are not built [it is thought] how shall we get to
heaven in season? But if we stay at home and mind our business, who will want
railroads? We do not ride on railroad; it rides on us...Why should we live with
such hurry and waste of life? We are determined to be starved before we are
hungry...As for work, we haven't any of consequence.' Well this goes on, and I
promised not to continue. But I dare you to read Walden, and tell me about it as
I've told you.
My mother's quaint utilitarianism, I always thought, summed up
perfectly the idea of what meaning there was to life at that certain level of
personhood she inhabited - like so many others. She was not alone. It's a
straight line (I'll call it the 'Avenel Line') that connects promise to use, and
want to need. It's the Avenel line that sees nothing promising in something that
cannot be made to work or be put to work, to make something else. Nothing - by
itself - has any worth. Nothing stands by itself. It was all too bad - years
and years of it went together making things; the simplest of the things we lived
by in that odd, strange community (yet so characteristic of all others as well)
- Duchamp's 1917 work, 'Urinal' one-upped nothing here. Signed as R. Mutt, it
audaciously portrayed a 'reality' which was presented as something other
entirely. 1917 apparently had never had an effect upon Avenel, or what became
'Avenel'. No one had understood a God-damned thing. To my mother's mind,
anything that existed had to be for something; there was no meditation in her
life (all that church and Sodality crap notwithstanding). There was no
understanding of anything at all. 'Art', I found, was the complete
opposite.
57. I'm still thinking of a hundred other
things - for instance, my mother's 'utilitarianism' as reflected in household
'totalitarianism'. Any connections to be made? There's always a certain form of
circumscribed 'Freedom' inherent in a family structure, by the book anyway.
However, no one really ever owns up to the factual reality of the family
structure really being one of 'control'. We live within it, slightly shifting
modes, when we can or feel to, but essentially always ending up reinforcing and
underscoring the legacy of family-structure. The 'State' promotes it, as does
church and school. It's irrefutable, and propriety tells us we have to go along.
Like they tell the newly-elected, incoming members of Congress, as a way of
saying 'don't make trouble, fit in' - 'to get along, go along.' I, on the other
hand, somehow once again echoing Thoreau, became a 'sayer of no' - the spirit
of Henry David at the core of my being.
I have so many things to recollect that it gets difficult for
order and sequence to set in. There was a period of time, as I've previously
mentioned, when a lot of my time was spent reading almost one thing after the
other. The '77 Dream Songs', by John Berryman were very important to me for a
long time - formative stuff, even to the extent of the format, the paper, the
very book itself. It was a beautiful volume - none of the 'poetry' books of
the era, for a certain few years, had regular size or format. I loved it; they
were slightly wider and slightly shorter that regular books, and one after
another they'd come out that way. Just seeing them on the library shelf,
arrayed, was exciting. Funny thing is, now, I can't really recall the titles I'm
thinking of - stuff like 'Mistress Bradstreet', Lowell's 'For the Union Dead',
Randall Jarrell's 'Women At the Washington Zoo', with that great opening
line,'the saris go by from the embassy' - there were a bunch of them. I
remember one or two whole Summers taken up with this stuff, whenever it was, and
wherever. Oddly enough, some of this was available in the seminary library as
well; not all, but some. The biggest, 'hot' book there was this somewhat smarmy
photo book, entitled, 'The Family of Man.' (Edward Steichen, Carl Sandburg and
Dorothy Norman (1955)). Big for its time,
but - although very worldy and 'international' in its outook, it didn't quite
make the grade for me : to much happy and happy-family stuff. I'd have Summer
breaks and such and imbibe this all when re-visiting home. On January 7, 1972,
John Berryman jumped from a bridge in Minneapolis-St. Paul, while at the
University of Minnesota. He committed suicide, and it struck me hard - of
course, this was '72, I was living in Pennsylvania, trying to undo my old, urban
ways, living in a 'Ruritania', so to speak, of my own making. By March,
Berryman's suicide had undone all that. The fabulous fire was back in my belly,
his death had somehow re-lit the torch within me, of immediacy, creativity,
iconoclastic fury. By March of that year I'd taken everything apart again -
the slow but viciously and nicely ticking watch of self I'd just put back
together - and started anew my grand guess. My answer to all that, I found,
was Cornell University, and the still-smoldering leftover radicalism of the town
in lived in - Ithaca, NY. It's funny to see myself pinning all of this
re-kindling on there jumping-death of a poet, (Berryman), but it's true. Even
funnier, now, is for me to find myself in Princeton walking most of the same
steps and streets he walked. Him, and Saul Bellow, Delmore Schwartz, of course,
and many others. That's all a excitement by itself - walking in place amidst a
grand legacy of Heaven and its writing members, of which there are many more
I've not mentioned.
At that time, Ithaca - a scant '20-and-a-few miles' from
Elmira - came to represent everything else, all over again. 'Cosmopolitan' was
the word used - a place where the world met, instead of local canfabulations
of farmers and rough rubes pinning dead pheasant to their barn-side walls. The
Johnson Art Museum, high up on campus, had just been built and opened - it was
a stunner for 1972 or whenever - kind of a brutalist-modern concrete mass,
harshly angled, tall and stepped, with grand vistas out from the topmost viewing
areas. It had, as well, a nice collection of art, artworks, relics and crafts.
Immediately, I used it as our entry-point, a new focal-point, for breaking into,
once again, my personal world of reference and focus, the rest be damned. Many,
many were the mornings we'd get into the car and make the drive - Ithaca as
destination - past farmlands and winding roads - to park and walk or hike
those grandly angled streets to the heights above, where the university was -
Ithaca itself was like two separate towns, so-to-speak. At the base, the small
though bustling Finger Lakes 'commercial' town hub, and, a mile or so, or less,
up, the heights, which held the vast acreage of land-grant Cornell University,
and, off to the side, the contemporary, newer upstart presence of Ithaca College, a very distant second. In those very post-riotous years when Cornell
itself had been in lockdown, near to a martial-law format of militant and
radical protest, anti-war movements and Black Power and all the rest and with
operatives functioning throughout, enough to have shut down the University for a
while, all that smoke and bluster was still in the air; it could still be
sensed, a strange, ragged and rough, though artsy, sloppiness, something akin to
an old, tired finger still resting somehow on a rusted trigger, reluctant to be
pulled. It became, again, my way of walking through fury. The 'downtown, portion
of town still held within its framework of agrarian, farmer, working-class
business; numerous bars and taverns, assorted restaurants, hardware stores, car
parts, clothing, and, most interestingly, a few old-line Chinese restaurants yet
in place with all that old 1940's decoration befitting 'orientalism' with any
self-consciousness: dark green and red decors, etched glass scenes of Chinese
rivers and lakes, lotus flowers and mountaintop murals. Back then you could
still park at a meter and walk about, checking out this or that - bookstores,
hobby shops, etc. (Now it's all been pedestrian-malled, no traffic, and parking
garages in place). Having thereby lost a lot of its theme and luster, downtown
Ithaca, in and of itself, has grown - at the fringes. Big-box stores and chain
restaurants, all the usual crap taken out, away from downtown center and put
instead on the usual fringe-highway junk-collections most towns now have to deal
with. Yet, there is still a downtown, a small 'club' and bar scene, and an
assortment of the more trendy art/craft and hip-culture stores, tattoo parlors
and eateries. It's all still there, just there differently.
There was, on the outer edge of Ithaca, in the other direction from downtown, some sort of huge old house that had been turned into a Zen Buddhist/rehab hostel of some sort for drug-addicts on the mend. It was rather fanciful, and we used to stop there often; they sold teas and coffees and pies and cakes, bread and pastries, vegetables, etc., as well as pottery and all that other handicraft stuff that people on the mend, 'in healing process', do. I always liked it there, and I often just tried imagining myself living there, solitary, lone and meditatively. It all seemed so loose and free and right. There was also, in Elmira, or just above it (Pine City) some retreat house; Mount Saviour Monastery was its name though I actually forget Christian brotherhood that ran it - that always intrigued me too. It was manned by 'Brothers', who lived there in a very quiet and staid monastic format and the grounds were opened once or twice a week for outsiders, for mass and meditation, solace and counsel. It too was a rather wonderful place, though much different in its 'severity' that this drug-den rehab Zen place, redolent of all Ithaca's hippie and just-completed turbulence. The entire town of Ithaca made a great mix of itself - it was anarchic, loose, sloppy, and dark, brooding and quiet all at once. Not very 'aware' of itself, its portions bled into the Lake Cayuga district of rich homes and fanciful faculty and long-termers' houses and cottages, and the usual, rubble'd assortment of town living - vast old Victorian homes shambling into pieces, cut into student apartments, spilling out over lawns and driveways, group homes, messy apartment buildings. No real scenery here for the bespoiled, except those who appreciated the tumble of steep hills and multi-level town structuring. The geography was wonderful - rocks, glens, cuts, fields, gorges, rock gullies, streams and rivers, the big lake off in the distance, the wooded areas abutting the small and crowded messiness of the high-level, college-heights academic streets with its bookstores, sub shops, coffee stops and used clothing and bicycle stores. By today's standards, not much, but back then quite the thing in the middle of nowhere. Entryway into Cornell itself was pretty much understated. Old piles of rock, made into a gateway commons, a bridge over one of the varied gorges, and you were there - an old land-grant college (look it up), it spread itself haphazardly, in a lordly fashion, over many acres, with no concern given to space at all - there was tons of space to be had. Old stone buildings, mansions and grand homes, places turned into school use, and new construction too - all abounded. A true 'Ezra Cornell' paradise. One of my favorite stories was Thorstein Veblen, whose books I devoured (look him up too), stumbling onto campus back when and assumedly walking into the deans office and announcing 'I am Thorstein Veblen' and seeking entry into Cornell university's faculty.He's kind of an interesting fellow in his own way - certainly an outsider, with a lot to say - a number of very opaque but cool books, 'conspicuous consumption' and all that. Very Thoreau like, which is, I'd suppose, part of the appeal it made to me - anyway, I envisioned him often walking these hills and gullies, traipsing along these campus street, between things, hiding homes and places while rehearsing thoughts and sentences - all the cold, brash Wintry stuff I always liked. he was my kind of guy - that stern, obtuse, somewhat starchy demeanor of a very northern fellow. He seemed to fit in nicely in this inner portrayal of Cornell that I kept. made it vital for me. I also always get a kick - and still do - from all those zoned-out, ex-hippie junkies in places like that Zen rehab center. They're really a dime a dozen - were then and are now. Places like Easton, Pennsylvania, around the town-square monument center, you can still find that sort of zonked person - meandering about, intent on a calmness, except that it comes from the void of negativity instead of just a void of happy blank. There's a difference. It's always nice to come to terms with yourself, or think you are anyway, and to see other people doing it; yet, at the same time, there's a sort of prevalent, negative Evil that lurks in this dark absence of, really, anything else. You can 'void' yourself all you want, but you have to re-fill it all with something, and I'd hope that something was something good. But it's often not - it's a more vapid restlessness that just gets one up and about, walking the streets, sucking on cigarettes and coffee, lurking to watch and pace and pester, putting a hand out for money, staying in place while pretending you're really moving when you're going nowhere at all. It's a sad and sorry spectacle, even at curbside, and it can be seen all over - even in the more necessary voids of people shopping, lunging through mall parking lots to waste time, looking at goods and services, cars, blouses, hats and templates. It's like shopping for religion - like Aleck once said (about my family) - all that energy, and nothing happening from it.
Farm communities were firm and simple, at least the New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey kind were. Up until the early 1970's anyway, they'd remained rock-solid, strong - communities with unlocked, simple churches, connections between all the dots : grange halls, community service centers, an extra town garage and shed here and there, tractor trails, horses and barns scattered about, Holstein cows always chewing, split-rail fences, not too much electricity, car-garages, scrap yards, oily old junk yards with cars scattered here and there amidst lanes and walkways littered with tow trucks and oil and gas tanks, painted barn-sides with odd ads for tobacco or hair cleansers or tooth-powders - nothing ever very serious or committal. Certainly no emergency medical center ads, hospitals and doctors, telephones and gyms. All that stuff was way in the future, back then. I walked about in a delirium of happy awareness of things - the roadways had grass and shrubs growing right up their edges, often there were deep and dangerous gullies and ditches parallel to the road; woe to anyone whose car ran off it. Nowadays, if you see my contrast, they spray everything dead, in Summer, so it doesn't grow and remains as Winter - which, of course, when it's here, everyone wants as Summer. Go figure. They trim the curbings and make shoulders and edges to everything. No overhanging trees allowed. It's all different and rude. I'd much prefer the old, thanks. In tandem with this, the people of these communities, in their turns, were like that too - Ithaca, Elmira, Columbia Crossroads, Troy and Canton, Springfield and Towanda - any of those place in Pennsylvania and neighboring New York. They mostly could not have cared less for most anything not personal and direct; soil, water, mud, work, hauling, chores and the like, that's what made their life and put it all together. In a way, you have to think, even Cornell University got away with something - having somehow found a way to have snuck out of its 'agrarian' college roots, with its focus on land and soil, and turned instead to an intellectual hotbed of blind pursuit, a crazy steam of Nabakovian proportions. (Yes, he was there. Carl Sagan too).
There was, on the outer edge of Ithaca, in the other direction from downtown, some sort of huge old house that had been turned into a Zen Buddhist/rehab hostel of some sort for drug-addicts on the mend. It was rather fanciful, and we used to stop there often; they sold teas and coffees and pies and cakes, bread and pastries, vegetables, etc., as well as pottery and all that other handicraft stuff that people on the mend, 'in healing process', do. I always liked it there, and I often just tried imagining myself living there, solitary, lone and meditatively. It all seemed so loose and free and right. There was also, in Elmira, or just above it (Pine City) some retreat house; Mount Saviour Monastery was its name though I actually forget Christian brotherhood that ran it - that always intrigued me too. It was manned by 'Brothers', who lived there in a very quiet and staid monastic format and the grounds were opened once or twice a week for outsiders, for mass and meditation, solace and counsel. It too was a rather wonderful place, though much different in its 'severity' that this drug-den rehab Zen place, redolent of all Ithaca's hippie and just-completed turbulence. The entire town of Ithaca made a great mix of itself - it was anarchic, loose, sloppy, and dark, brooding and quiet all at once. Not very 'aware' of itself, its portions bled into the Lake Cayuga district of rich homes and fanciful faculty and long-termers' houses and cottages, and the usual, rubble'd assortment of town living - vast old Victorian homes shambling into pieces, cut into student apartments, spilling out over lawns and driveways, group homes, messy apartment buildings. No real scenery here for the bespoiled, except those who appreciated the tumble of steep hills and multi-level town structuring. The geography was wonderful - rocks, glens, cuts, fields, gorges, rock gullies, streams and rivers, the big lake off in the distance, the wooded areas abutting the small and crowded messiness of the high-level, college-heights academic streets with its bookstores, sub shops, coffee stops and used clothing and bicycle stores. By today's standards, not much, but back then quite the thing in the middle of nowhere. Entryway into Cornell itself was pretty much understated. Old piles of rock, made into a gateway commons, a bridge over one of the varied gorges, and you were there - an old land-grant college (look it up), it spread itself haphazardly, in a lordly fashion, over many acres, with no concern given to space at all - there was tons of space to be had. Old stone buildings, mansions and grand homes, places turned into school use, and new construction too - all abounded. A true 'Ezra Cornell' paradise. One of my favorite stories was Thorstein Veblen, whose books I devoured (look him up too), stumbling onto campus back when and assumedly walking into the deans office and announcing 'I am Thorstein Veblen' and seeking entry into Cornell university's faculty.He's kind of an interesting fellow in his own way - certainly an outsider, with a lot to say - a number of very opaque but cool books, 'conspicuous consumption' and all that. Very Thoreau like, which is, I'd suppose, part of the appeal it made to me - anyway, I envisioned him often walking these hills and gullies, traipsing along these campus street, between things, hiding homes and places while rehearsing thoughts and sentences - all the cold, brash Wintry stuff I always liked. he was my kind of guy - that stern, obtuse, somewhat starchy demeanor of a very northern fellow. He seemed to fit in nicely in this inner portrayal of Cornell that I kept. made it vital for me. I also always get a kick - and still do - from all those zoned-out, ex-hippie junkies in places like that Zen rehab center. They're really a dime a dozen - were then and are now. Places like Easton, Pennsylvania, around the town-square monument center, you can still find that sort of zonked person - meandering about, intent on a calmness, except that it comes from the void of negativity instead of just a void of happy blank. There's a difference. It's always nice to come to terms with yourself, or think you are anyway, and to see other people doing it; yet, at the same time, there's a sort of prevalent, negative Evil that lurks in this dark absence of, really, anything else. You can 'void' yourself all you want, but you have to re-fill it all with something, and I'd hope that something was something good. But it's often not - it's a more vapid restlessness that just gets one up and about, walking the streets, sucking on cigarettes and coffee, lurking to watch and pace and pester, putting a hand out for money, staying in place while pretending you're really moving when you're going nowhere at all. It's a sad and sorry spectacle, even at curbside, and it can be seen all over - even in the more necessary voids of people shopping, lunging through mall parking lots to waste time, looking at goods and services, cars, blouses, hats and templates. It's like shopping for religion - like Aleck once said (about my family) - all that energy, and nothing happening from it.
Farm communities were firm and simple, at least the New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey kind were. Up until the early 1970's anyway, they'd remained rock-solid, strong - communities with unlocked, simple churches, connections between all the dots : grange halls, community service centers, an extra town garage and shed here and there, tractor trails, horses and barns scattered about, Holstein cows always chewing, split-rail fences, not too much electricity, car-garages, scrap yards, oily old junk yards with cars scattered here and there amidst lanes and walkways littered with tow trucks and oil and gas tanks, painted barn-sides with odd ads for tobacco or hair cleansers or tooth-powders - nothing ever very serious or committal. Certainly no emergency medical center ads, hospitals and doctors, telephones and gyms. All that stuff was way in the future, back then. I walked about in a delirium of happy awareness of things - the roadways had grass and shrubs growing right up their edges, often there were deep and dangerous gullies and ditches parallel to the road; woe to anyone whose car ran off it. Nowadays, if you see my contrast, they spray everything dead, in Summer, so it doesn't grow and remains as Winter - which, of course, when it's here, everyone wants as Summer. Go figure. They trim the curbings and make shoulders and edges to everything. No overhanging trees allowed. It's all different and rude. I'd much prefer the old, thanks. In tandem with this, the people of these communities, in their turns, were like that too - Ithaca, Elmira, Columbia Crossroads, Troy and Canton, Springfield and Towanda - any of those place in Pennsylvania and neighboring New York. They mostly could not have cared less for most anything not personal and direct; soil, water, mud, work, hauling, chores and the like, that's what made their life and put it all together. In a way, you have to think, even Cornell University got away with something - having somehow found a way to have snuck out of its 'agrarian' college roots, with its focus on land and soil, and turned instead to an intellectual hotbed of blind pursuit, a crazy steam of Nabakovian proportions. (Yes, he was there. Carl Sagan too).
I remember one year, I guess it was 1972, maybe '73 - the
entire upper, college part of Ithaca was somehow caught up in some brouhaha over
a basketball finals playoff, or something, involving the New York Knicks. And,
actually, I think they finally won. I'd never been exposed
to the presence of basketball, professional basketball, and fans and playoffs
and things, and I was perplexed and taken aback - not understanding why the
university people were all caught up in this. Years later now, I realize that
the months of March and April and even beyond, are yearly caught up in March
Madness, playoffs, etc. of the professional basketball world (I still, however,
know nor care anything about it), but that would, looking back, explain what
that was all about back then. I thought it was cheesy - after all the
high-toned rhetoric and militant actions and such that had torn the citadel of
Cornell, and the university town, apart just two years back, this seemed like an
overly-composed, cheap and tacky media sell-out. I should have known and not
been so naive - there's always been - and still is - this second tier of
people and their emotive sports blow-outs, who stay involved in this stuff, no
matter what else. They eventually surface, as the fester of the bed times goes
away. So, as the slow easing of the radical politics of those days started
setting in, the usual factotums of stupidity and entertainment began, slowly,
seeping their own ways back in. What we were left with was the horrid 1970's as
they ensued. The years of all that muck were just beginning - radical politics and
any 'good sense' which could have come from it, were being tucked away and
(already) forgotten. It was March Madness all right, but the only madness I saw
was in the return of the old ways - so soon, so efficiently, and, even, so
defiantly. What was the use of all that bluster if everything soon went back to
normal? Of course, redefining normal was the key - but the authorities knew
very well how to do that, and still do. The key essentially lies with the old
'Bread and Circus' routine of the ancient Romans - keep the stupid rabble
entertained. By doing so, they stay in place, remain sated and happy enough and
'we', (the 'Authorities' speaking), get to continue to run with our
mechanizations. The end result, ever, of all this is to make money, turn a
profit - but that's their own short-sighted stupidity at work. They will all
soon enough be dead, and have nothing.
Ithaca let me think a little. Those crazy rehab Zen Buddhists were selling pies and honey, and I was buying, I guess - more so than anything so as to be able to watch their ways, understand their curtains and fabrics. It was soft and gentle, or was trying to be, in the light of all else that had occurred that was harsh and hard. They sought refuge from the failures that had boxed them in - like so many millions of others, whether religion, creed, philosophy or personal belief, the mind likes to fall back onto something and not just free-float. These people had, for their own time being, found their new niche and I now and then visited it. Soft. Telling. I wondered about their women and girls, the ones I'd see anyway - where had they come from, what had they done? Were they blazing sexual animals, still, underneath their new veneer - ripped and shredded as it may once have been, did their personality and world-view still reside somewhere within the psychological recesses of their days and pasts? I still wonder now - in think of these people, what may have come of them, what they may have been attempting.
In those years, I went through about 5 cars - 1971 through 1976, approximately. I was driving to and from most everywhere, and the distances weren't always close, and NYC was 250 miles away. Gasoline, as I recall, was undergoing a crisis in trying to price itself up from 60 cents or so a gallon when it began (from my remembered days of 19.9 a gallon) towards the threshold price of one dollar. I can still recall the grumpy old men, bewailing the situation at gasoline stations, standing about, carping over things like 'wait until they get it to a dollar a gallon, then they'll be happy, then there will be all of a sudden plenty of gas.' Always disgruntled and maddened by something, always blaming and seeking a point or figure to blame for their woes. Ithaca, Elmira, wherever, all that famed gasoline had to be brought in, transported from 'somewhere', efficiently enough, and then priced. It seemed the entire world was against the ease we'd been used to. Besides that, every other chemist and scientist and article one read was declaring that, no matter what, there'd be no gas left at all by the late 1980's. The gasoline era was over, we were doomed, we had to change our ways, we had to convert. Well, I don't know exactly what happened, but the 'conditioning', apparently worked. We're still here, we're still pumping that plenty of fossil fuel gasoline, there's more than enough of it, and it's four dollars a gallon. Go figure. Farmers took it on the chin - each little farm had a white, bulk-gas tank on their property, their own little personal gas station, for the use of tractors and spreaders and all the machinery - and cars and trucks - they used. Those tanks held a hundred or more gallons, everyone had them, and it began to represent a real investment. Farm fuels were always needed. Out in the dirt-road hinterlands, heating fuel and gasoline could really burn someone if it wasn't there - that was a farm kind of magic. All of a sudden, padlocks and chains began showing up on these farmyard gas tanks - it had all just become too dear, and somehow too it was disappearing. No one wanted their gasoline stolen.
I had a 1967 Ford Cortina (English Ford), a 1962 Wolfsburg-built Volkswagen (the kind with the little badge on the front, of 1962's, showing that unique origin, the Wolfsburg factory), a 1949 Willys, a 1964 Ford 150 pick-up truck (the best), a Volkswagen Squareback, a Simca, a Fiat 124, and even, at one point a 1962 Plymouth V-8 Fury, crazy, massive Virgil Exner designed car. Over time, each of these broke down on me, as I simply and, actually, pretty cheaply, out there, replaced one after the other, as needed. I think the Squareback, at $800, was the most expensive. At my Pennsylvania farmhouse I had plenty of space, plenty of yard-room, for vehicles. I remember I had Jim Watkins (mentioned earlier) and some of the local boys over a few nights in a row, Winter nights, while we tore apart the engine, and replaced the flywheel, of the Ford pickup to make it primo and a good runner. It was all done for free, a little food, beer and coffee needed, and not much else; just regular, down-home mechanical repairs. All these country-boy gearheads were a little crazy, and they'd do anything for laughs. I remember, this particular occasion, Jim Watkins taking a big piece of yellowed foam rubber - packing or something that had come with the flywheel from the junkyard, in the box - and folding it up in some way to resemble, as he said, a vagina, and then just prancing about with it, for like a half hour, a big, weirdly-fashioned, yellow-foam talking vagina. It was a real riot.
Ithaca let me think a little. Those crazy rehab Zen Buddhists were selling pies and honey, and I was buying, I guess - more so than anything so as to be able to watch their ways, understand their curtains and fabrics. It was soft and gentle, or was trying to be, in the light of all else that had occurred that was harsh and hard. They sought refuge from the failures that had boxed them in - like so many millions of others, whether religion, creed, philosophy or personal belief, the mind likes to fall back onto something and not just free-float. These people had, for their own time being, found their new niche and I now and then visited it. Soft. Telling. I wondered about their women and girls, the ones I'd see anyway - where had they come from, what had they done? Were they blazing sexual animals, still, underneath their new veneer - ripped and shredded as it may once have been, did their personality and world-view still reside somewhere within the psychological recesses of their days and pasts? I still wonder now - in think of these people, what may have come of them, what they may have been attempting.
In those years, I went through about 5 cars - 1971 through 1976, approximately. I was driving to and from most everywhere, and the distances weren't always close, and NYC was 250 miles away. Gasoline, as I recall, was undergoing a crisis in trying to price itself up from 60 cents or so a gallon when it began (from my remembered days of 19.9 a gallon) towards the threshold price of one dollar. I can still recall the grumpy old men, bewailing the situation at gasoline stations, standing about, carping over things like 'wait until they get it to a dollar a gallon, then they'll be happy, then there will be all of a sudden plenty of gas.' Always disgruntled and maddened by something, always blaming and seeking a point or figure to blame for their woes. Ithaca, Elmira, wherever, all that famed gasoline had to be brought in, transported from 'somewhere', efficiently enough, and then priced. It seemed the entire world was against the ease we'd been used to. Besides that, every other chemist and scientist and article one read was declaring that, no matter what, there'd be no gas left at all by the late 1980's. The gasoline era was over, we were doomed, we had to change our ways, we had to convert. Well, I don't know exactly what happened, but the 'conditioning', apparently worked. We're still here, we're still pumping that plenty of fossil fuel gasoline, there's more than enough of it, and it's four dollars a gallon. Go figure. Farmers took it on the chin - each little farm had a white, bulk-gas tank on their property, their own little personal gas station, for the use of tractors and spreaders and all the machinery - and cars and trucks - they used. Those tanks held a hundred or more gallons, everyone had them, and it began to represent a real investment. Farm fuels were always needed. Out in the dirt-road hinterlands, heating fuel and gasoline could really burn someone if it wasn't there - that was a farm kind of magic. All of a sudden, padlocks and chains began showing up on these farmyard gas tanks - it had all just become too dear, and somehow too it was disappearing. No one wanted their gasoline stolen.
I had a 1967 Ford Cortina (English Ford), a 1962 Wolfsburg-built Volkswagen (the kind with the little badge on the front, of 1962's, showing that unique origin, the Wolfsburg factory), a 1949 Willys, a 1964 Ford 150 pick-up truck (the best), a Volkswagen Squareback, a Simca, a Fiat 124, and even, at one point a 1962 Plymouth V-8 Fury, crazy, massive Virgil Exner designed car. Over time, each of these broke down on me, as I simply and, actually, pretty cheaply, out there, replaced one after the other, as needed. I think the Squareback, at $800, was the most expensive. At my Pennsylvania farmhouse I had plenty of space, plenty of yard-room, for vehicles. I remember I had Jim Watkins (mentioned earlier) and some of the local boys over a few nights in a row, Winter nights, while we tore apart the engine, and replaced the flywheel, of the Ford pickup to make it primo and a good runner. It was all done for free, a little food, beer and coffee needed, and not much else; just regular, down-home mechanical repairs. All these country-boy gearheads were a little crazy, and they'd do anything for laughs. I remember, this particular occasion, Jim Watkins taking a big piece of yellowed foam rubber - packing or something that had come with the flywheel from the junkyard, in the box - and folding it up in some way to resemble, as he said, a vagina, and then just prancing about with it, for like a half hour, a big, weirdly-fashioned, yellow-foam talking vagina. It was a real riot.
I think anyway, at heart, a lot of this stuff, a lot of
absolutely everything, has to do with sex. At least for a man; man-sex. Today,
by contrast, everything's been feminized, males are afraid of admitting to it or
crossing females, saying offensive things, casting aspersions, etc. It was way
different then - a guy was a guy, as hard, harsh and evil as he wished. For
good or bad, that's it went. It's funny now, in light of all that, how much the
retro-geeks and the entertainment types - you know the ones - go out of
their way to slavishly portray the 'Mad Men' days and the rest - all that
slavish leering and sexism, so they can make their shekels off of it, traipse
around with their lucre while sneaking back in all of what's been - in the
'modern' day, now, of correctness - effectively forbidden. Crafty devils,
getting such a job done, leering all the way to the bank. Somehow they can get
away with it and people just laugh and take the entertainment seriously. I had a
friend, Gary Russo, now in Florida, who always told the story of his father
(Mayor of Union, NJ, State Senator, Attorney-At-Law) Anthony Russo, driving him
around, all over Union, pointing out houses and big homes, to his son, Gary,
and - as Gary told it - telling him 'see that, Gary, see that home, that
extension, the porch, pool garden (whatever it was in each case he was pointing
out), Gary that's all for the box, everything you see here, all these houses and
the rest, all for the box.' As Gary Russo explained it, what his father was
saying was that men are in thrall to the wishes and desires of their wives, in
order to have sex. A man himself, the story went on, wouldn't do any of this
stuff, have any of these things, were it not for the wife holding him hostage
for the box. Blunt, perhaps, maybe stupid and offensive, but that's a true
story. Anyway, all these guys were crazy - Jim Watkins, traipsing around with
a big, plastic pussy and giving it words and sounds, he wasn't any loonier than
any of them - Bob Saterlee, Lloyd Perry, Mike Meehan, Denny Welch - any of
them who hung around my garage and barn tinkering and acting nuts. That was
'country', I guess.
It's way too easy to put today's gloss over yesterday's things
and get all self-righteous about it all. Like the US Government dispensing
cigarettes by the billions to its soldiers, it certainly now looks ridiculous
and against the standing grain of the day, but back in the recent decades, all
through the wars, etc., it was standard procedure. It was almost as if they'd
said 'force-feed 'em smokes.' It's how people were kept going - yes, a true
know-nothing and asshole stance, but stuff like that still goes on, you just
don't hear about it until whatever it is is turned about, later, as being wrong.
Evil and bad things lurk, they're everywhere; we just don't always know it until
whatever injustice it is becomes as blatant as a torn-off nose.
58. I've always loved geography. Not the
school-subject, textbook stuff - I mean instead the physical, artist-view
geography of the earth, the land we walk upon, the place we are. I guess it all
started a long time ago, and then - as I recall - it was all accelerated and
made more direct and detailed for me as I got art training, or some of it
anyway. Somehow it led me to realize the fullness of the geography of the world.
Easy to overlook, so easy to not think about. I look at Matthew Brady photos,
and others of those long-view Civil War shots. I look at old landscape photos
and artists' renderings, in their paintings, of the endless landscape and the
world around us. And then, taking all that in - seeing the different eye
needed to portray what I'm speaking of - I go out and walk on the open land
- anyplace really. Even the most captive spots are always interesting. Have you
ever noticed how land is never flat; even when they say it's flat; and, it's not
really. Only from that one, localized, perspective perhaps, of 'flat'. There's
always something happening - a flat plain, perhaps, right out to the front of
you, diminishing, but it's tilted at an angle, that flat plane, angled up a bit,
say, to the left. And then, over across from it, a slow, undulating land-ripple
begins, one that slowly detours the left side upward a bit, gradually, and the
right side, at the same time, is doing its own planar movement, perhaps slowly
curved, perhaps flat, that, too. A kiss and a dimple for an old stream bed, a
dry rivulet running, an indentation for something no longer there. The
two-dimensional shift of the land, under your feet, rolling off into, 1000 feet
away, another slide and swoop and dip and twist - it's a relative relativity
at work - flat, hilly, curved, OK, you call it, but relative to what? To what
speed of change? How long has the earth-world twisted and heaved to make these
undulations? How can the artist-eye within see them and understand and reckon?
On surface, there's really always something happening. We can take it all in,
absorb the varied font of what's before us, and enjoy and understand - and
appreciate it - for what it is. But that takes awareness and a certain bit of
training. A training of the mind and the eye to see, to force oneself to
understand the seeing of what you are seeing. The 'seeingness' of what's around
you - space, color, form, movement, slide, twist, bend, soft, hard. It's all
there, together, a huge myriad of moments, and then nothing is the same, ever
again. Change is constant - geologically constant, and steady. (Be quiet when
you're making all that noise).
I guess you could say I grew up in geography; my mind, when
young, was somehow still nestled in the idea that I was living in the concept
of, the presence of as well, land and trees and open space. My own mind hadn't
quite yet closed in around the idea of all the cutting and leveling that had
gone into the building of the homes I was in, the development which took me from
that (older, cooler, neater, wiser) Bayonne waterfont. I guess I was not fated
for that, not at four-and-a-half years old anyway. I was, by contrast in the
remnants of a place that was, a place becoming, someplace else - an in-between
to which I had to adjust. It wasn't easy, yet no part of it was really foreign.
I fit right in and enjoyed discovering - sodden murky places, old fetid
swamps, skunk cabbage in the Spring, growing profusely alongside damp swamps and
bodies of collected water. My most simple bicycle travel would take me to and
from all these places. Fresh out on Saturday mornings, in the Spring, I'd often
be, after April 1st, out fishing on the Rahway River with a friend, Harold Witt,
whose aunt lived there somewhere, right along the river - we'd get out, up and
early, 6 am, to walk the three or four miles along the backstreets to the river
and then to the fishing spot (never to catch anything, just to do), and about 11
am, over to the aunt's house, where, usually, sandwiches would be waiting. And
then the walk back. It was pretty far out, 1958 or so, just walking along with a
fishing pole with no real intention of catching any freshly-stocked trout, but
enjoying nonetheless the effort. We'd enter Rahway through the back, along the
junkyards and old river bungalows and shanties of the poor black people who
lived, or managed livingc xf, along there. There were always broken down cars,
half-fixed repairs, cars undergoing renovation and fixing-up. Old Chevrolets,
Buicks, Hudsons, Nash's, Pontiacs and Cadillacs - the entire old line American
panoply of 1950's cars. A certain weird respect for things; those black guys,
hunched over open-hooded engines, tinkering and tuning, wrenches and wires and
steel. Rubber tires and iron wheels, things all about. They were proudly
shameless, and that's what made it so nice. Working on their heaps under the
presentiment of getting along - quiet and determined, without a whimper. We'd
walk along, through and past them - bleary-eyed older men, drooping red eyes,
dangling cigarettes, here and there a beer can. Entering another life, easily
and with grace. The old ghosts and spirits of another Avenel, a place not quite
yet put together, and then not quite yet ruined either. Just abounding, all
happening, everything in flux. Rahway was a place, Woodbridge was a place. Both,
long by then, fixed and settled. Avenel was just the muck in between the two,
just starting to be someplace where the word 'place' could fit.
That entire portion of Rahway is gone now, replaced as it was
by the Government. The river has been channeled and straightened some (it seems
like everyone always loves the Army Core of Engineers, as they're called), a new
bridge put in place, the nearby highway reconfigured, a huge trash-incinerator,
again governmentally sponsored and funded, erected, and a few 'senior' housing
towers and projects. All typical - as I previously stated, the intrusion of
'Government' takes place most aggressively in places where the work and strength
of the spiritual past, the energetic past, still lingers. They have to stamp
that at, cover it over, so that any retrogressive influences do not recur. (An
aside here: OK, I know you're all laughing at my foolishness, but I know it's
true. the essence of 'Government' - whatever Evil that is - knows and
recognizes what I'm referring to. It cannot, and does not, allow the
revolutionary past, nor any of its fervor, to remain. Look around you for
yourselves, wherever you live, and see what things and which locations
'Government' has covered over). On the one hand, this old part of riverside
Rahway is claimed and praised for the places along the way where Washington
marched, passed, did this or that, small skirmishes took place, continental and
revolutionary era soldiers and encampments, old colonial trading posts and way
stations, etc. The area is rich with all this, but, alas, like this old section
here, long ago gone. I am reminded of an old Jewish joke - it went something
like 'We used to say there were two kinds of German Jews: the pessimists who
went to Palestine, and the optimists who went to Auschwitz.' Those old blacks
who lived in the shanty-town section along the river, with all that easy, slow
charm of the past, the big trees and drooping willows, shedding into the water,
the slow river running by, they knew both where they were and to where they'd
gone - and that they were doomed. Their location was soon to have an ending. I
could tell by their faces; this was just, simply, an over-extended other world.
These were old-line blacks, southern style, slave lineages. The sort of folk
whose forebears had come north a generation or more back, after emancipation,
after the Civil War, escaping the varied clauses of servitude and subsistence
once given them. They were free, yet they wanted to live this way, to be, in
this manner. Not Chicago's or the North's mighty, industrial ghettos - but
rather here, on the gentle banks of a small river. Rahway had industry, enough
work for mercantile interests to prosper; small jobs, paychecks, getting by
well. There was a big coat factory, a large pharmaceutical company (Merck), a
hospital and, most importantly too, a prison. Each of these places needed simple
industrial workers, low-paying jobs for maintenance people, food-service,
custodial, etc. It was all there and they took advantage of it - genially
living their quiet lives. There was not yet then the swagger, the panache and
attitude, the militant resistance of so many of the later 1960's and on, blacks.
It was all simpler, placid and kept well within its own smaller confines. These
were different folk, the kind not found ten years later. I'm not defending any
of this - slavery, servitude, passivity, etc. - but these were original
American-back-story black people, truer to their hearts, back then, than anyone
is today. The men would look up, from their hunched over postures peering down
into an engine, or while sitting on a few chairs, together, on a porch, and say
'How you boys doin' today? How's the fishin'? What'dya' get?'. Fairly precisely
they were always beneficial and cordial. I'm talkin' Mark Twain Nigger Jim
cordial. It was all very pleasant. I always loved the passage through there,
whether on these early fishing day returns or just by myself meandering along.
Right nearby there, as well, was a massive Masonic Lodge, whatever black temple
subset of Mason's there was. It was housed in a massive old mansion,
mansard-roofed, green and white painted clapboard, and about 6 or 7 acres -
groves, picnic grounds, barbecue and fire pits, a lean-to and shelter.
Occasionally there'd be massive parties here, two hundred or more black people
having some organized cook-out, picnic, fest. They truly enjoyed their time, and
the old ways of the simple, local, New Jersey riverside worked fine for them.
It's all gone now, as are they. The temple was taken down in the 1990's; nothing
remains. The river - which, yes, did occasionally flood - was tamed, cleared
and cleaned. Most everyone of the shanties and shacks and small homes which once
hugged the well-foliage'd riversides are gone. In its place, as I began listing
before, now are a 1960's twelve or fourteen story housing tower (the families
and offspring, many, of these same folk), a 1980's huge police complex, a 1960's
post office building, a 1980's seniors complex (one of three), a (1990')
library, municipal truck yard, municipal tennis courts (in a big canvas
bubble-shelter), and more.
I don't know about much else; Rahway was sort of an old-line
town, one once with a lot more importance than was left in the late 1950's. By
then the river had been despoiled, if not ignored - it was at the back stairs
of everyone's place in the crumbling business district, ignored and forgotten.
Facing the river, here, in the section I was speaking of, was the old
A.M.E.Order Masonic Temple - Masons didn't usually allow black people, back
then, and the black lodges had to be separate, named A. M. E. or Lafayette
Lodges, or something. As I also said, it was a huge old-day's mansion, big and
squat and square, set way back from the street, on a bluff or hill, with all its
own lands stretching behind it. Talk about geography - this was a perfect
example. The land swelled, it only seemed flat. It had little ripples and
uplifts, planes running in each direction depending on where you stood on this
'flat' land, it was going up around you or down from you, while on either side
it was doing something other - a typical, huge, riotous and brash yard. Inside
the mansion (I was inside in the mid-90's, knowing someone in the Lodge and
being brought in to see things and mingle, once) were big, dark rooms, a fairly
ordinary, but quite large, kitchen area mostly set up - not as I expected it,
set up for big cooking and crowdfests - but for very homey looking, quite
ordinary kitchen fare. Old, but serviceable - a big stove, a rather simple,
old kitchen table, drawers and implements, pots and pans, a side-board type
thing for cutting and placing, a cabinet for china and dishes, etc. The other
rooms, rather grand and large were, nonetheless, shoddy and run down - big old
easy chairs, couches, lots of dark reds and browns, old deep wallpapers, not too
much light anywhere. It seemed like a deep, dark, almost sorry place; a dour,
stolid sitting room, a place to wait, a haven for the dim and dark - color,
tones, and activities. Not much within its walls but serious comeuppances, or
slow, steady dreariness. That's a far as I got - no upstairs for me, not
really much peeking around. And then it was gone. One day they just started
tearing it down, clearing the lot - nothing took very long, a week, maybe. Now
it's a seniors' apartment - healthcare complex, all together : get old, live
there, get sick and be treated there as well. Never have to leave
home.
I had two friends, over the years, who lived in those two
housing towers. Many of them were old-line black Rahway families, whose parents
or grandparents once peopled the area now gone - their consolation prize, sort
of, was subsidized, 'poor people' housing in these towers. No one was 'poor' by
any means, just not rich. Jermaine Robinson was one of the names, - he was a
nice, interested-in-things young kid. He later, back when (about 2002), joined
the Marines to, as he put it on a return visit, 'kill Saddam'. They'd trained
him well, apparently - he spoke those words quite glibly and without any real
seeming purpose or rancor; just what he'd been trained. Another two people I
knew, living there as husband and wife, were not connected to the 'past' there
in any way. She was from Canada (Carole Anne Koert) and her husband (Lee
Smith), also an ex-Marine, was from South Carolina. He worked at Seton Hall
University as a computer tech therein. They later moved out, to East Orange, by
the campus, and had two children I guess they're still there. Neither Jermaine,
nor them, had seemingly any connection or knowledge of the past there; they
seemed to just accept the present. Over time anyway, fewer and fewer people knew
anything of it at all. It's true, though, it was all there, and I was
witness.
Rahway Prison, on Rahway Avenue, was also there; approachable
from the back area, with the railroad tracks, which these properties abutted.
Using the streets or Route One, they did not. But, geographically, they were all
of the same swell of local, sweeping Rahway land - up from the river, all of
it, in ways we can no longer see or fathom. Two hundred and fifty years ago,
however, these places (without the car-ways, highways and by-ways that have now
so altered and churned up our worlds) were of actual connections to the river,
the pathways and cut-ways bisecting the woods and fields up and from the
riverways. People actually lived with the rivers back then, they were useful
and by them things got done.You have to, mentally, peel away all of today in
order to see the world as it was then - in the way I pictured 'geography' -
all that turning and rising of land, that slow, lawnside heave of ground and
woods and trees. Take away the harsh overlay of today's cuts and roads and
developed areas, and it's all still under there, like a land-ghost, of time, set
in place. If we can only see it. The prison was at first a boys' reformatory -
in the 1860's and on up. Part of the penal-reform movement, it bore the harsh
tales of punishment and enforced isolation and thought and behavior modification
that later brought it into the adult, male, high-security, governmental prison
system. Again, no doubt. It's now a maximum security, New Jersey State Prison.
if you were ever to see it, it's visually quite bizarre - at one time, for
many years, it bore the trophy-designation as having the 'largest' dome in the
eastern United States. I'm sure it's been supplanted now, but back then, yes, it
was a horrific-looking, Victorian-themed correctional institution; essentially a
huge, dark green dome (central receiving area and lobby) flanked with two wings
of double-tiered cells and guardposts, infirmaries, work areas, small gyms, and
a sitting room, shower-area, etc. All was kept quite 'Dickensian', shall I say.
My father, when in the local First-Aid Squad, often made calls there for
'emergencies' - illnesses, sick inmates needing hospital transport,
emergencies from falls, fights, knifings and even - once or twice - suicides
or attempted suicides. Back then, also, remember, it was a prison farm - an
actual, working agricultural plant, of which the inmates partook and worked at
and, there were, as well, the usual work injuries, cut fingers and arms, broken
this or that, that farm work incurs. Equally hard to imagine, but do so, is the
realization of the greater opportunities for harm and injury outdoors, in a
work-field atmosphere, for the resultant prison grudges and paybacks to 'take
place' as accidents. It's a reality, and back then it was real. To me, as a kid,
Rahway Prison just all seemed like a meaner, darker version of school. It just
seemed wrong - another place where people were kept, against their will. As
simplistic, child's-eye view, but whatever. The prison is still there today,
minus all of its farmland and, thus, any of its glory; greatly diminished now,
it houses hardened, maximum-correctional prisoners and, in an adjacent building,
sex offenders - with also a sexual-correction treatment and rehab center, for
the same people. That entire place, and the prison's perimeter as well, is now
ringed off with rolls and rolls of bitter-bright, almost chromium-steel, razor
wire rolls and coils atop old brick walls. The wire shines and shimmers in the
bright of the day, each bright day there is.
I'd bought that Jaguar I mentioned before from a crazy
tin-horned dictator of a car mechanic right on the river - Rahway River -
where it ran against Route One not far off, right by (a half block away) the
black lodge Masonic Temple and all the huts and shanties of the black river
community that was all along there. In the year I bought the car, most of that
was already gone, but the Temple was still there, the old mansion, MacLac
Shellac too. A sterling river site. The mechanic's name was Fred Fox. His old
man's name was Fred Fox too. The father was about 70 or so, Freddy (as he was
called) was about 40, maybe 45. I'm sure Freddy didn't drink, but he otherwise
mostly bore all the high-energy, crazed attributes of a drunken angel, a
mad-fisted Kerouac character, the crazy ones, the mad ones. Freddy and his
father (who'd started the shop a long time back), had a light green cinderblock
building with perhaps a 500 foot square all around it, the front paved a little,
the rest just dirt and gravel, covered with cars, broken down cars, junked cars,
for sale cars. It was hard to tell, they kind of all looked the same. Everything
was like in a mid-1950's age range. Anything after 1960 was considered some real
new shit. The cars were strewn about and, inside the garage, there was one
little car-sized spce, maybe a wee bit larger, for whatever that day's current
work-job was. The rest was all glory, tools, parts, a car or two partially under
tarps, a desk, covered, literally, with bills, receipts work-orders and papers,
in a closet-sized little room somehow built there. In addition to this scene,
Freddy had two beautiful mahogany wood Chris Craft boats that he doted on; kept
polished and clean, the wood in perfect condition, everything ship-shape, so to
speak. I don't know if and when ever either of them had ever touched water, but
guess they did. They were up on trailers, about three feet off the ground, carts
with wheels, ready to roll - the most magnificent things with motors I'd
probably ever seen. Problem was, if they were going to move or be moved, ever,
getting all that stuff out and up from all around them. Pretty much, they were
locked in. I don't know the models, can't remember the inboard/outboard
qualities, but I can visualize, to this moment, what it all apperared as.
Absolute, crazy glory. Freddy's father never did much of anything, just hung
around, sat in a chair, always just looking out. I was told they just kept him
there, trying to keep him out of the way and away from things. We'd talk now and
then, though he never had much to say; just old man stuff (I used to think; now
I'm nearing that age myself, or soon enough I hope). I enjoyed him. Whenever he
actually was doing something, or when Freddy wasn't there at the moment, he was
always 'looking' for something - there was always something he couldn't find,
a paper misplaced, a receipt he'd forgotten about, an order he'd taken.
Something he slowly couldn't find. I never knew if any of it was real or just
his routine, but I always went along - weirdly, he'd be picking through
drawers of screws and washers, nuts and bolts, hoses and clamps, saying he was
looking for...a paper. I had to laugh it off, it just was otherwise too strange.
So, sometimes I too looked; what the hell. I'd learned a lot about absurdity
from reading all that Brautigan in the inspection line.
59. Now the madrigal of matter suddenly
awakens in me a something else to speak of. (How's that for an opening?). In
Rahway, years back, when I had a Jaguar, 1957, MKVII, at the inspection station
right next to the prison, I read lots of Richard Brautigan while waiting in line
(endlessly, it seemed) for my car to be inspected. That would mean, 'A
Confederate General at Big Surf', Trout Fishing in America, a second time, some
poetry, and a few other things. No big, heavy stuff, but remember how in,
perhaps, 1969, it was heady stuff. Richard Brautigan, at one passing, bleak
but frightfully bright moment of time, represented prosperity, possibility,
Freedom and rashness. he embodied a peculiar schema of hippie-youth-Americana;
words were roasted, conceptual ideas and weird analogies and personal allegories
were somehow put into things - Brautigan tall, strange, oddball, youth as a
mama's boy, all that kind of stuff. the breakaway moment was reading him in a
God-damned inspection station for a car which kept failing. New Jersey
inspection at that time was obscure, obtuse and nasty - run like a fiefdom by
little Nazis who pushed people around. the wait times were enormous - three
lanes across, of perhaps a hundred or more cars waiting, idling, fuming. nothing
to do but wait, if you so wished, even though you had to anyway. A three-hour
wait time was about right. My car(s) used to fail without fail. Over and over
again (today you couldn't do that because the scanned car ID is computerized and
all records are both kept and retrievable). I'd rip the failed sticker off and
go to the next inspection station down the line and try again, whatever failing
they'd noted, I'd attempt fixing. The entire thing was more personality conflict
stuff than it was anything else - they never liked the car, me, my comportment
to them, my attitude. It wasn't just me, this stuff went on and on -
long-hair, facial hair, hippie clothing, perhaps a guitar or flute in the car, a
harmonica on the seat, an anti-war bumper sticker or two, Fuck LBJ, whatever.
They'd catch all these little signs and indicators and make their own stupid
decisions. It was an organized throttling of the sleazy fag-bastard long-hairs.
Car inspection was a brutal undertaking. NJ finally gave up on it all about 10
years ago - now, in the other direction, it's a reverse joke. They've sold off
the service, thankfully, to some lame operation called 'Parsons Group' or
something, and the most cursory car-examination now passes for 'inspection.'
It's lethal and crazy in the opposite direction. They don't check anything -
exhaust, emissions, and a simple 'does this car stop?' brake inspection. A
homemade slot-car could probably pass - and being used (as is the Army) as an
employer of last resort, the hired hands are usually Neanderthals, lunks, idiots
or barely passable speakers of English. Go figure. They're probably making 30
bucks an hour to keep a failed system failing, while they purport to inspect
others, and decide what fails. in this 'Homeland security' era, they check the
paperwork more than anything; it's carefully entered, scanned, called up on the
computer for matching, etc. Stolen cars as car bombs, I guess, don't really need
to stop anyway. As I said, I'd go to there next inspection station down the
line, and fail there too, usually. then there next. I had Perth Amboy, North
Brunswick, Plainfield, and numerous others to choose from. they were all the
same, but all different in their profiling ways as well. It was a shitty system.
I'm glad it's gone - no one needs passive manipulation that you pay for -
plates, registration, license, insurance, etc.
Anyway, a lot of time was spent reading Richard Brautigan -
he just seemed right for the inspection line. Acid-headed, pot-smoking,
anti-establishment absurdism was perfect. They all got what they deserved from
me - cops, inspection and motor vehicle people, I detested them all. I
probably gained very little from reading Brautigan in this manner, but I did
come away with - if you believe the re-entry - with a pretty good, critical
idea about some forms of writing, and how to go about some forms of writing I'd
develop or keep away from. It honed both my faculties as a nascent writer and my
critical apparatus as well. I learned to 'read' what I was reading, take it
apart, re-source it all - not just reading, but 'Reading.' I liked that aspect
of it : wasted time in the service of personal growth. I could have been reading
Kafka, Balzac, Henry James, whatever, but they wouldn't have been a good fit -
perhaps Brautigan was more in line with Kerouac or Ginsberg, but I'd read them
already, too much, like a battering ram. Anyway, the other cool thing, for me,
was that all of this was being done right in the shadows of Rahway fucking
Prison, whose immediate neighbor this inspection station was, the State of NJ
having usurped a prison farm field, after the farm's demise, for the building
and pavings of a very large Motor Vehicle Department site. How conceptual was
all this to me? Not much. I added the conceptual stuff on my own, padding it
onto the reality of the crap that I had to live right there. It all came
together like a bowling ball careening down a highly polished bowling lane, into
pins, unfortunately, made of concrete and steel.
Years later,
as I looked back, I realized the distance I'd come was in actuality fairly
direct. I'd been somehow cut out of my own loop as much as had those old Rahway
people been excised from theirs. No appeal, no going back. By the mid-late 60's
things had just been bowled over, new directions were coming forth, and there
was a peculiar pull from both directions going on. Old-guard stuff, of course,
always having its way, was taking paramount place - the embroiled hoo-hah of
Vietnam War protests and drives, patriotic bullshit John Wayne radio songs
(Ballad of the Green Beret and the rest) were subliminally present everywhere.
Stand-ins for military matter, as I just related in the inspection station
scenario, were all in place. On the other hand, and from the other direction,
the strong pull of protest, student engagement, professors, leftists,
philosopher/writers, fashion type, media stars and all that crap was running as
a deep undercurrent beneath all this. By late '67, all I was doing was walking
away from it all, or trying to. I'd made New York City by home of sorts, in a
newly-fashioned way, basically blind around me, that I'd undertaken. I really
hadn't a clue. So much was within me and going on around me that I walked the
streets, all those lower Broadway places, each of the darkened and mysterious
lanes, streets, studio and warehouse alleys and lofts, that I hardly had made
time for myself to take a rest, run at 'Lento', music-speak for slow. I always
somehow felt as if I was 'escaping' from something instead of 'arriving; at
something. it's a weird feeling, operating that way - dark and Kafkaesque, in
its way, seeing as how it tends to make everything else equally dark, furtive
and suspicious - the motives of others, organizations and street operations.
Much like a madman, I walked along. Tucked in my mind somewhere were still all
those places I'd left - the back-river streets of Rahway, the straight lines
of Avenel and Inman avenue, even the watery, ferry boat and barge traffic lanes
of the Kill Van Kull, all that heaving and pulling of old waterfront Bayonne.
But so little was left and so little of it was real. And then somehow at the
same time, I'd feel a pang of guilt over missing places but not people. My
thoughts seemed never to really turn to family, kin, friends I'd left - that
was all over and gone. Most of my thought went to place and ground and location,
not people. There's a New Testament thing about leaving your mother and father,
hating your home, taking up your tools and 'following me', or something.
Sometimes I felt like that. I suppose, over hundreds of years, hundreds of
writers and artists and thinkers have walked their own streets and lanes in this
same frame of mind - and done their own great stuff from it - all those
Raskalnikov's and Gregor Samsa's and the rest - for me, however, it was all
just beginning - ever so slowly - to be sorted out. A big, fizzy movie
screen was dropped down in front of my face, and the images on it were the
things I saw and read and reacted to. my mission, as much as it was to watch and
observe and take, was - just as much - to make, to
create.
Freddy had sold me the Jaquar after I'd stopped there with my
little Renault (1959 2CV). He took one look at me, laughed me off, and said
'what are you doing driving a little piss-pot like that? Let me show you
something!'. He proceeded to talk me through, and show me, the incidentals of a
massive, 1957 Jaguar MKVII estate car. He said it was a divorce case, the wife
hated the husband and she'd gotten possession of everything - this car in the
garage included. In spite she wished to sell it for near nothing. In fact, I got
it for $300. It needed, said Freddy, an exhaust system, BUT, he exclaimed, if I
bought it (which I did, 300 bucks cash down on the counter top where dad was
still looking for something) from him he'd custom weld for me a
jaguar-specific, chrome exhaust system with mostly unmuffled sound, that would
sing, that would roar. I said yes, and he did. the car, two weeks later, sounded
grand - a low rumble at idle, a nasty 'grrr' at acceleration, and the most
massive symphony of noise as the engine backed off from speed. It bested, that
sound did, any Corvette or Ferrari or hot rod I'd ever heard. The car was
classically beautiful in the old British way (look it up). Two-tone grey, fender
skirts, black-lighted interior, short-wave radio, plush leather seats, fold down
arm-rests and support, and, on the rear of each front seat, for back-seat
'executive' passengers, two fold-down dark-wood tabletop desks - straight out,
for writing, reading, or whatever, each about 18X20 inches (I'm guessing from
memory). it also had reading lamps and jacket-rack hooks in the back. The engine
was a massive in-line big-bore 6, with two Borg-Warner dashpot carburetors, both
with oil floats - all very classic, powerful, old-line stuff. Two gasoline
tanks, 20 gallons on each side, with a petcock for the driver to switch tanks as
the gauges advised. Tachometer, speedometer, burled walnut wood on the dashboard
and all throughout. My father called it my 'Bonnie and Clyde car' - a current
movie reference then - though it really wasn't visually like that. The two
constant problems for me with the car, three if you wish to count the fact that
the heat was nearly non-existent, and which were always constant problems for
inspection as well, were the exhaust, and all its sounds, and the brakes, which
were mostly about as near-to-useless as the heater. One time, it got a 48-hour
sticker, meaning if it wasn't fixed and re-inspected and approved within 48
hours, it would be taken off the road. I peeled that sticker off and took the
car next to Perth Amboy, without incident, where this time it failed (completely
differently) for fog lamps that did not have an independent switch separate from
the headlamp switch. It was all a stock-Jaguar set-up, but they were claiming
I'd rigged it wrongly myself. Whatever; it was all a never-ending battle. Stupid
is as stupid does, or however that went.
Freddy and his father - who somewhere in the 1980's died -
both are gone, the shop was bulldozed a long time ago when the highway
interchange right there was altered and the incinerator built. I don't know
where any of the stuff went, nor where Freddy ended up. In the mid-1980's I
bought another car from him; this one (an Oldsmobile Vista-Cruiser, a big,
glass-topped V-8 station wagon) was hand delivered to my front door by Freddy
and another guy. Before they turned the car over to me, we all had to sit in it
for about a half hour just talking, swapping car tales, hearing stories about
the good-old days, etc., before I had to give them a ride home in my other car.
The story with the Oldsmobile, from Freddy, was that it was owned by the band
leader of a small group that played weekly in Atlantic City at weekend club
gigs, dinner music stuff, and it had 'ever only been used then, to pull a little
trailer with the band equipment and two or three guys in it; straight-line
driving to and from Atlantic City, no stop and go, clean mileage, easy driving.'
I liked the car; it lasted me about a year (I loaned it to my father and mother
for one of their Catskill trips and - with my father's bizarre driving habits
- he wrecked the engine somewhere up there, managed to ditch it in some
off-limits parking lot, abandoning the car and taking a rental for the
trip home, with the car later being impounded and the local police from up there
catching up to me here. I'd done nothing, and my father dealt with it all
himself. Fines, etc., with nothing on me, thankfully. But, I missed the car, and
remembered the lesson I'd forgotten about. Don't lend Dad anything; he was
brutal).
I was surprised, actually, that my father even asked me to
lend him the car. It was out of the blue, and we really didn't see much of each
other anyway, even living - at that time - 7 miles away. His point was that it
was a big, powerful V-8, could make time all they way back and forth, was roomy,
and he didn't want to use his small car or his van for the trip. I couldn't say
no really; he had me. So I gave in, against my better judgment. I kind of knew
it was going to go bad. But it was a funny sequence of events and an odd feeling
of loss, in that manner. I somehow felt cheated, tricked, but worse for it,
because I really couldn't carp or snap bank over it, and he thought little of it
anyway.
-----------------END OF PART ONE.
-----------------END OF PART ONE.
