RUDIMENTS

RUDIMENTS, pt. 121 Making Cars It's pretty weird right now, in my later life, to still be doing all this crazy writing. I would really never had thought this would be going on, had you asked me in 1968, or any other year from anytime back then.  By the time I got through  the 1990's I was pretty burnt,  unsettled, and almost numbed,  and that slows you down a lot  in your writing-reactions to things.  In order to really 'write' while  looking back along the way to  reflect and make anything sensible  out of both the urges and the messages  that come through, one has first to  have had developed a one-step-back  sort of detachment. I'd think, anyway.  It's a very odd concept I'm working  with here  -  let me put it another  way. In old landscape paintings,  right up until Cezanne, when you  viewed the landscape there was  always a 'way in.' There was always  a spot the eye was led to, to walk  int

RUDIMENTS, pt. 120 Making Cars Another thing about all those local town meetings  -  they are very distorting; like fun-house mirror  things. The smallest, tiniest concerns   -  I mean even down to things like the size of the sidewalk squares, the lighting, the hours of operation of an establishment, their lighting, their noise  -  each of these tiny, quite parochial concerns, get blown up  into issues of great import, and sometimes anger too. It's very much a rumble, with the hearings and the locals taking the mike. Everyone's  got a beef about something, and they get completely absorbed by it. I often had to sit there and listen to all this emotional gibberish, and then seek out the speaker, get the person's name. maybe some background info, what it was they just said, or tried to say anyway. Many of these people were not very  articulate or precise about their words. And then, once they realized I was a 'reporter&#

RUDIMENTS, pt. 119 Making Cars While I was working the biker racket I was able to learn about a million things, the sort of things that can be absorbed into the lifestream and easily remembered. Covering those meetings that I mentioned, for the Star Ledger, they were the real eye-openers. There was a Board Of Education guy in Piscataway (Schoolhouse Road, actually) who, whenever they held their meetings, to which I was assigned, he was the meeting Chair and was, and comported himself as, an absolute raving maniac, with a gavel, no less. It used to just about make me crazy to have to sit there, (for 50 bucks a meeting) and listen to him. I was supposed to, by definition, just be there to report proceedings, facts and figures, budget and curriculum stuff, etc. It never worked that way because, by the time this guy was done with a meeting, even I was ready to lunge for his neck. This was already  like 22 years ago, so understand that 

RUDIMENTS, pt.118 Making Cars I've often had these little relationships with words. 'Contingent' was one of them; for instance, 'your acceptance into our fraternity order is contingent on you first passing a selective assortment of local tests.' Contingent? Meaning you'll accept me only if I can prove that my personal assortment of strange talents embraces and meets your code? Or, 'your acceptance into our organization is contingent upon documentation that you have first read all 72 volumes of the 'Great Works of Modern Man,' and visible evidence that you can speak on the subject of any of them.' OK, sure, can do.' Words are funny subjects, and the subjects of funny words are too. - For about 10 years, a little more, my basic day job (and night too) consisted of some sort of weird commitment to the world of motorcycling. I'd quit all my other jobs  over this one, and took possession of a