RUDIMENTS 455.

RUDIMENTS, pt. 455

(mistletoe and redwing)

My God may have made me

an entity, I'll admit, but the

burden of responsibility was

for me to, or not to, pick up

the mantle given to me. My

situation was whatever it

was : Goodbye Bayonne

harborlands, early. Hello

Avenel. Rhymed with

'What the Hell,' so I took

the young-boy cudgel. And

now here I am. The message

I've taken up of late is in

the finishing of the story,

however it goes. I may gag

on a tuna sandwich tomorrow.

My heart might stop here  - !

!! -  in mid-sentence (ha ha

fooled you). Or I may have

12 more years some some

sanctimonious pussyfooting

yet to do. I used to tease my

Mother endlessly, in two

ways, as a young guy. She

was very impressionable,

and naive. I'd tell her I

was going to die, and that

I knew it, at age 42. She'd

gasp, and get all upset.

One day I awoke, and I

was 42. 'Oh damn,' I said

to myself, 'now I've done

it.' At least she was glad I

was surviving. And the other

thing was, I'd be talking to

her, or standing around, and

I'd just fall over dead. (It was

an acting trick picked in the

Drama Dept.). Playing dead

was the easiest thing in the

world. And then one day,

waiting for the Princeton

train, at the Dinky Station,

I was reading the Meditations

of Marcus Aurelius and I ran

across that quote I'd forgotten

about; some version of 'Live

your life as if you were already

dead.' That hit me hard, woke

me right up from a dream.

So, since then, I have.

-

Now, as I mentioned, it's

end-game  -  as I enter those

final scenes deep in the last

act, it's all good. I thrive.

But I have still to write an

ending. Hard parts coming

up, a big plural, one after

the other. All the things

once established in the early

parts of the play are long

gone. There's a line in old

theater-writing training,

that says something like,

(I poorly approximate here),

'The gun that's introduced

in Act 1 must go off by

Act 3.' That makes sense

and means nothing

'superfluous' should be

entered in, scene-wise,

if it's not to play a role.

Trouble here is (hello

real life) everything put

up in those early scenes

is all gone, torn apart and

asunder. Try getting out

of this mess, you creep.

It's now a complete re-write.

-

No one has ever claimed

that I'm clear, but why

should I be  -  this life

itself is a mad jumble,

and things get scrambled

up and mixed around right

before your eyes. It's a

giant with whom we all

must wrestle. Nothing

really stands on its own

two feet  - there are flows

and currents always running

beneath, alongside, and

over things, They two

must be reckoned with.

Only rhetoric wins the day :

Well, I'm not sure what I

mean by that, but I'll let

it stay. Is all this comic?

Or is it pathetic? The sort

of thing this all is is a bit like

a mystery volume you win

at a fair. Some strange and

oddly alluringly young lady

hands you your prize : A

book with no ending, one

that refuses to tell you the

end of its story, and which

also won't let you in on what

the author thinks might be

the best end for the story.

Like Avenel, it makes

absolutely no difference

whether you laugh or do

not laugh. Here you are,

either way. The mythic

proportions abound. Those

here, as I am, who say the

place is a dismal horse's ass

of a wreck, and the ones here

who say it's the most wonderful

horse's ass they've ever seen.

And they love it. Then you

have all those faraways who,

given five dollars, pipe in :

It's a dungheap; I'm so glad

I got away. and the others

who say, I grew up there, I

miss the place, my best

memories were there. They're

blockheaded enough to act

as if that place still existed.

Jesus, where's the gun from

Act One? Give it to me.

-

I never transformed? I never

returned? I thought I'd done

both. One time, at the old

library location when it was

on Rahway Ave., my girlfriend

worked there and I had been

teaching her to drive, my '62

VW. She got the hang of the

stick-shift pretty well, but had

some trouble with the push-down

sequence needed to get the

lever into reverse. Well, she

missed this one and started

out in reverse, except it was

first. Right into the building

at about 5 mph. The metal

bumper took a hit, but no 

big deal. And she probably 

woke up a few nappers inside. 

(I told here there was a book 

in there, by a guy named R. U.

Napping, called, 'Sleepers

Awake!' There wasn't really,

I made it up). But in like 1984

or so, there really was a book

called 'Sleepers, Wake!' I was

15 years ahead of the curve.

My gun went off too early.

(Hey! I think that's how I

became a father too).

-

Mistletoe and Redwing?

You're probably wondering.

That's the title of a play I 

wrote, in Avenel, while sitting

night after night at that dingy

library or Rahway Avenue,

(it's Woodbridge really, but who

cares. I claim it for Avenel).

Redwing is a prison in

Minnesota, a large, boys'

reformatory (a big place, not

fat guys). It was about love

and caring (thus the mistletoe),

in the miserable life of kids

who've gone wrong. Yep, I

wrote it, it was pretty cool,

and I've never seen it since.

I put it somewhere, and there

it's stayed. Like a gun in

Act One that never went off.