RUDIMENTS

RUDIMENTS, pt. 761 (who among you...) Rattles abstract the quart with no bottom : the painter is cleaning his brushes. I sit nearby, in some ancient wicker chair that's so dry from age the wicker turns to powder when you touch it. Who among you should dare for any more than that? There's a flashlight on the shelf, an old style kind, basic, batteries and a little lamp  -  not those fancy super-bright things they peddle now. Painters don't buy junk like that. Anyhow, this old loft used to be a carpenter shop once too, and then they stored paint gallons, later. Who among you knew any of that? The place on the corner, called Phoebe's; as I recall, from experience, it's been here for years. In the 1980's it stuck out like a sore thumb. Now it rather fits right in. High toned shoes, ambi-sexual men, girls in light stockings and things in their noses. But, still, I don't go there; it's not for me. The k

RUDIMENTS, pt. 760 (justice and cause and crazy violence too) There never was any sort of bolt of lightning or anything like that  -  unless maybe you count getting hit by a train. That can do it. In any case, most of my conscious life  has been just a steady off-kilter. I'm often thinking I'm all set to go with something, and then it's gone and I need to start all over. My mind holds lots, but lots is fleeting too. Numerous times I've been  to Philadelphia, when I wander around to this statue they have of Benjamin Franklin; he's got a kite going, on a string (it's all metal sculpture suggestion), wearing his funny breeches and those colonial shoes and even some sort of hat, I think, with his funny hair. The place where the statue is, now just a tiny park in the middle of rows of row-houses, typical Philadelphia, quaint and real nice, was once the outer rim of countryside between the Schuylkill River

RUDIMENTS, pt. 759 (it needs better icing than that) Tycho Brahae had a metal nose. His actual nose, or a good part of it, was lost in a duel, and he had - from that same duel - a large scar up into his forehead. It was said the nose was made of silver or gold, but twice his body was exhumed (once to check for death-inducing poison, not found, and another time to check the nose). Apparently, along with the poison story being false (a burst bladder had killed him instead), the nose was found to be of brass, and it adhered to his face by means of some sort of adhesive; often replaced, I guess. Brahe was an astronomer, getting some things 'right,'and some still wrong, as people of that time did. He was, besides being the teacher of Kepler, the last of what are called the 'naked eye' astronomers. Before telescopes and lenses. - Be all that as it may, I'd