RUDIMENTS

RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,003 (it was all adventure) Eventually I got tired of everything: Tired of listening seeing, talking. It's at the point when the body begins telling you there's trouble brewing. Your urge is to stand in front of something, go to the train yards ('cept nothing there goes fast enough). Maybe the motorcycle and alcohol stuff was a death wish. However you wish to slice it. I had to move on new urges and get straight. My straight, of course, never being what others saw as straight. One single life is never enough; a person lives like 5 at one time. I began imagining, and the imagined situations, though fraught too with peril, were better than my life because they at least were worked around a philosophical basis of acceptance. I had a friend, named Tre, over at the Village Den restuarant, I think that was the proper name, though I just always said 'The Villager,' for my uses. (see 'Miasma Ar...

RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,002 (filling spaces with old new things) I don't think a person should go along berating themselves for things done or not done. After all, retrospective viewpoints add little to the forefront, it's all about the rearward view. In the case here of what I'm writing about, I had NYC at my fingertips, in a wide, opening, world, but I availed myself very little of its resources or opportunities. My father, as I recall, had a great fascination for Bakelite. I think it was an early forerunner, or maybe just a heavier, black,  version of, plastic. It was thick, often used for radio bodies and things like that, and then I guess  they began dying it, for color. Maybe too it got some automotive use. I can remember it pretty well, as it often broke off, in small slabs, at the corner, so that often a radio or clock-body would have a chip or a broken piece at the corner or end. I suppose it was a brittle mix, bake...

RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,001 ('deliver us from evil?') Is this the time we should thank local officials, while they try to keep everyone apart, for building cheek- by-jowl, low-class housing projects? Is the time ripe now for us to thank them for investing so much debt and money into new schools and 'physical' plants for non-learning except as baby-sitting, and enforced social conditioning, and then having them all closed up? Had we a more normal, strong and individualistic system of home learning in place, with half-intelligent parents and non-distracted, not sugared-up kids, railing at walls and windows while clutching their electronic distractions and TV minefields, there would be stronger people growing to maturity, rather than the maniacs and shoppers we have now, brawling and screaming for their paper-products, candies and jellies, and restaurant poisons. Yes, let's give them all a real hoo-hah. - I wond...

RUDIMENTS, pt. 1000 (getting to the bottom of... .) My first few nights in New York City, having landed basically with nothing, except what I wore and the few things I carried, I spent in Tompkins Square Park. The park itself was configured a little differently back then. In fact, it was a lot different. If you look at any of the old photos of 1960's urban parks, you'll see, since they were all about the same. Metal swingsets, set off in some corner, in bare grassy areas, with but a little grass. It was as if, in all these  municipal settings, that people  had no clue what to do  -  metal and concrete, swings, slides, etc.  Apparently there was no over-riding  sense of safety, aesthetics, or place.  It hadn't developed yet. Things were  just thrown about and left to fester  where they might. The thing about  Tompkins at least was always the  stately elms. Most of them are still around. (Elm trees ...