RUDIMENTS 25.

RUDIMENTS, pt. 25

Making Cars

Running cars, and motorcycles too,

with well-pressed, highly-tuned engines,

there's a lot in balance. Especially in earlier

models where the variables run higher.

Cars of the pre-computer era had a different

tuning factor, the mixture points and accesses

were different -  carburetor, jets, etc. But, no

matter, that's not my point. Rather, I wanted 

to point out how I found a similarity to that

with the world of ideas.

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Running a hot car is all about efficient cooling.

The same thing goes with a motorcycle  -  those

of my experience have always been air-cooled.

The temperature and cooling factor, the idea of

heat build-up and fighting that, was important.

You wanted air-flow, air hitting the engine, and

in a water-cooled situation (where a coolant

'jacket', as it were, of liquid flows around the

engine), you needed a sort-of fan-controlled

air flow directed at the radiator, etc. All well

and good. BUT, in important factor as well,

and mostly nothing you had control over, was

called 'heat-set'  -  which is the short period of

time immediately after the engine is turned off.

Running a hot engine, fast, hard, really pounding,

for a few minutes after shut-down, all that heat

produced is still produced, in a quickly-diminishing

way, yes, but all the metal components are still

under that growth as the behemoth, turned off, 

still sheds heat. Heat that just stays there, with

no blowing or shedding except the outward

radiance of. You have, essentially, a huge pile 

of non-aspirated raging metal still producing,

and shedding, or trying to shed, its rage of

heat. It's called, as I said, heat-set. It could be

called, just as well, 'aftermath.' The dynamics

of metal expansion, that minuscule growth

of the physical plant, all those tolerances and

tight fits, mean that the unit itself is still glowing,

still perhaps expanding, still raging for its finish.

No real danger, it diminishes and does shut itself

down - but conceptually it's a happening idea. No

matter how carefully controlled the factors of

heat and its cast-off, while running, were, once

the engine-plant was turned off, it was still raging,

still producing its heat of fury, for a bit.

Drunk guys used to dwell on this.

-

Among the biker crowd, I'd sit there smirking.

All their talk of physical realities and post-running

occurrences used to bring me immediately to the

meta-physical places where all these things

constantly occurred to me too. It was very much

the same, this engine stuff, as with an idea, a

sudden flash.  Creatively, heat is generated,

fiercely; it has to be channeled, directed, and

a means found for its production to be cast

outward, before a crashing, rambling mess of

overheat destroys it all. And then, afterward,

the idea, the spark, is still setting off sparks

and idea-collisions, brandishing its possibilities

into the other hardened chunks of fixed reality

which oftentimes resisted such expansion.

Psychological resistance, conflict within ideas,

a crazed, crash-land of inert stuff which refused

to fit, or sit still, or cool down.

-

No big deal, of course, and nothing to really be

concerned over except to the nut-case (in this case,

me), generating these ideas  -  oh maker of heat,

oh divine fire-producer, oh caveman on the plains

of a mental Abraham  -  but someday I dare you to

walk with ideas akin to this amongst a group of

people who bear no awareness of this sort of

thinking  -  and see how far you get. Even better,

see how difficult it is to function; which is why

there have always been 'artists' communities,

those odd enclaves you read of and hear about,

over all these years  -  the writer' colonies, the

eccentric small art-towns, the Chautauqua's and old 

Woodstocks of the world. This kind of thinking,

this sort of 'heat-set', yes, has to be isolated, put

away, moved aside, for the coals and fires to

kindle and burn, run-down, settle....and burn out.