RUDIMENTS 29.

RUDIMENTS, pt. 29

(Making Cars)

One of those ancient guys, I forget

who, wrote, 'Live your life as if you

were already dead.' I always lived

mine, in that light, full-tilt boogie

anyway, or as much as I could do 

that with very little money. I really

forget who it was  -  Marcus Aurelius,

in his 'Meditations', or maybe in a book

by Boethius entitled 'the Consolations of

Philosophy.' I used to read that stuff, but,

frankly, back then it made very little

import or sense to me, more just like

drudgery. Round-about 2007, when I

began taking the train each day to 

Princeton, I began re-reading a lot of

that material from years before. It made

better sense, but the problem was the way

some train-madman or another was always

intent on interrupting me. Passengers, or

even conductors. Especially the little, extra

Princeton-shuttle train I had to take to get over

to campus  -  that had a conductor who really

liked to yap. Ideally, in one's head, you think,

'Ah, train time! I'll be able to read and get a

lot done.' No so fast, fellow. You see the same 

people each day, mostly in a commuting

misery, and they each begin thinking they're

your best friend. Or should be. There's always

an obstacle. I asked someone once, at a

gathering (he took a different NY train each

day) how he got around that problem, and he 

said 'just keep your head down, do what you're

doing, and don't look up or make eye contact

with anyone.' Hmmm, yeah, right.

-

So, it's all summed up in 'Living life as if you

were already dead?' That shit's considered 

profound? What's it even mean? Everyone I ever

saw, poor, rich, or in-between, was always

intent on going on, continuing. Had I said, 'live

your life as if you were already dead,' they'd 

have hit me with the nearest bowling ball. It's

more the sort of thing you have no real choice over

and are usually glad for the chance of. Living, I

mean. It's always, seemingly, these deep, weird,

religious guys, Buddhist monk types or whatever,

who get all over the top morose about inaction, 

stillness, being centered, meditation, right thinking, 

good intent, goal-completion, detachment, and all 

the rest. I could never isolate like that, and I admit 

to it. I'm not about to fake my way along by saying 

I achieved some sort of wonderful eastern mysticism 

deep within my non-being by doing and saying all 

those proper things. Hell. no. Like a typical jerk 

human, when I saw something, I reacted; or wanted 

it; or found myself (oh no!) desiring. Why would 

anyone, I used to think, deny the human factor in 

the stuff that they do. It was a young-man's quandary 

for me, for a long time; and the streets of NY City 

anyway were not really any place to try and be 'pure.'

In your own head, that's a different story, and maybe

that's what the saying meant, but that's just as

difficult  -  every other street-corner back then

there was someone or something demanding 

hands-on interaction : someone dying, or throwing 

up or passing out; some bum pulling his pants

down and taking a dump; some drug-addicted

nothing nearly comatose and strung-out to die.

That stuff brings you right back to reality, quickly.

-

There used to be a place up by Riverside Drive, 

or at Riverside Drive, way west, about 72nd street. 

It was, and still is, an interesting series of passages 

and archways and tunnels where the end of Riverside 

Park sort of dips down on itself to get over to Riverside 

Drive, and then the river. Cars are zooming all by 

on the Drive, and these arches and things take you 

beneath it all, and there are a few exit-type ramps

for cars seeking to enter the larger city at the east.

All through the 1970's and into the 80's, it was its

own mini-Calcutta, this place. Lots of homeless

people who'd made their own little spaces and living

quarters, one after another after another  -  cardboard,

wood, planks, carts, fabric, tents, you  name it. It

was a veritable 'city' of the disenfranchised; it

mostly went unmolested and no one interfered with

it, including cops and round-ups. Any real 'crime'

there was when one or another of them killed or

maimed each other  -  stupid drug feuds, thievery,

whatever. Talk about living as if you were already

dead, I knew these people could fill in a lot of the

blanks about that subject. I would occasionally

find myself there (I had friends who lived then

in the west 70's), walking amidst these people;

they were surly, or drugged, violent sometimes

in severe and weird personal ways, but none of it

really had the 'energy' factor to take it outwards,

to others. I was probably as safe as I was in danger.

All the same. (How's that go, 'when you got nothing,

you got nothing to lose? Or, Freedom's just another

way for nothing left to lose.'  -  I always hated those

stupid, proto-musical, playing at intensity, couplets).

Anybody who got me, so to speak, would just get a

dead body, so I was probably, in those terms, perfect.

As were they  -  wiry, dazed, unfocused humanoids,

(each giving Darwin, surely, a run for his money).

Let the dead bury the dead? Yeah man, we were

all ready for our own shovels each.