RUDIMENTS

RUDIMENTS  pt. 60 Making Cars One thing I noticed was that, when younger, a person seems to want to have an opinion about everything. Later on, in deeper age, it no longer seems as vital, seems in fact more to be just nosiness, blowhard stuff. What used to be called 'Budinsky.' That should surely be a syndrome by now. They can sell  pills for it and then have that long list of cool side effects listed. Best thing the FDA ever did  -  better than having to call Mommy a drug addict. 'Well, she often walks into walls now and often poops her pants, but at least we no longer have to hear what she thinks about Cuba.' - Back when I was finishing high school, that crummy final year filled with loads of bad moments, there was a young teacher, just starting, named, as I best approximate, Mr. Fangeorelli. He was  maybe 26 or 27, and for his first classes they'd assigned him to a 'new' subject class, never tried bef

RUDIMENTS, pt. 59 Making Cars I often make no bones about things  - (I kind of like that phrase, it's a bit of brute honesty, maybe something I used to hear around home; don't know)  - but of late no matter what my personal history and tales and stories are here about New York City and environs and me and my time there, and the places I was in and the things I used to do, I realize now that that place is dead and gone. As I walk about there, now, it's all I can do from laughing, or crying, abut the horrible mishmash of a place it's become; mostly a disheveled version of some technocrat Hong Kong or Singapore nation, with everyone doing the same thing, smiling as they follow orders, and going about rightly attired to eat and drink their smoothies, veal and lamb dishes, perfect veggies swaths of this or that, while vetting each other to see, at essence, what they really are, girl? Or boy? Yep, it's that crazy. All the

RUDIMENTS, pt. 58 Making Cars Man Alone. I think that was the title of a book I read, back whenever, about 1965. Alienation, the crisis of modern man, all that crazy stuff. That one was written (talk about alienation?) by a husband and wife team, Josephson or something. And another one was called 'Fontanamara,' by an Italian writer who called himself Ignazio Silone (not his real name). Both of this book took time and I was probably, really, over my head with them each. But, that never stopped me  -  who cared. I never felt 'alienated' in the sense of it being a clinical 'condition.' The entire feeling and sequence of emotion was something I just lived with. I guess it was alienation, but I don't know. The people who claim to know all that stuff and who then diagnose for it  -  on themselves or others  -  they're the crazy ones in my view; having to be having every little thing named and called something an

RUDIMENTS, pt. 57 Making Cars Who remembers 'pusillanimous pussyfooters? Who remembers, for that matter, Spiro Agnew, Nixon's first Vice President, thrown out and convicted for bribery and evasion as Mayor of Baltimore or whatever in Maryland he was? (I'm deliberately being imprecise and have so little interest in him that I'm not going back to check info and correct). The guy was crooked hack. His being sacrificed was, in a way, supposed to placate the haters and save Nixon's butt -  it didn't. Spiro Agnew. Chosen from nowhere. To get the Greek vote? Nixon again; there was a big, revolutionary crisis going on at the time (1967) in Greece, and Richard Nixon really was policy-mad enough to count and try and garner every little packet of votes he could. Thus, the unknown Greek. When things began getting hot politically, Agnew was sent out to begin challenging and making fun of the leftist, anti-Vietnam, youth wing, and th

RUDIMENTS, pt. 56 Making Cars So there comes a point when the real mettle of a single person either rises to the occasion or fails miserably. Like Leibniz's original monad, we are each a factor of one. Which is what biography really is  -  pretty miserable because it's mostly an acdemic statement made by someone posing to dig facts and feelings out of a personality (or persona) who has made some public name and acclaim, which then the biography does one of two things with : either bolsters and backs up the fame, or in some fashion finds points and ways to debunk it, or scandalize it, or ruin, otherwise, that person's name. Besmirch. The murkier,  or zanier, oftentimes, the better. After all, publishers want to sell books. The  writing craft of Biography-work would be nothing take note, without individuality. Memoir and autobiography, on the other hand don't suffer these fates as much. But, on the same note, how many one-m