RUDIMENTS

RUDIMENTS, pt. 423 (avenel - here is not there, two) One of the most fascinating aspects of me resuscitating my own life was Ithaca NY, and Cornell. As I've pointed out, it was a clearly different time and place and filled with a different gist. The place was still burning and hot. Francis Fukuyama was a senior in 1974; Harold Bloom had left some time before that. Me? I was still looking for Nabokov. Every sort of heavily and be-principled academic tyro mainliner could be found. Telluride House, or the decrepit student slums along Stewart, Eddy or Quarry streets, and any huffing walk up Seneca Street could bring to you the roughs and the readies of cramped, off-campus living. I loved all that stuff. For a mountain village of a very scholarly but indeterminate quality, the place sure had drive. It always revved me up, no matter who was around. The location of ideas was still smoldering  -  riots of a few years b

RUDIMENTS, pt. 422 (avenel - here is not there) I have found that it is better sometimes to let others do your work for you, or carry your mission forward. All those ancient Chinese books of strategy and war-craft and that, show this as a credible tactic. The work goes on and develops while the wise leader remains just off to the side, out of the picture yet there, thus remaining a presence and continuing his or her prestige. (Who am I kidding? It was always a he, in those old books, never a she). Tactics of warfare and statecraft : now we build refrigerators instead. - Measuring lives and values by production is pretty simply stupid. That's just amassing things, gaining by number, with no regard for quality or taste. Back in Avenel, we used to throw together the nastiest versions of teepees, tents, and tree houses and call them done. They worked for us, but really were just junk. The veneer-drift of any idea of &

RUDIMENTS, pt. 421 (avenel - something to nothing?) In my own way, I've always loved liars. Really, you've got to  hand it to them. I've always thought that there are so many dark secrets locked within the potential of each of us  -  we either get them put of the way, ignore them, deal with them, or crash-land. Much of it remains as taboos; one way or another, things we cannot do. Face it. We're totally constrained. It's good to let loose now and then, especially for going on as if an expert on local theater, or municipal garbage. Hey, wait? Aren't they the same thing? - If you're going to steer  something  -  I mean good,  and steady, steer  -  you can't just jump and sing.  You have to know what  you're doing. With all  hands on each lever,  and while manipulating, but not just at top, not as  only the figurehead; you  can't be  leaving the more  supple maneuvers to the  'st

RUDIMENTS, pt. 420 (avenel gives hell?) I spent lots of time at the crumbling of those piers just mentioned  -  essentially it was where I lived, on foot or by bicycle, that entire first Winter  -  between things, but always returning. It's difficult for me now to try and recreate the ruination and decrepitude of what once was there  -  most especially now as how since it's all become fashionable and quaint  - parkways, joggers, bicyclists, gymnasts with their weird clubs, stuff I just don't really understand, all done by people I understand less, and care to understand even less than that. Another world entirely has eclipsed any of that which I may have been or inhabited, and that's fine with me. You can take your sensitivity stuff, your girl as boy and boy as girl crossovers and emotional bleeds, sob-story sentimentality, feeling for the 'other' and all that 'it takes a village' myop