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RUDIMENTS 423.

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 back - police and
shutdown, all that violence
stuff, and the war, still
burgeoning  -  kept Ithaca
well-fueled and fired up.
To my mind there wasn't
any other place around like
it. I'd think of Elmira, and
then I'd think of Avenel too.
My family and parents would
occasionally come for visits,
stay a few days or a week,
and it was all untranslatable.
I couldn't fill them in on a
thing, because the thought-
languages were completely
different. Elmira was nearby,
geographically, so at least they
got that. Ithaca was another
matter. It was as far away as
now is, say, Avenel from
reason. The words and the
skinny-dippers from Avenel,
right now, make me sick. It
was about like that then too,
but what has grown now is
ineffable goon-sound of
ignorance. People hiding
behind others have always
made me retch. The missing
factor, of course, is that of
intellectualism. In Ithaca,
it all runs over the falls in
torrents (I'm speaking here
figuratively, Avenelites and
Gregorians; this isn't the back
of a cereal box you're reading).
Intellectual matter is like grist
in the mill of constancy. I'd
begun living that. In Avenel.
you'd need a knuckle-sandwich
every 4 minutes to bring sense
to anyone; the two didn't mesh,
and couldn't take. (I resign myself
to nothing except the most horrid
aspects of everything). I had
a hill-home in Ithaca, a place
for my aching head. Thorstein
Veblen himself had walked
these hills and streets, back
when land-grant colleges of
this sort were just beginning
(when America made some
sense, had some feel for itself,
instead of just feeling itself,
like Gregorians in ultramarine
drag on fake city-sound stages).
I could only wish for tham all
to become Ellen Jamesians.
(Look it up).
-
Have you ever been anywhere
that you feel is a perfect, at that
moment, reflection of you? I 
have; more than once  - because
the 'I' of me kept changing. 
Like a hurricane, OK? Ithaca
was it for a long time. But I
was not remaining stable. It
was Thomas Wolfe, with his
whole 'you can't go home 
again' jive, who got it right, 
or meant to, or came closest. 
All he meant is that the flux 
of Life keeps all things in 
turmoil, and change. You
can't go home again because
it's not there, and neither are
you. Flux is everywhere. 
The sooner that is learned, 
in a real way, the better 
the individual can be. So,
you ride that wave, and
you better yourself, you
go somewhere, and learn
something; applying 
yourself. That's why I 
was in Ithaca, haunting 
bookshops and spending
hours in places with Tom
Rapp on the overhead, a
distant and dismal sort of
daze-music, on sometimes
long and fierce, cold, 
wintry Saturdays. It all
became my life, and that 
of my little family too. 
The problem today, by
contrast, is ignorance;
a hand-held and ignoble
ignorance based on local
corruption. It's that simple, 
and it's not being called 
crime because people no 
longer seek to face things
off. They let the indentured
servants of miserly minds
hold them in thrall. In 
Ithaca, they'd be dead.
-
There was also  -  and I've
covered this before  -  a sort of
zen Buddhist rehab or dry-out
group home, up along the
highway on the way into town.
We'd stop there often enough,
often for the food  -  officious,
nearly free, and wholesome,
in the 'zen and grain' way that
is much more ordinary now but
was a rarity then. They also
sold, as often happens, their
own stuff : pies, cookies, breads,
grains and vegetables. Clothing
too. It was pretty weird to see
people in robes and shaved heads
and such, doing ordinary but
high-minded business as a venture,
in 1972. I guess the hare-krishna
dudes and all that were around, at
airports and things, but I never
much saw them. Anyway, to me,
and because it was Ithaca, this
all came as high-minded, blissfully
pure and good-intentioned. It's
funny how, sometimes, ideology can
become a stumbling block in one
undertaking, but a prime-mover
in others.
-
I'd never faced black-power
before; the incendiary attitude
of the sort of righteousness that
went with that ideology. But 
they ended up being right, 
though it brought them 
nothing. Today we let the
creeps and the criminals 
have the best chairs of 
honor.  In 1971, handling 
firepower was the way it 
was done, especially in the 
back hills of Tompkins 
County. They used to stand 
around the open-pit fires
at pig-roasts and ideology
picnics and say, 'There's
nothing better than smoking
a pig.' Man, that threw me.
Here now, when I hear a
local jerk, with his fireworks,
I jump. (And from 60 yards off!).
-
Mostly, I've found, ignorance weaves
its faulty quilt with a mighty needle.


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