RUDIMENTS

RUDIMENTS, pt. 456 (the lately lamented everything) 'They have redness of eye, who tarry long with the wine.' Boy did that ring true. It used to be that the city drunks were all called 'winos.' I saw hundreds of them over time; never knowing what they drank nor what it was called. Thunderbird. Night Train Express. Red Scorchy. All those little bottles, left about everywhere, and the prone bodies of the dead or passed out from those bottles before being emptied. Sometimes they  could talk, these guys, or still try to, with or without teeth. Gumming their words like a suction-cup thought, their deep-seated feelings did sometimes turn to tears  - there's nothing worse than having to witness a man crying over his past, yet in his useless present. It was a speechless section of time, to see that, and one without a script. - Igor Stravinsky said, 'One lives by memory, not by truth.' I always ag...

RUDIMENTS, pt. 455 (mistletoe and redwing) My God may have made me an entity, I'll admit, but the burden of responsibility was for me to, or not to, pick up the mantle given to me. My situation was whatever it was : Goodbye Bayonne harborlands, early. Hello Avenel. Rhymed with 'What the Hell,' so I took the young-boy cudgel. And now here I am. The message I've taken up of late is in the finishing of the story, however it goes. I may gag on a tuna sandwich tomorrow. My heart might stop here  - ! !! -  in mid-sentence (ha ha fooled you). Or I may have 12 more years some some sanctimonious pussyfooting yet to do. I used to tease my Mother endlessly, in two ways, as a young guy. She was very impressionable, and naive. I'd tell her I was going to die, and that I knew it, at age 42. She'd gasp, and get all upset. One day I awoke, and I was 42. 'Oh damn,' I said to myself, 'now I've done...

RUDIMENTS, pt. 454 (russ the dane) Never sticking your neck out, as they say, means never getting your head cut off at the neck. I guess there's a nice, quiet  complacency to something  like that, but I don't know  why a real man would want it. It seems to me that we're  now surrounded by fake men; little guys who hide behind the scenes and set off their incendiaries while taking no initiative ever to own up to the things they're doing. That goes for women too, I think that's what they're called. As I was a novice, coming up through the dank folds of the cloak of Avenel, I remember people who would just punch people. They were the best,  just getting right to the point. There's so much conflict around anyway  -  I remember, in about 1961, this guy Clifford Gary, a real pain in the ass kind of kid, and he had a sister too, name forgotten. In Catechism or Confirmation class, one of  thos...