RUDIMENTS

RUDIMENTS, pt. 637 (left for dead on the mantle) Never knowing why, it always seemed that people confided in me, started telling me stuff I didn't need to know, almost in confessional ways. I could never figure it out, and never knew why  -  nor what they ever expected I should do about some of the things they told me. It was charming, don't get me wrong. But sometimes it put me in funny situations  -  like in Elmira one time we had these two friends, real interesting people, arty, lots of nice finesse, etc. On the surface of things it always seemed ideal; they were fun, we got along, he was an art-teacher, if not an artist; (I never felt one could be both, but I never pressed the point). It was his premise that he was - both, I got close with the wife in this family,  from work connections. We each  had a 6 or 7 year old boy, and lo and behold, as in so many other times, this wife starts telling me all...

RUDIMENTS, pt. 636 (nothing good comes from nazareth) I always figured most of 'Society' to be made up of envy. The component of envy was everywhere, in everything, the basis of all marketing and made-up desires, and, of course, pushed constantly by the advertising industry. Capitalism itself was based on a promoted form on envy, the idea being you 'wanted' what your neighbor had. Regular people envied artists for their ease, lack of employment, and their free ways. In turn, artists envied the regular pay-checks, homes and family lives that they'd see, many times, all those regular people having. Lay people envied clerics, as the clerics often enough envied the flock they preached to. Cops envied criminals and criminals envied cops. It was all a regular schmuck-show, and the only thing steady about America was how envy was pushed along, used as the basis for selling 'larger' cars - things bi...

RUDIMENTS, pt. 635 (not a notion; not an ocean) You know how people sometimes say 'Oh just do it this once, it won't bother you at all'? Well, whenever I heard that, or anything like it, it just reminded me of being a kid again, in my basement, with those Lionel trains my father always had set up. They were actually pretty boring to me, at all times, but I had to go along with whatever the supposed sporting pleasure of them was supposed to be. For the sake of family. Or my Father anyway. It was always a big deal to him that we had, or were meant to sense we had, the best, largest and most finely-appointed train set-up on the block. Of course we didn't, or maybe we did, but how were we supposed to know or care anyway? He was way achievement-oriented in things like that - but what could you possibly do in taking pleasure from a collection of trains? Of course, they were the full-size Lionel best; O-gauge or wha...

RUDIMENTS, pt. 634 ('but neither did I ever ask...') I was always something of a floor rat - even in the Studio School, where I finally got hooked up getting 16 bucks a week (where that number came from I cannot recall), staying there, sleeping there, sort of just as a night presence, and a bit of a main desk person on various evenings. People coming and going, shows, small talks and lectures, etc. There was, down a floor, at the ground-level of the rear yard court (this was an old collection remember, of brownstones from a hundred years back, wherein wealthy people had lived, and their open-doorways to the private courtyards and all that was important), into which you'd sort of descend and sit in as royalty; using your imagination of course. The Studio School, in this present day, has closed that access off, the glass-doors which had opened out, etc., and just put at that area a wall for their art-gallery...