RUDIMENTS

RUDIMENTS, pt. 791 (not so bad, really) I had a half-Italian friend once, Alex, who used to go around saying mezzo mezzo. Whenever anyone would ask, 'How are you?' he'd say, 'Ah, mezzo mezzo.' It was pronounced as 'metza, metza,' sort of, or, then, close to that. I never really knew what was up with that. He was haughty enough about himself that I always somehow thought he was saying, 'Mensa, Mensa.' Which is a society for high IQ people  -  which , of course, he would have just loved. What it does mean is like 'half and half,' -  the good and the bad. Not so bad, not so good. Kind of a 'so so.'  - It never bothered me, but I always found it to be a bit like striving. My opinion was, just say how you are and shut up with the other language posturing. I never told him that, so he went on with it. - There's only so much you  can do about other people,  I found. They...

RUDIMENTS, pt. 790 (hey, don't tell them I said that) This  world sure is a funny one.  On balance, as I look back on that I was doing, I see  now it was part mad-escape  and another part almost a  biblical sort of casting out  from my personal equivalent  of a bondage in Egypt, to a  sad, nutso, chase following  something into a hoped-for  Promised Land of only a personal reckoning. The fact that it all ended in failure, although disconcerting, does not invalidate what I did, or the doing of it. It all was like a self-doctoring, without prescription, to a progressive wound that just kept growing  instead of healing. (I want here to imitate a parent, and say,  'Don't pick at the scab! It will never heal!'). - I view life, I think, as a  descending pallor  -  nothing  ever gets better, rather  viewpoints change to...

RUDIMENTS, pt. 789 (sidebar, bad weather, off track, detour) As far as anything real went, I was up to my knees in it all. As far as the rest  -  the imaginary and the intellectual pursuits and all that. I was overwhelmed. There was a good period of years there when I never touched an art brush. I had numerous typewriters going, but not artwork. Living in a new situation such as this was, took a lot out of me. I can't remember much about sleep, but I guess I had no trouble sleeping. I can't even remember much about eating, but  -  though I seemed to have lost pounds  -  I guess I managed all that OK. I was in a real strange no-man's land, of my own making. A corollary to this happened to me just today; which is about the funniest thing of late. Here where I live now, it's a regular street  -  houses, curbs, and all the rest. I live at the corner of two fairly often used streets  -...