RUDIMENTS 790.

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 the

accommodate the descending

order and the degenerating 

format and context. It can 

never but be that way. 

Consider the local folk

here  -  including me, I 

suppose  -  always going 

on about taxes, expenses, 

congestion, home prices,

and all the rest. Ending up,

most often, moving away 

to somewhere distant. 

What then happens? To 

the person from Staten 

Island or NY, this all

looks, by comparison, 

to be a paradise. Rentable, 

affordable, green and roomy. 

So they move here, filling 

the void. That's where we 

get the slow transference,

downward, I'd say, while 

complacency and passivity 

set in and the new people

plop down here right into

the manipulative soirees 

of those hosting this 

authoritarian toastfest.

-

I saw right through that game,

long back ago. When I left

town, I'd figured I'd left for

good; doing all that Thomas

Wolfe stuff  -  you can't go

home again. That's really all

backwards anyway. It should

be 'You can't really ever leave

home.' In the same way those

are both true statements, so 

what's then the difference?

-

All those farmers, and their

wives and kids too, I got on

surprisingly well with. I've 

already written about the

compromises I agreed to  - 

those barber-shop porch nights,

the guys endlessly jabbering

about crap, men standing

around drinking hard cider

like it was their own personal 

gold, (which it was). Everyone

was sort of accepting, after

maybe a first-blush of cold

hard anathema. It went away,

usually, as soon as I began

talking; I'd find the simplest

subject, and go from there:

Nails used in the old barns, say.

Then some fool would start

going on about 'Daddy Hardwick,

and how he'd forged his own

nails, and had a count on how

many it all took, and if it was

7,000, well, he'd made them all.

They weren't nails anyway, so

much as endless spikes, to grab

the wood....' Blah, blah. The

prevalent eccentricity here was

that these guys could go on

about most anything. Cow teats,

the mailman's daughter, Alton

Ford's new gravestone, their own

wives' grunts and groans. Nothing

ever stopped them; they talked

while they milked, or shoveled,

or hammered. Now, I could be

belittling all that, but I'm not,

because to me that was all free

schooling about old stuff I'd

otherwise never know anything 

about. Suburban living cuts

you out of Americana, for sure.

All the stories of the great, old

country that ever were, they

all came out of places like this

here one, in Pennsylvania  -  as

I'm writing of it. This was 1740,

western frontier stuff; all those

restless 1st and 2nd generated

Americans pushing off into Ohio

and the hinterlands, the 'Northwest

Territories.' Injuns on the run too.

These old lands were still forming

societies; everything in flux, no

fast rules or laws about anything.

Mostly the rudest or nastiest guy

hiding out, he's the one who

eventually got into town, as

it came to be, and took over.

Post-facto lawman, enforcer,

even executioner. Start fires with

his spit, he would, if he had to.

Everyone else  -  those who stopped

their moving on anyway  -  they

stayed into place until it all

congealed. Like Jello, it might 

have been wiggly and jiggly, but 

it had  form and shape, and 

had 'congealed!'

-

Seems like whenever something or

some group leaves, there's always

something coming in from behind

to fill the gap, like the Staten Island

escapees I mentioned, to here. They

arrive here when something costs

2,000 dollars. They've been paying

3,800. It sure looks like a bargain

to them. Alas, we still recall when

it was 900; so we're the stuck

ones  -  grunting and groaning

like one of those farm-wives

the guys talk about. Hey. Don't

tell them I said that.
-
Conflict was always just a stone's
throw away  -  if I had sought it.
But I certainly did not feel it to be
my place. There was something
tangible, to be felt, about being an
outsider there, and I felt it. It was
a boat I didn't wish to be rocking.
Family and bloodlines ran back
through generations there, and it
wasn't often that totally new blood
was entered into that stream. When
that old blowhard started talking
about barns, names, and 'Daddy
Hardwick,' more people than not,
within earshot, knew exactly of
whom he spoke. I had no clue.
Something in the air there kept
people together : There's an old
story, one of those zen-type
things, about an old monk who
long had lived alone, going about
his tasks...having dug an irrigation
ditch, he would go fetch water,
and pour that water bucket by
bucket into the new ditch, to
water and reach his vegetable
garden below. His efforts were
tremendous, though the results
appeared as meager. A passing
traveler, seeing this, stopped and
told him another method for all
this, to lessen greatly the load and
improve the sequence. 'Take a wooden
lever, weighted at the back, light in
the front; it dips, brings up water,
and dispenses it. It's called a
'draw-well' and will almost gush,
saving you all this tedium.' Anger
rose up in the old monk's face, and
he said, 'I have heard my teacher
say that whoever uses machines
does all his work like a machine.
He who does work like a machine
grows a heart like a machine; and
he who carries the heart of a
machine in his breast loses his
simplicity. He who has lost
his simplicity becomes unsure
in the strivings of his soul.
Uncertainty in the strivings of
the soul is something that does
not agree with honest sense.
It is not that I do not know of
such things; I am ashamed
to use them.'
-
For me, it was all
something like that.