RUDIMENTS

RUDIMENTS, pt. 906 (ancient stirrings of dread) You know how it is when people look back to recall who they've known and who others might have been now that they can hardly remember? Well, I've become my own dead man, in so many ways. In many ways too I've thought I was quite like a cat, having so many lives and having undertaken to do so many things. I guess the riches were in the thinking, not the doing, because none of it at all popped up or turned out to be anything. A person - it may be said - learns how to read and write, and surmise and reason, make choices, or choose not to make them. That all happens quite naturally, and it seems all a body has to do is go along to be then brought to the end-result of any of that natural stuff. It's been a mighty long time now, near past forever, in fact, that I've run across someone who can't read. Or can't write. Or can't rightfully reason things o...

RUDIMENTS, pt. 905 ('Les Bicyclettes De Belsize') Up in Pennsylvania, there wasn't much use for a bicycle. The dirt roads were nasty and rutted, mostly went nowhere anyway, and they all ended up on the sort of tree'd and pleasant land that bicycles never seemed part of. I often used to wonder about kids and bicycles, as Christmas gifts and all that. I'd imagine that cut them right out of that picture; nor did I ever see a bicycle store up there. I guess you can't sell what people aren't buying. It always confused me, that idea of bicycles and the country. In the way that you always see old-time America personified through genteel sorts of folk on bicycles, I figured it only worked for those old-timey villages with a town square and streets and paved walks and all that. Doctors' and preachers' offices, the jail and the undertaker (Were those two ever in competition, I wonder, or did they ...

RUDIMENTS, pt. 904 (Coryland) As I think back now, I wonder whatever happened to tonsils. In my day, every kid had their tonsils out, and anyone still with their tonsils, by 5th grade was a real solid exception. Up and down my block, everyone I knew was tonsil-less. Like the 'appendix' (what sort of word was that, used in a literary sense? To show some sort of added on extra?), no one knew what any of this was for. The few renderings I ever got of tonsils were quite vague and without meaning. In the same way, kind of like ulcers - which every proud and striving businessperson had or sought to have - I guess no one gets them anymore either. Beats me, but I do wonder about the general consensus of things. It seems like nothing is ever straightforward and is more than half crap. Back when I was studying Geology, at Elmira College, we had this crazed professor who went on, each class, over and over, with great al...

RUDIMENTS, pt. 903 ('you must change your life') I never used to get angry, but now stupid makes me angry. Mostly it's the idiotic, material things. I have found that the majority of that stems from the misplaced values and the poor perceptions of others, so, to solve my dilemma, I just walked away from it all. Last time I was up by Grand Central Station, I was walking around the side, off Vanderbilt Ave.; they've taken down pretty much the entire old city block there and a huge new tower is going up. In one of those facing storefronts, this hair and barber guy, preppy looking, fussy and fey, was out there smoking. I guess on break, He makes eye contact with me and does one of those femme-boy shudders and says 'Oooh! Gnarly beard!' With a face of displeasure, not joy. I just smiled back at him and kept on my way. He probably saw me as a hundred and fifty buck clean up job he'll never get. It...