RUDIMENTS

RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,164 (I'm out of time) Dear Milllicent - I took your car from the driveway in New Orleans, but never brought it home. Some black folks up in Portland took it from me, saying it was rightfully theirs. I couldn't fight back, as they burned the 7-11. I'd driven up to Oregon to see what I could see about all this that was going on. Maybe write about it, or just observe for later. Nothing made sense, and I took a Greyhound down to Tempe, Arizona a few days later. I got there OK, well, really 'here,' since I haven't yet left. It's quieter here, but boring as Hell. All you may hear about Arizona; think sleeping buros and inactive Central Americans. - Up in Portland, the entire range of rage was different, and it seemed to be always changing. No one knew what any of it was about, but to them it didn't matter anyway. The strife and the theater of display was all that mattered. I

RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,163 (generalizations, mostly erroneous, we have) There's no legal maneuver for keeping a sound body and mind, and I truly think most people have already lost it by about age 15. Maybe before. Once a person seriously begins to accept the foul assumptions of society, and then directs efforts towards only ITS version of success and accomplishment, you've either already lost your mind to it or are well on your way to the adoption of their ways of both assuming and thinking. The unreal world is somehow bolstered enough by fantasy realms to, by silent force, become everyone's 'real ' world - no one ever knowing it's all bogus. There's little more annoying than seeing some 15-year old snot-nosed kid put on a shirt and tie and begin acting 'grown-up' and writing some Elks propaganda essay about like 'What America Means To Me.' Real dumb craphead stuff. I was always remind

RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,162 ('head down...don't look up') Well. Here I am, seemingly now relegated to a back-bench burner. My dog is dead. I'm in the process of a long, tedious uproot; boxes and carting. My mind and spirit tells me I can get through this, nicely, with compunction, and with a positive, creative field of endeavor. I work for light like that. - Pulling - no, tugging - from the other direction is all the local eastcoast, NJ, semi-ghetto way of living that I have to jam against. It's a startling fact, realizing that upon returning here each time, after 4 or 5 days away, this place appears decrepit, beleaguered, under assault, poor, morose, and wasted - with little quality anywhere. I trace my eyes, while driving, internally, as they leave the hills and mountains, the solitary singleness of the small roads, the twists and turns, all between gravel and dirt, rut and redstone. It's a different wo

RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,161 (that train kept a'rolling, zelda) Shovels to Ipswitch? I had always known something about place. John Updike lived there, until his death, Ipswitch; the one here, in the USA. Massachusetts. He was actually born in Reading, PA, and grew up, tenderly, in Shillington PA, where they've kept the little white house well preserved and marked. I don't know how large of a 'tourist' attraction it is, but it probably is, a little. He wrote an early book, called 'Of The Farm.' I vaguely recall it, something about his Father, a failing farm, that father as a country school-teacher of some sort, and an early model, speeding car. Another one was titled, 'The Poorhouse Fair.' It's pretty much a descriptive title for exactly what the tale is about. Both are now considered 'early' work, and the preponderance of the reputation he's left with comes from his later works,