RUDIMENTS

RUDIMENTS, pt. 356 (plato in Avenel, pt. 1) With my mouth wired shut, as I've been writing about, I really did little talking. It was a long time too. You have to figure, the time spent with a wired up jaw, and the time spent, before that, in a coma, weren't either of them very noisy places. When it's not you doing the talking, you learn to see a lot of how others do it  -  the way they punctuate with a facial expression, or work their hands as they make their points. It's petty cool and used to make me think about tribes around campfires. What shamans possessed, more than the average drudge, was a form of message-telling charisma, I guess it would be called now. When you possess that, it's real easy to get right into people's heads. No wonder they think you're wizardry is special. It's all in relation to their own lack of the same thing. It's all projection. - Once my mouth, by the way...

RUDIMENTS, pt. 355 (Avenel Academy, pt.1) Once you're in the hospital a long enough time, I found out, in Perth Amboy anyway  - which was kind of way low-key as far as hospitals and rigors and routines go  -  that they all love you and welcome you around. Like having a healing pet or something, as is done now. I just waltzed around on my crutches, went where I chose, mostly, and got to know people. It must be like an orphanage or something, where, yeah, even though it's sad, people get by, and manage to smile, survive and 'be.' It was like that for me  -  in fact the only crummy people I kept kept really seeing were the visitors, mine and all the others, who would come and go all miserable and sad. I figured you can't be too sad, at least you still have someone to visit  -  ain't dead yet. Cheer up, Kemosabe. (That's also a cancer joke, 'Chemosabe' but the Lone Ranger and Tonto hadn't...

RUDIMENTS, pt. 354 (Perth Amboy : Avenel train wreck) Walt Whitman said he loafed to enhance his time. Yes, I can understand that moment. Life ends mostly on a dreary note; within an estrangement of both circumstance AND time as they overlap. Go. Go then. Just watch the birds in the field, and see the river, how it flows. The words of Man are nothing, and the works of man are battered. Long, long ago it occurred to me that I was born in the wrong place and the wrong time. Once a realization like that hits, it throws you way off. The papers said I had a family, a sister, at first just one, then more, and then a brother. So, I guess I did, but it never ever seemed natural, Or right. I was one, alone, struggling through, and without any aid or assistance to take or give. Really, I wanted to strangle myself, but that's one thing near impossible to do  -  for, at the moment of your passage, your muscles, going limp, undo th...