RUDIMENTS

RUDIMENTS, pt. 545 ('hey, where you come from') I used to buy macaroons, somewhere down by Clinton or Forsyth Street  -  the place is gone now, a corner sort of bakery. I'm not sure why I just thought of that, but they were really good. I'm not even really a macaroons sort of person, and I don't think macaroons themselves are particularly Jewish, but this was a Jewish Bakery. Not Gertel's, on Hester Street; and not Jonah Schimmel's on East Houston. They were both good, and had their own shtick, as it were, but this was different. And don't get me wrong  -  I didn't set out on macaroon-buying trips; it's just that, as I'd be up and walking about, I'd get near the place and then think to stop in. My friend, Pauley, tended bar, of what it was, at a place near there called Lotus, or the Lotus. The Lotus was cool. First off, it inhabited an entire corner, at Clinton Street and Stanto...

RUDIMENTS, pt. 544 (once when leaving haverstraw) Well, Cap'n, 'ere's how it goes, I guess. They cut down every tree they can find so to make the place they live like a landin' strip and then they go out and plop down 40 bucks to buy a dead one and drag into their house,  INTO  mind you, for two weeks. Jes' to sit there and wither, and from that they say they're celebratin' Nature, and then, some, they throw in the Jesus stuff too  -  cute little wrappin's and animals at the scene. The only Nature they ever celebrated is the one outdoors from them where they wage war on it with bug sprays and cuttings and pesticides and toxins and then cry when their cat dies. Like drinking freaking lye. I'd say. 'Least it's the same-soundin' word. - That was my speech to the Rotary Club; which club, the only thing rotary about it, is the way these thug-warming guys find their butt plug to sit on an...

RUDIMENTS, pt. 543 (zooming for the top) Privilege is nothing, and privilege is gone. The world gets pretty vapid after a while, and one has to look out, or away, far from it, to have anything make sense. Old age, I suppose, can be tedious. (I'll let you know?). Study Greek grammar? Take lessons in Chekhov? Bullfinch's Mythology? Sleep later? Stay in? Walk to Gramercy? You can only watch clouds and shapes so long and then that becomes dizzying too. I've not had a heart attack yet, and my heart is already dead  -  or weary. Kids on phones and skateboards, or both at the same time. They make me puke. Girls walking by, sometimes, like the pillars of Hercules on their come-get-me platters. I never know what to do but I sure know what not to. My tiresome fanaticism has become my only good trait. What's that tell you, huh? - The park smells like urine, or dog shit too. Either way. Wild animals, it's call...