RUDIMENTS

RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,160 ('Carthage must be destroyed') In one of those 'this is because I say it' moments, I was a Roman Centurion. But, a contrarian centurion never went far in the Roman legions, and I was slain for my insubordination: Leading a revolt of legion stable-hands from the side of the Landowne March. One day I awoke, remembering all that, and it took me right over to the shell-stalls in the old flea market stands. I knew I was searching for something, something internal that was becoming pressing, but I knew not what it was. It's like that when one is 'driven.' And I was driven - but once that drive breaks out of its control parameters, most of the effort bleeds away into a sort of no-results nothingness. In fact, when you come right down to it, everything is nothingness, but the idea of the schools and colleges is to take that sense of nothing and at least stack it and hone the point of it, so as to do 'somethin...

RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,159 (drowning in a richness : seeking dry shelter) The meandering explorations of a 'Me,' for example, took that me in many directions. I was, truly, all over the place, but, like that bus driver a chapter or two back, essentially going nowhere at the same time. Life and language are sometimes like that: So strange. - "Porcupines like to live alone, but in Winter they sometimes hole-up in long-snouted little gangs inside hollow trees and logs, in cavities made by cracks in boulders, beneath piles of brush, or under a front porch, sneaky as thieves. Inside, in the damp and ratty dark, fallen-out quills carpet the floor. In spring, female porcupines raise their babies in these dens. A baby porcupine is called a porcupette. There isn't a word for a porcupine den, but I suggest...a quiver."..... - "Quivers are, generally, a mess. Porcupines are rodents, an order of mammals that are, as a ...

RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,158 (ideal time) Did you know that Humankind now takes having a roof over one's head as a human right? Having evolved from 'an outdoor species into an indoor one, we've gone from the African savannah's wide open expanses, intimate with Nature and seeking protection under tree canopies, so that our genetic hardwiring, built over millennia, still craves that older connection to nature.' Hmmm. No wonder I scan skies and look to the heavens to forestall a certain sort of K-Mart innate boredom. Even the confines of an expensive car can't solve this new dilemma. I go, though the way be wild? - That's not mine, that 'way be wild' thing. In fact, as I recall, it's from Linus, in an old Peanuts cartoon. None of that sounds vital now, but in the very late 1960's this Charles Schulz guy had the world wrapped with his 'Peanuts' cartoon. I was never a fan at all, not even a ...

RUDIMENTS, pt. 1157 'somnabulance' The sleepwalker's a pretty good guy: he wears a mellow yellow, and strikes the band on high, running between the ancient aces and figurines on the bottom of the sea. Sometimes I think the only person I'm at war with is myself: juggling anima-diversions, or wiggling this way or that. Over along the ittle highway some crazy guy has a cactus stand. Selling them potted. Stupid-looking little things too. Maybe a foot high, for the less-pricey ones. I used to have interest in such items, 'succulents' and jade plants. I grew 40 of them, over time, and each time they'd send out the air-roots, a clipping was in order and I had twice as many. 'Two became four and then four became eight.' That's called 'exponential' growth, for those of who out there who've studied economics. It's always been the bane, in population terms, of people who disliked immigrant...