The Grind has a strange policy with bums. For some reason, they are not only tolerated but encouraged to hang around outside. Today has been particularly gruesome— a white, middle -aged bum with shit-stained pants has been hounding girls for an hour. It’s useless to ask the DJs to flush these guys out— they’re too spineless. As the outside tables are not cordoned off, a bum like this can get right in anyone’s face or even sit down. Sure enough, the guy sits down at the next table. He moans and groans, calls the girls beautiful, scratches his ass, and generally ups the tension knob a few notches. It’s Labor Day, coincidentally, and semi-crowded (I was expecting desolation). I just ran into a friend of Bennie Holmes, one of the street poets. The conversation petered out after an awkward minute. What this guy can’t stand is that I’ve changed— I don’t give off cozy mediocrity vibes anymore. This guy resembles the landlord in Big Lebowski, but I don’t know if he does dance routines. Suddenly, here comes Dana, and I’ll end this off with ellipses until she leaves…that’s the longest conversation I’ve ever had with her. Now that we’re a semi-item, she appears to be opening up. Dana has a lot of pent-up rages, for the simple reason, I believe, that she never gets laid. She spent several weeks in New Hampshire this summer, farming, and she tells me all about the thrills and spills of the organic life. She sees herself eventually living on a farm, in some sort of communal context. Funny: I spent some communal time in New Hampshire, too, on a poetry farm, and, as I’m not ashamed to admit, on a proverbial sex farm, with Wendy Smith. Dana is so scared of such things that I might say something about my own life that there are surprisingly few pauses in her rambling monologue. I nod, laugh when I’m expected to laugh, express the requisite affection. But the conversation is tainted by the evident rider that I’m not allowed to speak. Dana reminds me of N, too: the absolute despotism of the orgasmic ecstasy of the mind-fuck.
It’s taken me, actually, thirty-four years to fully realize what a charnel ground the arts are. The charnel ground is established and held in place by millions of folks whose major talent is for self-deception— their guiding premise being that they can do this, where the arts are concerned. Layer after layer of self-deception develops, if these people stay in the arts over a long term. Because the success ratio in the arts is astronomically low, these “pseuds” contrive any number of reasons to place themselves right on the proverbial mountain. Dana is a perfect synecdoche— it’s useless to try and dissuade her from believing that her little pictures are as good as anyone else’s. And what density! All these levels and layers of self-deception are so tightly packed (perhaps because the self is packaged as a commodity) that to talk to these people is to spit into the wind. Being young is no guarantee of malleability— girls like Dana learn all sorts of self-preservation methods (whether it’s theory, mistrust of theory, ignorance or knowledge) that ensure maximum density by age twenty-five. The guy that was just here, Bennie’s friend, is a typical example— his platform is an exaggerated American egalitarianism, an ethos that dictates “nothing’s better than anything else;” which means, of course, that his own putrid pieces are safe, fine. It also means there’s no reason to respect me as his superior. No taste means no waste, as far as he’s concerned; if everyone’s equal, everyone can serve (and, if they’re unctuous enough, be served by) him. Some of his gossip has gotten back to me, too.
One of the hokey contrivances around modern poetry involves age; specifically, that poets under the age of forty cannot be taken particularly seriously. This is a gambit on the part of older, conventionally established (i.e. impotent) poets to protect their glass-housed positions. This guy, Benny’s friend, turned forty two years back. Since then, it’s been his delight to deign every move I make the foolish (albeit cutely foolish) misstep of a “younger poet.” If you spend enough years publishing garbage, if you’re still in the game at forty, you too can gloat and treasure easy superiority over anyone younger than you. Taste makes waste, except I’ve won enough leverage to cut him off if I want, and I do. Kill or be killed, schmuck, as Bill would say. The smarmy stance before the world of the book parasite. That the good guy has to win some of the time: why the rake and ho routine had to happen between Wendy and I.
The sex difference between Dana and I makes these issues trickier; genuine sexual tension makes it difficult to be disinterested, and vicious. Where there is an edge of wanting, razors become butter knives, especially with a man like myself, who aspires to kindness. But, from old writers right through to Dana, the angle of the would-be (or could-be or should-be) holds true. Do I desire vengeance? In this context, vengeance and truth are identical. Philly, this Philly really is such a putrid mess that a claim for vengeance (or truth) would be an overstatement— all I covet is a few moments rest— Larsen’s dope. Which was a hit down on the farm in New Hampshire, I might add.
Yours, The Eternal One
No comments:
Post a Comment