PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE (the story of Feltville)

230. PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE (the story of Feltville):

It was always (had to be) something like punch-drunk love or some riddler’s oasis on the threshold of vague time : the abandoned mill at the bottom of the river down in the deep valley where no one goes – a lone and forgotten place filled with ruins and old buildings and graves from another day long ago – an entire community lived here (Feltville) in a sort-of meritocratic communal fashion – plebians workers drones and leaders : church school home farm and fare : a jumble of little places now barely discernable and only the largest of structures remain – the old meeting hall the church house the broad building used for school and socials and the once-much-larger rows of housing now with but a few remaining and others leaning and with the only true evidence of all which once was here being the lines of trees and shrub which used to ring the places that were once important - an old brick-kiln oven yard a flagpole-centered village oval old paths through the big trees and down to the waterway as one makes the path there are all sorts of evidences of the old mill-work the plant the offices the rock-walls and cartage slopes for wagon and man and beast YES YES it’s all there in some fashion and the true excitement of discovery is about for all to partake : stumble-stones graveyards little piles of heaped rubble old foundation walkways lookouts baths and sheds : ‘could’a been a really wonderful place’ someone uttered ‘and they had ‘free-love’ too’ another said ‘plenty of kids about I bet and for sure they didn’t die out for lack of people – not with all that porkin’ going on’ the wiry one said and then the old-timer spoke up ‘it was 1841 and everything was still wide open – the very idea of Utopian communities was about taking off – all those stern New Englanders were breaking down their stuff into looser configurations - communes and sacred communities and Nature-Worship and the like - this was all an off-shoot of those early days and it worked here for thirty years too – plenty of graves attest to that – but it’s little known and not much mentioned either but at one point everyone stopped here – all them crazy-commune-preacher types and there was regular circuit they all ran speaking and preaching at one place or another but it wasn’t a religion at all in the ‘religious’ sense – it was self-sufficient self-knowledge nature-worship love humankind dignity and salvation somehow all rolled up in one and yeah you’re right probably throw in lust there too – but what ever made more sense than that anyway?’ and then he nodded as to himself and looked skyward and said – while walking away – ‘it’s all over anyway and nobody now gives a damn about nothing’.