ME AND LILLIE MAE (nyc, 1968)

249. ME AND LILLIE MAE (nyc, 1968):

'The guy named Fisk was just in from the Comstock Lode when he arrived on the scene along Lake Erie where propeller-driven winds were pushing the sailboats low across the water : it was race to the finish and the winner was to be the one who lived and he alone would tell the story'...I'd heard this all before and just gave up listening because I was solid-bored and it was all pretty tasteless to me just the same and no matter and my new best friend Lillie-Mae said she was willing to go along with me to the horse-stables over on 71st where I sometimes hung out and so we went together like a couple of real rich kids just out for a jaunt and once arriving there she went into a story about golden-chuted horses raining down from Heaven in a silence known only to God and that caught some guy's attention who said he'd buy us some food or a meal if she would just keep talking for a while - since he was lonely and a widower man without any companionship and he thought 'kids' were just the greatest thing in the world - by which of course he meant people like me and Lillie-Mae not kids at all just young people busting things up and 'making opportunities out of things his generation had passed up on long ago' - that was his quote and I always remembered him saying it almost with a sadness that could make you cry but I never knew why - I mean even if it were true (which it wasn't of course) why blame an entire generation of people for something that just had dawned on you alone and for all we knew he himself was a loser who never did anything at all anyway but I noticed that when people start getting old they begin thinking about death and old times and things they might have done but never did and all those regrets just start catching up to them and then BAM! one day it's just the opposite and they're daft - crazy foreverafter until they die all misty-eyed and wistful over the (suddenly) 'wonderful' days they'd lived through and the great times they'd had as young people back in the times when times were right and nothing was better than the old days except the old days themselves - so as I said I never really knew what to believe with people like this but anyway he took us across to Columbus Ave. and we had a couple of nice sandwiches and some soda and coffee and things and he sat there mesmerized for a long time just listening to us go back and forth about stuff - much of it what we'd just make up as we went along but he didn't know - and it was all on him so we enjoyed the eating and the talking too and occasionally he'd know somebody as they passed and the hello's and nods and handshakes all were about the same - turned out they all were like neighbors and building-mates of each other and their little block along 67th Street or somewhere and I guess this was just how they hung around passing their time - equally old and probably equally diverse too in the different ways they'd achieved their status and place and age : money is hard to come by until you come by it once and then it just starts bringing in more and manages to stay around - or so it seemed anyway - so that by witnessing in this way I at least got to learn about rich people from a different angle but an up-close one : and then we went back to the stables which were really that and inside the huge building there was like a riding academy and an indoor circular track or circuit or whatever it's called where people ran their horses or trotted and cantered or just moped around with their horses for the human/horse company and bonding it gave and there were very many expensive-looking riding jodphurs and fancy girls with straight blond hair and little hats and stuff and the guys too all were stiff and uppity about themselves and one could tell the old stables had been around for years and generations - back when horses were just normal things that everyone had - and layers of family traditions were overlapping like a cotillion or dance or coming-out party all the time for riches and wealth and its handing over to the next generation but it little mattered to us - we just stayed around and most people either thought we were hired-hands or visitors just as we were and no one really bothered us and it was kind of fun - the guy who'd fed us stayed around too and we hung back until it was pretty late and then he said he'd hopefully see us again real soon and we agreed to that and he left and then we too left a bit later and hauled off on foot across the dark park over towards the east and when we got to Fifth Ave. we jumped the wall and went down to the avenue walkway where there were hundreds of people walking in either direction and all across the avenue down to the end of the park by 57th the crowds were big and everything was lit-up as usual and the audaciously disgusting GM building as it was lit up the corner with fake radiance and it dwarfed by its light the stones of the old Plaza Hotel and the rest but people no matter hung around - all wealthy coats and patrons and then plenty of gawkers and tourists too but all the big stores down along Fifth were filled with people and lights and goods and the crowd at the skating rink by Rockefeller Center was cramming the promenade there and it was all crazy but fun - we walked all through it arm-in-arm enjoying the immensity of what was all around us going on and she'd look up or past me to see the different things and then she'd say weird things like 'never had such a hoot at rambling' or 'no difference I bet 'tween Heaven and this 'cept my daddy said never to go there' and then she kissed me - and I wasn't ever sure what any of that stuff meant but it was like hillbilly talk and I dug it then and still smile over it now - we eventually got to her place on 19th Street and I stayed overnight a few nights there - she was good at everything how should I say - and the I left and we vowed to stay friends and look each other up (but hell that was 1968 and that was a long long time ago) and I missed that wagon I guess as it went around the bend - but no matter - there was one time I remembered she told that guy that night we were eating how her theory about marriage (he was going on about his dead wife) was that one's wife either became like a sister or like an enemy and either way that didn't sound good to her - and another thing she brought up when he was asking broadly about 'religious' ideals or beliefs (like if we had any) and she said some stuff she claimed to know from old Jewish studies - how (memory here) 'In the beginning God said 'Let there be Light' and there was and from open space a flame burst out and God crushed that light to atoms and now myriads of sparks are hidden in our world but not all of us behold them and the self-glorious - the ones who walk arrogantly upright - will NEVER perceive one but the meek and the modest with eyes downcast they see it and 'ALL light is sown for the pious' and that's the story of divine creation' and that sounded good to me but I never thought it went far enough and I always had my own ideas about that - Creation and the rest - until one day years later I was sitting on a train watching the morning sun arise over on the eastern horizon and thinking how ancient all of that was and the bare landscape stretched before me and all of nature's ritual and silence working together and it all just hit me - this idea behind really all creation and all religion and stuff and I realized the real ROOT of all this misinformation this charade this human error in fighting over the hows and whys and when of Creation and God too : the answer was GOD DIDN'T have to MAKE really a thing ! if within the course of His creation procedure He'd decided instead that all he had to do was to introduce to the spiritual cosmos (to the US within US) the CONCEPT of everything (all the stuff we endlessly argue at as religions and belief systems and the rest) and we would do the rest - He didn't need to do anything then except to throw out to the ether the very IDEA of Creation and all our place within it - the means and modes of choice and diameter and process and ruling and system - WE would run with it and create the layered-upon-layered layering of all the Life we lead everywhere and forever - we'd do it all and HE didn't make a thing - we'd made everything according to his introduction of the possibilities - and this creation goes on and on and every probable and possible is still being created over and over anon as are all ideas that go with everything - time death after-life right wrong chance probability regulation anarchy mayhem peace function color depth texture light dark internal exterior skeleton joint health disease plague growth diminishment and the most minute and unspoken things to the most huge and the loudest and overwrought - it's all the possibilities of US and all God did was give us the ONE concept the duality the human/divine dichotomy to work with and we would do the rest and every story was a story we'd made up and every idea of creation and time and death and Heaven and Hell and all that - WE'd done it all and it's ALL right and it's ALL wrong - every idea every version every value they all exist together and in some equal sense are ALL correct - God didn't make any of the errors - WE DID ! and I figured that was why so many times a person could see something that happened and understand immediately that 'that' just had to be - grasped perfectly the 'why' of something as if it filled a need which was projected by the absence at the same time (something like 'necessitated presentiment' or even Plato's 'ideal states') so that was my understanding of matter and material from that time on : and there were plenty of times after that I knew I had missed out on opportunities but I never regretted anything and so many of the people I'd see or meet anyway ended up going nowhere and if they didn't die they just ended up normal as people do - there's a certain period in everyone's life when the cape of 'outlandish' is thrown over the shoulders and then it slowly dwindles away as one realizes it affects nothing except the fey bravado of posture and stance and even the most violent of opinions satiate themselves eventually.