8070. THINGS ARE DIFFERENT NOW, (#31)

#31 EREWHON / 
SAMUEL BUTLER

When I was about 16, I used to  

walk the woods across the tracks

behind my house. General Dynamics, 

the company, was still functioning

there with their factory and land, 

and they had a service road for 

trucks and deliveries, which ran 

through these woods with a truck-

entrance on Rahway Avenue. The

woods were fine, and unbothered,

growing well, heavily tree'd, etc., 

and no one ever bothered me. Only 

occasionally would I see a security car

or some sort of personnel for security, 

around. Never any trouble. I'd walk

through those woods (they brought 

me out the other end, by Rahway 

Avenue and the prison), declaiming

aloud lines of Blake or Ginsberg

or Ferlinghetti. It was just something

I'd taken to doing  -  memorizing

things and orating aloud (habits

from the seminary days, when I'd

do the same thing in warming up

for the Oratorical Contests I was 

in, and stage lines for the Drama

Club stuff). Memorization is a 

really odd thing :  it's an old,

dated way of carrying and of

recalling the world, both at

the same time. In olden days,

it was all a distinct category

of remembrance, nowadays

forgotten. We have become

inured to things, visually and

aurally (hearing) and orally

(spoken) too. We have instant

images, instant recall and

recollections, and the means

to call forth History and the

past at any time, instantly. That

premise of our lives has now

permanently changed. My waltz

through these woods combined

my memorization of things,

and the performance aloud of

that. It was all based on an old

Greek guy, Demosthenes, I

believe it was, who started all

this, and from whose writings I

learned about putting pebbles in

one's mouth, a few, while practicing

an oration. After many repetitions,

and without the pebbles then, one's

words are clear and concise! It's

pretty amazing, and a grand way

of practicing for oratory,

beforehand.

-

You're probably wondering

what could possibly have

brought me to be including this

in one of these chapters. It all

began last chapter, when I was

was being critical of landscapers

and people of small intelligence,

in this case the marginal and

immigrant groups of probable

illegals anyway whom we allow

in to do these jobs. My thinking

was that they're dumb enough so

that people would call them

'flat-Earthers,' as in folks who

still think the world is flat. The

minute that idea hit me, I knew I

was in trouble  -  because that idea

all stems from William Blake,

1757-1827. Back when I actually

was 16, and studying Blake  -

all that material of 'Sunflower'

and 'Chimney-Sweep' and 'Los'

 and 'Enitharmon' and 'Urizen,'

and the Prophetic Books and

everything brought me to a

point where in Blake (with 

whom I felt a total and 

immersed kinship, from

the very first moment, 

sometimes as if I WAS 

him), some commentator or 

another made a remark about 

Wm. Blake still believing

in the theory of flat Earth. I

guess in our world that's 

outlandish. So I checked it 

out; and what I found astounded 

me, and still does, and perfectly

explains the concept. Which

concept, obviously, the

block-headed commentator

could not grasp-to-realize. In

his own terms. William Blake

really did believe the earth was

flat. And he said so. But he 

didn't mean hills and valleys 

and flatlands and plains, and 

all that. The format of this all,

which I totally shared, and 

understood and had experienced

myself as if it had been my own

idea, was that the 'world' is a

flat, planar sphere of interpretive

matter, which each individual

processes as 'Reality', all both

different and the same, together,

for each. The 'world' is flat,

it reaches straight out, a linear

plane open and unmarked, for

each. Communal and civilizational

and agreed-upon 'assumptions' 

about things make for society 

and place, the things we 

experience and inhabit. I was

right there with that, and it all

appeared real easy.

-

I used to go out into those woods

really early, often for Summer 

sun-ups, and Winter ones too  -  

but not as often because walking 

to school, on days I did, took 

another direction. Just as today,

when I can catch a sunrise from the

train station platform on the days

that I'm there, I had my very own

'almost-observatory'. Like a primitive

man far out of time, I had limbs and

branches and tree things through 

which and upon which I could gauge 

the sunrise, watch the ascent,

experience the brightening. As if

at my own particularized version

of Stonehenge, I could be vast and

ancient man, celestial man, grand

and cosmic Mankind, taking the 

world  -  flat or round, who cared  -

all in. I loved all that, and lived 

a solitary time.

-

That's all gone now, all of it, as 

am I. That particular version of 

me died a long, long time ago. 

The world around me is totally 

different, and we're not much on

speaking terms anyway. It's filled

with dread, and it's boring. Every

story and each fixation is a long

and drawn-out itinerary to nowhere.

Which, by the way, was an 1872

book, by one Samuel Butler,

published anonymously and 

meant to be read as 'Nowhere', 

a fictional country discovered 

by the protagonist. A satire of

Victorian, British society? A

lost word for a lost Utopia?

Well maybe, one, or both

or neither. Of such conundrums

are our lives all made. From here

to eternity, or here to Erewhon.

No difference at all.
-

The real point here, and one which

I've not clarified, was that the point of

William Blake  -  which the commentator

missed entirely, and which is echoed in 

our own literature by Thoreau's 'Most men

lead lives of quiet desperation'  -  was that

the world is FLAT for the mass of Mankind,

those who accept rational living and ideas,

who follow sequence, remain dull and

un-creative, who do not think or themselves;

those who live in Erewhon. For Blake  -  and

for myself as well, which I felt within me  -

the only goodness and holy presence

there is is in constantly dis-proving that

flat-Earth fallacy. (More next chapter). That

is why, for instance, Humankind has allowed

real sentiment to be overtaken by the false sham

of a sort of Hallmark Card sentiment, everywhere.

Avoiding all issues, in the hope of false harmony.