8359. THINGS ARE DIFFERENT NOW, #103

103. MUTATION

There's something said about

the perfect 'western'  -  the old

movies I grew up with as a kid,

about cowboys and villains,

prairie heroes and displaced

Civil War fighters at loose in

the west. It goes something

like: The perfect western - 'the

villain has arrived, while the

hero is evolving.' I forget how

it goes, exactly, but it sort of

makes sense, and it's about

a 'moment'  -  that single kind

of moment when things enter

'turnaround.' I kind of lived

that moment  - extended and

stretched out  -  for a long time;

and still do. My life is a pivot

point, instead of entering town

it's about getting out.

-

Derivations abound. Everything

is a symbol. Even us, to each

other. There are, here and there

along the way, certain people

who just captivate me, slow me

down, make me happy to muse.

Everybody has love in their heart,

they just often refuse to recognize

it. I wear mine. It's a symbol, yes.

The psychological symbols that

go into the make-up of a life, they

rise up like images; things made

of smoke that only hold form

for a moment, or a few. It's like

that moral, or that turnaround,

moment the old westerns were

always fooling with. In fact,

that was a symbol, and they

couldn't even realize it. The

mind of movie-man had not

advanced that far. Symbols

are psychic codes that can be

interpreted in infinite fashion

according to the circumstances

in which consciousness finds

itself. It was like that, let's

consider, with the Twin Towers

as well as with most anything

else. They soon became a

universalized symbol, for

everyone  -  a 'whatever you

will have it be' kind of place.

To the perfect mind, to was a

pleasurable source of business

location, job, plodding data

entry, contractual and

circumstantial possibilities.

To others, it came to symbolize

greed, the negative world of

all Mammon and finance and

bad things. To others it was a

perfect, square architecture of

place  -  soaring heights, corridors,

an idea which grew to supplant

the previous ideas of things like

the Empire State Building, which

then became an older, outsider

now, symbol for a huge cycle of

existence and thought which was

now over. Had the dynamisms

been  different, perhaps it too

would have fallen. Mankind had

not yet, however, been brought

to that form of thinking. I was,

as I said, equipped with

'forevision', seeming able to

sense things. Here, I sensed

nothing but dread, dread and

the tragic to come. It all seemed

to be everywhere, and confusing.

Up at Judson Memorial, they'd

post names and numbers of Vietnam

dead each day  -  the American,

soldier guys, not the Vietnamese.

Actually, apparently, NO one

cared about them at all, as if

they didn't exist. As long as

the 'show' could go on. At one

extreme, we had US soldiers

walking the Asian forests with

flamethrowers and napalm

spreaders, killing everything

within sight and reach. Those

same kids who, on any other

time-map, might very well have

been right here with me,

experiencing and renovating

their own stupid life-lines. When

I say 'killing everything within

sight', that's incorrect  -  because

here again the secret world intrudes.

They were, more than that, killing

all things sight unseen : the vibrant

and vague mysteries that make up

the spirit and the soul. The countless

unseen Vietcong, and ARVN soldiers

that the trees and jungle hid; the

monkeys, the wildcats, and

land-slitherers. It was just the

poor-man's mistake of hubris,

over and over. Destroying the

unseen world and living within

the ruins, and then demanding that

everyone else accept that and live

within those same mental ruins.

Naming things, Programmatizing

things. Sorry buddy, that's all

your own problem, not mine.

Walking the world today, 50

years on, here anyway, I often see

people of a certain age  -  colored

skin, black or vaguely black, or

white or vaguely white, indeterminate,

with Asian eyes, the soft, pressed tilt

of an Asian face, all mixed in with

some form of American-race,

Caucasoid features, and I think

to myself, 'I know, yes, what your

Daddy did in Vietnam.' In spite

of killing it, we've also brought it

all together, somehow having

globalized this world of sex too.

And that's only the babies who

were eventually brought here.

How many more still walk the

streets of Vietnam, you'd have

to see for yourself. The Judson

Memorial does NOT list those.

-

It's funny, too, all these years later,

how the world has simply developed;

'words' for this  -  'they use 'Blasian'

for one side, and HAPA for the other,

somehow an Hawaiian word for

islanders of mixed mainland blood.

I guess it works, but it's still all so

strange. Was that rape-slavery? Was

that captive, forced sex? Is that also

what we unleashed on the world?

Besides war and death and killing,

the New York and Newark soldier

boys (the clutches of which I'd barely

and after some struggle, escaped)

were to be broadcasting 'Life' as

well? It's funny too, when you

get to all this Art stuff, how so

much is symbolic as well. 'Green'

symbolizes, for the viewer (and

for the artist) something completely

other than what 'yellow' or 'red'

symbolizes A square form

symbolizes quite differently

than does a rounded or soft edge.

It's all like dreaming, sort of a

dream-like character to a made-up

'reality' produced as art. In the

dream state, the mind tries on

possibilities, circumstances, and

juggles, as it were, probabilities

too. Everything is in flux, reviewed

in a sense-deprived cosmic time, by

the courageous spirit soul about to

experience an end of their 'desiring'.

Illness. Happiness. Riches. Death.

Glory. Infamy. All these things are

on the nightly table. It's all out of

time, it's all a long and continuous

world that we just do not see,

being so determined to awake

into our small, closed and

confining cubbyholes of time,

expectations, belief, dictate,

and structure. It's amazing how

anything gets done : NO, actually

rather it's amazing that

EVERYTHING doesn't get

done, and all at once. AND

IT DOES! We simply do not

see it or understand it, forced

and closed and scrunched as we

are, like children, on the toilet

in a hurry to get back outside.

-

There was some place I remember,

down in the financial district, where

the sidewalk was clear, some form

of impact resistant something or other,

and where the idea was that the area

was so historic that beneath one's very

feet there existed an entire other world

of remnant and historical past. This

allowed you to peer down and see it.

I wish I remembered more  -  layered

stuff, some sort of clockpiece too or

timeline, so you knew what you were

seeing. Old Dutch stuff, pottery shards,

someone's yard. It was pretty amazing.

(85 Broad Street, at Stone Street, the

old site of Lovelace Tavern and the old

Dutch, original, Stadt Huys, ('State House,

City Hall') from about 1670. THERE! I

found it). I can't remember the year,

maybe mid-70's  -  just about the time

of the beginnings of that new and

prideful American self-awareness

around the Bi-Centennial stuff, a

thousand silly boats in NY harbor,

fireworks, cheers and swells  -  all

to underscore the usual lies, and

advertising marvels. 'But ain't

that America....blah,blah...'

-

Time is so fluid it's stunning.

People would say, 'I can't stand

it here, how can you live here,

it's horrible.' I was truly able to

reply to them that I didn't live

there at all. And it was true.

Time had become nothing to

me but the entrances and exits
for events of past and present

to exchange places : little

regard for the now, anywhere,

I was not living present day.

It was difficult to explain that

to others. I was not there. One

day I could make my way

down to old India House,

once the Cotton Exchange,

in the financial district, and

simply get lost out front,

thinking of all the sail

merchants and spice

importers and all who

used to pace the waterfront

with their lists and check-forms

of their incoming cargoes, etc.,

all their carts and wagons waiting

their lunches and meetings at the

merchants' club in India House,

so named. Or the old red-brick

German Medical Clinic at

Tompkins Park  -  still there

today, as a library. In these and

a hundred other places time

stood still, I was there and not

there, or  - even moreso  -  here

and not here. One thing I'd

noticed, after arriving, and it was

very disconcerting, was that I'd 
stopped, it seemed, any dreaming.
 I was going to sleep blank  
and waking up blank. Perhaps

my energies had become so

absorbed by integrating and

absorbing this new reality that

the dream section of my daily

mind had been overtaken. Or,

I thought, perhaps it was the

new and uncomfortable ways

of sleeping  -  the ground,

rocks, dirt and grass. Did I

really miss such comforts?
The comforts of home? Had
the villain arrived, while

I was still evolving?