9751. RUDIMENTS, pt.17

RUDIMENTS, pt. 17

Making Cars

Wishing to read something? Try

this nugget I ran across today: 'For

while it's true that the unexamined

life is not worth living, it's also the

case that the unlived life is not worth

examining.' That's credited to some

guy named Robert McKee, from 1997.

All that may be true, and I like it, but at

the same time what a simple crock. I

had a friend once who disliked me, just

for the reason that I do all this writing

with only a junk-life to account for it.

His claim was (is) that I've done nothing

and achieved nothing, and therefore such

'nothing' is not worth a write. He may be

correct, but I still won't accept it. There's

too much inexplicable crud floating around

which people grab at  -  every other cause

and effect  -  to claim and make a part of

their own lives. I never do that, so I just

don't feel it applies to me, what he says.

The time I spent in NYCity, these tales I

relate, are like my own Iliad and Odyssey,

an oral tale told down the ages, except

here being written by me. I've got my

own version of the Gilgamesh quest.

-

Anyway, if a person had to wait for some

real, smashing life success to arrive before

doing anything over it, it would sure be an

even more crummy world than the one

we're left with. I always wondered how

cool it would have been to have had

George Washington and Aaron Burr

and Thomas Jefferson and all those

guys to have written a form of memoir

or recollection. They did nothing. What,

if any, they did write, even Thomas Paine,

probably the best of the bunch, was in

that stilted, formulaic, program-logic

thinking of the seventeenth and eighteenth

century. Plodding decrepitude, the plights

of history and the rights of man. Like it

mattered. It didn't, and it's boring and

painful to have to read. Thomas Jefferson

rewrote the New Testament, he figured,

by editing out everything except the words

of Jesus. How stark is that? I mean to say,

it's OK and all, and of course the words

of Jesus would be where the meat of the

New Testament is anyway, but still, excising

the extraneous stuff as superfluous? No

way. Like Springsteen or somebody said

about looking into the sun, 'But mama!

That's where the fun is!' Had any of those

guys (this is still what I myself used to

think, walking along, past all these older

and historic places marked in NYC where

this or that happened and this or that person

was), just inhabited a smidgen of the

modern, more abstracted personality and

approach or understanding, what a bunch

of great writing we'd have. As it is, we have

nothing by them of the real sights and sounds

of what they lived and felt and sensed. We now

get, instead, the closet-case documentarians

of pale politics and forced warfare telling

their stories for 3 million bucks just a few

years after they're spun from that web.

Nothing to show from it, no advancing

the cause of intellect or consciousness;

just instead the drab re-tellings of who did

what when and where while negotiating with

the Pulchama of Marachanba to re-fine the

floating value of the Pinda, the local

exchange currency of Winawabo province.

These people have no brains at all, and the

only thing they're advancing is the means of

extending the cage within which they've been

kept, and actually liking it, or thinking they do.

Which is where money comes in. The only

reason for the existence of money  -  let no

one tell you differently, and try they will   -

is to advance the servitude along. You end

up actually thinking you need it and just

keep wanting more. No one tells you.

-

I spent two good years with not a thing to my

name except the junk I could pick up or steal.

If there's no accounting for any of that than why

does it all keep resounding in my brain under the

rolling subtitles of 'write,' and 'record.' If I had

a fondness for anything, well, anything I'd feel 

like telling you about, you'd have heard it by now;

except that there' always more coming. Certain

portions of the streets I lived on, I owned them.

That's a declaration of intent, at least in this

telling. Inside a person's head,as I see it, there's

a Winter geography and a Summer geography,

and in either of those categories is a choice  -  

a very final choice because it then defines the

rest of one's days. Winter people versus Summer

people. New York City was all Winter people.

Just as I liked it. One time I bought a perfect,

tan colored, Winter, bare-trees, coffee mug;

for 25 cents, but no matter. It was perfect, as

by it's simple and direct graphic it captured

everything about me and the places I wished 

to be  -  there was a pattern of bare trees 

running all around the mug, the design 

motif. Just bare trees. So pleasing to me.

I'd visit home again, and there'd be mugs

saying 'Aruba' or 'Bahamas' or wherever, 

even one of the Disney places : sun and 

shore, happiness and sand, umbrellas 

and drinks. I could hardly not ever believe

that  -  a place of lawns :  Avenel, an old 

out of tune pianola of a swamp, with 

happy cups everywhere. Ugh!

-

I sure wished I was able to walk along, 

between two places like that, as it were, 

with any of those  old time Revolutionary 

War guys I mentioned before, but with them 

in their new guise of a completed cycle of 

psychological growth and literary maturity 

and abstract thinking. It was have amazed

me, always truly amazed me, I thought, to

have one of those guys along for the walk to

see with today's eyes and pen (keyboard,

whatever) what the world they'd begun had 

by now given back and become, or turned 

into. I don't think their sense of wonder,

frankly, would be able to extend or to stretch 

that far back into anything, forward or behind, 

to accept and absorb what's here today. 

Now that's worth a storyline, George.