RUDIMENTS, pt. 45
Making Cars
I never had designs on my own time but
instead always just took things as they
came. It was a free and easy way of just
'learning' on my feet. What I found was
that - and this still holds - most people
simply do not have the gumption to do
things on their own. It's funny in a way -
like when a new restaurant or store opens,
the first few days are dicey. No one is ever
sure they want to go there. They know
little about it. I often said the thing to
do is to have something called
'Rent-a-Crowd' - a little business deal
by which you'd be paid to fill seats, to
make somewhere look busy, parking lot
full, etc. That's what people go by; if
others seem to be going there, then they
will too. They'd hire you and you'd then
organize and hire others to mingle there,
show up, mill about. It's like that with
education and stuff too - there are a million
people who don't have the mannerisms nor
the personal imagination to learn on their
own. Everything has to be presented to them,
done for them, a guide and a preacher to give
them the spiel. They pay good money to let
someone else guide them, waste their time
actually, and get paid to do so, for giving them
something so God-awful simple they could do
it themselves. Let's face it, however, like anything
else, it's an industry, corralled and controlled
by those in charge - who make these sorts
of operations and then make sure they prosper.
Well, I'd have none of it. There was nothing
at all, in those days, say, at nearby NYU, if
and whenever I wanted, to just walk in and sit
down; most anywhere I wanted : lecture, course,
presentation, or special guest speaker. And I
did. It was all very simple and free too. The
only thing I couldn't do was hand in a paper
and get a grade. Oh me; what a tragedy. One
time, I sauntered in to an evening talk by
some 'famed' actress named Viveca Langford.
Like from the 1940's or something - I had
no idea who she was, but she went for two
hours, in the nicest way about the old
Hollywood, and codes and the movie
industry and its people and stars. I figured
she was maybe 65 or so; but that's all I knew,
and what did I care about Hollywood - but it
was there, and I was open to it, so just
strolled right in. No one had to 'guide' me.
-
Most things are just stupid. People who are
stern and rigid about themselves, they too
are pretty stupid - I always figured they
should just loosen up; go with it. The
personal psyche has enough interest in
everything to carry a person along most
anywhere. Franklin Roosevelt said 'The
only thing we have to fear is fear itself.'
That's a starkly remarkable statement if
you just give it a chance and let it sink in.
When you look out, at the unknown, the
only thing you're 'fearing' is your reaction
to the 'fear' that you've thrown up first, in
front of yourself. It's like that with learning
or doing anything - writing, art, and the rest.
Jeez, just do it. But no one does; everyone's
always in need of the sanctioning, the
approval, the nod of an officialdom passing
on things. It's not supposed to be that way,
take it from me. People forget their own
vitality and, when asked about their feelings
or ideas about things, actually do have to
stop and think of what to say - but only
after they judge the situation, which most
oftentimes then colors and changes what
they'll be saying. And that statement too
is a really good example of how, after
all, the learning process and the instructional
mill that processes it just churns and cuts
the meaning and the gist out of everything.
All we're left with is the vain, historical
statement that this was Roosevelt's
quote to the nation in his first fireside
chat. Wartime. No one realizes what he
was saying; instead it's just put into the
pot of the usual propaganda about the
war effort then underway. They have an
agenda, and for the money you've given
them, they're going to pound that into
your had. The nails are free. Why be
Jesus when you don't need to be?
-
Some time in that Summer, '67', '68, I do
forget, there was held some huge human
swarm of a celebrant-nothingness in Central
Park. A Be-In, or Love-In or something like
that they called it. A few chapters back I wrote
about that entire hippie-California-ethos and
how it really didn't translate too well into this
New York milieu. That held, for sure, in this
instance too. New York City, being a misnomer,
is to many people thought of as Manhattan;
where the action is. That sort of thinking was
much worse in 1967 - lots of people then
just didn't know much outside of their own
backyards. New York is actually five boroughs,
each quite different, and disparate too. Queens,
Bronx, Brooklyn, Long Island, Staten Island,
and Manhattan. Sometimes if you mixed these
people all up and put some of them together,
I swear, really, they'd start killing each other.
That's a sure thing and a good example of
how different the boroughs all are. They are
more connected by bridges and tunnels than they
ever are by the continuity of the people who
make them up. Dogs and debris, most often.
Ready to pounce. The only thing these hippie
Summer flings were doing was wrecking
people's lives. Naive young hippie girls, for
instance, in the finest of hippie styles and
clothes, they were coming over for the 'good'
time and the love-vibe, but with no brains.
Ripe for the picking, they were getting ravaged
by 2pm the very next day. And smiling for it.
People like me. Stumbling in with an entire
menu of half-assed goals and intentions, but
with little real knowledge of the 'place' and
its ways were ending up drugged, passed out,
or dead, within a few weeks. The expected
blissful transformation would never arrive.
These real New York guys were serious
business and for what they wanted, they
could manipulate the naive like magic, and,
before you knew it, yes, that was a knife blade
5-inches into your gut, and thank you buddy.
There was trouble everywhere, no matter
what nasally stupid media-propaganda was
put out about Love and Oneness and being
all that.
-
Central Park became the locus of a huge festival.
It was both the real start of, and the last gasp of,
Hippiedom in NYC at one and the same time.
Off the top of my head, just like that, without
any real valuation, I'd bet 4,000 kids were born
that following May.
-
Sometimes stupidity knows no ends, and most
oftentimes idiocy, calumny, and ignorance ride
right along with it. It was everywhere right then.
The California people were decimated; most just
went home and got it done much better in Haight-
Ashbury and Golden Gate Park. In New York
City it all just withered and turned dark : deadly,
shootings, bombs, killings, anxiety and bad feelings.
I had all I could do to stay focused and understand
my own place and the heck with the rest. It was
too lethal. That's when I'd go back into that great
psychic library I'd been able to tap into and draw
(take) from. Words and being, and you could
chuck the rest : 'The focus personality rises
into prominence from the rich, infinite reality
of the psyche or 'source self' which constantly
supports it. The focus personality cannot drown
in its own source, or be annihilated or dissolved
within it, because it is the face of the psyche turned
toward the earth. Drawing from the psyche's
greater knowledge reinforces the focus
personality's ability to deal with the world's
contents, increases creativity, and automatically
reveals the self to itself - and thereby reveals the
true meaning of the world's contents.' Yeah man,
by then I was sure hoping so.
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