10,077. RUDIMENTS, pt. 111

RUDIMENTS, pt. 111

Making Cars

There's a photograph that has

always stayed with me -  nothing

special, just one I could never shake.

It has something to do with the sort

of person I am, which has usually

never been a good thing. Dead end.

Ineffectual. A tad too sensitive for

my own good, or at least too sensitive

for the sort of rip-your-heart-out

piss-in-your-face tactics that people

who get ahead put to use. This

photograph did everything (below)

necessary to both make me sad,

and anger me at the same time.

I know, you're going to start saying,

'why'd you look at it then?' That's

a typical power-guy's response. I

looked at it BECAUSE it hurt, and

if you can't understand that, well then,

you're one of them. You're one of all

those other people in that photo. Just

like, in Vietnam days, those two iconic

photos which were well-publicized

and which closed the book on that

ridiculous and pathetic war (the guy

in the street a Vietcong prisoner, getting

the side of his head blown off by the

captor-guard who is about two feet

away from him, and the other one of

that girl, those little naked kids, fleeing

and screaming as napalm burns their skin).

I know I could never live like that, and  -

soldiers or not  -  if I ever saw any one of

the guys that did that stuff, I'd be sure to

stab them to death, and maybe then (only

then), say 'thanks for your service.'

-

All of this stuff hits me hard and hits

home. It's just what my character's about.

Any of otherwise gung-ho crap about

'my country' and 'defending Freedom'

and all that crap is pure, boilerplate,

rip-off BS. Nothing of that exists at all,

in any way. All those podunk guys

bending elbows in Legion and Elk Halls

and all that, blubbering over their past -

they're all hunks. Salami. Baloney. Capicola

too. Seasoned and processed, and not

good for you at all. My time in New York,

a good portion of the beginning time anyway,

was taken up with, and squandered, with

US draft and Vietnam stuff. Those people

were absolute evildoers. The induction

center on lower Broadway then, called

'Whitehall' but not on Whitehall Street,

was a pale-green-walled mental camp

for retards. People in suits and uniforms,

demanding fealty to Death. And everyone

just accepted all that. It was pretty hideous,

and I'm at least glad that those photos came

out and were publicized and printed so as,

in their own way, to pull the panties down

on these military pieces of shit.

-

So, you want to say I'm not wounded and

maimed from Vietnam service, go ahead.

You want to say I don't have a good grip

on myself and am not giving credit where

credit's due, go ahead. And then meet me

in the alley, OK. When I look at this photo

the one I first referenced, I still fume. I

fume at all the duplicitous garbage that

this country has always, always, been

underway with. If you ever thought I'd

fight for that, you're crazy. Here's the 

background story, as I'll put it for you. 

The last thing I wanted to do today was 

get on a rant here about all the sorrowful 

moments that have rattled my past life 

and how they now affect my present. 

But this just came up. I just completed, 

based on some old California musings, 

a book entitled 'Cadillac Desert'  -  all

essentially about the 'California,' later

20th century water situation. Of which 

there is none, really, and how it's all

dammed and taken from others  -  all

this Eel River and Feather River and,

down south, the Mulholland stuff, the

Colorado and Snake Rivers, Arizona,

Idaho, etc. It's all an artificial fantasy

of water  -  trouble abounds. AND it's

built upon the broken backs of any 

number of Indian tribes  -  whose 

people have been coerced, stolen 

from, transplanted, and then transplanted 

again, and then again too. Endless lands

taken from them. Areas of their tribal

and sacred lands submerged; they been

treated and betrayed in the most dastardly,

evil (again, that word) ways by every level

of the US Government, top to bottom

because of water need, using only ONE 

example. Mostly so that shit-ass Americans

can move there, have their sub-divisions,

lawns, pools, sprinklers, strip malls, movies

stores, clubs and cabanas, highways, interstates,
bridges, dams and water-supply, and

indigenous people be damned. The gifted 

endeavors of  a civilization in search of 

the well-sprinklered lawn. So take your 

guns and bombs and go fight for that.

-

'One of the last-known consequences 

of water development in America is its

impact on the Indians who hadn't already

succumbed to the U.S. Cavalry, smallpox, 

and social rot. Although many of the tribes

had been sequestered on reservations that

were far from the river-bottoms where they

used to live, some tribes had been granted

good reservation land...Colonel Pick, for

the Interior Dept., got his way when the

Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs

tore up Interior's version of the bill and

wrote its own version as dictated by a

still-smoldering Pick...the tribes would not

even be allowed to fish in the new reservoir

being created. Their cattle would not be

permitted to drink from it or graze by it.

They had no right to purchase electrcity

generated from it (the dam). They were

disallowed to use government monies 

granted the tribes, to hire attorneys. They

were not even allowed to cut the trees

which were to be drowned by the reservoir

anyway, nor were they allowed to haul

them away...The bill was signed in May, 

1948. At the signing, stood George Gillette,

leader of the tribal business council. 'The 

members of the tribal business council

sign this with a heavy heart. The future

does not look good.' Then he cradled

his face, and began to cry.'