Monday, October 9, 2017

10,038. RUDIMENTS, pt. 99

RUDIMENTS, pt. 99
Making Cars
I think I best forewarn you that this
one is a heavy, tawdry, piece to bear :
Much like those steam trains that, at
first, ran along the rear of my house, with
their huge puffs of smoke that clouded and
darkened the sky, and which we kids  -  each
newly arrived, from some other towns, into
these new, development, homes would chase
and run or bicycle along with as the huge
train cloud drifted and settled  -  all of my
life was the drifting and settling of events
and ideas which otherwise were relegated
to the straight and steady drive along rail
tracks of logic and expectation. No turn
unexpected; no destination uncharted.
Once it was said, once it was presented to 
me, I tried immediately to begin finding
my own alternatives to things. I simply
knew I did not wish, even at a young age, 
to be boxed in to what was being presented
to me. Meticulously, I put things together;
and it still amazes me as I think back on it
all now, what I saw and refused to accept.
It was a daylight world of stark realities.
I felt for sure as if I had lived before, in 
some other realm, or reality, which allowed 
me the recognition and the understanding 
of things which sort of pre-existed to me
and I already understood, just not in the
context it was, by 1957, being given to me
in. That's a difficult and an exceptional
concept, but let me try to explain. (I felt
as if all things here existed so to 'lock' you
in to the harshness of their being, 'reality'
a it was called, and not for freedom or 
release and that everything else was being
done to mock those categories rather then
implement them  -  in this case, the USA,
with its silly focus of Freedom and individual
Liberty, which all was anything but). On my
new house's front porch, facing west, once
noon arrived, on hot Summer days, the 
treeless street and house-front were 
immediately baked by the overhead and
 incessant after-noon sunlight. As a kid,
to be playing at the front of the house, as
we did often, became unbearable after noon,
with the sun beating down. I felt stranded 
on a harsh and uncomfortable planet,
set beneath a raging sun. That feeling rang
bells in my head  -  I knew it, perfectly, from
experience somewhere else, some distant,
and hot, rocky planet where I'd had to
operate as a member of a people who lived
in that realm, tolerated that extreme, knew
of it and simple accepted and never spoke 
of the harshness. It was commonplace and 
accepted, there. Only, somehow, on this place,
or planet, or realm, whatever, was it noticed,
spoken of, complained about. These 'humans'
had different concerns, were, I thought, smaller
and more squat and dense and earthy, a slave
race, indeed. 
-  
(Think of this and what it can possibly 
mean and why it is done to a young boy or 
any young person, very young; why this is 
pushed into heads, what the ulterior 
motivation for this can be) : there was 
a time when Man, all Humankind, was 
perfect and all things were sublime. 
When Man and Woman co-existed, 
harmoniously, in a perfect state of 
aloneness and togetherness combined.
With and within Nature, and with all 
those things being sublime, all we had
left was a pale memory of it, faintly
called 'Love,' for lack of anything better.
Called by the name 'Garden of Eden' 
this original tract of land represented 
the first state  -  Primal Being.  We are 
never told how long this state lasted, 
what occurred during it and how, 
by what duration things were held, 
things were done, what the light and 
the feeling was like, what noises there 
were nor if there were any hostile things 
 -   animals, winds, storms, fires. None 
of that is ever broached. Nor is Time, 
nor are Words and Language. Nor, 
for the matter, is Thought. Presumably, 
at this initial juncture, words being 
unnecessary, nothing of that nature 
had arisen. Man, so to say, had not 
yet 'named' things. We (as man, as 
Human), needed nothing and knew 
all things already, all things in their 
totality. Then, 'the Fall' came  -  some 
grand transgression, of whatever nature
and, by whatever means, a Hell was
constructed around us and for us?   -  
and we lost all of that. We no longer 
knew things, no longer grasped the 
meanings of things. We worked on 
ahead blindly, seeking what we had 
once already possessed. Everything 
became separated. Time grew; all of 
our concepts and places took root. 
Humankind was blind and dark, we'd 
lost all things.  Next stage : the original 
mover the GHOD of Oneness returns 
and finds a means of saving this 
situation; Salvation through 
representation. GHOD (that's 
my rendering of 'God' with an H 
for Humankind within) sends (what 
we call, by this story) a Son  -  a selfsame 
human fixture, by whom we are redeemed
in His sacrifice? Things are bettered, but 
not fixed? At least we no longer dwell in 
the Fall, though we have lost all knowledge 
of things?   --   we find Language, which 
gives us the signs and the signification 
to at least make the attempts at 
recovering meaning. All that which 
we already know. We use the words 
to remind us of what we already knew. 
A child, reveling in the joy of a cat or 
kitten, is taught the word for it, the 
name of  -  'cat' or 'kitten' so as to know 
what we refer to it as AND the signify 
what he or she had forgotten  -  already 
knowing the quality ('cat', 'kitten') they 
need the name to be reminded of what 
they already knew, in order o draw it
back into this consciousness. To tell 
ourselves what we already knew, we
use words. Words. Augustine said 'A 
sign is learned when a thing is known, 
rather than the thing being learned when 
the sign is given.' Again : a child points 
to a cat and an adult teaches the cat to 
say 'kitty'; this does not acquaint the 
child with felines, but rather teaches it 
how to indicate their presence, or 
perhaps their desire for their presence. 
Words have force only as they remind 
us to look for things, they don't display 
them for us to know. When Words are 
spoken we either know what they signify
or we don't; if we know, then it's reminding 
rather than learning; they remind us of 
what we know already, of the absences 
in our knowing. Easily recognizable as 
Augustine's version of Meno's paradox,
this exploits the duality of sign and 
significance  - the Word that gives 
meaning is created both as an act of 
Memory and as an aid to remembering 
'what we know (knew) already. Its 
'when' is elusive.  MENO'S PARADOX: 
-

How could a man know that he has 

found which he searches if he does 
not know which he searches?
-

Socrates answers that if then Meno's 

assumptions were to be true, then men 
could neither search for which they 
know for they already have it, nor 
would they be able to gather something 
new since they would not be able to 
identify this thing to be what they were 
inquiring for at the beginning. Plato 
proposes an hypothesis to this riddle: 
it's his theory of recollection. He'll 
propose that knowledge is merely 
forgotten memories, and that learning
consists of remembering those ideas; 
by this, so he proposes, a man recognize
the true from the false.
-
However, it is to be noted that Socrates 
concludes here that this 'virtue' cannot 
be taught, whereas he changes his mind 
in the 'Protagoras' by the end of the 
dialogue. Also, Plato's attempt here 
is, I think, very limited in impact and 
not really convincing... his example 
of the slave (recall I had previously 
found us here to be a slave race 
beneath a harsh sun) being taught 
something does not really establishes 
well the plausibility of his theory, 
although it neither infers its impossibility. 
Anyway, who rally wants to learn, who 
really wants to know anything, for 
that matter? Aren't we all just happier 
playing in primal mud? Isn't that why
we drink beer and eat cereal? Plato's 
work is so great in detail and quantity 
that it's hard to understand the exact 
reason why he changes his positions 
here and there or why certain ideas 
remain constant... was it a reasoning, 
something he realized later or 
simply something he had planned 
to set out? I remember once being set
on by a street-interview guy, and a 
video crew, for some fluff news talk, 
and I wondered, 'did this guy already 
know what Id' be saying, were these
conclusions already drawn beforehand,
making it all acceptable for his dumb
show, filled only with Ego and Vanity?
-
What we can be certain of is that it is
considered that 'knowledge' is related 
to the Intelligible and that someone has
to overcome the difference  between the 
appearances and existence to understand,
to finally know. The reason as to why we 
can anyhow grasp knowledge which was 
not ours first will inevitably be that 
learning is a form of recognition and 
not of affectation or attribution; 
understand it to be finding back 
traces of which you had or seeing 
in plain daylight as in the Allegory 
of the Cave. We once knew everything.
You might read of me that the 

certainty will be driven from the 
fact that it will be unquestionable, 
irrefutable, self-approving and 
non-contradictory; that it's like 
the only solution to a big puzzle 
with every piece in its place; like 
a system where no line interrupts 
the course of others... But that's 
where I begin thinking and we 
might loose track of Plato somewhere; 
I've put it so you could get an idea 
of how the question is answered.
-

I always thought this, in recollection 

to be true enough, and to be the 
reason so much of what I lived 
crash-landed on the shoals of 
the stupidity of the normal,
neighborhood people of Avenel, 
to use that example. It was language 
and it was Words  -  frankly, I never 
knew what anyone (still don't) was 
talking about because they operated 
fleetingly, leaving things out, never 
following anything up, never stopping 
to muse. They used assumptions I did 
not share  -  about the world, about 
things, about Reality itself. That was 
OK with me; it was their world and 
their place, I was merely visiting. 
visiting because I was stuck there.
-
That's pretty much the point I was 

up to when I left Avenel  -  as I said, 
my single-minded focus and 
determination was to stay tight 
and dedicated to my creative work, 
the rest be damned. That included 
(includes) truth-telling, finger-pointing, 
and testifying. Writing and art combined.

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