RUDIMENTS, pt. 145
Making Cars
I think I would have to say
that society nowadays no
longer elevates the noble.
That would be a good way
of putting it. So would saying
it's all now 'cockamamie BS,'
but I won't say that, I guess.
I can't claim for much except
idle passing chatter on my part;
a rancid life reflected back upon
with not too much showing.
But I can say that at least, for
one period of time, there was
something 'noble' in the air,
about what an individual strove
to do and believe in. And a
person could stand for that,
whatever it was. Now, you can
no longer do that; the daggers
and the pincers come out and
in a moment the proverbial
'balls in the vice' ringmasters
come trotting out with their
torture implements to pang
and pounce and tease. Like a
'Waterboarding' of the Spirit,
let's call that. Three hundred
years ago it was dunking - you
proved your guilt or innocence,
supposedly, by surviving serious
downtime in deep water, strapped
and straddled, and dunked. Now,
it still goes on, but at least before
it was water - now they just
dump you in their shit and keep
you there. You find a way to
breath through their offal, or,
pardner, you're not breathing
anymore at all. That's absolutism,
a dictatorship of the asshole,
a deep cut slice done with
surgical imprecision.
-
"The decline and fall of everything
is our daily bread. We are agitated
in private life and tormented by
public questions. We stink in each
other's noses." That was written a
long time ago by Saul Bellow. When
I first read it, it was fresh and I knew
exactly what he was getting at. It's
funny, but that clarity I once had
about it has now since gone away.
Confusion has replaced it. I feel
that the world, since then, has
simply degenerated into a
pitfall of the tragic. The only
way found to stop it has been,
of late, by the stuffing of rags
in the various speakers' mouths.
It seems to me that way too
many Starbucks whores and
coffee-cafe-critics of
everything have taken over.
'Call a spade a spade, except in
Harlem,' as used to be said by
a friend. He also used to like to
'talk turkey.' What both of those
phrases meant to get at was
to cut the crap and get down
to essentials, real facts, the
authentic scene. A person
can't do that anymore, except
perhaps in the privacy of
whatever passes these days
for the private. A dictatorship
is underway, by the somethings
over the somethings. A soft
dictatorship, because it just
slowly grew, spread, and took
over everything. Everyone. No
one really 'proclaimed' anything.
Bellow's world was, for good
or bad, more the world I grew
up in. I wasn't Jewish, no, but
you'd be surprised how many
of the strictures and dictates
and the morose brooding of the
Roman-Catholic-Papist-Italian
sort resembles the Jewish wildness.
Same stuff, different day, or pew,
or dunking bucket. The Jews lord
it over everyone because of their
secretiveness about their own
greed and foulness. Italian
Catholics do the same, except
they don't hide it as much -
they emote. They talk with their
hands about all the same stuff,
and swoon like they're all
orgasming at once. That's
their social policy. I had to
live with it. At least the Jews
get a Day of Atonement. We
get Baby Jesus; cuteness on speed.
-
The ring-roads of our life and days
are just off that main road of good
sense. Our tires and tracks have long
ago gone off the hardtop, as we wildly
speed along. No chance about looking
back - before us it's all coming too
soon and too fast. Back when I was
in the seminary, about this time each
year, I'd take a bus from Blackwood,
to New Brunswick, to re-visit home,
for Thanksgiving. A few days, no
big deal. The bus would take the
Turnpike, yes, but before getting
to that Turnpike it would have to
weave through 5, 6, maybe 7, other
little towns with bus-stops along
the way. By the time I'd be returning,
three of four days later, those same
small towns, which had been fairly
barren on the way out, would already
be underway - I guess in the workday
or two after Thanksgiving - with the
putting up of all those Main Street type
Christmas decorations and displays.
You can't much do that now, not that
it really matters - all that cutesy-at-
Christmas faux religion crap wears
thin anyway - but each town is
afraid of saying anything that's not
neutral. Even 'Season's Greetings' is
taking a chance, because you may
offend people who really do hate
'Winter' as a season. It's all just
indicative of what's in play.
Anyway - my point - each of
those towns, on the return trip, in
the early darkness, appeared to
me like a wonderland of the
real. The way regular people
lived, apparently. I was cloistered,
sequestered, whatever you'd call it,
and saw very little of this; certainly
'Santa Claus' was not in attendance
where I lived. We had our own
strange (seminary) enclave of place
and the world was outside of that.
These strange nowhere towns had
strings of lights, wreaths and
bulb-banners, across the streets,
over the intersections, strung over
the traffic signals. Store windows,
the usual 'Bob's Appliance Repair,'
or 'Lindsay's Jewelers,' displays and
happy wreaths, etc. Simple stuff.
This was 1964 remember - none
of the flashy light-displays and
kitschy crap that's out there today.
I'd be engulfed, as the bus would
stop in weird little places -
Runnemede, Berlin, Blackwood -
and the same pattern was repeated.
Time after time and place after
place. Like everyone was somehow
getting the same wearying message
from that same distant star, and
just accepting what it said, and
putting up their lights and displays.
To me, it was all totally, totally
bizarre. I guess it was '63, too, the
year the President was killed, that
everything, for that one time, had
gotten pretty subdued, and a sad
quietness, a period of reflection
perhaps, had taken over. Anyway,
come to think of it, that may have
also been the year the 'exalted'
and 'elevated' which I mentioned
at the beginning here, had also
been done away with.
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