RUDIMENTS. pt.173
Making Cars
I guess it's pretty hard not to get
depressed. I try it, remaining on
an even keel as best I can - Leo
Tolstoy, the Russian writer, once
wrote or maybe said 'Is there in
life any purpose which the
inevitable death which awaits
me does not undo and destroy?'
Yeah man, that's a happy Christmas
card waiting to happen. I guess
I threw that in very cleverly to lead
into this: After 68 years, I can
'irrefutably' state that I hate
Christmas. And proudly. It's
at best a farce, and beyond that
just a unscripted evil made to rot
Mankind's communal brain. So, how
many ways can I call it down? It's
too easy. A Babylon of malfeasance,
an Eden of insincerity. A manger
full of crap. Leo Tolstoy, by the way,
was a 'Count,' as in Count Leo Tolstoy.
The only thing you can count on about
him is that he was a downer.
-
I was never a fan of young children
either, and the entire effort of the
Yule season is about the slobbering
inefficiency of childhood fantasy.
Stupid dream-wish and shattered
ideals. No matter that it's also based
on the fetish-like lie of adults
everywhere parroting some prattle
about a 'Santa Claus.' Cinder Claus,
the guy in the chimney. Down west
New York in Chelsea, Clement Clark
Moore got all this crap started. It
was more about domesticating a wild
young America than it was about
anything else - all that effete and
very properly British home and hearth
and fireplace and family, stockings
hung at the chimney and the rest, stuff.
'With care,' no less. The thing about
real America was that it had never,
before that, had a care about anything
like that at all - whiskey rebellion,
tax revolt, traitors and hangings, all
the filth of a ragged New York with its
black-jacks, stabbings, thefts, killings
and murders. All those two-toed
preachers and the rest were running
shit-scared. Clement Clark Moore,
the 'Reverend,' a son of a Reverend
anyway, was a Reverend like Tolstoy
was a 'Count,' they tried wickedly hard
to whip all this into some sort of shape.
Workable and traceable shapes. And
there you have Santa. The largest hoax
ever concocted. You can see all about
this over at the General Theological
Seminary - and it is a really nice place.
But at heart, the whole thing was a
mixed bag of capitalism and fakery.
The professor and philosopher Moore
late broke up all these beautiful lands
into sale-able plots, with a hundred rules
for those who bought in, for his sons to
develop and sell, rows of peculiar and
beautiful in-a-row city homes built and
patterned after 'Chelsea' in England.
And called Chelsea here too. So, at heart,
his interests were commercial from day
one, and to hell with all the rest. He
was pushing serious domesticity, so
as to tame America, and turn eventually
everyone into silent, dumb consumers.
And liars to boot.
-
You can walk around Chelsea today -
and I do, and I do it without trying to
be depressed (thanks Count Leo), and
see all this. It's all still there and all yet
in place - the walks, the little garden
fronts, the serious parks, the serious
seminary grounds, and even the few
little plaques doing reverence to what
here occurred. It's a very gay headquarters
now, the entire area, yes, so everything
is very neat, cleaned and in a row,
floral and pretty. The domestic harem
of any little boy's heart.
-
In 1967, nothing was like this at all,
anything you see today was not so then.
Today everything is pretty, and cute
(made like Christmas) while back then
it was dark and bleak. All the old things
were running down, everything was in
need of repair. Instead of happy people
skipping and swooshing down these
streets, there were men working the
small shops and manufactures that
then dotted the area. Now, since the
1990's, they've all been changed over
and re-purposed (I watched a lot of it
as it occurred). It's all different. All
of the old hands-on mechanical and
craft businesses are gone and a lot
of it now (it's actually on its 3rd
turnover of things already) are
the usual little cafes and bakeries,
fussy glass shops, clothing things,
shoes and leather. Here and there
are pottery studios, art stuff, and
yoga and exercise centers. That's
one of the earmarks of the modern
day, and it's a twist on everything.
Instead of 'useful' things, the world
is now satisfied enough with the mere
consumption of the selective and the
personal - the artisinal products of
those who otherwise have everything
they need. Pretty strange, and I often
wonder if that's an end result of
consumerism as a science of its
own, or just a sort of fetishistic
and maniacal overplay of Clement
Clark Moore's push towards domesticity,
which I'll rename as consumption.
-
I had a friend once, dead now, a solid
New York kind of guy, who had a job
for a while in which he was paid for
just sitting with some old guy in his
apartment, on the upper west side.
That was it, a real New York kind of
a job, for sure, like a movie. The guy
just wanted company in his old age -
he wasn't infirm, or in his dotage, or
out of his mind or incontinent or any
of that. It used to drive my friend
crazy. All the guy ever wanted was
for him to play Mendelssohn LP's on
the record player, and tend to them.
He had over a hundred, all Mendelssohn,
catalogued in some sequence of his
own, and they had to be returned into
place, as the next one was brought
out and played. A very bizarre thing,
almost the madness of an over-and-over
repetition sort of mind. But it paid, and
it was OK. The problem was, my friend
(who really did know classical music
very well), abhorred Mendelssohn. Yet,
because of the situation, etc., he had
to withstand it all, and do it over
and over. I always felt that was exactly
like me, with Christmas - except that
now I don't even any longer go through
the motions. It really can just be ignored.
You'd be surprised how easy it is.
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