RUDIMENTS, pt. 231
Making Cars
I wanted to maybe name this
chapter 'To Show the Passage
of Time,' but I didn't because
it would be out of the ordinary
and I can just explain it all
anyway. I found myself, wonder
of all wonders, adrift in a complete
world full of objects. Specifics.
Details. As if constantly in one,
long, deep breath, I walked around
stunned, agape, and gazing. My
mind raced about, realizing that
if I could find a way to capture
all of this - or even some of it -
for others to partake, I'd really
have something. I'd never intended
to be on this quest, but there it
was, before me - presented and
clear. Even just by doing that St.
Basil's report I've mentioned, I
saw how it was enlivened, the
entire 'Russian' aspect of it, by
details : 'Before the Revolution,
Russia was largely an agrarian
society. At the turn of the 20th
century, four out of five Russians
were peasants. They were poor,
uneducated, superstitious, and
illiterate. In many places, life had
hardly changed since the Middle
Ages. Leon Trotsky began his
'History of the Russian Revolution'
with the observation that 'the
fundamental and most stable
feature of Russian history is the
slow tempo of her development,
with the economic backwardness,
primitiveness of social forms, and
low level of culture resulting from
it. In 'A People's Tragedy,' the British
historian Orlando Figes describes a
primitive world in which every aspect
of life was governed by a relentless
conformity: Everyone wore the same
clothes, everyone's hair was cut in
the same way, everyone ate from the
same bowl, everyone slept in the
same room. 'Modesty had very
little place in the peasant world,'
Figes writes. 'Toilets were in the
open air' and 'urban doctors were
shocked by the peasant custom of
spitting into a person's eye to get
rid of sties, of feeding children
mouth to mouth, and of calming
baby boys by sucking on their
penis.'
-
This is, sort of, how it happened
for me. And it's a fairly simple
construct. Upon leaving 6th grade,
which to my mind was akin to
leaving the simplicity of old 'ABC'
schooling, I began being bussed
and entered another school then
called a 'Junior High School.'
Had I not left, after 7th grade, for
the seminary, it would have run me
through 7th, 8th, and 9th grades.
When I got to this, new, school for
7th grade it was a brand new
building, an entirely new school
built in a modern architecture :
fully blemished, thought I, and
ugly and the rest. Nonetheless,
there I found myself, in Iselin
Junior High School, suddenly
mixing it up with kids from
other schools, area kids, locals,
and schoolbus transportation. All
new. Girls were entering their
high-starts of puberty, boys a
bit behind. Budding breasts,
wiseacre attitudes, show-offs,
etc. That in itself took some
getting used to. But, once
entered into the school I noticed
that they had these clocks, on the
wall, in each classroom - clocks
which I had never seen before.
Instead of a steady, second-hand
sweep, these clocks jumped a bit.
They were 'business' clocks, or
'station' clocks - the big hands
suddenly flipping forward once
a minute. A lapse; a jump. I was
fairly astonished. We are brought
up with all aspects of our learning
and awareness being led along
to believe that things happen in
a continual, steady fashion. That
time has a flow and a keel that,
even though perhaps sometimes
illusionary, remains steady and
as a 'progression.' In my own
way I had just settled all of that
within myself, so as to come to
some working agreement and
format to develop the life of a
young man; I'd hoped. This,
however, blew everything out
of the water for me (I don't
understand what they were
thinking in taking this step -
the changing of each class,
all those buzzers and bells,
perhaps to them it made sense
in a 'business' vein of efficiency
and movement, but I'd think
that to be the very last thing
needed for growing the mind at
this stage of impressionable
life. Too bad. This was, after
all, school, and NOT working
for IBM). So, this new 'advance'
ruined it for me; twisted my life-
branch around some crusty trunk
of a strange tree.
-
But anyway, it occurred to me to
be a writer - to then be able to
FILL IN those gaps of time now
being presented to me as utter
Reality, and fill them with
thoughts, ideas, details and
occurrences. These fools had
opened to me an entire other
world, with its own means of
access. In AND out. I don't
know what they were exactly
thinking, but I knew what I
was. Between each jump of
those clockhands, many, many
things happened, each time -
all quite specific and detailed to
be worked within our frame of
experience. I would catch all that.
The world being presented to me
otherwise was a fiction, a lie of
stopgap, herky-jerky 'Time'
- a concept with no truth at all
except a supposed base economic
truth, which I wasn't interested
in, and all their facts, figures,
and reasoning, stemming from
it, I was not interested in either.
Now, this was not easy stuff for me
to take, but I saw it all and I did
take it. Fate and destiny here were
intertwined, for me. I figured that
if 'they' were giving me the moment
'between' time - that break they
showcased - I could jump in,
transform my world, at least, and
fill these gaps with detail. (I'm not
even sure this comes across here as
anything sensible, but it's become
a working premise of my life -
my full-theory work-out). Life is
NOT alone what we think it to
be, we 'see' mostly without 'seeing.'
False and incomplete definitions,
thereby lead to false, incomplete,
and deadly consequences.
No comments:
Post a Comment