RUDIMENTS, pt. 356
(plato in Avenel, pt. 1)
With my mouth wired shut,
as I've been writing about, I
really did little talking. It
was a long time too. You
have to figure, the time
spent with a wired up jaw,
and the time spent, before
that, in a coma, weren't either
of them very noisy places.
When it's not you doing the
talking, you learn to see a
lot of how others do it - the
way they punctuate with a
facial expression, or work
their hands as they make
their points. It's petty cool
and used to make me think
about tribes around campfires.
What shamans possessed,
more than the average drudge,
was a form of message-telling
charisma, I guess it would
be called now. When you
possess that, it's real easy to
get right into people's heads.
No wonder they think you're
wizardry is special. It's all in
relation to their own lack of the
same thing. It's all projection.
-
Once my mouth, by the way,
got unwired, I remembered at
least 500 people - the same 500
dumb people you meet anywhere -
mentioning about that 'first great
steak again' I'd be eating. For
some, very weird, 1959 reason,
people went around assuming that
the biggest thing I missed in life
was a juicy steak. They always
used that word juicy too. Man,
I'd rather have another Gerber
mashed peas then any of that
slimy, melted grease and fat
that goes into a slab of what's
called meat. Which is also the
scorched flesh of a fellow creature
who has just been pummeled and
tortured to death and then hung
on a rack to be hollowed out.
Yeah man, get me another one of
them, and real soon too. People
really are nasty goons, and I
learned that early on too.
-
In relation to talk, conversation,
discourse, and all that - I was
never big on any of that, mainly
because my ideas were usually
so radical that I couldn't possibly
or clearly get anything across
without someone being annoyed
or pissed over what I just said.
It's the standard truth-teller's
dilemma. Like they say to
new Senators and Representatives
upon arrival in Washington DC,
before committee assignments or
any of that stuff - they are told
to learn the ropes, quietly, get
in line, not stand out, make no
waves. The hope is that, after
some time, they'll get the idea
and not make noise, so as to
get the better and more plum
assignments as they come along.
The actual phrase used is 'to
get along, go along.' And you
wonder why Washington and
politic in general is such a
slime heap? Why nothing
good ever gets done?
-
I crawled out of the train wreck,
went to the seminary, finished
high school's last tit-end, and
went to NYC. And that was
pretty much it for me; was
supposed to be anyway.
Nothing ever happened
the way I'd figured it for,
but that was all to the good
too. Everything else after
that was bonus. Time to
think, think hard, and play
out some of my ideas. One
of them, along about the
streets of New York City,
was to begin a series of
imaginary conversations.
I guess that's how people
get the reputation off being
crazy - walking the streets,
apparently, in rapt conversation
with, well, no one. (It happens
all the time now but that's just
the modern day - flap-jack
people babbling blindly on
phones as they meander along,
going over what they just had
to eat. That's all today, and
it has nothing to do with what
I'm saying - mine was a much
more classic idea, one of discourse).
It's a bit - all these years later -
of what I'm after with this
open-schooling thing mentioned.
[By the way, let me interject. I
know already what 15,000 other
people are saying : it could never
work; expense, insurance, regulations,
inspections, etc. Well to all of that
I just sort of say - screw it. That's
why it's an Art Gallery. I'm not
about to play footsie with any
group of winkle-assed inspectors or
officials. It would be no different
than the failed shit-shop that was
last in there, which everyone was
barking yeah-yeah about 8 months
ago, in old Murrray and Martha's.
It lasted about 4 days. If Avenel's
proud over that crap, think what a
school for revolutionary thought will
get them. And anyway, all these little
It lasted about 4 days. If Avenel's
proud over that crap, think what a
school for revolutionary thought will
get them. And anyway, all these little
towns now, they each have these
horny-housewife places called
something like 'Wine and Paint,'
or 'Brush and Grape,' or any
dumb-ass name, and everyone
gets groggy-happy over these.
A lady's night out of wine and
free-form junk paint.. For which
they pay. This is to be no different,
Mr. Fire Official Buddy. Least
I'm not serving alcohol; just
revolutionary thought.
-
Chaos and Order. Sort of the two
fighting poles of our existence.
Here's a bunch of things that go
into my idea of advancing this
'schooling' premise in ways not
addressed today : (John Jay
Chapman, d. 1933. 'All good
writing is the result of an
acquaintance with the best
books. But the mere reading of
books will not suffice. Behind
the books must lie the habit
of unpremeditated, headlong
conversation. We find that the
great writers have been great
talkers in every age. Shakespeare,
Johnson, Mark Twain. The
English have never stopped
talking since Chaucer's time.
And the other Europeans are
ready-tongued, vocal, imaginative
people, whose very folklore
and dialects have been preserved
by the ceaseless stream of talk
on castled terraces and village
greens since Gothic times. But
our democracy terrifies the
individual, and our industrialism
seals his lips. The punishment is
very effective : 'If you say things
as that, I won't play with you.'
Thus the average American
goes about in quite a different
humor from the average European,
who is protected and fortified
by his caste and clique, his group
and traditions, which are old and
change slowly. In America, the
uniformity of the popular ideals
and ambitions is at the bottom
of most of our troubles. Our
Industrialism has all but killed
the English language among us,
because every man is afraid
to make a joke, unless it be
a stock joke. We are all as
careful as diplomats not to
show our claws. We wear
white cotton gloves like
waiters, for fear of leaving a
thumb-mark on the subject').
Ralph Waldo Emerson covered
this by saying : "If you are
afraid to do anything, do it!'
-
Well, sometimes I end up
not wanting to do a god-damned
thing; I learned that from living.
The earthquake - all that was
long ago, and I can still feel its
tremors and shake - it ended up
not meaning for especially much.
I covered up my belief structures
with a carpetbag, and ran a little
from place to place. Again, trying
to get something across but not
with any luck. Assholes, again,
yep, watching World Cup Soccer;
the same ones every four years.
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