11,413. RUDIMENTS, pt. 540

RUDIMENTS, pt. 540

(crankcase full of horseshit)

Well I always figured it

would all work out : but

thinking, why didn't they,

for instance, just call asparagus,

'grass spears,' and be done with

it. (It almost sounds the same 

anyway, and better describes). 

Some people chased money,

game, position and fame. Me?

I was always stuck on words

and concepts. Questions of

that nature, like the asparagus

one, just unsettled me more

than a plane crash or a stock

market crash would ever have.

There was so much of that

'word' stuff out in the world.

I was tripping up on it all the

time. Like seeing a road sign

that reads 'Dead End.' (There

are a few of them right around

me here, where I live). That

wording or concept or phrase

must have made sense for

about a week, back in the

1920's when roads and

all were being finalized. I

figured a bunch of map guys,

laying out new streets, with the

woods and all yet around, they

had this concept that 'streets'

all went somewhere, and at

their end they'd have delivered

you to something. But lots of

times, new places and all, there

was a blockage, and the roads

just ended. Water, woods, ravine,

etc. What to call that end?

Dead? A 'dead' end. I guess.

Over the years, that clear

concept got all screwed up and

took on the negative connotation

of a 'bad idea;' a 'dead' end.

How do we still live with

that? And people live

on them? Weird.

-

There was always a certain

something afloat around me,

something called 'Freedom.' I

of course never understood it,

and I was actually the last

person in the world to have

taken advantage of anything

about it. Everything I ever

somehow did was based on

anti-Freedom  -  all that church

and seminary stuff, getting

married early, having a kid

young, buy a house quickly,

etc. That was all the weirdest

thing in the world. I kept

digging holes to slavery, and

jumping in them. The hum-drum

life of a working-stiff jerk, 40

years on the job. I kept smelling

Freedom, but never escaped.

Some stupid trait of honestly

or fidelity kept me pinned

down. That's a shame really,

because in spite of all that I've

ever done  -  my secret aspects,

my writing, art, photos and all,

is probably just going to go

right down the drain and

anyone looking at my grave

will just say 'there was a guy,

steady, and dedicated, always

working.' Meaning at a job,

of course. I detested every

job I ever had  -  so they'd have

that all wrong. At my grave?

Might as well piss on it.

-

Telling you the truth : I'd rather

eat nails and curse for two hours

straight then have to relive what

I've done. A crankcase full of

horseshit.

-

Is that normal? Or am I just the

only idiot around who feels like

that? The only thing I've ever

valued is that which I made on

my own  -  my own values, my

own works, and my own

judgments. I don't even live a

real life now  -  I live in my own

library, at all times, amidst a

mass of words, pictures, songs

and dreams I've made myself.

The pencil lines everywhere

of the scrawlings of Hell.

That old sailor guy I wrote

about in the previous chapter,

he was always going on about

his freedom, and the joys it

gave him, the places and the

travel. Shit, I never saw the

guy holding as much as a

valise. I don' even know if

I believed a word of what

he said. Popeye with a credit

card? Bluto with a beard?

No, more like Wimpy, with

his god-damned hamburgers

and whines.

-

Another time there was a

German kid, about 18 or 20 to

my 10 or 11. Peter, or maybe

Pietre, or however they do that

other spelling stuff. He was,

from what I got, somehow on

the run from either the West

German Army or some other

infraction, had ended up here,

in the USA, and was staying

at the house (temporarily) of

my German (from Germany,

about 1938) uncle, and his wife.

my aunt. Peter was Teutonic,

blond; hell, he was Aryan. He

had the coolest blond soft hair

that just laud on his head, 1960

style short. It wasn't 'long hair'

by any means. Here I'll make

a long story short  -  he'd come

over on visits, to my house in

Avenel. I had, in my room, a

National Geographic, large,

map of the world on my wall 

-  with push pins in it I'd put

in place at world cities I

was interested in, knew of,

or even if only in imagination,

hoped to visit. (Never did any

of that either). We'd cross the

tracks, out back, and roam the

prison fields  -  farmland, rows

and rows of cornstalks, etc.

Tractors. Cows. he'd go on

about a hundred things, of his

mind  -  Euro-stuff, Germany,

learning, philosophy. It was all

so different from the gimcrackery

of the Bozo the Clown and

Officer Joe Bolton crap we all

got, here. I was fascinated. His

plans, lo and behold, were to

be continuing his 'flight'  - away

from whatever it was  -  to end

up in Aruba. To the map we

went. It got a push pin for sure.

Aruba, in 1959, wasn't yet a

play-land, vacation paradise

for the monied vacationer. It

was more a ratty, mysterious

oil kingdom, part of Venezuela,

as an off-shore island possession

of theirs. He had plans, I forget

what they exactly were. And

then he too was gone. Years later

I asked my aunt (dead long now)

about him, and she said he'd made

it to there, found a life to live, and

even had been back a few times.

Years had passed; I was grown.

I ever caught back up to that

scene at all. A shame.

-

There are so many instances like

that threaded through my life. I

live yet in that library  -  it's an

insulated place, for me, insulated

against time and repercussions,

solitary, and insular too. My own

little Venezuela, maybe. I can't

say to anyone, 'be like me.' It's

a pure disaster  -  like a salt run

straight onto an open wound.

Somewhere along the way, I

think a large part of me may have

died on the cross of Nietzsche:

"If we look deeply into the 

essence of things, into the 

horror of existence, 

Nietzsche  thinks we will 

be overwhelmed-paralyzed. 

Like Hamlet we will not be 

able to act, because we will 

see that action cannot change 

the eternal nature of things. 

We must see, Nietzsche says, 

that "a profound illusion ... 

first saw the light of the 

world in the person of Socrates: 

the unshakeable faith that thought 

... can penetrate the deepest 

abysses of being, and that 

thought is capable not only 

of knowing being but even 

of correcting it. This sublime 

metaphysical illusion then

accompanies science as an 

instinct ... ". In Nietzsche's 

view, we cannot change 

things. Instead, with Hamlet 

we should "feel it to be 

ridiculous or humiliating 

that [we] should be asked 

to set right a world that is 

out of joint". Knowledge 

of the horror of existence 

kills action-which requires 

distance and illusion. The 

horror and meaninglessness 

of existence must be veiled 

if we are to live and act. 

What we must do, 

Nietzsche thinks, is 

construct a meaning for 

suffering. Suffering we 

can handle. Meaningless

suffering, suffering for no 

reason at all, we cannot handle. 

So we give suffering a meaning. 

We invent a meaning. We create 

an illusion. The Greeks constructed 

gods for whom wars and other 

forms of suffering were festival 

plays and thus an occasion to 

be celebrated by the poets. 

Christians imagine a God 

for whom suffering is 

punishment for sin..."

-
If there truly is a God, then
suffering, despair and anguish
seem absurd and cruel. What
God would likeably implement
that? If there is NOT a God, on
the other hand, then suffering,
despair, and anguish are all
there is. We are left with our
Human paradox  -  a million 
ways out, each leading nowhere?
-

Truly and for so long, 

I am lost.