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?
-
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.
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