RUDIMENTS, pt. 639
(save somebody, even if it's not yourself)
I was most often a crazy fool
about writing. I'd hunker down
and find a place to do it, just as
an exercise in thought management.
One time, to a friend in California,
I was writing a long piece that I
made up as I went along. I guess
it was in about 1974, or whenever
President Carter imposed 55mph
speed limits, in the name of energy
efficiency and all that crap. It was
all a sham, as if it were to make any
difference. I'd written a long essay
sort of diatribe about the end of the
American expansionist dream;
actually I had called it the true end
of Manifest Destiny. President
Madison's idea that the USA had
the sovereign right as a young
nation to expand from coast to
coast, and no one should get in
the way of that progress, meaning
mostly Spain and France, England
having already been spent. What
Carter and the 1970's had to face,
and without causing riots, was
telling the people that we were
done, there was nowhere else to
go, Alaska and Hawaii pretty much
having exhausted our reach, and
Cuba and Puerto Rico being places
no one wanted anyway. So, to avoid
insurrection and unrest, Carter
lowered the speed limits, under
the foul pretense of conservation,
so that (put simply) it would take
longer for people to get anywhere,
thus presenting the illusion still
of space and room and growth.
Those people setting out NY to
California, or Pittsburgh or Akron
or Colorado, would simply have
a longer, by time only, trip ahead
of them. Sort of a particularized
conspiracy theory that no one
believed anyway. BUT, my friend
Ed, here, in this case, took this
paper and presented it before one
of his groups - some San Francisco
university setting or another, and,
after the paper was read out, he said
it proved wildly popular and was
copied and re-submitted and passed
around, causing quite a stir.
-
And then, another time, say 1975, I
was visiting a friend at work, for her
lunch break - she worked at some
big, downtown advertising agency, I
believe M. W. Ayres or something, as
their research librarian - yes, hard to
believe that dimwits at ad agencies
have research libraries - and during
that time I got a 75 dollar parking
ticket for illegal parking in some
zone or other in the financial district.
At this time, New York City was broke
and going nowhere except foully
downward. They had had some sort
of Municipal Bonds, sold for years,
with Lebenthal Co., called 'First
Obligation Bonds' - often bought by
fixed-income retirees, elderly, who
relied on such reliable small dividends
and incomes. The idea was, no matter
how bad things got, NYC would first
and foremost honor their obligations
to these bondholders, and never default
on them. Well, lo and behold, with the
city being broke, what did they do?
They, yes, defaulted on these First
Obligation Bonds. A no no. SO, in
light of my ticket, I wrote a long
screed to some agency I now forget,
saying that I myself would - since
NYC had turned its back like that
on its ow obligations - in turn also
not recognize my obligation to pay
them their fine, seeing an equivalency
in their abrupt dismissal of responsibility
and my resultant refusal to pay. I
expected nothing but a scolding. In
any case, and amazingly, months later
I received in the mail an official letter
from the City Of New York, dismissing
my ticket - and along with that was
a note from some Law student or
something who had been clerk-interning
their, saw my letter, thought it was a
marvelous idea, and, as a project for
his law-study, taken up my argument
before a judge-in-session, argued for
it and won dismissal! So cool, that was.
Somewhere around here, long lost
and probably long buried and boxed
in something, I have the note.
-
Just goes to show how a little bit of
crazy intensity and a show of effort
can sometimes bring remarkable results.
I've never stopped, since then, being
a writerly thorn in lots of sides, and
with some cool results. Still waiting
for my big breakthrough though.
Never expecting much anyway.
-
I've always figured my best way out
of here was in a simple, pine box, with
as few mourners as possible. I hate
all that other stuff - drained and
stinkless corpses, looking like tissue
paper versions of what they used to
be, being gawked at and slobbered
over by people who actually probably
couldn't care less. On the third day
He arose again from the dead. Yeah,
sure, that'll work. There's no two
ways around the fact that earthly
existence rots the brain and ain't
worth spittle. But I still can't figure
any of it out. With all the tremor and
activity that NYC used to bring, there
isn't that much time by the ordinary
rube for all that thought about the
different points of philosophy and
illogic. The slobbering mass of
Humankind just swarms the street
like a bunch of Dumkopfs and gets
their feeble work done. That was
the cool thing about the Studio
School and the people and position
I'd gotten myself into. It was an
assured level of anarchy, with
little interference. At about this
time, 1967 and on, there were new
groups of people, all of a sudden
like weeds, everywhere. I've always
respected the past, my past, the
literary and artistic past, the legacy
values and the precursors and
forerunners of all that we needed
to know to make our contemporary
art, writing and world references
have value, but these new weed-kids
had very little of that. It was more
just a general rebelliousness born
from restlessness and an empty tub
of no real values at all. Not that I
minded - the girls were oftentimes
quite beautiful and stunning. About
this time too there was a fabric
or whatever it's called, that girls
were wearing, hippie type girls
anyway - it was thin, pretty near to
a sheer fabric, colored lightly and
made with prints and patterns; a
real modern garb. Lots of girls
wore it and they all wore it well -
very sexual, almost erotic, seeing
that stuff on the streets, walking
along, it seemed there wasn't a
care in the world for these grand
creatures; nothing that NYC
could interfere with or stop. It
was a sort of free-form assault
on all previous assumptions, and
it worked wonders. Guys had
nothing really equal to that -
what were they going to do,
sideburns and new hair? What
I'm saying is that it had become
totally easy to do nothing at all.
No one there was 'forced' to
think deeply, scour through the
world of philosophy, reason and
logic, pick through history, make
a worldview of their own. People
drooped instead of growing.
Too bad.
-
That new world a'borning allowed
a person, through ignorance or
laziness, to just waste away, do
nothing, and just 'keep on keeping
on', as the stupid saying went. I
felt that if a person was ready to
settle for that crap, they might as
well die. I never went passive. In
fact, I hated. My hate was good hate.
-
I passed a place today that I pass
often enough - it was certainly
nothing new - and, as usual there
were the one or two people there
with their placards and handouts.
It's a medical facility, and an
abortion mill as well, and these
picketers are most often there,
with placards and large photos
of fetuses and babies, and all that.
I guess a girl driving in for an
abortion is supposed to feel bad,
turn around, change her mind, etc.
Today the placards read 'Adoption
Is a Loving Alternative.' It's all
Knights of Columbus stuff, and
the church and the Knights Hall
is right up the street two blocks
or so. The whole thing, from all
sides is equally stupid and ridiculous,
and there's really no right or wrong.
Sorry. Adoption into a dastardly
situation, abuse, poverty, disrespect,
and further psychological abandonment
is always a possibility anyway, but
these idiots don't possess the depth
of thought to carry themselves that
far. Anyway, the Catholic Church
should talk! (Or at least outlaw
aborting boy babies. Ha!). I
never get their point - if this
world is the den of decrepitude
they make it out to be, fallen and
sinful, with everyone tainted at
birth by original sign and in
desperate need of Salvation, which
of course (?) can only come through
them, as Holy, Apostolic Bullshit
Catholic Church, why in the heck
bring a poor, suckered kid into
this world? What exactly is so
wrong about cutting them out of
this miserable loop at the last
moment anyway, especially as
they're obviously already seen
as excess and unwanted. It just
make no sense to me. Isn't that
the same, in essence, as saving
a soul, by not bringing it here
in the first place? I'd think that
would be a good thing; and if
you're about saying 'Only God
can make that determination,'
yeah, well, he or she ain't been
doing too good a job from what
I can tell.
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