11,645. RUDIMENTS, pt. 640

RUDIMENTS, pt. 640

(everything is a crock)

As the lion said to the tiger :

Let us prey! Based on that

previous chapter, my mostly

cumbersome interaction needs

some follow-up : Saints and

Saviors, and the conditions

of life on Earth. It's a strange

and long story. I'll try it.

-

'Genesis 22. Abraham, an old

man who was waiting all his

life for the birth of his son and

heir, is suddenly commanded

by God to take Isaac to a

mountaintop to kill him.

Abraham immediately follows

the instruction, making no

protest as he leads Isaac up

to the mountaintop. Only at

the last moment, when Isaac

is bound on the altar and

Abraham has his knife raised,

does an angel appear and call

off the sacrifice, saying 'For

now I know that thou fearest

God, seeing thou hast not

withheld they son, thine only

son, from me,' the angel tells

the patriarch. A ram appears

nearby and is offered in Isaac's

stead, and everything ends

happily.' (Except, I always

thought, for the ram. I could

never figure this animal-

sacrifice stuff out).

-

To what lengths does any of

this claptrap - (my opinion) -

perfect-strength idea go, in

'obedience' to God? And what

possible meaning could any of it

have for our present day states

of living? And  -  back to those

aborted babies at the driveway  -

what differences exist, to make

one a 'sacrifice' and another a

murder? All Life is the same long

line, a continuity, which draws

its strength from all the shared

definitions we dwell amidst.

Including this situation. If you

do this to lose everything so as

to show obedience to God, then,

as well, what was the big deal

about Job not just accepting all

his problems, giving it up to God,

and being done with it? There

are way too many finely split

hairs here, and I'm still glad

I'm not a ram, goat, or chicken;

talk about monstrous deaths

for no good reason at all except

that Man is a killer animal, long

out of control and worth only

extinction.

-

There's currently a guy name

Martin Hagglund who has written

of this scene and come up with an

'escape hatch' of sorts for what

Abraham had, apparently, been

willing to do  -  kill his own son,

albeit for God, yes. Hagglund's

escape hatch is that if Abraham

had perfect faith in God, then he

believed without a doubt that

that the killing of Isaac did not

mean the loss of Isaac. Rather,

a slain Isaac would be with God,

and so Abraham could hope to

find him again after death. For

all the difficulty and grief that

killing his son would cause him,

Abraham never actually puts

Isaac, or himself, at risk. Thus,

'Faith' cancels out true loss. As

long as you keep religious faith

you cannot be defeated by loss.

-

That sure is some convoluted and

convenient reasoning  -  I'd say.

It reeks of entrapment, in that

the systems that develop around

it first already KNOW where they

want to be and where they want

their arguments to end up, so they

build and construct their entire

framework around that conclusion,

and conveniently get there! That's

as immaterial as it is dishonest. It's

all, frankly, calculated crap, first

thought up, and then ended at.

As I said, I never understood,

nor did I have any interest in,

all this ancient sacrifice stuff :

completely nonsensical to me

and way outside the mainstream

of my personal thought structure.
Tribal stuff was never my kin.

-

Early on, I began coming to certain

conclusions. One being that the

art world sucked. I began noticing

the dollar signs on things getting

larger and larger  -  paintings that

previously would have been salable

at two thousand dollars  -  a price

that would have made artist and 

agent as well quite happy  -  were

slowly rolling upwards of a

hundred thousand dollars and still

more. Certainly a whole other

threshold of money. Reason was?

Business. Agents. Gallery Directors.

Collectors, and, of course, a new

tax law in effect by about 1950,

looking back, that had changed 

everything. By the purposing 

of that law, changing the tax 

code meant that art collectors 

could take a deduction on art

purchased with the intention

of one day, even posthumously,

donating the works to a museum. 

The bureaucratic change then

immediately invigorated a market:

buyers and wealthy individuals 

had an incentive, beyond just the

love of art or its acquisition as

status symbol, to buy art; now 

purchasing art on the advice of 

a small number of 'experts' who

directed them toward the art most

likely to be accepted by a museum.

The entire operation was thus

changed, into something as

hermetically sealed and closed

as insiders could keep it. Prices

began a slow, steady rise, right

up to today's absolutely bizarre

numbers at auction. Museums,

and galleries, thrived, but the 

life slowly began falling away

from the works themselves. It

all became a system. And I

hated systems.

-

Once I realized things, I knew

that  -  in my own rather low way  -

I had to, and would, keep at it, but

I was not in any way personable 

enough, public enough, polite

enough, or caring enough, to

take part in the social-circuit

and psycho-babble necessary

to get through show openings,

chatter, drinks and rambling.

Insider talk, phrases and code

words of extreme meaningless.

And that's how it went for me, so 

that now, at life's soggy end, I'm

cloistered with paintings, drawings,

lines, words, and doctrines, all of

my own doing, which have gone 

nowhere except the royal 'Here.'

And good riddance to all that;

they're all a bunch of shits.

-

Everything's been taken up now

anyway by the gold-wave of the

wandering tribe, much as it's always

been  -  those seeking and sucking

money from hype and air. They say

you can't get blood from a turnip; 

and they'd be the ones to know,

having even tried that.

-

Just today, in fact, as if to prove

my point, I was paging through an

old Look Magazine, of all things,

from Sept. 21, 1965. The cover said,

in bold letters with a horrific-looking

urban-dangerous photo, 'Our Sick

Cities'  -  and in smaller type, 'and

how they can be cured.' My immediate

thought (I'd picked up a number of

these at some junk sale for like 25 cents

each) was 'That's not a Conclusion!

That's an opinion!' Even in good

old 1965 they were well underway

with that bible-premised obfuscation

that has taken us from Abraham and

Isaac right to the present day at

the local abortion mill and its 

constant protesters. [And, by the

way, another obvious problem with

this is collusion between church and

state here  -  in that the real perfidy 

is the town hall assholes who allow

this stuff. Were I to appear each day,

with placards and stands, and signs,

at the roadway, outside of Town Hall

proclaiming them as agents of Evil,

crooks thieves, liars and fruitless

bums besides, I'd be hauled off by

the local constabulary immediately].

The guys at Look Magazine, back

in 1965, I can see them now, had

their CONCLUSIONS  ready first.

'Let's do a story on how rotten our

cities are. Make the facts and the

findings fit only that. We'll get some

photos of the usual crud to make the

point, and go at every angle we can 

make, to have this fit our lead line

and premise. Go at it, you have 

two months, for a cover-date of

late September.' Everything is

a crock, and everything is fixed.
Facts don't exist and this
life's a premise.
-
Those editors around the big table,
they take the place, in a way now, of
God in forming what we know of
as our universe. Everyone bows, 
 'the accepting of the acceptance as
the accepted acceptance.' Problem is, 
nothing is as it seems, and it's ALL
a ringed circle around a dead-man's
neck. Given the right incentive, I
could produce a story too, with photos,
of this as a wonderful, thriving and
positive world, refuting theirs  -  and 
against  their lowly premised, dated, 
stupidities of 1965, because it's all in 
the presentation of the continuities 
and what's selected to be exposed. I
drive the tractor. I make the corn rows.
I plant the seeds. I harvest the corn.