RUDIMENTS, pt. 676
(barfing under the chestnut tree)
My problem was always about
tribute. I never gave any, nor
had any. I was never in any
way part of the gung-ho
Americanism which always
still seems so prevalent. Most
of those people don't know
a ghost of what they're
pretending to know about.
I kind of get sick and tired
of it. D. H. Lawrence wrote
once (in 'Studies in Classic
American Literature'), that
'As I say, it is perhaps easier
to love America passionately,
when you look at it through
the wrong end of a telescope....
than when you are right there.
When you are actually IN
America, America hurts.'
I saw plenty of the hurt angle,
believe you me. What's the
thing people say most about
the USA, 'We have everything
we need.' That's probably true
if your needs run to junk, crap,
assorted (sordid) entertainments,
froth, sports, consumption (Hey!
Remember when that was a
disease?), and the 'empty-headed
needs of needs you don't need.'
it's all a trick parlor game. You
can snack up to death at most
any gasoline station while, right
next door, you can probably gas
up to death on greasy, oily, heart
stopping donuts too. Everything
in America has somehow become
two sided - you buy your clothes
now in a hardware store, one that
suddenly gets the deal of selling
some clothing in addition to barn
tools, nails and hammers. You
can go to church to buy a trinket
and a book; and you can go to
a snack bar and come away with
a video-game or a movie. No one
any longer wants to only be doing
the thing they should be doing.
That's why so many business fail;
empty storefronts tell the story:
Over-reach. Too much expansion.
Doing too many things at once.
It's not enough to fix your shoes,
now the shoe-man wants to also do
your mufflers, repair cars, and sell
paints and varnishes too. Codifying
all this has become the obsession
of America's school children, (now
forget the dead-white-males thing;
the classics; male and female
writers; and thinkers of the past)
who are taught this 'consumption'
as a means of promoting their
well-being. Supposedly. The
future, I'm afraid to say, by
these equals, will amount to
mayonnaise on toast. With its
equivalent uselessness.
-
You may very well, using your
reverse telescope, take solace
from all this and rise to salute
and sing the grand allegiance.
Your sons and your fathers, I
am, however, sorry to say, have
fought and perhaps died, quaintly,
for nothing - or, if I give an
inch - for very little at all. In
an even more quirky vein, I was
once talking to someone, a mother,
whose son, as a State Police officer,
she felt, was doing high service for
his country - the NJ State Police
had taken over, or been given the
responsibility, for policing Camden.
It was so bad, such a dire place, that
the State stepped in, fired the in-place
police force, or at least put it on a
hiatus, and turned over that new
responsibility to the State Police,
one of which, her son, was now
posted to Camden. I myself
considered that a backward, and
poor move, squandering police
power only to amplify the failure
of the body-politic, and the
destroyed city, while she, on the
other hand, thought it high and
wondrous work her son had
been given. Two sides of that
coin again, I suppose. I saw a
miserable, bankrupt, failure by
a country and state that could
no longer sustain itself. She
saw the power and the glory
of grand America at work.
Stark the difference for sure.
-
On the other hand, (there's always
that other hand), it meant little
to me. I was not them, and they
are not me. Understandings and
definitions vary. I've got mine.
While in NYC, I'd pass it all -
every level of the human
condition - along the way and
so it seemed - was present and
out in the open. I saw dead in
the gutters, puke on windows,
people hit by cars, needle-panic
junkies jumping all around,
robberies, thieves, sex-perverts,
and stalkers. Mumblers, screamers
and knee-jerkers. It was a scary
scene, and there are times now
when it's only a little bit different.
A lot of it now is just perversion -
as I can see it, many young men
walk the streets all pumped up,
from porno, phone photos, or
whatever, and they leer and gawk
and the passing femmes. It's good
the females now can fight back,
have lost that reticence, because I've
seen some real lurchers bothering
women while waiting at a crosswalk
or a light. Is that urban order now?
Must we then institute and allow
such a form of self-policing? Has
it come to that? We can no longer
really 'arm' ourselves (except by
knives and blades), and we are
then expected to walk through all
this, vulnerable and on our own?
I don't understand that either.
-
The other part of the problem is
that people have been taken over,
controlled and dis-empowered,
and willingly move ahead in that
stupid condition, as long as they
are kept entertained. I'm not at
the long OR the short end of
any viewing scope - I'm IN
the view, I AM the telescope.
And none of this, sorry, will do
for me. My faith is in my faith,
and not in any miserable, failed,
fake ideology. You can have it
any way you wish, but way back
then I'd already tired of those
civic drones who prattled on
about patriotism and God-given
rights, and Freedoms of this or
that. There are none, unless you
count picking your own donut
choice to be a Freedom worth
the likes of early fighters and
writers of this country's real
underpinnings. They'd barf
under the nearest hanging tree
they'd find. The next time the
stupid Elks have their essay
contest for 'What America
Means To Me,' it means barfing
under the chestnut tree.
-
Have you ever looked at a
junkyard? Go ahead, do so
- there's one at the end of
Avenel's Inman Avenue
that might do you good.
They represent the plentitude
of America: Why we took
lands from others, killed
the 'Injuns, smashed the
skulls of their women and
children, burned their tents,
livestock, dogs and woodlands.
We built our kingdom on their
dead backs, and by force. And
what's it gotten us? Hmmm. Try
to drink the water in the running
creeks adjacent to the junkyard.
Try to grown anything in the
oil and gas soaked, blackened
and dead soil there. Make some
sense if you can of the three and
four vehicle high piles of junk
metal cars and trucks, leaking
tanks, broken glass, chains, and
tires. The highways run by this
all, and those highways never stop,
and all this crud continues to pile
up - while people fight over
definitions and meanings of
woodland, water, foliage, trees,
open spaces, drainage, and the
preservation of land and water.
It's really all a crock. The only
thing left standing, left for the
factors of in-demand, is money;
sales, trades, profits and mark-ups
too. And it's all a crock, a really,
flaming, crying crock. The world
goes on forever? Perhaps.
But we don't.
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