11,740. RUDIMENTS, pt. 677

RUDIMENTS, pt. 677
(playing those nature games)
The more I get involved in 

things, the more I figure the 

world is biased towards

the prevailing social viewpoint,

which is, I guess why it's the

'prevailing' one. Just today,

one more (this is going to 

sound stupid) I took exception

to the New York Time's daily

crossword puzzle, (a Monday

one, the easiest day of the

week for this 'progressive' 

puzzle. They get denser as

the week goes on.  In any case,

I don't like the direction it

takes  -  I don't like the entire

NYTimes anymore anyway; 

it's mostly unreadable now  

- neutered, slanted, prevailingly

biased, ironic, aware of itself,

often untrue in its half-truths,

and nowadays more magazine

featurelet-like than the older

'newspaper of record' that once

was. In fact, it's fairly pathetic

and laughable now. But, the

crossword puzzle itself has now

taken on the same characteristics. 

You'd think it wouldn't bother 

me, but it does. I hate to see the

downward slide: in addition to

everything else there's now a

good quantity of TV, move and

entertainment questions, of which

I know nothing and wouldn't have

in my mind -  no TV here, no

current input, thank you, for some

6 years now, and counting. When,

to my mind those sorts of evidences

begin floating up  -  curious clues

calling for pointed answers which 

would not have been the answers

twenty years ago, well, it's just

weird. They say language is a

changing 'reflector' of the times

in which it's spoken, and, then,

maybe so. But I need not like it.

-

A long time ago, at my father's

insistence mostly  -  as a kid  -  

I had to spend inordinate amounts

of time with him on his 'boat.' One

way or the other, these fishing

Saturdays out were, I'd now

suppose, his way of bonding

with his son, but to me they were

also a bit perplexing, even often

just off-putting. I was 'out' in a 

world, of his, that I didn't much

want, and felt as if my time had

been taken from me. The good 

thing about being young was that

I didn't sulk. I'd just go along.

Observing things  -  the water

and its swells and changing

colors, kelp and seaweed, the

shells and things on the reefs and

coastal islets he come to. The 

polished stones and glass, made

smooth and even by all the

turnings of the surf and tides.

Always searching, we well, for

the proverbial 'Help me' or

'rescue me!' message in a

washed up bottle. Which 

never appeared, thankfully, 

because I would only have 

thought it had been cast 

adrift by me.

-

If there was a crossword clue 

of interest, it would maybe 

say, 'watching fish die,' and 

the answer would be 'bored.' 

That was me. To my own mind,

all I ever came face to face with

were the unreasonable questions

of existence  -  which mostly 

seemed pathetic to me. The 

'catching' of fish being a case

in point. I don't know if 'catching'

is even the right word, since the

'catch' here is death, and finality.

My father and I never really

discussed any of this, nor what

was going on, but he'd occasionally

catch a fish, whether a bluefish,

or one of those flat fish (fluke or

flounder, I think). They would

just then be unhooked ( a horrid

process in itself) and chucked

down into a bucket or on the

deck, to just gag, flop, and

generally suffocate  -  if that's

the word for non-air breathing

things. You can't say 'drown,'

but at the same time, they don't

really 'breath.' That always

confused me too. 'What was

the sense of any of this?' I'd

think to myself  -  the last thing

I ever wanted to be was a form,

any form, or predator  -  which

is what a 'Human' in this situation

appeared to me as. 'Me go killum

fish!' 

-

It only got worse in later years.

I hooked up with bosses and work

people who were 'hunters' without

fail  -  bow and arrow season, small 

game, deer, doe, buck, cannon, rifle,

dart, whatever God-forsaken killing 

season someone would come up

with, these guys would take their 

4 or 5 days off and go greet that 

slovenly world of blood, death, 

and trickle, and greet it all with 

glee. It always seemed they were

sure to go hunting anything, only,

that didn't or couldn't shoot back.

Making your bets real safe, I guess

it was. They cheated the entire

system. Laying down scents, to

lure the unwitting  animal to its

untimely death. Sometime in

November, I think it was, there

was 'turkey season,' and they

be practicing, for a few days

beforehand, with their mouthpiece

turkey calls -  these were actually

sold in hunting stores  -  so that

the guy with the rifle would sound 

like a horny turkey, or a turkey

of some sort wanting to breed (I

knew a lot of them too, believe

me). The poor dumb turkey is

halfway to death already on

those mornings, just waking up...

and then to follow the false

call of a dumb-ass human with 

a rifle? 'Me go killum turkey!'

-

Yep, what a God-awful mess it 

all was. It always seemed like 

humans, bemoaning everything,

constantly complaining, simply 

had to have ALL things in their 

favor first, before they'd play any 

of their 'Nature games.' First off,

there wasn't anything rustic or

natural about it, and any 'ruggedness'

they pretended at, in the late 20th

century, was pure fiction, a modern

fable, or, as we liked to say in church,

'Bullshit!' The road to get where

they were going had to be paved, 

the highways, and Parkways, in the

case of the Jersey shore, for fishing,

had to be running freely, traffic

in good shape, their clothing dry 

and nice, their equipment perfect. 

The real-world chances of anything

going wrong for them was nil. They

still occasionally shot each other by

error. Soon after those days too, the

people who 'fished' began using

on-board fish finders and range

scanners, etc., to tell them where

the fish were, in schools or in some

form of plentiful grouping. That was

cheating too. There wasn't anything

copacetic or bona-fide about any of

this. Like I used to tell my father,

'It's a fluke if you catch a fish, if

this boat runs out of gas, we're 

going to flounder, and the only 

fish you're going to get in these

areas of schools of fish, are

groupers. (That was kind of a

joke, because I used to think there

was a kind of a fish too, called

a 'grouper.')...