11,751. RUDIMENTS pt. 682

RUDIMENTS, pt. 682

(do such wars ever end?)

It always baffled me how,

in life, you can't exactly

'undo' things. Way before

the days of computers and

laptops and keyboards and

all, I realize now what I was

then already thinking of was

for a sort of 'undo' key. The

means for backing out of

something just done  -  I

knew one could change one's 

mind, alter a conclusion, or

make a different viewpoint.

But  -  and what I really meant  -

you can never undo the moment

itself; can't take things back,

so to speak. ('I just told Michael

Jethro he's a jerk for painting

his bobsled black, but now I

wish I hadn't said that and hope

to take it back...'). In its totality

the entire idea would upend

and really screw up the world.

Just imagine  -  I used to think

of what a perplexing (even

moreso than now) world it would 

be if everywhere you went there

were people changing the reality

of the world they lived in, going

back and forth, altering  the

concomitant results. And then,

one day, I realized: That's exactly

what goes on constantly now!

As things are! As he world is

made and constructed! It all

just left me speechless  -  so

that, I realize now, I'd invented

to mute key too.

-

You can't exactly put too much 

faith in the world around you, 

what you see, and all that goes 

on. Accepting all that, it. It only 

end up years later, when the dirt 

comes out, that the person or the 

process you once so admired 

was a creep or a dirty cheat. Not

much to do there but shrug and

accept the way of the world. That's

what I treasured most about my

solitude  -  I'd been able to remain

outside of any of that adulation

crap that people give to others.

The 1960's and 1970's so-called

'youth culture' was filled with all

that. It was only later that you

learned  -  and really only if you

read the bios and the material that

came out in retrospect, that your

idols and stars were mental runts,

slobbering drunks, or drug-addled

nuisances. All those pristine and

sanctified aspects of 'The Band,'

personifying rough Americana

filtered through longing and purity

and Bob Dylan, were just a 

rollicking bunch of good-timers

out chasing drugs and skirts. Just

using other ends to get the same

results as your average, corner

bar-stool lecher.

-

That's a lesson too late for the

learning; made of sand made 

of sand. Are you going away

with no words of farewell? Will

there be not a trace left behind?

Well I should have loved you

better, was a fool to be unkind.

You know that was the last

thing on my mind. Yeah...Right.

-

One thing about growing up, 

in my own day and time, was 

that the only fair option that we,

as young boys, were given, was

to be a Navajo or an Apache or

some crazy Mohawk warrior. I

wanted to be an 'Indian' all my

life  -  not the real kind, miserable,

sorrowful, half-drunk, miserly and

disenfranchised, rotting away in

some pathetic reservation somewhere

thanks to 1950's mid-American lies

and neglect (and hate)  -  but the

romanticized TV and Hollywood

sort, endlessly pushed down our

throats through Wagon Train and

Maverick and all that. The Lone

Ranger and Tonto, and Wyatt Earp

too. And, like NJ Railroad Avenue,

what a cool name was 'Wyatt!'

-

We were, in essence, presented with

a false world of idols and fake fronts,

and told to work our way through

it all, preferably without any real

comment or dissent. That is what

our 'Education' amounted to :

expectations to just go along.

-

Anyway, one of the more surprising 

things I ran across was 'Indians' in

New York City. In 1967 there really

were  -  I met a few and they talked

of their subculture and living quarters

like it was some cult or some niche

they inhabited that the real world

had not yet caught up to with its

lights and cameras and expose and

magazine spreads. These were real

dudes, and they could be as nasty

or nice as the next guy but they also

inhabited a place that included the

flavors of hate and revenge and 

regret. It was a shocker for me to 

realize that all of that had been

'skier' by the normal perverts who

taught is things  -  teachers, TV

people, parents, religious people,

and all the rest. The way it had all

been presented to us was that

whatever an 'Indian' was they 

were a cast-off segment of the

oily past from which America had 

extricated itself. No one ever spoke

of remnants, or leftover 'urban'

variants of same; instead it was

all romanticized into some soppy

mess of sentiments with gracious

Indians teaching us how to plant

corn and have giant meals and

passively remove themselves from

the scene as the new, large, billowy

white boats appeared on their shores.

And then the knives came out  - 

the diseases and death and rapes 

and slaughter and pillaging. Done 

on 'our' part (but kept within the

silences and lost), only because of,

and in the nae of, the greater Christian

cause of sanctification and blessedness

and, later somehow, commerce, lucre,

progress and industrial gain until all

that was left was a vain, polluted

ash-heap and shit and death for all

to share. And now these 'urban'

Indians that I began seeing were

alive and living right in the midst

of it all  -  industrial lofts, grease and

grime, dead lands and waters, crowds

of people worshiping material and

money. It was no wonder they just

didn't kill me  -  as representative

of that vast IOU that was still out

there. AND, to make it all worse,

every god-forsaken hippie piece

of crap who blew in to those shores

suddenly wanted to BE and LOOK

Indian, American, Native-stock.

Natural! I ask you now, do

such wars ever end?
-
I'd like to end this chapter
with the following, in light of
this land's treatment of its natives,
and the equivalent treatment of those
in South Africa, as apartheid: "In
1948, the Afrikaner National Party
came to power and began instituting
ever more elaborate system of racial
categorization, determining who could
live where and with whom: non-white
South Africans were pushed to the
peripheries of cities an towns, and were
divided based on their tribal background,
into ten rural regions, called Bantusans.
The policy enabled the government to
declare that there was no black majority
in South Africa, only a collection of
disparate ethnic groups. More than
three and a half million people were
removed from their homes in rural areas.
Their land was expropriated without
compensation and sold at low prices
to white farmers. Under apartheid,
85 percent of South African land was
reserved for whites, who made up
17 percent of the population." When
asked how to pronounce apartheid
correctly, once, I remember an
acquaintance of mine replying,
'apart-hate.'