RUDIMENTS, pt. 916
(hello 1870! how the hell are you!)
(hello 1870! how the hell are you!)
At the turn of another year,
calendar-wise, I don't even
feel like continuing. As far
as feelings go. I'll continue,
because I have to. The pace
of all the things around me
turns fairly disgusting, but
my value to myself keeps it
all together. I've got no mice.
I keep no fish. I decompose
nonetheless.
-
If craziness was ever contagious,
I may have caught it when; and
it seems that all you have to do
to live an interesting life is be
a damn fool. I've done that too.
I used to wonder, about that
Hungarian girl - whom I'd
never ever seen again, sadly,
because I would have had
some questions for her (the
good questions seem to always
come later) about how she
learned that cool fractured
English - for instance, was
it ever certain to her the difference
between a doctor who has a line
of enormous patients - or one
who has enormous patience?
Seems to make a difference.
We could'a talked. Any of
those intense Euro-types I've
ever met had always gotten on
my nerves. I can think of two
that didn't I suppose. One girl
was from Hamburg, and when
I asked what she did there,
she said I probably wouldn't
understand, but she bartended
in a 'dive bar'. Thinking we
didn't have dive bars here? I
told her I knew all about dive
bars, believe you me. She was
fun. Not Euro-intense. And the
other one who was also fun was
some girl named Anna. I Think
she was Russian. Her family
was harboring the Soviet outcast
and exiled writer writer Josef
Brodsky, back then. In Nutley,
or Montclair, NJ. We were up
in the west 80's that Winter,
and she was the girlfriend,
then, of that guy Paul I've
already mentioned. I have so
many good memories, they're
bad. This Paul guy was always
a trip : One night it was about
4 degrees out, rare even for NYC.
We'd all been waking, a long trek,
were hungry, and cold too, real
cold. There was a guy ahead of
us, walking his dog, and Paul
exclaimed, 'I'm so cold I could
eat that dog.' Huh? I had to ask.
What's the connection? Are you
hungry enough to eat the dog?
Cold enough?' He replied, in
an utterly logical fashion - all
of which hit me like a bolt - that
when you're cold, if you eat, then
the body can transform the food
just eaten into the warmth you
need. It was so weirdly logical
that it almost sounded like something
the Government would say about
some 'Minimum Daily Requirements'
stuff.he got all cantankerous over
my saying that, and I said 'Good.
Get worked up. It generates heat.'
All we had to look forward to anyway
was his 86th street hotplate. A real
bore. No wonder we frequented
Twin Donuts.
-
Euro-people were always so glum;
I think it was all that Existentialism
and post-war stuff. They all wanted
to be dark, and blank, Like Hannah
Arendt. Susan Sontag too, even
though she was later. That works for
a while, but it wears thin, and after
about 5,000 Gauloise cigarettes
and a briefcase full of Sartre, Camus,
and - maybe - de Beauvoir, all
your left with around the existential
dinner table are big talkers with
deep, raspy voices. The females
too. no way to run a philosophy.
-
It was like wearing a beret. I wore
one for a while, yes. Back in the
1970's at the base of the Flatiron
Building, there was a bookstore of
sorts, called China Books. It was
essentially Mao and Cultural
Revolution and Chinese Communist
propaganda stuff, not often that
much in English. But they were
nice books, done well, printed
in old letterpress ways, with all
those Chinese characters. They
also sold a lot of other things -
lie pins and buttons and posters,
etc. It was weird, how they got
away with all that, selling Commie
stuff and all - but I guess it just
proved, at some level, the truth
of the American 'openness' to
freedom and expression. They
sold these really beautiful, red
enameled Maoist stars, with
pin backs, and various sizes.
I proudly displayed one at
the front of my beret for a
long time, until I retired the
beret and the rest - mainly
because it began to look
really silly - I had at that time
grown big, mutton-chop, punk,
sideburns. It was a bad visual.
I also had my own copy of
Mao's Little Red Book. It
was all pretty useless.
-
Now, as it is, for stuff like that,
you don't need a Flatiron Building,
a storefront, sales space, or even
a clerk (Maoist or not). I can
look up 'China Books and
Periodicals Co.' online here and
get their entire corporate history,
current location, offerings and
books, home offices and all that
I wished for, in like an instant.
Just like anything else. That's
how the world has changed,
and if all that doesn't make you
wonder about 'design,' I don't
know whatever will. Let's go back
a chapter : God's got defenders
on both sides, but what sort of
a God - truthfully - would have
selected and arranged - this is what
they say anyway - a peacefully (?)
growing and prospering new country
(don't ask any Injuns about that one),
based on enlightened premises,
Promised Land kind of stuff - City
on a Hill, John Winthrop, etc. -
and then break and sunder it, in
the process of killing or maiming
a million men and boys over the
issue, more or less (and yeah, you
can argue all day. You go ahead;
I've got things to do) of owning and
enslaving, and brutally disciplining
and/or raping generations of stolen
black people, AND THEN as soon
as that carnage is all over, unleashing
upon the world new sciences and new
theories of HUMANKIND descended
linearly and orderly, from apes, fish,
lizards and pond scum. In pretty
much that order? Hello 1870! How
the hell are you?
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