RUDIMENTS, pt. 918
(god helps those....that ain't fair!)
'The animal that is to be
trained, must be caught
young.' Boy and how. That
always made good sense
to me, in light of feral
Man roaming the Earth.
One who goes un-lauded
often times ends up angry.
That usually causes trouble.
I think the Govt. caught onto
the idea early of corralling
the kids into 'schools' early.
That frees up parents for
their other purposes of
makers, and consumers.
All that adds to the flooding
and growth of what's called
a Gross National Product,
by which a lot of other things
are measured. Putting a child
early into school, and then
disguising it as mandatory
rigor, covers lots of sins;
and a lot is lost. You'd be
amazed at what youngsters
can learn and get good at
by just learning at home and
not, instead, having the entire
societal structure forced onto
them like a crown of thorns.
They end up thinking the only
to learn, ever, is within that
enforced structure.
-
Henry Adams once wrote, 'One
sees whatever one brings.' I got
to liking that phrase, and I sort of
instantly realized what he meant,
because I'd noticed it a hundred
times. At the Studio School, as a
for-instance, if one did a painting
with whatever number of things
in it, randomly, I'm just saying:
color, line, a tree, a house, a jet
plane, and a Brillo Pad, all mixed
together as some Pop Art thing
(again, only an example) - no
matter what my own, as artist,
concentration or meaning on it
was meant to be, if someone
taking a look at the piece finds,
instead, that the Brillo Pad
or the jet plane resonates with
them, that's what the entire
painting is going to be about,
for them. It secures, within them,
the place of echo, where all the
personal memories or touchpoints
for them are. Like a madeleine
of Proust, it gets right to work.
['The madeleine is a symbol of the
past that arises unintentionally.
Proust traces the contours of a
subjectivity that accumulates
memories without realizing it
(madeleine, as each act, is lived
naively), a subjectivity marked
by the world passively.']. So, I
also wondered, does that lock
an artist in to only ever painting
from the past? Never from a
future where these 'touchpoints'
and madeleines are not? If
so, how does one ever forge
forward?
-
In my travels and the varied
places I stayed, I was never
attracted to the tedious types -
which was good - for the people
of Pennsylvania, in the smoked
out sections I lived, were ablaze
with a form of anarchy I'd not
faced before. A lot of them, at
the same time, faced off this
bare and rudimentary Christianity
that went around in those places
but they faced it off with no
complications or interferences.
it was more like an occasional,
part-time, local joke one had to
deal with. Sort of like waking up
on a Saturday and seeing the
new Jehovah's recruits going
door to door for the hundredth
time and you trying to make up
something new to say back. It
was easy and complicated all
at once. Mostly it was just the
ladyfolk who were hardcore.
That may sound sexist and rude
by whatever flea-bitten standards
people run things these days, but
it as true as a Depends on great
grandma. The women were always
all fired up about Sundays and
church socials and mixers and
their pot-luck dinners and all that.
Men mostly could not have
cared less, but if old Rev.
McKnight wanted to pray over
that old, sick cow no one was
about to stop him. I never
spoke religion to any farmhand.
Up in the places - as I saw it -
the whole unencumbered world
was a church. Free. For the taking :
Wind, air, bloom and blossom too.
All quite lovely, and it seemed
to me that shoving it all back
into a box of church rules and
regulations and outlooks and
attitudes was about as stupid as
screwing a lightbulb into
Cassie the horse's butt.
-
Elmira had different rules, a
different feel, and a slightly
heavier attitude about everything;
sadder, more sodden, bereft and
broken. Outside of the college,
it was much more like a penal
colony on the skids. Old, dead
cities up along that New York
State corridor were like that.
My friend, Rod, up there, used
to tell me that the place his
father worked - IBM or some
such, out along the wood
sections of Rt. 17, in Waverly,
was SO important to the USA
missile and strategic-weapons
defense and offense capabilities,
that (workers there were told)
it was on the Soviet's priority
list of the first 20 or so places
to be nuked if intercontinental
war ever broke out. That was a
real chiller, especially up and
out there, along the long corridor
to nothing at all. I never did
believe that story, but who
knows? Anyway my UFO story
about that landing I witnessed had
that one beat. (Previous chapter
here somewhere, maybe 30 or
so back).
-
That was - sort of - the mid 70's
there for me. Kids in school, taken
early, fed all this crap about sides
and enemies and advantage, etc.,
when all they needed really was
a good grounding in the ABC's,
some decent stuff to read, and,
along the way maybe, some real,
solid, plain reflection spoken
back to them about real things
and the solid world they were
(supposedly) in for the next
60 or 70 years, by teachers with
a sensible handle on Reality. If
ever there was one. (Handle and
teacher both).
-
When I lived up there it was
like I was talking to the past.
There was this one spot where
some river or a stream that
flowed into river waters just
outside of Elmira - it's a famed
spot for amateur, and 'pro' fossil
people - flowed at ground level,
off into the woods some, by some
old RR tracks, and just off a bit
from the shoulder of what was
then a part of old Rt. 17. The waters
uncovered, and ground heaved up,
fossil rocks. I mean really nice
ones. You had to search, walk
the waters slowly, or just next
to the waters anyway. We turned
up any number of amazing things
in our times - small-scale and
all, but chiseled and finely-detailed
fossils, often in fist-sized rocks or
just bigger. Easy to walk back
with. There was one time I stumbled
on this rock, maybe half the size
of a microwave oven, lets say,
that was, and I called it such for
years, a 'Rosetta Stone' of fossils,
a tenement, apartment house. It
was the neatest thing I ever had.
Yep. When we left Elmira, in
the rush of moving, I left it on
the porch, where I'd always kept
it for decoration and conversation.
When I did go back for it, in the
finishing of the house-move and
the closing up of the house for
final sale, it was gone. God
helps those who help themselves;
but to other's rocks? After half
a millennia? That ain't fair.
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