12,382. RUDIMENTS, pt. 900

RUDIMENTS, pt. 900

(money honey)

There are many people

who still live by 'Science.'

Those folks will still be

around probably another

40 years before they're

all shook out of the system.

As when I myself was a

kid, there will still be

sorts of old 'throwback'

people I used to see. The

1920's leftover guys, all

over old Avenel, with their

sheds and workshops, kilns,

brickmolds, smoking their

pipes, in their bib overalls.

You don't see any of that

nowadays. Used to be there'd

be old Polish guys living

like that, leftover Germans

and super-practical Swedes

and Dutch, puttering around

in their yards, making fences

and sawing wood. None of

that's left and now any 'fences'

you see are mostly and probably

white plastic privacy fences.

Keeping the rest of the world

out, I guess  -  since there's not

that much to keep 'in.' It was

a much quieter world, and one

way more determined to stay

to its own path. We'd be about,

as children, along all the streets

and doing pretty much as we

pleased. Also not anymore 

seen, such behavior and 

childish anarchy has been 

retired to the new passions

of safety, video games, electric

interactions, and battery re-charges,

which have taken the equivalent

importance now of what we 

once reserved for bicycle chain

lubrication, air in the tires, and

honing the sharp edge of our

pocket knives.

-

Sometimes, by contrast, now

I just find myself tired. Tired of

all today's things : tired of the

mechanisms, and the connections,

tired of machinery and industry

and how things are connected,

all, to nothing at all. I miss those

flaming tar-pots that used to be

everywhere. Piles of wood.

Mounds of dirt. The holes and

diggings in the streets were

always marked by them, and

those little flame pots were

always left lit. No one ever

got hurt, or were bothered by

them. Now there'd be massive

class-action pantywaist lawsuits

by pantywaist lawyers and

people offended by the air. All

that stupid, modern stuff is so

off-script; no one even knows

what life is supposed to be

about any longer.

-

I used to get a kick out of,

when I first learned of it, 

the phrase, 'exclusionary 

clause.' Insurance companies, 

mostly. It cracked me up, 

because they're the insurers, 

the risk-takers, the ones who 

receive your money, most 

usually for years and years,

without ever having to do 

a payout. And then, when 

something happens  come 

back at you, citing their

'exclusionary clause' this

or that, with a denial of your

claim. 'Sidewalk had previous

cracks in it, before policy date.'

Or 'Trees on property to close 

to street line walkway,' or any

of twenty other formulations.

Their business is risk-taking,

so what's up? You can't say

no, because their industry 

lobby and payoffs have long

ago gotten into the pockets of

politicians, and all this crap

has been written into law, about

mandatory insurance this and

that. It's an organized and 

legal scam. When I was at

Barnes & Noble I worked

with a woman who told me

that her friend was hired, in

Georgia, to do nothing but

act as a first-line denier of

claims. If the 'client' then

persisted, the case was handed

off to the next level of deniers

and investigators. Is that any

way to run a businesses? Well,

yeah, I guess it is.

-

The fact about money is that it's

all illusionary. The more you dig

for it, the less it really exists; it

being an agreed-upon fiction by

which the whole world functions. 

If everyone sought their money

at one time....no way. Looking at
all these claims and claim-deniers

and padded accounts and payoffs 

and all that, its apparent that whole

damn dirty deed is fixed and nasty.

An entire robber-class of its very

own. The 'modern' world lets

a person, and all these systems,

get away with illusion. It wasn't

always so. Modern psycho-analytical

theory once proposed, and used to

function under the premise that,

the relation between the human

animal and the money complex

was the infantile urge to play with

feces : 'Nothing other than the

odorless, dehydrated filth that

has been made to shine.' The

connection between 'filthy lucre'

and the anal is no longer stressed

as much as it once was. Money, 

in non-literate cultures, begins 

as a commodity, such as whales'

teeth on Fiji island, or rats on

Easter Island  which later were

considered a delicacy, valued

as a luxury, and thus became a

means of mediation or barter.

When the Spaniards were

besieging Leyden in 1574,

leather money was issued, but

as hardship increased, the 

population boiled and ate the

new currency. After WWII,

the Dutch - after the German

occupation  -  were avid for 

tobacco. Since the supply was

small, objects of high value,

such as jewels, precision

instruments, and even houses

were sold for small  quantities

of cigarettes. (A magazine

report recorded an episode

from the early occupation of

Europe in 1945, describing

how an unopened pack of

cigarettes served as currency,

passing from hand to hand,

translating the skill of one

worker into the skill of another,

as long as no one broke the

seal.). Money has always

retained something of that

exchange-commodity feel,

even though we have long ago

lost any awareness of that or

'money's' original justifications.

Exchanging goods? Barter?

That would no longer work at

all, factors being now way too

many people, much too large a

geography, complete different

sets of values, and too many

forms. 

-

I never lived in any environment

where money was any factor

out of the ordinary. Growing up

I never paid it any mind  -  always

had my whatever food was around,

ate OK, had cereal, ice cream. We

never did much or went anywhere

big-time, but it all never mattered.

My father came home on Fridays, as

I recall, with a brown pay-envelope

with $125 in it. I guess it sufficed.

Lasted a week. House, two kids,

two parents, a car. My father

always bought his gasoline in

one dollar increments  -  'A buck's

worth, Mac.' Money never kept a

substance, or none I ever knew

bout, and it certainly then never

held any importance to me. I

never really knew where anything

came from  -  we had the bread,

and the butter, we needed. I guess

I just grew up more in the line

of the loaves and fishes miracle

thing - when you need it, it'll

somehow be there? Nothing

much scientific about it.