12,504. RUDIMENTS, pt. 944

RUDIMENTS, pt. 944

(dead, stuck, and anchored)

How does one get serendipitous?

Do the new arrivals in Heaven

know immediately where to go?

I always thought yellow journalism

wasn't 'journalism' at all. It was

just people too chicken to point

specific things out  -  thus, 'yellow.'

Heck, think of where all that would

get us. We'd still be getting ptomaine

from bad industrial food-canning.

Those business types will do anything

they can do cut corners and make a

few more pennies.Which brings me

to my next point  -  an issue with me

my entire life, and I've actually even

worked for a guy whose other line

was a restaurant out in the boonies.

Why would anyone pay to eat out?

To eat food prepared by others?

In the first place, if it's a corporate

restaurant, one of those ass-happy

places with booze and eating, loud

noise and music, it's corporate. The

frozen foods and entrees are probably

40 days old already, nutritionally

inert, tasteless and gummy too, and

carried in by weekly truckings. If

it's a local person's restaurant, it

may be a little different in that regard,

but still, in either situation, the profit

motive rules. They'll open the place

up with some fanfare and a showcase

menu, and then, three months later,

everything begins getting fine-tuned.
They'll find out it's cheaper to buy
160 frozen entrees to microwave
up then it is to get 30 a week; so
their hunt for 'economies of scale take
over  -  your food is 40 days frozen.

They notice what sells, what doesn't;

they review costs and feasibility for

this or that. Then they begin, in the

name of sustaining a profit, to cut

what they may  -  inferior ingredients,

fewer or different seasonings, faster

prep, shortcut here, shortcut there.

They may be feeding you, yes,

but they're also gauging your party

for table-time, what you buy, what

they begin omitting, what you'd

not notice. The predominant issue

is profit and bottom line, not your

food and dining. Why bother?

-

Well, anyway, that's just me, and

the real reason I would never dine

out is because of price, mainly;

but I also have a real aversion to

eating publicly. It seems a gross

thing to do, and the presence of others

holds out no joy for me. I'm a light

and delicate eater, hate leaks and

slop, the sounds of chewing and all

that, watching people's plates and

the guzzling and muck that goes on.

We should all be so private. Maybe

it's all (once again) because of that

damned seminary stuff  -  enforced

group dining, three times daily, with

a mass of idiotic male teens. You

never outgrow your need for...yuck?

-

I guess serendipitous stuff is just

another version of that whole 'timing'

thing. That Chasen's drugstore or

Schwab's kind of episode all over

again. People turning a corner or

entering a store and, wham! they

get discovered. Most of those

stories probably should be taken

with a grain of salt (whatever

that actually means), but maybe

some of the essence is true. It goes

back a lot, in part, to that numbers

thing I mentioned in an earlier

chapter one - one two back - about

certain agglomerations and tallies

of numbers. When they happen,

or some version of them, you enter

another spot entirely, the skies

open for you  -  as it were, you're

stepping into destiny, or fate.

That all works fine, as a working,

numbers, tally, but once the final

numbers roll in, you're done. It

happens to all. 'In that you are 

not so unique.'

-

Tires are round  -  they aren't really,

that's just what we call it. The

peculiar essence of 'roundness' does

not exist except for 'words'. In the

same way as the perfect cylinder

of a six-gun seems eminently right

for the perfection of that circularity

and 'six,' a 'seven-gun' somehow
just wouldn't work or be the same. 
It's just the things we adapt to.

I used to think of that when helping

those wagon and cart guys along the

west side  -  17th, 15th sts., etc. and

their horses. Each of them and their

horseshoes. What is a horseshoe?

It's a very indeterminate word, I 

guess describing something, a 

thing-that-is, in this case self-defining.

We seem to know exactly what is

meant, but what is it we are saying?

The description? Or the thing? And

of either, which is more 'correct'?

These are human terms and human

things, and the world is made up of

them, but if a person is not careful

they can lose all of that and just be

absorbed, with the meaningless, by

the saying of whatever they're saying.

A person MUST, then, remain

conscious of everything.

-

You see, the problem is if you go

around with stuff like this coming

out of your mouth your 'timing' is

going to be so far off even the

Battery-To-Times Square bus won't

hit you. You'll be one-step ahead

of the impact, or just off. You get

all those sky-watching Mt. Palomar

type telescope guys, digging way

out to deep space, and they walk

off to take a whiz, and, boom!,

they come back having missed the

stellar explosion they've been 

waiting on for 31 years. They

come back to peaked, waning

blackness, 6 minutes off! And

that's on light that had been

traveling for 4.33 light years

to show itself.

-

It always seemed  -  odd as it was  -

that everyone somehow agreed

on what, say, 'Yellow' was, or the

'roundness of that tire and wheel.

Yet, 'Democracy' or whatever

operative phrase one pushed, tended

to say 'every person for their self'

as far as deciding goes  -  what's

false, good, or bad, or true. There

are dangerous threads of anarchy

woven into all that, yes, but men

and women most generally do agree

on round, and yellow, and, yes,

horseshoe. It's a stable (no pun)

shortcut we take to keep the world

in one piece. But it doesn't need

to be, it's not in our make-up. Or 

is it? How far did the Tower of

Babel concept go? Using one's

own faculties to determine for

oneself isn't that great an idea.

I remember some old ad from

the 1970's, about car loans. 'We

loan for any make,' etc. The image

with the ad was always a vehicle

made up of parts, fenders, lights

and the rest from a grab-bag of

all different cars : Buick, Ford,

Chevy, Pontiac, Valiant, etc.

The idea got across. The ad 

worked, but it was the most 

simple of concepts. The 'other' 

idea of 'Concepts,' it would 

not work for: The American 

philosophical method was

weird  - old things were all

supposed to have died away

and we were to be grounded, 

if at all, on our own new concepts.

No longer bound by the tradition

or ritual of old. Prejudices of

religion, class, and family : 

Gone!

-

It never quite worked that way, 

at all. From the very beginning, 

each person took claim to their

thought, their own stance, as 

being the predominant stance : 

churchman had their divine 

standards or revelation, 

aristocrats for their reverences 

towards antiquity, fathers for 

ancestral integrity, and such.

'Even if men seek authority,

they cannot find it where they

used to find it in other regimes.'

That made things tough. It was

thought 'Men' were on their own,

well, maybe, but, not. Yellow

remained yellow and round 

remained round, thankfully.

-

The problem, as it arose, was

that the 'common' beliefs of

ordinary people are what took

over. And those common beliefs

become what was determined as

proper judgment  -  and of course,

that was what I'd been fleeing

from. It hit me. It hit me like a

round, yellow, horseshoe, and

one as yet without a name. If,

thereby' all men were thinking

alike, for convenience's sake, 

was it not, in a sense, viral, and

spreading. Common thought,

taking no chances, no depth

of field, just a really dull

snapshot of a supposed place

and time. How quirky! And

that's exactly what we have 

now  -  the dullest of the dull,

always doing the most dull things.

I'd left all that, long ago and

with a very grand thankfulness,

but it still comes back to haunt,

and every so often, bite. The

common bite, like a lowly

mosquito. In the absence of

anything else, the most common

of beliefs will take over, and

the most common of men will

let it go that way, and remain,

stupidly, satisfied. My own

way-station was constantly

moving. It seemed everyone

else's was determined to remain,

in place, dead, stuck, and fully

anchored in all the old things.