12,525. RUDIMENTS, pt. 951

RUDIMENTS, pt. 951

(old world, new flip)

I never got to drive a Messerschmit,

though I always wanted to. They

were pretty unique and to me they

represented another world of matter,

older and harsher, trying to break

through. Everything about them

spoke something I couldn't touch.

-

It was from another world, more

or less, one that came out of World

War II : ruins and internal damage

to just about everything. The

idea remained in people's heads

that they had kept the right of

mobility in spite of all else. The

Messerschmit was like a spider,

crawling over the ruins, and it

probably brought Germany

itself back from Death.

-

I never had much else to say

on that matter, until now. My

father, when I was young, had

given me, from somewhere, a

really nice, oversized wall-poster,

and he'd framed and hung it on

my wall. It was maybe 20x28

inches (a guess) and present

the entire line of Chevrolet cars

through the years, like from the

1920's right on up to whatever it

was, 1958 or '59. There wasn't

anything there that looked like

a Messerschmitt, not even in

approach or spirit. I don't think

GM had even taken that approach

to anything, and as far as I could

tell the only thing that American

cars did was get bigger and

fatter, expand and grow

hilariously into other things

than cars or transportation.

That entire point had been

lost and resigned. Taken away.

It had all, instead, become a

sunning sport merely to decorate

the highways of America.

-

There were so many 'possibles'

that this country never took. The

mind goes numb thinking about

it: Not only just the small, tiny,

three-wheel cars but so many

other things. Everything instead

came out to bloat, ooze and grow.

It was always that  sort of thinking

that seemed to take root, in all

aspects, as 'American.' Large, and

stretching boundaries  -  and maybe

in a certain way that's good, though

I'm not the one to determine that

because I think it isn't, but there's

nothing 'fine' about large. It smothers

its own subject/presence.

-

The American experience incorporated

BIG lies and suppositions, big reasons

for every little things, big twists of

truth and logic to make the world

spin. New American World, self-made

and self-created. When you drive over

the land and see all of this, what strikes

one the most is the immediate datedness

of the premise. Most of those big

mills and factories, smokestacks and

industries are now as dead as a doornail,

yet all they once were still blots the

land, in their huge deadness. So much

so that it's hard any longer to even

differentiate the good from the bad,

those categories each having lost

both luster ad relevance. I'm driving

along the slag-heap mountains above

Scranton, and all I see is the waste

from Civilization's demise. Long 

and slow, and faded away, from

an era now gone, what we see

are only evidences of the entirety

of the pasts old efforts at making

the machine' world of comfort.

-

Just as in the bowels of NYC, where 

I'd see the old 1960's versions of

power and efficiency crumbling,

the efforts that Humankind made

towards improvement had left

out the mind for the mass of people,

which mass swam along daily in

droves, intent on other things and

nearly unaware of failings. Like
an old world with a new flip, all the
occurrences kept striking out; a
new land like that had no designated
endings but which had benumbed
people anyway in order for them to
have been taken over by that
very vacuousness. It New York,
most the efforts went skyward;
in other places those same efforts
stretched out and spread as a
blight along the land. Killing
our plains and prairies, and 
making even the most peasant
countryside but a barrel of thorns.
In Ideal terms, the three-point
stance of the Messerschmitt then
represented, with its three wheels, a
perfect and miraculous embodiment
of a sort of mathematical logic
hat reinforced the rest of the world:
Triune, balanced logic  -  the three
parts of the Trinity, three wise men,
three days in the grave, three strikes
and you're out. The rest of the world,
following the push and the prod of
America, stacked itself, as usual,
on stability, steadiness and utility.
The four wheels of a world gone wrong.