12,546. RUDIMENTS, pt. 959

RUDIMENTS, pt. 959
(I need a sanctuary state!)
One thing I couldn't shake

was Jack London. I hardly

remember now where his

place was, but I went into

the woods and visited it,

wherever it was. He had a

wife too, I forget Charmian,

I think was the name, or

maybe Sharmian, one of

those. He was an offbeat

writer of sort of oddball

Yukon tales and stuff  -

White Fang, Call of the

Wild, and other Yukon

Gold Rush stuff. Confusing

character, a bit wildly off

and eccentric too, with a

peculiar biography. This

place was a stone and

timber, large, home, deep

in the middle of some

woods. It had burned, a

long time ago, in fact maybe

it was never ever completed,

but before it burned, but it's

claimed as his home and they

made a historic site of it.

There are some guide-signs

posted around, with old

photos and scenes. But no

matter, the glory of it was

location. I loved it. So lost

and far-off, it seemed. That

sort of place doesn't need 

words, it was all kid of 

ghostly, with his presence 

still around, whatever level

of it it may have been. Jack

London was also one of those

original Bohemian Grove

fellows  -  crazy and wild

in the woods. If anyone 

maybe could have kept me

there it would have been him,

spirit and history-wise, but

in actual fact, his writing

never did much for me and

held little interest. So I

folded on that account too. 

-

You could find little things 

out, here and there, but the

'old' California kept a lot of 

itself to itself and you had to 

dig. It would have been like a

history project, yes, bit one

that began way too late for 

my taste. Previous to any 

real 'colonization,' what

became California was a 

lot of Christian/Hispanic 

missions and trails and all;

it always seemed like naive

and faulty cultural infatuation.

Servitude. Enforced Christian

piety. Trial by fire.

-

Speaking of fire, I used to 

walk around San Francisco 

and think  of'that 1906 

earthquake, when  all those 

fires broke out and old 

wood-framed San Francisco

went the way of a dream. I

called it the Fried Zone., or

San Firecisco. No one ever 

got the joke, but it was ok. 

Back then the whole place 

just torched itself up and 

everything fell in sheets,

either sheets of fire, embers,

or ashes. There wasn't much

of any water around, all else

was in an emergency, and

there wasn't much they could

do. Mostly the people who 

died were unknown and

uncounted. There wasn't, in

1906, much of any way to be

sure of names and counts and

amounts of people, the registrar

angle on things was still primitive

and, anyway, old 'Frisco (no

one there really ever says that,

or do they say 'San Fran.' Those

are both dead giveaways for you

being an outsider), was a travel

town, with itinerants and people

always coming and going, or

passing through to somewhere

else. The whole thing was a

bad disaster.

-

There's this thing called Magical

Thinking. I got interested in the

concept, even way back in seminary

school, when I realized that people

actually pray for 'things.' Which was

a weird, very weird, concept. They

pray for that loan to go through so

they can get that new car, or that

their cancer will go away, or they 

can win a lottery. I mean, you name

it. Someone once said 'God doesn't

do vacation homes,' and I knew

immediately what was meant. It's

actually pretty perverse to use

'religion,' as an ostensible cause,

to try and effect a momentary,

earthly want. If nothing ever

makes any sense, and it usually

doesn't, that's about the best place

to start. Yet, no matter, people

do it. The more miserably poor

and uneducated one is, the

more it seems to happen  -  you

see some strange dweller in a

poor neighborhood who just

witnessed a cinder-block coming

down to the sidewalk from 14

stories up and landing 10 feet

away from them  -  you put a

TV camera in their face and

right away they're talking 

about how God spared them, 

was watching out for them,

had made them, that day, NOT

walk close to the building as

they usually did, and that being

the 10 foot margin that saved

them. Yeah OK. Magical 

thinking to the rescue.

-

The point of all this was that 

I wanted to bee in as many 

places at once as my silly, 

stupefied mind'could manage, 

but it could barely manage 

one. Most everything I've

learned, I've learned by the

doing. The scampering around,

The experimenting and the

theorizing that goes with a 

very loosely wired brain. I

don't do channels very well.

There ought to be a section

of the country for people like

me. I mean, why should 'we' 

have to put up with the trials 

and tribulations and rules and 

misnomers of the mass of men, 

when 'we' subscribe to little of

it; like, for instance, all these

wankers switching back and forth

from some illicit impeachment

to the freaking, stupid Oscars, 

and treating both in the same 

breath and with the same freaking 

gay enjoyment, as if all things 

were frilly entertainment? Hell,

I need a sanctuary state! I'll

take Nebraska. You can take

Kansas. Throw the bums living

there now the hell out. Or send

them back to New Jersey.