RUDIMENTS, pt. 991
(journal of the plague years)
You know what's funny to me?
How pathetic America is. That
sounds very paradoxical, and
probably 'funny' is not the best
word for it, but I'm meaning to
say how far afield it has gone from
any basis in its own reality, which
it somehow still prides itself over.
Pretty much like a pig that assumes
its own success by noting that even
though its entire body will be
consumed as one thing or another
by crazed humanoids, no one will
eat its snout or its tail and thereby
the pig proclaims its own victory
of its survival over slaughter.
-
If I'd ever had the gift of seeing
into the future, and if I was still
in those seminary days, it sure all
would have scared me off. And things
then, as simple as they were, were
already on their way to this. Now
we've got the plaque years coming
back? What makes it even more
pathetically funny is - what the
Americans now peddle for it. Two
days in a row, NYC newspapers
have run selected books, 10 are
listed, 20 in 2 days, of books about
the 'plague,' or a pandemic. They're
all modern pulp stuff, like Stephen
King, and the sorts of books they've
made disease-disaster-films from.
Real crud. Apparently is seems that
they have the complete and foolish
idea that 'Americans,' while on the
run from phobic fantasies, will be
content to cuddle up with a pulpy
adventure book about the very thing
that they are fleeing from; like dining
on a fearsome diet of alarm-cake.
If 'America' had any food sense or
value about itself, it would afford its
half-brained citizens opportunities
to read, say, Daniel Defoe, from 1665,
'A Journal of the Plague Year,' which
was a real happening in London, in
1665. And maybe even, by Boccaccio,
'The Decameron,' abut the plaque of
1348 in Florence, Italy. Anything but
the slime-crud being proposed. But,
no, Americans need their sniveling
pulp-matter trash and vaudeville
type books to guide them through
disaster. What a stupid country.
-
First, I offer, from 'The Decameron' :
"Tedious were it to recount how
citizen avoided citizen, how among
neighbors was scarce found any
that showed fellow-feeling for
another, how kinfolk held aloof,
and never met....nay, what is more,
and scarcely to be believed, fathers
and mothers were found to abandon
their own children, untended,
unvisited, to their fate." And, in
another, this from DeFoe's 'Journal
of the Plague Year' : "This was a
time when everyone's private
safety lay so near to them they had
no room to pity the distresses of
others.....The danger of immediate
death to ourselves, took away all
bonds of love, all concern for one
another."
-
Yeah, well all that is from a far
different place and world, and my
own vantage point is different too.
I don't much look forward to any
of this - all those soon to be
blasted people, hoarding and
jamming supermarkets and food
counters to make sure they get
enough of what's not necessary
anyway. The grueling horde of
fat-mouth mothers grazing grocery
shelves for cereal, milk, and eggs.
Pandemic to pandemonium in
about 4 days. Americans are
not good at this restrictive stuff.
Telling them there's none left, or
that they'll have to do without, will
surely brings riots to the streets,
or at least to the parking lots. I
can't wait for the breakdown
myself. 'Be proud of your school;
don't be a fool.'
-
You can't exactly tell people there's
'nothing left of nothing,' because
that's too advanced a design concept
for scribblers. Life and Reality are
made up of intellectual concerns,
first and foremost - those are what
form and weave each separate person's
reality-of-self.' There's really no
communal brotherhood and sisterhood
BS involved. When at base, there's
no intellectual content underpinning
things, which in most of these
cases of American people there's
not, then everything flounders and
floats on nothing. It's like seeing
one of those photos or films of the
garbage coasts, or those Asian seas
and inlets we are occasionally given,
where the water slides around sluggishly,
and afloat atop it is a wide, yearning
flotilla of countless plastic trash, bags,
wrappers, containers, and pieces. The
thrown-off crap of a very sick world.
That's your 'plague' for you, and just
maybe this now is 'reckoning time'
again. It's all psychological. It's all
in the head.
-
But if the head's not got it, it's all
nothing. Reductio ad absurdum,
as the old Latinates used to put it..
Stash away your sleeves of sentiment.
Uselessness is at the forefront of
things now. If ever was needed
that advancing iron hand, this is
the time it comes due. Race war?
Societal breakdown? Let's go at it.
The best excuse for violence and
anarchy and revolution in the
streets is a plague and all its
attendant disorders. Throw
your sentimental, 'aren't you
worried about others?' platitudes
out the windows and doors,
onto the heads of the others,
the writhing masses, lost in
the streets outside, lost and
adrift. Wear your sidearm
like a belt, and the Devil
take the hindmost. By the way,
does it not occur to people that
if their professed faith and credos
are to be believed, they should
not mind 'Death' at all. Death
is why we live; some faster
than others.
-
"Nothing is out of the question
the way I think and life my life.
I'm always thinking about creating.
My future starts when I wake up
every morning. That's when it
starts - when I wake up and see
the first light. Then, I'm grateful,
and I can't wait to wake up,
because there's something new
to do and try every day. Every
day I find something creative to
do with my life. It's a blessing
and a curse, but I wouldn't have
it any other way. In my life I
have few regrets and little guilt.
Those regrets I do have I don't
talk about. I'm more relaxed with
myself and everyone else now. I
think my personality is nicer. I'm
still suspicious of people, but less
than I was in the past, and I'm
less hostile too. I'm still a very
private person, though, and don't
like being around a lot of people
I don't know." Journal of the
Plague Year, again? Have fun,
as James Baldwim put it to Miles
Davis (whom I quoted above),
in these 'Yet to be United States.'
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