12,787. RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,045

RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,045

(that's how we do it to live)

Little is known about

what was here before us.

I mean on this earth. The

records of what we presume

to be Human History are in

fact fairly limited when you

realize the geological finds,

the fossil evidences, the great

shifts of land masses, topography,

continents, and 'land versus

water' layouts over (what appears

to be) time immemorial. In point

of fact, most of this planet's

history has taken place BEFORE

'Time,' as we are presuming to

know it and call it and claim it.

It's all quite easy for me or

anyone else to say this, but the

learned evidences by now resound

with these old tales : flipped

planets, and flipped orbits. Out

of position celestial bodies,

erratics in motion, past collisions

with evidences left everywhere,

missing planets, or at least the

places where such once were;

space voids, weird ellipticals.

And, most importantly, for me,

first as a writer here, yes, but

secondly and more importantly  -

as a cosmic seeker and someone

to whom a weird storyline and

ways of seeing or understanding

that are noticeably different from

the more astringent manners of the

everyday crowd presents a better 
picture of Reality  -  the spiritual

senses of multifarious lives and

levels, are the things standing out
as the defining characteristics of 
a differentiation of life on this 
globe. Perceptive derivations

which lead me to realizing the

mostly invalid premise behind

all that we see and claim to be

presented with. 'Life as a toy

store' has a lot of failings.
(Boy, that was one heck of a
string of dense sentences).

-

We apparently accommodate

ourselves. We claim the 'fit' is

fine, even when too tight or too

loose and too baggy. I awoke one

day, second go-round on the carousel

given, and, without even speaking,

was able to know what I was being

told. Post train-wreck life was skittled  
with lots of oddities. Reset time was 
here. My strange problem was in going 
to be how to make all the new forms
fit. Or fit me anyway. And I was now
beneath a sky that was not a ceiling.

I was within  a system that was not a

system at all, just a mass realization

of supposed events into which that

system was fitted nicely, and into

which system then I too was

expected to fit myself in. The

late Leonard Cohen used to sing

one of those imponderable lines

about the crack in the world

being how how the light gets

in, ( the actual quote, from

'Anthem,' is "Ring the bells

that still can ring/Forget your

perfect offering/There is a crack,

a crack in everything/That's

how the lights gets in.")….

It's actually a little cheesy,

with the overworking of an

entire premise around the rhyme

'ing.' But, whatever. It goes. I

was always up and after that

light. Once I unloosened from

all that train-wreck drubbing,

I was pretty much out on my

own, and fairly unstoppable.

From that point I think mostly

what I was after was to construct

my own life without any contrivances.

Stage tricks. Fabrications of on the

spot filler and engagements that

only fit the circumstance at hand.

I never liked that  -  contrivances

are offensive even in contemporary

novel-writing.  Not to say they

are not still done. America turns

contrivance into a self-conscious

jest  -  the sort of fame and hilarity

that you see on talk-shows and the

guest-appearances of otherwise

quite useless and ordinary people.

With, maybe, one joke, or one

tic, or one pet phrase or approach

to carry them through all other sorts

of...well, yes, contrived situations;

plots written nearly, with them in

mind.  Here's a perhaps example:

"The newspapers are alive with

inexplicable follies. Men, safe in

important positions, earning huge

salaries, forget to file income tax

forms. What a block-headed,

unrealistic contrivance 'out of

character.' We see, particularly in

persons high in public and political

life, the recurrent, bold, dissolutions

of the very core of themselves as it

has been supposedly observed in

endless printed repetitions, in

biography, in assertion of principle.

The puritan drinks too much it turns

out, the Christian is a heathen..."

[Elizabeth Hardwick].

-

Monumental undertakings, I used

to muse, take monumental men. 

(Or women, or activators. Jeez).

When the monumental men are

all gone or have been reduced to

simpleton-drones with sad and

stupid thinking, there isn't really

too much you should be expecting.

How many visitors would a

Mt. Rushmore get (plenty, in

all actuality) if it was made up

of Daffy Duck, Goofy, Donald

Duck, and Minnie Mouse? That's

the scene at this juncture. A

huge piece of rock, free-falling

through 'gravitational' space,

eons old, covered with swarms

of delightfully drooling people

going about their laggard, made-up

businesses swearing they are the

first ones ever here. The human 

mind, as made-up now  -  and

fortunately  -  is not possessed

of the strength or power to have

all these things 'present' and in

awareness at any one time. So,

for functional purposes the

average, everyday mind shuts

ALL the past oneness of

experience out, and keeps it

away and distant. Occasionally,

deep in jungle-cover, or under

the waters of our great oceans,

we come across strange evidences,

the ruins and the tracings of other

lives and beings. It all gets a

puzzled look, gets laughed off,

ignored, or rationalized away.

That's how we do it, to live.

We make our cover-stories to

cover every possibility.

-

It keeps us humming : Look at

the world's great cities and towns.

They always run, almost automatically,

producing and churning the sort of

evidentiary life-force we need to

keep our minds off all these other

things. As a race, we can intently

concentrate on our fingers and

toes, to cut our nails and the like,

but we can see little and recognize 

less, of the interior life of the vast

world around us, with us, and

beneath and over us. That's the

way things are kept. All we can

ever do is wreck it. I always

remember, as a youngster, asking

my mother, at some site or another

where things were being built and the

natural world removed, for that  - 

'But Mom, why do they call it

construction?'