12,839. RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,066

RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,066

(really living off the grid)

Much of it was words. For

me, a lot of everything had

to do with words  -  I noticed

that even in, say, 6th grade.

I'd get hung up in a way no

others seemed to, over titles

and names, catchy phrases

funny or misrepresented

couplets. Elsie the Cow

kind of stiff, I called it.

There was no doctor for

that. We used to have this

doctor, when I was young,

who came to the house  - 

house calls, it was called.

He had, and always came

in with, this neat little, black,

medical bag, the kind where

the top opened up into two

sides, and it was filled with

all sorts of medical stuff.

Stethescope, and tongue 

depressers, and needles too, 

 and those little glass bottles

into which he'd stick the

needle into first to fill it, the

vial, and then jab it into an

arm. I always chuckled as

he made house calls, I'd say,

because he was named Dr.

Homer. And then I thought

how, being a doctor, he must

have been able to glean a lot

more from actually visiting

the home environment of a

patient, seeing how they

lived, and make judgments

from that too  -  space, air,

light, cleanliness, what sort

of bedroom atmosphere and

crowding there was, and all

that. It seemed a lot better than

just having people come to you,

as the doctor. I guess a good

doctor was always aware of all 

that. And the vial, I thought,

was always filled with vile stuff,

which then got injected into

your arm or butt and wasn't

so vile. We also had, in a dental

office over at what was called

Cloverleaf Gardens, which were

new apartments then, built over

the cool swamps and fens at the

end of Avenel Park - that's

all gone now, for a million

third-world type apartments -

a dental office for a dentist,

named Dr. Nepo, which was

hilarious because it was 'open'

spelled backwards. What else

could the poor guy be? Unless

his last name was, maybe, Spit,

or Rinse. Or even 'Numbyet?

-

I found other stuff out too. Like

Heroin. The drug. It was from

1900, made by the Bayer Company,

the same people who'd developed 

aspirin, and it was 'introduced'

as a much stronger form of pain

reliever (I bet). Actually, they said

'pain killer,' but how ominous can

one get? They named the new drug

'heroin,' derived from the German

word for 'heroic.' That's pretty weird.

It was promoted as a treatment for

an array of ills : colds, coughs,

asthma, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis,

stomach cancer, and schizophrenia,

and long life too. (Just kidding. I

made that last one up). Plus, it was

advertised as 'safe for children.'

-

Another, sad, one I found was for

Kopp's Baby Friend, a popular

potion for quieting colicky infants.

It was about this same time as Bayer.

In one of the first instances of what

is now called 'targeted marketing,' the

company hired staff who'd scour

newspapers for birth announcements

and then send mothers free samples.

Giveaway marketing. The mothers

who receivedthe 'Baby Friend'

freebies, however, did not know

that the formula contained alcohol

and morphine sulfate, often poisonous

to babies. Dozens of infants died.

What an ironic twist on the phrase

'quieting colicky infants.'

-

Anyway, that's how my mind ran,

let alone blanched. I'd run into

things like Vietnam's 'Village

Pacification' program, where the
brilliant Americans would

'pacify' a village by destroying it

and killing the inhabitants. Yeah,

that'll work. And this won't hurt

at all. There were countless others

examples of the same. It's all
in the words used.

-

Another brainstorm I got, and this

one stayed with me, and I thought 

it over and always kept looking

for clues. In NYC there were

numerous old graveyards, within

the city proper, and not. They were,

often enough, the final resting

places of notable of one sort or

another  -  thinkers, writers, art

people, scientists, etc. And tons

of ordinary, fine and complete,

people from their various times

and eras. The stones and stories

were often enough vivid and

varied, and captivating. As I'd

visit and pass by, I'd think this

scenario: Imagine 200 years from

now, or 300, whatever, it's all

conjecture. The people of that 

era would see all those old graves

and, in wonderment, remark on

how strange it was that, for all

those years of the past, people

would just bury their dead. As

cast-offs, just thrown in the 

ground. My thinking here was

that  -  and this was quite clear 

to me  -  these people of the

future would have developed

a totally different practice and

approach, and would find it

abhorrent that 'we' simply took

and buried away all those brains,

filled as they were, with the thoughts

and information and imaginings,

of the day. Just wasted and cast

off. Why do I say this? Because,

in my scenario, these people of 

the future would have a totally 

different practice. Not wasting a

morsel of thought or intuition.

Each person, upon death, instead

of just being mourned for a moment

and dumped, first, and immediately,

has their brain removed. It is then

taken, and hooked into, immediately,

their modern-of-the-day means of

a grid-like, electric impulse process

wherein the contents and thoughts

and experience of that brain, what

ever they may have been or amassed

or succeeded at or failed, are, instead

of being wasted, put into, by the

impulses draining them, into a form

of national or human grid for future

use and cataloging and saving. All

of Humankind, as it were, being

banked into a sort of second-level

man-made God resource, containing

all things. Mined, and used, and

searched and studied by scientists,

medical people, philosophers,

thinkers, and the trained technicians

of that new age  - wherein NOTHING

goes wasted. Wherein whatever of

value, a human possessed is preserved

and examined and mined. Thus their

agreeably understanding of being

aghast of all 'we' used to waste and

overlook, and fall by the wayside.

All of those old petty fears and

jealousies and angers which they,

in their time, have simply taken 

off the grid.
-
I'm not saying that by any of
today's standards this is fully
understandable. It's not. It's a
glimmer from an alternate future.
Linearity is all gone, in that future.
Thoughts and ideas float and jump
and skip, at will. The advances and
 developments of what we now call -
quite primitively - electricity, impulses,
wavs and focus will all be quantum
changed. Humankind will work off
of the vast library of thought matter
and alternative patterns which
exist (and always have existed) in
the ether amidst which we 'walk.'
I know this, and felt it amassing,
all along the old and backward
New York City streets.
-

You don't like that idea?

You want your brain still,

after death? Why? And what

if you are cremated? You did so

little with your brain, while alive,

that you still want it after death?

And anyway, what if it does

remain alive? Imagining and

forming, thousands of impulses,

and millions of images? What

will you lose then by just

throwing it away, and all

its accumulated thought?