12,902. RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,088

RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,088

(welling up)

I had a bead on all the

classic architecture guys,

Gordon Bunshaft, I. M. Pei,

back in their days, just to

keep an eye on the sorts of

buildings that had been, and

were being, erected. I always

figured if you're going to

be living in the midst of all

that hard chromium steel

design work above your

head and, by the way, also

completely out of your 

control, you may as well

enjoy and appreciate it, or

go home. Nothing made

me more sore than the sorts,

and there were plenty of them 

too, who'd sort of hippie-ize

everything and want to go 

back to nature, hate and 

disclaim the city, while yet

sitting their skinny ass down,

there, anywhere, within all of
that very same city and place.

Central Park, back then, was

chock-filled with all that crap -

peacock feathers, with their
big, fancy center feather-eye

from the fan-tail. Everything
looked like a life-painting by
Aubrey Beardsley. They'd walk 

around selling them, somehow, 

for like 30 cents, and usually 

accompanied by a large Afghan 

dog and some black person, 

usually the opposite race and sex

from them, just to be showing

how cool and hippie they were.

So, you'd get kids, hippie kids

probably not yet 16, parading

around with stupid peacock

feathers, beads, little-mirror'd

headbands, bell-bottoms, low

slung, colorful pants, and bare

feet, mostly. They'd treat Central

Park like a huge Summer Camp,

one hot day after the other. No

one did much about anything,

leastways not in 1967 into the

1970's. Even the cops tried being

hip; like the dancing-goon cops

now that you see dancing with

the blubbery, fat-ass street mobs.

Man, it's just now as if everything

has degenerated into a perfect

parody of stupidity, ignorance, 

frolic and childishness, with 

some stupid cause tacked on 

for validation; false as it 

might be.

-

All this crap used to sadden me,

now it doesn't bother me at all,

and thank God for gun control.

-

To tell you the truth, once I saw

that ridiculous I. M. Pei AT&T

Building, when it went up about

1980 or whatever it was, I kind

of already knew it was all over;

good sense and sincerity, I mean.

The furniture-top style of the

building, that chifferobe-type

molding way up high, at the

top edging, was, to me, just

sad irony overapplied, and I

realized that even architects

around here were no longer

serious. Now, it's all out of

control completely, some 45 

years later. We've lost all the 
puppet strings that used too 
hold things together, and the 
entire fake scene, including the 
puppeteers, have crumbled and 
fallen to nothing. Please burn that
 stage, it's too horrid to look at.  
What we get now are, as I said, 
stupid cops dancing with those
they're supposed to be bashing.

No wonder they're beginning to

get rid of cops  -  they turned

out to be totally useless. Like

badly-designed architecture.

Everything's gone nutso  -  

there are skylines now and

buildings now of swirling

shapes, looking like lipstick

tubes with their pointed tops,

or volumes of twisted cubes

or bubbles piled one atop

another. It's all play, because

you know that inside it's still

the same bastardized 4-corner,

right-angled walls and halls and

doorways and stairways, each

again in the same old Hell of 

regimentation, group-think, 

conformity and subservience.

Just like the goons in the street,

I guess. 

-

I often wondered, 'why doesn't

the top come off?' Why doesn't

someone really lift the lid on all

this poor stuff and show it for 

what it really is: Slavery, Hall

of Mirrors, Psycho Horror

Chamber, Mental Jail. Why 

wasn't the anger welling up

then, as it is now? At least then

the issues had some substance,

weren't yet just entertainment 

and a Looney-Tunes play hour.

Why aren't the crafty manipulation

and coercion that's really at work

ever brought out? Everything that

ever happened went nowhere. It

ended up as a slot-card crap-shoot

in Vietnam or Korea, Sudan, Libya,

or the Middle East, all at the death

and expense of the common guy

dumbly doing all the dumb stuff.

Why was that just accepted, and

not called 'slavery'? Nothing ever

welled up that was any good;
-
No matter, I guess, for whatever
happens in those streets and
corridors far below those fancy
buildings all takes on a life of
its own that is all different from
what it is seen  - as it grows and
festers and gets mythologized. So
much of what you 'hear' about the
past never really happened at all, or
happened in the manner you were
taught about it. That's all like the
barnacles that grow on the bottom
os a ship or boat  -  the below the
waterline stuff that clings and grows
and bears an entire and different
reality from what really occurred.
That barnacle is what we then
dare - or presume - to call 'Life.'