RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,050
(a constant movie, repeating)
Sometimes it seems all I ever do
is sit around writing. Reading.
All that literary stuff. I never
know why. I'm tired of that
sort of crowd, though it's a
crowd of one. Me. For the
rest, it's all about missionary
things: Causes. Effects. The old
college bookstore I remember now
resembles nothing so much as a
Red Cross ward trying to do good.
Profit motives notwithstanding.
I'm sick of the good. I'm sick of
the cadaverous world that allows
that stuff. How do any of those
people get on with themselves?
Everywhere one looks, some sort
of false crystal hail is falling.
-
Mostly, our world is structured
falsely too. We start our 'History'
with a Biblical reckoning, and
that's that; even as 'Science' and
research disproves that time-frame
completely - showing it to be
without sense, and artificial too.
Yet,as Civilization, we bank
on it.
-
So, my thing about David is gone.
And I can't even recall hos it came
to me, but I remember it was voiced
perfectly. Had I written it down, I
am sure it would have worked. In
some way it was a profile of the
David who became the King David
whose lineage became the basis for
the Davidic line and the Christian
line too - of Salvation, for them.
Local warrior-chief, brash and
callous and bold. So too bad I
lost the thread. Mental lapse on
my part, but I simply can't get
it all. I'm afraid, for my own life,
still.
-
My mind nowadays gets all mixed
up; brittle maybe is a better word.
I don't know why. I feel lost. I have
a field of current always running
through me, a form of electricity
I do not know or recognize, but to
which I attend with a fealty and
a table. What little else there may
be, around me, others still insist
on calling 'Life.' I just want to flee.
-
In the backyard of my paretns' house,
as I was growing up, back by the tracks
there was a flock of pheasant, maybe
5 or 6. This was about 1959, perhaps.
They would descend, or be there upon
the ground, in early mornings. I got
to know their flight well - that strange
noise they made, their 'voice.' To me
it always sounded like a clothesline,
the sound the old pulley made on a
reluctant turn from the housewife's
laundry tugging. My mother did it
often, out the back window, and the
squeak of the pulley so resembled
the flight-sound squawk of the
pheasant. It became a naturally
occurring sound for me, even to
the overlap and confusion of the two.
And, oddly, there were no other wild
animals about in those years. Even with
the cornfield of the prison farm, which
was right there, no rabbits or foxes
or deer were present. unlike now when,
even in the midst of far worse, there
are plentiful deer, and small ground
animals - all the sorts of things that,
in my own day - DDT had pretty
much eradicated. Not to say there
weren't attempts by us to go hunting,
or pretend to hunt, these pheasants.
Bow and arrow, sufficed, though I
never 'got' or saw anything for the
hunt. It was a quiet world.
-
Nowadays, when depression and
darkness overtake me, I peer deep
into those shadows, not in my despair,
but in a hope of bringing something
back. Some worthwhile reflection
of another land and vision. It often
enough fails, that effort, but every
so often something really good
comes forth. My touch with King
David, I believe, could have been
one of those moments. The story
is exquisite enough, though confusing,
and somewhat brutal all the same.
A young son, adapted for new purpose,
slays a great giant (Genesis 6 tells us
about them), smites his forehead
with a slingshot stone, and then.
with the giant fallen and stunned,
uses the giant's own sword to cut
off its head. This brings accolades,
and eventually supplants the fame too
of King Saul - as the furtherance
of the adventure brings Saul's death
and David's new Kingship. Jonathan
too dies, and David is bereft. There
could have been a story there, for my
information led in other directions,
The unified, selected, 'chosen' of
God people.
-
But Humankind's history hadn't started
there - it went way before that, back
to the stars. We err in our attempts to
go chronological. It's a useless endeavor,
for all these things happen together, and
at once, and recurrently, and still now.
The theater of Life plays on, its constant
movie, repeating.
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