RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,093
(my renewable Eden)
Up in the high farms of Columbia
Crossroads, there wasn't too much
middle ground. Things were rural,
plain and simple. It being the
early and mid 1970's there had not
yet been established that rather junky
American connection between the
local highway, or nearest, and the
elaborate string of stores, plazas,
and national-names of stores that
we see now everywhere. If you're
out in the country now, you can
be certain not to worry, because,
usually, with 15 miles somewhere,
there's one of those big-box moron
stores surely lurking - and when
there's one there's three. Etc. The
range of goods offered runs from
foodstuff to hammers to lounge
chairs to lottery tickets and fishing
tackle too - so there's no worry
about doing without.
-
That's America today - the place
that precedes any Trump or Biden
that gets heaved our way - each an
interchangeable facepaint, as it were.
Anyone who claims rural living these
days is probably bluffing. A monkey
with a credit card could get by in
today's world. And many do.
-
There used to be a severe dividing line
in that once 'image'd' idea of the
American pastoral. Urban structure
on the one extreme, and raw, pastoral
retreat on the other. That's all gone
now; the main reason is/was the
incessant thrust (to use a sexual
relevant) of population growth, which
effort was never stopped and is still
constantly welcomed. (You can't
have it both ways - those seeking
ecological refreshment, natural
purity, and proper Earth husbandry
never take the next step of assessing
the situation, realizing population
control as ONE of the missing
elements, and undertaking then the
necessary steps. Fatal flaw, indeed.
See Paul Ehrlich, for instance, the
book being 'The Population Bomb.'
The essential quality of a new Eden
which was lost over 250 years of this
blasted nation's growth was, and still
is, destruction; except now it's skillfully
couched (by manipulators) into the
compulsive languages of adulation,. false
premises, and blatant misrepresentation.
Which is, once more, where that whole
faux-ecological divide gets set-up. You
can't drink fresh water if it is, essentially,
the leftover product of the larger crowd's
sewage and waste-water. As I patrolled
the streets of my NYC quadrangle, I
ran across, at most every corner, a history
of days and times past which had been
completely forgotten about, and covered
over. New York was always like that,
with things disappearing as swiftly
as the suds in a dishpan. A person
had to catch quickly what was around,
before it was usurped. I used to think
of it as one of those carbon-wax-drawing-
pads that children back then had - an
image written with an etcher-stick, on
a gloss overlay, to make a one-time
drawing that disappeared as soon as
the top sheet was, again, peeled up -
allowing one to start over. Renewable
Edens galore!
-
Would that it was, but, alas, it was
not. For every historic Edgar Allen Poe,
Walt Whitman, Eugene O'Neill, Jackson
Pollock and Hart Crane corner I ever
saw, there were twenty times as many
miserable confluences where the putrid
met : insufferable drug dens, gay mens'
clubs, soiled and fetid water, leak hydrants,
tenements, pigsties and innumerable lost
lives with NO possibility of a re-start
ever. Not much renewable in that world,
just rather the usual re-seeding of junk.
Stories and by-lines, amassed over
150 years and more, had built an
understory to all of NYC, yet it was,
quite simply, one that no longer
existed. it was all fiction, of a
retrospective sort anyway. If there
are ghosts - of the storybook sort -
New York city would be overlapping
and knee deep with them from a
past always available yet always
a fictional memory too. Each of
my steps walked and stumbled
along, tying to find the renewable
Eden where the natural past overlapped
with the present - though I did
realize it was all impossible. All I
got were rude wisps of smoke and
smog, harsh noises, and the hammering
voices of workmen all along their
tasks; streets thinning of life, yet
thickening with people. The lines
at movie palaces - gaudy facsimiles
of a spiritual life of the only sort
still extended to people by the
monsters in charge of them -
stretched half a block, as they
meshed with the even more
annoying crowds of Broadway
play attendees, all dripping and
gross with their effete, suburban,
stances. Renewing nothing, yet
bearing everything down by the
rank culture they brought with
them.
-
I finally had to set Nature aside
and stop thinking of it. What
passed for Nature there was
only another story and a tale
of another supposedly
renewable Eden again:
Central Park : The rocks and
stones of renewed geological
eras long past. It all seemed
like a trick to me.
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