RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,101
(not the fantasy, just the lies)
I was out yesterday rooting around,
walking cold woods, looking at the
white ground; in a manner of my
speaking I was reviewing my own
story, and I got to thinking how, in
my earlier plans, this whole thing
started with the idea of a long telling
of a life-story, done over and over,
maybe 4 or 5 times. Curious idea.
I've used Rudiments, and I've used
Below the Water Line. I've used
Established Marvel, and I've used
Surreptitious Valparaiso, and I've
even used The Guy Who Killed
the Turtle. Rather bizarre, I grant.
But, then a light came on, way
above my head. The jarring light
amidst the white trees whacked
me, pushing my sensibilities a
bit. I caught myself with a
super-reality of moment, deeper
and more dense than usual - that
room again, that cosmic library I
can always enter. It's an overlay,
one put upon this world, screening
it for better purposes and leaving
only what is worthwhile and of
telling import. It's kind of a
scrambled and newer layout, in
more vivid turns, of this world.
-
The thought came to me of the
origin of things; the things we
know, anyway, and the time-scale
we accept to live with. Even the
Gospels are the same story, written
anew 4 times over. Each with a
slightly different twist. Luke was
a 'Doctor,' it is said, so he writes
with that point of view. I never
quite understood, in any case, what
the word 'Doctor' refers to for the
years here in question. Thanks be
to God, I suppose, that Matthew
didn't race cars - swift justice to
swift deliverance.
-
So, I've re-written the same coarse
tale, 5 times? I really wouldn't know
that, because each was new to me
as I did it. Judgements like that I
reserve for the pedantic types who
dot i's and cross t's. All I really know
is what I see, or have seen, and taken
off from on that basis. 'It's a dream.
All this life is a dream.' That's a real
quote too - when Allen Ginsberg
asked his aunt, whom he'd taken
to dinner in honor of her 85th
birthday, what lesson she had taken
from this life ("I asked her what
she had learned by now, what life
was all about,"), she said, "Life
is a dream - it's all a dream."
-
That's the sort of thing I wouldn't
know, or take a stab at anyway. It's
a bit immaterial to me. To live amidst
conjecture is too easy...and demanding
all that certainty just makes me quesy.
-
Maybe I'd rather just say 'Life's a dirty
rag, the kind you find greased up on
the machine shop floor; a mixture of
filings and iron shavings, grime and
blood, the filth of two hundred uses.'
All those high ideals the preachers and
witch doctors prattle on about? They're
all made up along the way, fantasy
thoughts to embody an instant.
Otherwise life is but an un-nameable
and a passing moment and we all end
up bouncing from Aesop's Fables to
Alice In Wonderland, which is then all
contorted anew so we end up near-dead,
sitting in a chair, watching some
ridiculous concoction made up as
The Wizard of Oz, and being
told not to believe the fantasy,
just the lies.
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