RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,133
(Tigers, lions, wenches, and pimps)
Life's about thinking, not doing.
Sit down. I've been reading a lot
of science lately and am constantly
astounded how utterly and without
equivocation it discounts spirituality.
When the professional types and
the political people expound 'Follow
the Science' (as they have been
doing of late, much, for Covid
cures and preventions, etc.), I
almost already know is a bag of
malarkey being heaved up. These
people aren't men or women,
they're vermin. It all sounds like
bullshit to me. I sit around here,
right now, thinking of how many
Hollywood boardrooms and TV
studios, etc., are filled with men
and women planning how they
can exploit the current Covid
scene, for profit. Filling the air
with dramatic falsities, with the
usual Tom-Cruise-Vehicle type
scenes and episodes of the brave
and the faultless fighting rampant
disease and crises, mixed with
the usual polemics and diatribes.
I'd wonder about those boardrooms
too, whether the troglodytes in
session wear masks. I doubt it.
Why aren't they called criminals?
Exploiters? Savagers of the social
climate? They'll take their instructions
and promote the 'Science' the panic,
the terror, setting everyone more on
edge, diluting any fabric of goodness
for the banal use of sentiment and
drivel. There's no sense, nor any
reason, to lies. I'd have rather
stayed in place, on west 17th
street, in 1967, with the horses
and charcoal carts, and died right
there. Nothing else since that
time has been worth much.
-
The rapid core of 'Science'
that I see is secular and
without redeeming social
value. You can follow all
the science you want and
it will lead you only to its
own juncture, its own dead
end. Life - and disease -
is consciousness; first and
foremost. Ruin that, and
you're done. What Science
and secular society (and
Government) are driving
at is to get you to that point
where you give it all back
to them - leave your
consciousness, stop your
creative growth, and receive,
and take, only from what
they give you and allow
you. Follow their Science.
(The blind lead the blind,
and they both fall in the hole).
-
Old New York (I use that now
as my term) as I saw it in 1967
was unscientific in all respects.
Of course, I know that it wasn't
actually that, but the perspective
I brought to it made it so, and
that is, at root, the cause of
'Reality' as I've been portraying
it anyway - it becomes that
which you 'creatively' make
of it. My friend, a guy named
Steve Sloman, way back then
stood at 8th Street and University
Place one day, with myself and
others present, and his large
dog too, name forgotten, what
was what he and his girlfriend
called a 'Poolie' - meaning, as
I recall, a Poodle and a Collie
mix. No matter. Traffic was all
tied up, it was dusky 5pm maybe,
traffic jams, frustrated people,
horns honking. Someone made
comment about it, and Steve said,
to the effect, 'Well, look at them.
Late afternoon on a Wednesday,
all sick of themselves and their
cooped-up jobs, all just wanting
to get home. Frustrated and angry.
Wouldn't you be honking and
growling too?' We laughed,
ha ha, that's right. That was the
'other' world, the one that Science
and poor consciousness was making.
It certainly wasn't ours, nor was it
to be the one we'd be making. (That
all turned out wrong for me, but
I'm not sure how the others ever
ended up).
-
Point being, yeah, you are what
you dream to be. I guess - or
at least you 'become' along the
tendencies of the path you've
selected. Those horse guys and
all those gnarly old men I used
to know, they had all, long before,
hunkered themselves down into
some silent profession of themselves
and that alone. Saying little; doing
less. Work kept to a minimum; the
most simple of chores, not 'profession.'
Pats for the horses, refilling carts,
loading the charcoal, re-stocking
the crap food and pretzels. Mostly
in cigarette-silence and morose
dangling. Life as overage, and
nothing more. Science? Anywhere?
I doubt it. To follow that Science
you'd have need an anchor and a
rope. To the bottom of the harbor
maybe. Sometime 'life' ain't all
is cracked up to be, but then it
again it NEVER matters whether
it is or not. Soon enough, we're
dead and gone and remembered
for that moment. We're harlots,
and stupefied slaves, and we
somehow welcome it. That's
the real Science.
-
Mark Twain lived on 10th Street.
Washington Irving lived at (now)
Irving Place. Walt Whitman hung
out at Pfaff's, an underground
beer-cellar below Broadway at
Bleecker. Kenneth Patchen,
oddly enough, lived at Patchin Place
- as had Theodore Dreiser, John Reed,
and E. E. Cummings too. They were
all gone; the urge to live had left
them (scientifically) and churned
up a memory factor and a legacy
for each. They were, however,
still present - not just them
either, but many more writers,
male and female, whose presences
I fed off (Or on, is it? I wonder).
They, having imagined their own
times, influenced them, and then
they - quite unscientifically, by
the by, as I can l ready tell from
your reactions - just walked away
from all that and left us. Gaping :
as in Agape, that proto-religious
term now hijacked. If the world
has no wonder left for you, it's
a surely-gone world. In addition
to them, up and 8th Street I was
able to mingle with old those
ridiculous old plebes - drugged
and drunked rockers, the lost and
the foundering, listless and without
shape. Every homunculos extant
probably went past me at least
once. Cars honked, and women
screamed. tear-stained faces, and
those scratched and bloodied. The
scabby and the wise. The dictatorial
and the passive fools. Tigers, lions,
wenches, and pimps. An unscientific
sampling of a quite scientific mess.
So, let Science be your guide? -
as the new tyrants rise and drag
you along? I'll stumble and stay,
in my memories. Where I really
rather belong. If I had to life
without the Spiritual and the
Creative within, I'd rather die.
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