RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,143
(everything was new...)
The way the world is done?
It's like the brine in the ocean's
waters - we know it's there,
but we don't really know the
why or the how. My wife and
I were speaking today, as we
drove some forested area; she
was commenting on the various
tree-barks she'd been noticing,
and how they change for the
Winter. I pointed out how the
distant trees some 50 yards off
were showing already their
reddish, bud-tipped branches.
She said, 'Nature's so intelligent.
The trees go by light, and then by
temperatures. They communicate
all that, and know exactly what
they're doing. Same with the
animals. They read all this.
Nature's so smart. It makes
you wonder, no, why Humans
were ever created; to wreck it all?'
I had to agree. She really gets it.
-
The greater (greatest) divide for
me has always been the difference
which runs between the personal
and the universal. I was never able
to get that together. I studied lots
of things, and plenty of subjects.
At Elmira, I had a Philosophy
teacher named John McLaughlin
(not the musician John McLaughlin,
an advance-line jazz-rock guitarist.
This was another John McLaughlin
entire. My friend Mary Kay had
the guitar guy once as a seat-mate,
by chance, on a coast-to-coast
flight back east. She said he was
pretty cool, and talked well as
they conversed. She was happy).
Anyhow, The philosophy-McLaughlin
usually ended up throwing out more
paradoxes than clarifications - (1974's
version of 'Existential crisis,' to me).
It's funny the things one remembers.
I had told him one time that I was
hoping someday, in writing, to find
that perfect and right grouping of
words, which I swore I knew was
out there somewhere, that would,
when put together, send the entire
world crumbling down to nothing.
A 'critical mass,' as it were, of words
that would be unstoppable and would
destroy and collapse all Reality.
He said, strangely, 'I'd think any
writer worth his smarts thinks the
very same thing.'
-
On the subject again of the difference
between the public and the personal,
which has always bugged me, and still
does, I'll put here a few quotes and
ideas: There's a certain form of idealism
in most of what people do, or they
wouldn't be doing it. Say, the guy
who builds himself a garage for
his uncorrupted, slightly restored,
Ford Mustang does it because at
some idealized level he considers
himself, by doing so, to be mixing
in with that same societal stature as
Jerry Seinfeld, Jay Leno, Shaquille
O'Neill, or Reggie Jackson, with
their huge and valued collections
of collectable cars and rare or exotic
vehicles. The 'ideal' precedes the
reality, in the same fashion as an
existential would say 'Existence
precedes essence.' Now, Parmenides,
an ancient Greek guy, said - and
Heidegger, a more modern German
guy, picked up on - 'Thought and
Being are one.' That's pretty good,
and - being that as it may be - it's a
good start for contemplation. Idealism
is the exile we take from Reality. The
subject - severed from the object -
can make of it whatever he or she
will. Any ordinary 'Karen Nolan' can
buy expensive perfume and fancy
herself Mata Hari idealized. (Mata
Hari was a courtesan-spy [courtesan
has always been a euphemism for
'prostitute']. Mata Hari gained fame,
and a legendary status in the WWI
era; and was executed by firing squad].
That exile from the 'ideal' always
does, eventually, want to come home,
and that Homecoming attempts then
to negate the difference between the
'ideal' and the ordinary life which we
each eventually end up living anyway.
That splintered being seeks back its
own unity, and that unity becomes
disguised and symbolized by any
of a thousand things: house, home,
car, family, career, interests, events,
travel, etc.
-
I think that 'divide' always remains
present, in one form or another. The
'collision' of the two elements occurs
when the idea of ethics intrudes itself.
To become 'ethical' - considerate of
rights and wrongs, others, morals, etc. -
that foolish play at 'Ideals' needs to
stop. Ethics demand substance.
Ethical substance demands a
'self-consciousness, and that, in
turn, requires 'maturity of thought.
Based on foreknowledge and self
education outside of schools and
pathetic systems. That is where
people fail and the system falters.
College-learning just becomes, in
today's terms, a stupid vocational
training for continuing more of the
same everywhere; a hideous error.
There is but one sort of 'real' person,
and that sort is few and far between,
though it is the very sort needed to
make a finer world; to make, in fact,
anything at all from the new-dross
we are given. Heidegger has it, here,
as: "Immaculate celestial types or
presences, who preserve within their
differences and divisions 0f self the
never-deconsecrated innocence and
integrity of their being....lucid unto
themselves, who are unriven spirits.'
-
Heidegger also put it as each individual
being a 'stranger in the house of being.'
-
So, life's a changeable playlet? I guess.
My own personal drama department,
with me as leading man, shut down
long ago. Back at the Studio School,
my friend Judy and I would travel
nights on bicycles, just rolling around,
looking at different things. I tried to
be at her level, but never was - she
was already city, urbanized, smart
and wise in all the ways I never was.
But she taught me how to eat cauliflower
raw, right from the vegetable stand.
To me, that was a greater lesson,
probably, than anything I'd have
gotten from Pythagoras. Giotto and
the artists' first ideas on 'perspective?'
That was all hers and she was all over
it. So, I guess I idealized her, yes, and
a hundred other things and ways too.
And everything was new.
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