RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,181
(light/tunnel...no light/no tunnel)
I've probably said it a hundred
times here - 'Life is a crackup,'
and mine never made much sense.
I've phrased it differently and, in
the sense of a writer, portrayed it
less by simply 'stating' it than by
giving examples and concrete
accounts of things which may
have occurred along the way.
In so many ways my life has
always been somewhat medieval:
Idiosyncratic with moments of
religion; oddball and primitive
beliefs; varied forms of serfdom
and subservience; years under
the cane of stupid employment
and scratching for money; the
lack of travel and amenities;
quite secluded presence and locus;
a small coterie of friends and
companions; small-time crimes;
lust and debauchery (some). The
bottom line, when all is brought
to a close, is - 'who cares?'
-
The modern day and all its rabble
have brought us to the point of now
thinking that everyone cares and that
every little thing is important, or of
an equal importance within the now
distracted mantle of false-lace that is
draped over everyone's collar (the
lacework of a ratty reality, through
which we 'see' the reality which now
now we are given). The games now
are of valuing memoirs, retelling the
adventures of a fantastical 'youth'
perhaps. The touch of the world has
mostly been reduced to a poke and
a wink, with everything having
become meaningless or turned
into some form of stupid commerce.
(I've always liked Ezra Pound, and
his 'Cantos' for the pronounced
hatred of 'Kommerz' within it, both
embedded and spoken. At least there
was a guy with something on his
mind and the guts to say it over
and anew. Yes, he ended up in an
insane asylum in Italy, placed
there by the US Government, and
then tried and re-incarcerated for
many years until his death, in
St. Elizabeth's Hospital For the
Criminally Insane, Washington,
DC, as a pariah. Goes to show
how, with any old trumped-up
excuse, they can take the 'bad'
guys off the street - after 'they'
first define who they are - yet say
that only the 'Soviets' ever did
that). America truly reeks, and
people don't even know it.
-
I sort of coincided with a smoky
gray era of NYC that still inhabited,
in the 1967+ era, that grainy aura
of the 1940's. I admit - and I well
knew - that it was soon enough to
be gone, and quickly disappearing,
but I'd see it in places where it yet
lingered: the older and adjacent
corners of old, west Greenwich
Village, with the stooped Italian
men, in suits, talking quietly to
their young grandsons, in an
almost 'man-to-man' format of
passing something on - some
vintage profile of the old; the
legacy of secrets, illicit trade,
vendettas, and the like. In those
locations, that was the norm and
all the rest was the crazy. Pound
in Rapallo? I often wondered
where he fit in, an Indiana boy
gone poetry-mad, off-kilter, and
way out of orbit as defined by the
others. Life never held any space
like that - at least not American
life. Where the coffee too was as
insipid as the thinking.
-
When I'd really get rolling - while
writing or painting - I'd know that
spirit had taken hold of me too, and
that I was among another place and
time - different in quality and in
atmosphere. I knew it, sensed it,
felt in in every fiber of my being, or
whatever I was becoming anyway.
It was no longer me talking; it had
all become someone or something
other, working through me. I was
no longer a part of the ordinary
world. Maybe a gift. Maybe just
some old, medieval, alchemy of
magic, turning a dross into some
other factored material.
-
How far along has it all come? To
the dead-end of garbage. News of
today? China now allows couples to
have 3 children, no longer just 2.
Like we need that? Stupidity leads
to the awesome sink of blindness;
people don't even see any longer
that they're being controlled, altered.
moved along, in the names of any of
five hundred false Gods. Government?
Security? Factors of Health and now
Safety? Learning gets stopped and
controlled at schoolhouse doorways?
Airwaves are filled with filth and
fodder? Pigsties double as centers
of opinion and learning? People
pretend at blasphemies without
really know that they really ARE
blasphemies? While the great and the
heavenly, about now, re-enters its
turnaround and comes back to take
us? Alas, I ramble: making no money,
cursing the day, removing myself
from ordinary things, and preparing
to leave. Oh...did they ever tell you,
you know not the day nor the hour?
-
The old saying went 'Give a man a
fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach
a man to fish, and you feed him for
a lifetime.' Along old 47th street, at
the Gotham Book Mart, the overhead
sidewalk sign read, 'Wise Men Fish
Here.' That's all gone now, and we are
in another world, probably fishless
too, though with plenty of phones
and useless information and illicit
ties to the world around us. People
just listen and obey, without even
knowing what they are doing. In
Lagos, Nigeria, the government has
made it illegal to smoke while driving.
The streets are filled, and there's a
big business in police writing traffic
violations for that infraction. They
routinely pull people over. Meanwhile
the dozens of unmasked people push
past one another through shoulder to
shoulder pedestrian traffic, routinely
ignoring, at the same time, the
government edict about not going
out unmasked. No one thinks twice
about any of it, and the silly world
just rolls along.
-
"Lagos is many things. It's New York
in Africa - activity on steroids. We
practically all live cheek by jowl, with
almost no green spaces. Compliance and
enforcement since the mask mandate
has been spotty, although smokers in
cars get bagged" Politicians may have
an incentive, by the way, to 'minimize'
the Covid crisis. But, paradoxically,
and at the same time, to maximize
it as well, There was, both sought
and received, billions of dollars in
in foreign assistance to 'minimize'
and combat the virus. What it all
comes down to, whether in NYC,
Lagos, Nigeria, Ghana, or anywhere,
is both the 'blindness' of a populace
to get pushed along and not see what
is being done to them, and the pure,
filthy, falsity and ignorance by which
our depleted and degenerated lives
are controlled today.
