RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,180
(a finely-woven game, pt. 1)
With always somewhat of a
fog around me; I always had
to drift through some sort of
morass in order to reach at
least the 'form' of a clarity
with which I could perceive
or recognize other things. They
probably have a name for all
that crap nowadays - syndromes
for this and for that being about
as prevalent as temptations on
a street corner. Perhaps that's a
general condition of life for
everyone, but the way the iron
fist of the medical industry has
itself pressed down now on
society, unless you're in on some
sort of pill or treatment program,
'you ain't nowhere' - as they say
in the ship's map room.
-
I was never 'classy' in any way,
yet all through school and the rest
of that garbage, the idea of being
classy and swank was pushed, as
the end result of good learning and
as proof of proper breeding. It was
all such pretense, and the most basic
form of 'breeding' any of us ever had,
along Inman Avenue way anyhow,
was maybe a pinch and a feel at the
local power-zoned movie house or
drive-in (yeah, they were still around),
and the good bet was most probably
that that was the same way your
parents probably conceived you too.
But no one ever let on. They all wanted
you to pretend to be a Vanderbilt or a
Dreyfus. Imagine that! In the supposed
land of the free and home of the brave,
all the mainstream idiots posted their
goals around images of the rich and
the wealthy, and then the slobs would
televise crap like Daniel Boone or
Westward Ho! or some other anti
Indian drivel and tell you, in the
same breath and probably in the
same classroom, how America had
been boldly settled by rough and
ready individuals intent on staking
their climbs for rough and rugged
living and leaving all the old-world
stuff behind. Then, somehow too, the
history guys would get to Andrew
Jackson's presidency and have to start
explaining how it unsettled everyone
because he allowed the rabble INTO
the White House for his inauguration
and they swamped the place and ate
all the food and almost caused a riot
upsetting all the false-rich landowners
and upper-crust political types who'd
been living their own American lie on
the backs of those same reprobates
whom Jackson had let in. Kinda' sounds
pretty familiar, all this. This country's
a real barrel of monkeys, I'd say.
-
If the real message of 'America,' as
it was taught, was about classlessness
and self-attainments for happiness
and personal satisfaction, why then
the constant squirming for the 'proper'
and the right and the 'correct, as if we
were all still settled on attaining some
sort of more-royal caste. I can remember,
whenever it was, Princess Diana, first
with all that ridiculous wedding crap
with Prince Charles, and then with
her cool-estranged (and mysterious)
tunnel death, the paroxysms of anguish
and despair that the stupid media and
so many regular Americans were all
caught up in the tragedy' of losing a
Royal (??). Excuse me, but we don't
have that crap here, remember. There
was a declasse pizza place in Metuchen
at hat time - Roberto's. The place used
to launder newly-arrived Italian kitchen
help in and out like tomato sauce from
a tap. Every 3 weeks, a new crew. And
an owner (dapper guy, always natty),
and some slovenly real guy as the
pizza cook, and for that weekend of
the Royal Wedding everyone's eyes
were glued to the TV, in the place,
and the endless broadcasting the
wedding. People ate it up like IT
was the pizza. Why?, I wondered.
How crazy was that?
-
Only later did I learn a bunch of
stuff that proved to me that none
of it mattered and that the entire
game - all the angles and all the
sides, whether Communist, or
Capitalist, Bolshevik, Nazi,
whatever, all came from the
same place and all operated
together in a finely woven game
of inter- connected overlappings
and money kingdoms involving
people's minds - all so as to
control and lead the idiot rabble;
having them assume that, in their
pathetic, assumed, choosing they
could actually make a difference!
Or that there was one at all!
-
Things always change, and things
always get mangled. Ideas, I mean.
Consider the 'Mind,' and how people,
over the years, have tried to explain
it. In 'mechanical' terms it went from,
first use of similes and metaphors
of things that made magical sense
in their own day, and with the most
'complex' machines of the day: First
the brain was supposed to be like
an immensely complicated set of
gears and levers. Then it was as
hydraulic pipes, then steam engines,
then telephone exchanges, and -
now that computers are seen as
our 'most complex' and impressive
technology, brains are said to be
computers. But this is still no more
than a metaphor, and there is no
more reason to expect the brain
to be a computer than a steam
engine. What it all comes down
to is 'control' - the long series of
information travel and information
influence that gets set into us to
align and then underscore the
societal assumptions of any day,
but always for the benefit of
those same hidden powers who
split and decipher, mangle and
separate all these issues (supposed)
and lead people to think they are
taking sides and entering into an
active 'decision-making' process,
when, of course, they are not.
'The State is more concerned
to contain its people than to
move them forward.'
-
Before I close this dour chapter,
perhaps a bit of humor will help.
Along the way in reading, as I
recall, reading deep into the
Pushkin and Dostoevsky eras
of Russian Petersburg writing,
I always (still) can recall the
great fun I got, once, when I
read the following unwittingly
humorous comment by some
critic or historian of the time:
"Voltaire, Diderot, Bentham,
and Herder, all enjoyed imperial
patronage; they were translated
and consulted, subsidized and
often invited to St. Petersburg
by a series of emperors and
empresses, climaxing in
Catherine the Great..."
-
That always sounded like such
a good time, to me.
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