RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,186
(...got out...)
One of the things that irk me
the most is the manner by which
the Volksmob of today has gone
about viewing and re-judging the
past by the light of the present.
It reeks of a broad-based brush
paining a very flat picture - and -
inasmuch as it in the end results
in the usual pathetic fallacy, the
completed picture is wrong and
probably fades just as quickly
by the light of tomorrow's day.
But people are too ignorant to
realize this and they go ahead
willingly wearing the foolscap
of erroneous logic.
-
For myself, it's nerve-wracking,
and distracting as well. I keep
well away from it from the same
angle as I would if the mob was
disclaiming cave-people because
they hadn't used forks. There's a
sound basis - fact is - to everything,
and that basis is constantly under
the effects of change and process;
it should not, in turn, be under the
process of interdiction or dismissal,
or condemnation, for that matter.
One of the happiest facets of my
time in 'old' NYC,' beginning in
1967, was the fact that I was able
to successfully encamp in the midst
of a very changing world, in places
where that 'change' had not yet
really arrived nor altered the fabric.
I lived among silent and very singular
craftspeople, old-style makers of
things, machinists, mechanics, crooks
and slanderers - and none of that had
yet been condemned by the present.
The New York City of that day, yes,
was under assault - like everything
else - but managed to withstand the
atrocious pressures of straightening
itself up of, as Lillian Hellman put it,
'cutting my fabric to fit the present
day.' As she said she would NOT do,
so did the working silence and the
hard-scrapple of old New York say
the same. Without saying it. The war
in Vietnam was raging, notching up,
hordes of hippie-dippy kids began
rolling in as runaways, ridiculous
louts and potheads, seekers of sex,
joy and acid, in whatever order; the
politics of the day had fallen apart,
been tattered, to the point of having
lost meaning and effect except by
resistance and force, and yet, in the
nooks and crannies of the westside,
were still to be found the low denizens
of those who hid out and remained
aloof to all of this.
-
If I was to tell you or try to describe to
you what then existed, you would be
incredulous and probably I would have
difficulty in getting it across to you
anyway. When that large fell-swoop
of newbies descended, things changed.
In a few years, the change became
as abhorrent as the 11th street townhouse
being blown to smithereens by errant
bomb-makers. People suddenly crawled
the street intent on their polyglot and
amateurish advancements of weird
politics and even weirder social
commitments and behaviors. In the
same manner that a flood is a river
out of control, suddenly all else was
engulfed. Unglued? Perhaps too.
-
In any case, much of it bore the
informal earmarks of a psychological
Civil War in which the survivors, as
they were, were left stupefied and
stunned, and the participants were
insane. I'll leave the next few years
to R. D Laing to explain; not my
current concern. Or as Barack Obama
once said, 'That's above my pay grade...'
Something like that. Point is, the very
fabric of what we lived (still, in the
most paltry sense, calling ourselves
and it 'American') was gradually
transformed - even as 58,000 dead
soldiers were fighting to proclaim it
alive, and defend it somehow. It was
as if a person begins running faster
only as they realize their laces have
become untied.
-
I was there, among the smoldering
infrastructure, not sure of either self
of sanity, nor of others. The world had
blinked off, and, upon blinking back
on, had gone mad. A mere 100 years
before that, in something of the same
way, the undoing of Reconstruction
tore things up - proclamations of
amnesty and pardons going nowhere,
smoke still in the streets, the 'existing'
state of rebellion supposedly over, or
proclaimed to be so. Now, it was to be
more 'Self-Reconstruction' as again the
nation stumbled and tried picking
itself back up. The problem was, all
of advertising and all of the commercial
world, said that none of that could be
done 'singly' and that only by a mass
could it be achieved - of course, by
them alone stating and defining that
'mass' by which their own profit and
products would be sustained. It seemed
to me no wonder that the world was
garbage : polluted and noxious at every
turn, factories lining riverbanks, their
stacks and run-offs belching and
polluting., land and forests despoiled
and debauched, cemeteries ignored
and all ideas of prudence and decorum
removed. It became a hateful time.
-
A faint voice told me there was to be
nothing left. In my self-addicted
confessional, I had maimed and murdered
too, and I felt all those crimes were
upon me now, like the mark of Cain.
Even in my invisibility, I felt vulnerable
and porous and, yes, still quite and too
mush, visible as all get out. Which is
what I eventually did: got out!
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