RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,201
(ignorance roams far from the ignorant?)
Unless you're into any one of
those deep and weird cosmic
mesh belief systems (as I am,
I'll admit), there's no means
of authenticating common life.
The make-up of the human
system somehow incorporates
the fact that we, as individuals,
simply go on about our world
and just don't take notice of
any of 5,000 things a minute
that go on all around us. We
simply accept whatever the
premises or presences are.
Any evidences of seconds and
moments are subsumed into
minutes and hours, and are
generalized outward. If I
could show you hw many
times you blink, and breath
in, etc., with no conscious
resolve of doing so, that would
be a start. It's like that with
everything else too - systems
of personal belief, accepted
parameters of what is or is not
real, or tangible, or truthful or
not. but that's all your business,
not mine.
-
When I came out of my train
accident induced coma, at age
8 (accident occurred Feb. 27,
1958, I vaguely recall), I last
remember, from the darkness,
words telling me that what I
was about to be reintroduced
to was 'Lesson-learning catching
up to itself'). That was mysterious
as all get-out to me, and eerie and
curious too. I no longer knew
what to expect. The next thing
I knew was turbulence.
-
That turbulence became my own
life and it was that which propelled
me along the way - through healing,
and through all the after-effects to
which I was subject of tests, doctor
visits, crutches, dietary stuff, etc.
It all seemed hardly worth it, but
I've always remembered that voice.
Distant. As in a dream, I'd swear
it was loud, fearsome and booming,
but yet I hold it all as gentle and
quiet and dear. It couldn't have
been both. Unless it was all not
just dream-like, but Dream itself.
-
I admit I was never the same and
couldn't rightly do anything anyway.
My effective 'normalcy' was over.
I had been somehow marked for
a strange notoriety of ineffective
salaciousness, oddball grooming
(or lack of it), and attitudinal
stances that bordered (usually)
on the bizarre. Some people
can blame that stuff on their
upbringing. I had nothing to
pin it on except personal history.
-
It it was 'phonetics,' my life would
probably have been spoken of in
grunts, guffaws, or half-syllables
of little meaning to others except
those initiated in that bizarre ilk
of language and speaking. A cabal,
perhaps, of a new sort of Esperanto
speaking ghouls who only uttered
from the soul. Phonetics from
Phoenicia, indeed!
-
Ending up feet-first into the
broiling slag-heap cauldron of
New York City, I managed to
sleep in the short mud of a long
flood - I somehow managed to
hit in at about the same time as
ten-thousand other kids, that first
Summer. The famed Hippie Horde
we've all known and loved (?).
The pounding of non-essential
frenetic music. The breakdown of
language into its pearly essence of
symbol and secret meaning. The
wizardry and joy of 'beauty', color,
sex, design, and outlook. It was
everywhere, and those things
dripped like clothing on a line to
dry, from every fire-escape, balcony,
hippie street, club, park, alley,
tenement and half-crap eatery
into which I ever stepped. I
was steeped in miserable things,
but not because I was miserable
(no I was quite enamored and
awed), but because of the many
miserable things around me. In
every direction there was a form
of tenement poverty - at least
the area I traversed, from east 11th
street to St. Marks and over to
west 8th street, crossing Fifth,
by which point everything had
changed to more comfort and
wealth that I'd ever seen. It was
both odd and weird too. Along
that crossing, I'd always pass the
District 65 Union trucking center
somewhere near the Astor Place
crossing, where there'd be heavy,
heaving men, loading freight,
backing trucks in or out, cargo
on pallets, people milling about.
I never got the gist nor became
involved in their talk, but it seemed
always 'about' something, and
often something quite foreign
from my then-present concerns.
I often feared it was about me,
and so I trod carefully that
'working-mens' area. In the
Vietnam era, remember, it was
not unheard of for laborers of
that nature to take out after the
lefty protestors who'd become,
somewhere, the pet target of
hatred. (It never occurred to
them, I guess, that any of a
hundred others, from Monsanto
to General Dynamics to General
Electric to Boeing to the entire
US Military, had more to do
with screwing up and befouling
their lives, and killing their
sons too, than did I or any
of my cohorts). It's been said
that the apple never falls far
from the tree. Neither does
ignorance roam far from the
ignorant).
-
I never made it to Haight-Ashbury,
and probably that's to the good.
When I did get there, it was
Summer, 1976, and that 'gold
rush' was over, having degenerated
- like all else - into the ground-up
nutmeg of blame, more hate, fire
and brimstone, and a national
carnage of another nature. We,
again, had nothing to do with that.
I always liked reading back, to
Hunter Thompson, who wrote
of 1967, there - "The Hashbury
served as capital of the young
drug-culture hippies and activist
drop-outs. The thrust was no
longer for 'change' or 'progress'
or 'revolution,' but merely to
escape, to live on the far perimeter
of a world that might have been -
perhaps should have been - and
strike a bargain for survival on
purely personal terms.'
No comments:
Post a Comment