RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,213
('co-opted')
Taking my fate into my own
hands I think here that I will
make one step into another,
more local, domain than the
one that I am usually used to.
I know that I can successfully
weave it into the broader thread
of my narrative, and probably
withstand the gnashing of teeth
it will produce. But, some people
never learn. I define my NYC
years - through my own lens -
as authentic, raw, and real. It
was still the 1960's, and years
of puddling out through the mish
mash of hippie-denatured, media
bullshit, over-assorted pinata
hangings of sex, drugs, and a
supposedly nascent developing
of a new 'culture' - yet another
oasis of 'bliss' along a patterned
media-field of nothing more than
sales hysteria. 'Buy, and ye shall
be free!' Only later did the computer
and tech industries coin there own
phrase 'Gigo' (garbage in, garbage
out), for the selfsame flim-flam.
-
If someone has killed, do they admit
to it? Immediately? Or only after many
years? Ask any soldier, and get me an
answer. In 1967, that answer, for so
many young men was forced out, as
if being coerced with forceps: Death
and destruction, carnage and burning,
rape and mad-murder, in its latter days
infected as well by drugs. It is (still)
called, in 'History' books, which of
course must the 'approved' version for
the kiddies to learn, Vietnam. In my
own case, the killings were as local
as they rancid domain I'd taken to
live in. East 11th street, up and down.
Hippies and goons. A very few years
later (look it up, view the film), those
same apartments and streets were for
a while taken over and redone as old
Russian fronts and cafes, for the film
'Ragtime.' The 'Novy Mir Working
Man's Cafe' was a particular favorite
false front of mine. It looked quite
authentic too. Watch the film, that's
11th street. James Cagney too, in I
think his last role. It was so bad in
that environment then that my wife
and I were directed out of there and
told to flee, that we should be in fear
for our lives and that we could be
killed for walking around there with
such camera equipment on our shoulder,
if anyone saw us. We were taking
freelance photos of the scene. Crime
was somehow that bad. I figured that
was pretty real, and authentic too.
-
If something is co-opted, the dictionary
says, it is 'diverted to or used in a role
different from the usual or original one;
as in 'social scientists were co-opted to
work with development agencies;' or
'the green parties have mostly been
co-opted by bigger parties.' That's how
I feel about all this 9-11 crap - which
today just happens to be 20 years past.
Big whoop. To see the way people and
scumbag politicians handle the drivel
it's all nothing but co-optation. A mix
of sentiment, false emotion, rudely
re-directed uses for politicized ends,
and - in fact - unauthorized and
inauthentic, any, purloined, uses.
Anyone anywhere is invited to lick
their own asses on this matter as much
as they like - as loudly, as broadly, and
as publicly, as they wish. BUT, for me
to yet again have to witness the screwed
over co-optation of this by municipalities,
fire companies, politicians on the take -
and the make - is sickening. They can
all go straight to Hell! If I see one more
flag, or one more hand-over-heart
bullshit move, I'll simply and loudly
call it 'pandering' by weasels.
-
There really ought to be bombs
and firebombs absorbed into the
schoolbook definition of what
America is; along with the plain
old, regular American definitions
of Freedom and Commerce and
Coercion and Control. Instead it's
as if we get the opposite. Everything
that's being proclaimed and taught
is wrong, and all we're to be left with
is a meddlesome mass of wise-ass
preacher types trying to refine the
smelting of the foul metal that's being
served up. I'm an old guy now, a natty,
piece-of-crap rabble-rouser, I suppose,
but that makes me no different than
anyone else, just off in the other
direction. At least I'm real and will
speak my mind (which will most
probably be censored here). When
a nation reaches the point that all
it's matter and opinion is reduced to
sentiment and emotionalism, there
is little left that's any good.
-
Saturday, Sept. 15, 2001, was a very
crisp and pleasant day - weatherwise,
in NYC terms - as had been Tuesday,
the 11th, a mere 4 days back. The city,
in a complete and continuing turmoil,
was shattered and shut-down. Getting
to anywhere below Canal Street was a
total risk and crap-shoot Everything
had to be on foot; no vehicles. Even
the tunnels were closed. Lockdown
and a weird sort of (real) fear was
present everywhere, as if most people
were certain yet that another 'shoe'
had yet to drop. The awesome spectacle
of the smoldering ruins, twisted steel,
the smell, the paper and debris everywhere,
and things still fluttering in the air,
the very psyche of terror itself, added
to the psychological terror. An unknown
'America, never before seen - Militia,
soldiers, ambulance and fire-workers -
ran everywhere. Sirens and signals
blared. Thick white ash and smoke
was still settling, and had coated
most everything. Cars were left in
mid-street, from where their owners
had fled, one assumed. Enormous
tow-trucks were dragging away crushed
vehicles - cars and taxis, commercial
trucks and firetrucks too! Crushed and
mangled materiel, everywhere. Along
each curb, to far downtown, were the
generators the size of of freight cars
which had been put in place alongside
the curbs. And from each of them, and
running along all the curbs, were plastic
tubed conduits of wires and connections
and hook-ups, everywhere, for temporary
electric power. As quickly as they were
put in place, as quickly were they then
coated with falling ash. Police and
authority vehicles were everywhere, in
rows, parked wily-nily, on sidewalks,
walkways, grassy small parks, etc. No
longer did anything of that nature matter.
Already flyers and posters of the missing
(and the dead?) were tacked onto bulletin
poles, light poles, most anything vertical.
These bore the photos, the descriptions,
the places of employment, in or out of the
towers, the personal left-behinds, the traits
and habits, the likes and even the grooming
of the individual being sought. Desperate
pleas on paper.
-
The medical-command stations, amazingly,
were empty. The expected rush of injured
and wounded had never materialized. There
was, really, nothing left of all that. The large
Medical Station in Battery Park - tents, cots,
workers, EMT's, were idle, were just waiting.
Outcomes were in doubt everywhere. Wherever
and whenever a body was found, a blast-horn
sounded, the work at that location stopped,
and a macabre sort of recovery took place.
An ambulance would then soar off, to St.
Vincent's Hospital, in Greenwich Village.
(That hospital too now, alas, gone to local
development; by the same cranks who
boasted so of it then). Nearby was the White
Horse, a famed tavern that was being used
as a re-freshening post for workers, firemen,
cops, soldiers, anyone in need of that respite.
Those within it, or on the sidewalk, were
always heavily garbed, and themselves
coated in white ash-grime. To and fro
they went, that entire day and night. Some
walked determinedly up or down Hudson
Street, returning to the scene for more, or
taking their time to walk off the horror. Cars
and vans dropped other off. Amazingly,
two things I saw that day live brightly on
in my memory. The first was the manner
in which, each time a walking rescue worker
would pass, donned in work garb and, as
I said, usually coated with ash, sweat and
grime, bystanders stopped, moved aside,
and applauded. There would be little knots
of people, standing together, applauding
the passing worker. The second thing, even
more vivid to me, was, at the NY end of the
Holland Tunnel (which had been closed to
all traffic except necessary vehicles and
police and militia use), when I saw, as
I was standing there for the vista and
the vantage point of the twisted and
smoldering ruins afforded me from
the nearby Nancy Whiskey Pub, and
heard the miraculous clamor of some
20 Negro marchers exit9ing the tunnel,
armed with shovels and pickaxes, and
accompanied by a brass-band troupe
of companion marchers, playing a
dirge-like tempo to some spiritual
tune I didn't recognize. They were on
their way to help and work. I figured
them to be from Jersey City? Hoboken?
It was awesome, touching, and amazing.
(I have photos of this. If I can find
them I will show them).
-
These were just a few of the scenes I saw
in those days of aftermath; and I'll tell
more too. Both my wife and a friend who
accompanied us, saw all these marvels -
and not one of the things we saw can be
outshown by the inauthentic drivel that's
prattled about these days - recollections
of nothing much at all except the usual
cant and the usual agenda and the
usual seeking of 'something,' whether
money or a vote or some new form of
todays condescension playing itself
out over the dishonest and self-absorbed
counter-American defense of what passes
these days as 'America.' It's all crap,
and it deserves nothing.
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