RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,235
(my push to your toil...)
Back at Elmira College, it
was 1974-5, and the world was
rolling along fairly well. The
vantage point, of course, from
which I was viewing things
was quite a bit smaller than
the wide-view of the broader
world. Elmira was an enclave,
a sort of smothered border or
a blanket thrown over things.
Maybe concealing, maybe just
to protect. I was, about that time,
taking Geology courses as part
of my own curriculum, and each
day brought another bought of
Pangea, plate tectonics, rocks
and rivers, savannahs and early
mankind's movements along the
globe. A person can get really
hung-up on all that it if they
let themselves go. I liked it all,
fitting it in between home-life,
work, and the rest. We had
fun too - oddball movies
shown in the student forum;
my NYC Artist-In Residence
friend, Gandy Brody; exchange
students from France and
Germany. One or two visits
from Rod Serling, the Twilight
Zone guy, whose daughter was
a student, under another name.
It was a big surprise once it got
out. He was, himself, mostly a
bore, speaking extemporaneously
in the lecture hall setting of like
'Meet Rod Serling' stuff. Someone
asked him why, as avatar of the
weird and the leading-edge, he
stooped to doing things like
cigarette commercials on TV,
etc. Pretty brash question. His
answer? 'I'm too much a child
of the Depression to not fear
poverty and destitution always
lurking from behind.' I always
felt he should have just said
'Because I can. And you can't.
I get paid well.'
-
One thing I remember thinking.
from those days, was how most
of everything was false, or at
best a 'manufactured' verbal
crisis to effect some end. Like
the 'oil crisis' and the gas lines
and all that. I had a car, but we
lived in town, in fact one block
off from the college, and we
could walk most anywhere, fill
our wants and needs, etc., - except
for trips to Ithaca and Cornell
about 20 miles off - without any
daily driving stuff. So, though
I'd see 20 or so cars in line,
people all steamed up at gas
stations, and all that 'gas crisis'
stuff', we were never really
affected. Gasoline at the point,
as I recall, was 56 cents, to maybe
65 cents, a gallon, and these old
guys at the gas lines would always
be hard-boiled and bad-mouthing
the 'oil companies' - "Just you
see how quickly there's plenty
of gas once thy get the price up
to a dollar, those bastards!" Every
Grandpa suddenly was an economist!
-
None of it mattered in the long run,
the gas crises came and went. Every
so often it would start again, and the
same carping and waiting. What
bummed me out was the manner
in which these 'changeable' tides
of events started influencing the
way the Geology teacher began
making his in-class pronouncements.
Why waste money, I thought, just
to have to learn this drivel about
things that were never going to be?
[Note: Ultra-hipster Geology guy
soon gave it all up and relocated
to Austin, Texas, which back then
was a big, leading-edge place of
the 'new' hip]. His point was that
by 1980 the world would be OUT
of oil, fossil fuels would be dead,
and we'd all be encamped in a new
form of poverty with useless cars as
desert homesteads. Not sure what
he was ever think (or smoking in
faculty house-parties) but it started
sounding like warmed-over and
already stale propaganda. Back
then too, there were these science/
alien/travel kind of writers, one
was Immanuel Velikovsky, and
another was Erich von Daniken.
I used to love to get this guy on
that subject, because he'd get
all fired up about false science
and pure conjecture, etc. It was
funny. He'd say: 'A perfect example -
each of them - of having your
conclusions set up first and then
making all the evidence fit that
schema!' It always sounded to me
just like his oil crisis BS, running
out of oil by 1980, world in crisis,
and the rest. Big stupid joke. It
did turn out that oil was nothing
more than price, there were zillions
of barrels of it just waiting for the
tapping, the world would go on,
and the only thing changing that
oil-economics, now, 40 years on,
is that fact that the manufacturing
base of the world (not the USA
any longer, the world) wants to
move on to a newer and more
lucrative technology under the
false guise of 'conservation' in
the disguise of electric cars; which
are bogus or as bogus as was any
internal-combustion engine. It's
all a disguised scam - plug-on
power still has to be generated, has
to come from somewhere, and is a
mere allocation-shift from one
power-source to another (in this
new case of 'electricity,' from
forms of 'shared' public utilities,
the grid-power for which is paid
for in a communal way by shared
'public-utility' costs, which can
be hidden and disguised, and
raided, by ALL government, at
every level, municipal, state,
federal, and local-grid service
costs as well. If you're allowed to
set up your own argument, yes,
and than find all the evidences
needed to make the argument
fit itself, the world is yours!
-
Now NO ONE talks about running
out of fuel. Instead, it's all of the
new and cutting production of
the stylish, must-have, new wave
of automobiles, electric-powered
and subsidized, and brought along
and backed by the Government at
every level. New product. New
controls. And the 'new' world
goes nowhere. Beware the wedge.
-
All I ever knew was that I was fairly
disgusted with all that had been put
before me, from grade-school on up
through the pallid efficacies of the
supposed 'higher levels' of bullshit
learning. Some Dago slimeball
selling vinyl-siding has more
integrity than does any Government.
-
About this same time - as I said -
I became friends on campus with
Gandy Brodie. He was a second
generation NY Abstract-Expressionist,
by designation anyway, who'd known
all the greats, hung at the Cedar Bar,
had art shows and a good reputation,
had ties to the beats, poet Ken Koch
(who as well often showed up at
Elmira, to visit, or give a reading
at some late-night coffee-infused
gabfest). Brodie and I usually would
meet on Sunday mornings (my wife
and 7-year old had become inveterate
churchgoers), and walk our dogs, talking,
comparing notes, etc. He'd go on to
me about his old days, and it was
all very invigorating. One day, he
was just dead. Period. Like that.
Such was the end of that era.
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