RUDIMENTS, part 1,240
(nowhere critical, or imagined)
Someone once criticized me -
quite harshly, I might add - for
being nothing but a 'trust-fund
baby.' Besides being so far off
and wrong (the only closeness
I might have to that is 'Trust me,
there's no fund'), this person
then made a pretty-near fool of
himself by taking the assumption
that self-being and environment
somehow work together. What
he was trying to get across, by
the way, with that statement, was
the idea that 'complainers' are
always the very people who have
the least to complain about, who
have a good station, and privileged
too, within the 'Society' they are
carping about. It might appear as
such from whatever erroneous
vantage point he was prattling
from, but it immediately colored
his entire argument, and swung
it way over to the equally-dumb
'subjectively-in-error' column.
Having thus shot himself in the
foot, I hope that foot has healed.
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Objectively subjectivizing everything
(awkwardly put, yes, but stay with
it), a person - any person - can
make great errors and thereby
effect the remainder of both life
and content, if that is not corrected.
Proceeding in error only compounds
the (growing) error. A person can end
up buying Barbie Dolls for Diabetes
or something of that nature; buy
falsely acting within the sphere.
The idea of a life is to break out
of all that crap; get away from it,
and back to the authentic.
-
Sumerians, Babylonians, Assyrians,
Mesopotamians, Chaldeans, Egyptians,
and any of the rest, all of those ancient
civilizations and tribes have had their
influences upon me. I've changed face
so many times I don't know what I
look like (someone else may once
have said that, but here I co-opt it,
shamelessly. Let's say it was David
Byrne; nice guy, fun, maybe a
little too 'precious,' but so what).
The Grail Legend, the Fisher King,
Horus and Isis and Osiris too. One
after the other, these inner archetypes
are still effecting in each of us and
in the entirety of the society we live,
the scrambling and re-translation of
most every moment. Myths and
religions - all that stern Father-figure
rashness and ire, forgiveness and
redemption, death and rebirth, all
of that, for millennia, have been
played out and done over in countless
ways. We are but a momentary sum
of all that work, as perceived BY
us, and that too, after us, will fade
and change. Nothing lasts forever.
Not even God.
-
Amenhotep, angels, All Souls' Day,
Easter, Eden, Nirvana, and Satan,
and Mephistopheles - catalogue
the simple list and watch it grow.
-
I think the right to complain is
born with us in the cradle, and that
all the heaped-up sentiment, and
emotive sentimentality too, that
we amass as we course along this
diddling life given to us - teachers,
schools, churches, Gods, religion,
parents, authority - is the territory
over which we must guard and
husband and protect and save.
Not the crap they try to fill us
with. As a kid in Avenel, one of
our pastimes - besides stealing
cigarettes and smoking them
between the portables in off-hours
from school), was setting off
firecrackers with the end-aim of
trying to blow off the ends of
our fingers or perhaps the fingers
of our friends, hopefully when
a girl or two was watching. We
were sort of foolishly daring and
belligerent for all factor of the
display and bravado such ways
provided. And, just as well, none
of us ever wanted to be alone.
That became, somehow, a need
and an important factor in what
we did. Herd behavior. Weird
11-year old breaking-adolescent
peer pressure or sexual nervousness
and raw angst? Cosmic guilt over
the simplicity of our own beings?
-
None of that was any different
from any thousands of years
previous : Wherever humanity
hung then its proverbial hat.
Primitive man, looking up deeply
at the night sky's blackness,
imagining Gods and stipulations.
Words and orders which perhaps
made some sense out of the wild,
un-seeded blackness. We were,
at that point in our dumb education,
being taught that things were deep
and complicated, and that they
would be getting worse. We need
guidance and domination. We had
to find productive careers and futures.
Hell, we had to BE productive so as
to advance all this complication.
Hell enough, that was all bunco.
That was all an alleged spiritual lie
for which no one had ever been
called out.
-
That same night sky was above
me as I dawdled - kids and friends,
hanging out on a pale Saturday, in
the very same-space schoolyard
where we passed the Mon-Fri times
as we were coerced to do. Why go
back, when he needn't have? I never
knew, except for the purloined,
perhaps, cigarette, and the few
dumpy girls willing to play. This
is like papier-mache - the stuff
we made those maps of Mesopotamia
on plywood out of, painting the
3-dimensional topographies: blue
for water, green for mountain and
hills, and tan for sand. An endless
and unmapped world of nothing,
it seemed to me. Yet, they said,
that was where these newer Gods
for us were born. And high above
us, now, was only John Glenn.
-
No, then, I could never figure out
this world as presented. A dead-man's
house of mystery, for sure. A man
hung upon a tree? For you and me?
Television serenades and shootings
and assassinations? Murders and
point-breasted crazy women? Dads
all in abeyance, and the whole world
groans?
-
Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray
the Lord my soul to....weep?
