RUDIMENTS, PT. 1,248
(the latent flame)
It was never a case, with me,
of too little/too late. Maybe it
was more like too much/too
soon. As if an overflow of
whatever it may have been
that flooded my life and
altered it. No avoiding it
and - as I've said before
- I was always the sort
who pretty much accepted
whatever came my way
and worked through it.
I can't say that I was ever
really involved in anything
that I was truly and solidly
interested or concerned with.
Every job I ever had - wage
jobs, I mean - just seemed
like a furtherance of being
belittled. All that rank and
file 'positioning' of boss and
master, foreman and head of
this or that, lording it over
the lowly 'doer' or peon over
whom they professed somehow
a grander view of things. It
was all for filthy lucre anyway
and I never cared much about
that. There's a certain balance
life that quickly gets lost when
a foolish human begins working
in 'commerce' instead of life.
-
I slaved away for many years
at the bidding of others; the
most stupid semi-automatic
stuff imaginable. Boxing or
unboxing, cataloguing or
filing, watching endless reams
of paper roll by, or convincing
someone else they needed this
or that ridiculous aspect of
whatever. During my time in
NYC, all the very best people
I'd ever meet were the doers
and peons, in fact. They were
the only ones committed to
reality and life as it was
presented to them. The other
sorts were always up to no
good - shaving markings of
off books to pass them off as
new, or realigning some dumb
old concept so as to pass it off
and new and superior; mouthing
the usual inanities and profanities
to impress the same old crowd.
Over and over it all went.
-
When I could sit around with
Freddy Fox, or put my feet up
on some packed pallet of crap and
have a beer with some street-level
guy like myself, only then was I
most happy. When the trucks
would roll up to the siding, I'd
drop whatever I was doing and
have better times with the drivers
and their waiting views of the
world they'd just passed. It was
a good life, most of the time. The
only times it ever cracked up, as
I said, were when money, gain,
or some stupid prospect of either,
reared its ugly head, for then always
there was someone scheming to
make better some crummy deal so
they could walk off with more of
the bundle. It seemed never to end,
like watching a Cliff go over a
cliff. Such shitty superiority but,
as they said in Latin class, 'Cui
bono?'
-
Life still throws me questionable
curves and hunches. For instance,
and as an example : I light a fire,
and as I do so I think about what
I'm doing. The fire I seek is 'latent'
in the match I'm striking, but it
doesn't exist until I strike and it
flames. Is that fire merely an idea
that then comes to fruition? If I
did not believe in 'fire' or 'flame'
either as word or concept, would
they still be there, with an 'a priori'
existence of their own? Is the future
now latent in the present, just waiting
for us to draw it out? Where then is
this future 'fire' when it is not in
our realm? What am I sourcing as
I reach for things - in this case my
long and eventual idea of 'fire' or
'flame?' When I was a younger
person, and used to stand around
the fire barrels in my old NYC,
with the old guys and the lost, I
had the same feelings with them,
but unspoken. Not realizing what
they were. Now, I do. Same fire,
and those guys are all gone. Time,
however, is never linear. It's all
together as one, and all things go
on together.
-
One time, on the docks there, I
witnessed a truck being torched.
And, yes, there was a guy in it.
Something horrible had had to
have gone way wrong for him -
it was more an execution than
anything. I never knew if he was
clubbed and unconscious, or just
already dead, when the truck got
torched. The whole thing took no
more than 10 minutes - it was like
one of those Vietnam monk burnings
when they'd torch themselves to
protest the war or something about
their current situation. You'd see the
flames, and the burning outlines of
things, and the form; the form of
something slowly going down. A
human form, as if outlined and
haloed by flames. Where'd it all
come from. Where'd it all go?
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