RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,258
(contentious cockroaches)
In startling ways I now look
back upon my old childhood
days as something I'll never
see again - as regards people
and societal habits. It's easy
to overlook, yes, but as I
recollect back, it now seems
almost a golden age if compared
to the society of today. Try as
I may, I cannot ever recall the
sorts of contentious issues that
today bungle everything up.
I guess society was a lot more
primitive 70 years ago, in those
respects anyway, but the most
we ever heard about to fear was,
perhaps, a 'truant officer' or a
'dog catcher' to snatch our loose
Fido. Never did I hear of things
like DYFS or Child Welfare or
race sensitivity or spousal abuse
at home, with or without kids.
-
Now, yes, it may be that all of
that existed and we never saw it,
but that merely supplants my
reference here - we lived in a
quite happy bliss of baseball cards
and pick-up ball games, or rock
collecting through the woods and
stream. Investigating things. Rides
on our bikes to rivers and woods.
I never once heard of care about
intangible issues about words and
attitudes and points-of-view. We
fairly well did what we wished and
the Devil take the hindmost.
-
You may call me stupid, and that's
OK, but there was no enraptured
drama of today's sort, about styles
and fashions, gangs or cliques, and
certainly none of todays ephemera,
from keyboard sidelights to Internet
issues of communication. Mostly our
mothers and fathers always seemed
true-to-core, and there were never
problems past the usual points of
family disciplines or any internal
squabbles, which stayed that way.
Even (in my strata anyway) divorce
was a seldom thing. Most all of my
friends had two parents and the usual
roles and genders.
-
I tery to figure out now the unhappiness
the must run through society to have
brought us all these ambiguous ways
of catching up with and controlling
problems and 'infractions' that - back
then - weren't even perceived. How
did any of that happen? Certainly not
because people are smarter now. Just
the opposite. Everything has been
hammer-headed down now to a blunt
and rounded circle of circumstantial
evidenes by which we only know of
the problem(s) when someone else
tells us of them - most likely to try
and sell us a false cure. Maybe it's
the rot and sugar of fast food? The
inherent foulness of chemicals in
everyday snacks and meals. The
highly-vaunted means by which all
this racketeering is sold to us : media,
medicine, journalism, and TV and
all that ambrosiacal 'streaming' stuff
that goes on.
-
In my clarified world of 'then' - when
I was a youngster - we'd occasionally
see some bloviating, red-faced, preacher
or authority figure going on about the
evils of rock 'n roll, or communism,
or flouride, or schooling. If anyone
ever listened, it was all thought of as
funny, country-hick stuff; people in
a frenzy of fingers and limbs, seeing
evil bonfires on every hillside. The
Vandals of the night were back to get
us! Burn your books and records! The
Devil is on the loose...
-
Now, in retrospect it's all seen as just a
dream, one maybe bordering in nightmare,
but a dream nonetheless; a dream on the
edge, a precipice from which we are
about to be thrown. Learning has taught
me only one thing, really : That the
'clarity' of old is gone, and that maybe
the Devil really is upon us and clutching.
To Hell with the books and records, burn
yourself!
-
Streetcorner preachers there still are;
they used to say 'Stop!' and 'Ban the
Bomb!' Now they say nothing except
the most perverse words about success
and riches, achievable only on the
back of Jesus and His saints. 'Refresh
Yourself!' has taken over from 'Repent!'
The church too used to be part of that
society or propriety and rule. Now it's
a foul joke. The more I delve, the sadder
it all seems. There's a book by Richard
Fletcher, entitled 'The Barbarian
Conversion' - I just read it, and you
should too. It puts the slow drum of
secular versus religious in a whole
other light. The entire field of that
endeavor is all laid out.
-
I think - to write frankly - I've
become too advanced for the paltry
little world of 'Men' and all their
opinions and societies and agencies.
(Men, that is, as in Human, both
male and female, your contentious
cockroaches). My own world long
ago spun out of control and recovered
its orbit and - even with wobble -
still rolls nicely along. For me. The
rest of it all, I couldn't care less about
anymore. It's all lies and slander and
calumny and sloth and idiocy and
filth. Ever hear of the Seven Deadly
Sins? I just received the new version
of that....from on high. They've been
re-titled now, as the Seven-Hundred
and Thirty One Deadly Sins.
And still going strong.
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