RUDIMENTS, pt. 1291
(How do we capture the flag?)
My own run down the runway
never made too much sense. As
kids in the street, even that long
boring street called Inman Ave.,
each of the games were made up,
or transplanted and none of them
ever really added up. For me. I
would awake another Summer
morning, and by evening it was
Capture the Flag, or Boxball,
Hide and Seek, or Ringolevio.
They were city games, played
with a pink ball and cracks in
the sidewalk. Even Hopscotch
used to reek of Brooklyn to me.
-
Funny too, now, in thinking back,
they were all manual games; as
elementary as the particles of
Science. Whatever moved, YOU
moved it, all the strategies were
physical. None of that goes on
today, not even, any longer, in
courtship or sex-pursuit. There
are intermediaries, interlocuters,
things and currents between to
interactions. The 'cloud' we now
speak of, or hear of, is an intrusive
'Other' brain, only claiming a
neutrality as well as a detached
impartiality, but all the time
scheming to make you a
consumer and a captive. Face
it, YOU are the flag!
-
Suburbs were supposed to shake
all that, weren't they? Nostalgia
for parents' kid-games was OK
for the parents, but for us new
kids, I really think we sought
for more. I know I did. Around
us now was space, and woods,
and rails, and open fields. Why
n the world limit ourselves to
the confining flat-space games
of imagined urban confines and
blocks? Birds had cages, but
we sought none.
-
It went like that most all through
my life. Everyone wanted that
confinement, something to close
in the being and the mind, even
as they had moved to more open
spaces. If there was a confinement
salesman, he could have been the
most successful salesman in the
world right then, because everyone
was buying. I think there's some
sort of correlation between reality
and the conditions it presents -
the dark and gray, low and polluted
skies around us, smokestacks and
mucky water pools, etc. - they
all reflected the rather gruesome
conditions of peoples' confined
inner lives at that time. Think
of the geometrics of the world
of 1950 : cubes. One little
rectangular house and lot after
another, and each arrayed along
streets with curbs, and little traffic
(at first). Curb-ball! The little
pink Spaldeen, thrown against
the curb and sent speeding across
the street. A ground out, or a
single if it gets through. The
lovely, high arc of the flyball,
to signify the just-right contact
curvature of curb-top to ball.
A 'Homer!! (The Iliad and the
Odyssey notwithstanding, we
already had our OWN lingo!).
-
At first, each house and lot cube
had a car as well, and then later
two, or more as kids matured!
Everything began changing. You
can find little of that today - few
areas of mucky water, or bad
drainage, and swamp-infested
miasma. Everyone now actually
claims their Freedom!! while
having less of it. Today's new
idea of 'Tetherball' involves a
cowardice and a constant, boring
distraction - being tethered to
electronics and doing nothing on
one's own : GPS, messages on
constant, games, foibles, rumors,
gossip, slander, lies, fake news,
ads, claims, profiles of illicit
cranks, stars, idiots and wannabee.
All that open-space and all those
ideas of grandeur, broken now,
sundered into the ordinary shit
of the everyday. Even the wonder
is gone; no one thinks twice
about the glories they live. This
new world is a distracting blur,
and a real bore.
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