RUDIMENTS 636.

RUDIMENTS, pt. 636

(nothing good comes from nazareth)

I always figured most of

'Society' to be made up

of envy. The component

of envy was everywhere,

in everything, the basis

of all marketing and

made-up desires, and, of

course, pushed constantly

by the advertising industry.

Capitalism itself was based

on a promoted form on envy,

the idea being you 'wanted'

what your neighbor had.

Regular people envied

artists for their ease, lack

of employment, and their

free ways. In turn, artists

envied the regular pay-checks,

homes and family lives that

they'd see, many times, all

those regular people having.

Lay people envied clerics,

as the clerics often enough

envied the flock they preached

to. Cops envied criminals and

criminals envied cops. It was

all a regular schmuck-show,

and the only thing steady

about America was how

envy was pushed along,

used as the basis for selling

'larger' cars - things bigger

and better. The thing that kept

Capitalism going was that it

was never ending - as soon as

any regular moron attained what

he or she had wanted, the need

would be manufactured that there

was something newer and larger

and better again! And you should

really have that too. As soon as

a person got to or near the finish

line, the line was pulled away

and another set. Maddening!

That constantly sliding scale

of indeterminate and relative

function entered into all the

facts of the day. Desires had to

be, first, created, and then kept

only nearly fulfilled but never

quite. Defeat always being

snatched from the jaws of

victory, as it were.

-

It all came down to how any

one person ended up seeing

their own self in relation to

others. That was the angle

constantly pushed; never

was it mentioned how one

looked to oneself. That form

of self-reflection, self-criticism,

or introspection had been made

to seem corrupt, gay, fey, mad,

useless, not playing the real

game. In the end, it becomes,

and successfully so, since it is

Society itself which has dictated

the ending for the rube who

follows it - a shoot-out with

oneself : taking at aim what

you perceive as being the

target, (because 'they' have

told you so and conditioned

you so), the threat. Which is

YOU and you alone, the you

which you then self-annihilate.

I'd seen it already a hundred

times and more.

-

That's what school is based on.

Subjection and submission.

That's the role teachers joyously

jump into along their ways on

endless little power-trips and

protection ego-rants. Really;

nothing good comes from

Nazareth.

-

That all ended once I got to

New York. In the seminary,

everything had been about

judgment and some sort of

labored and revered values.

Never fully explained, just

somehow absorbed. Pious.

(Two words I never much took

to, by the way, were 'piety'

and 'calumny'). We had our

share of that there - Charles

Waddell, it was, I can recall,

taking way longer than anyone

else to pray, dragging it out

longer than everyone else, each

time, so that as we all would be

leaving chapel he'd still be in there

kneeling, as we passed him, with

his silent-mouthed words and

lips going a mile a minute with

his stupidly clasped prayer hands

out before him. Boy that used

to make me sick. There wasn't

that sort of theatrical schmuck

crap in NYC. Don't get me

wrong, there was plenty of its

equivalent in whatever way,

shape, or fashion it was done.

I got used to it all, but all that

crummy, previous, stuff

lingered. Chuck Waddell, as

stiff and as rigid as cardboard,

was an after-image always kept

burning in my mind. I never

knew why, but I knew I had

to shake it. The lower and

dirtier I could keep things,

the farther away from all his

'plu-perfect' crud I'd be. It

was a, it became a, constant

psychic scrimmage. The only

thing those seminary guys

every really did for me was,

apparently, instill in me a real

screwed-up world view. A

female, for goodness shake,

was enough to give me the

shudders every day, and now,

all around me, they're suddenly

naked or half-so! None of

this was ever spoken of, of

course, and I shared with no

one my sense of being marooned

somewhere on an isthmus of

Hell with no apparent way out.

-

I did just have to watch everything

carefully. Fully-clothed girls were

one thing, but around me now they

were draped in nothing and 'modeling'

for drawing class. Oh, sure that'd, work;

I sensed that right away. Why walk

when you can run. The funniest thing

was the absolute silence about all of

that, as if the assumption was to be,

no, no, the girl's not really naked,

and neither is the guy there either;

they're apparitions that we'll not

speak about. And then, down the

street the girls at the Diggers place,

they lived together, all unclothed.

Highest-class hippies you'd ever see!

No wonder the silent mouth was busy

with prayer - someone had to get

us through this mess. You can hardly

imagine what it was like to have to

live in this manner - fresh out of

tenderfoot school and dipped into

boiling oil the very same day.

-

How do you make sense of any

of that? It wasn't easy and it took

some doing, but there are 

characters and situations I'm 

looking here to share with

you - hoping they will make

more clear parts of this strange 

predicament I had gotten into.

Just, whatever you do - 

don't envy me.