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RUDIMENTS 1147.

RUDIMENTS, pt 1,147
(the ground : only the ground
In a few other languages
the word for 'ant' is 'formica.'
That always surprised me,
inasmuch as for us here, using
English, it meant nothing of
the sort. I always got confused
about the crossover of words,
like the Chevy Nova, basically
meaning, in a Spanish usage,
'no go.' When I was young,
after first moving to Avenel,
probably no more than a year
or two after being there, my
parents did the bottom half
of the kitchen (walls) over
in some odd wall covering
that, in 1956 parlance, was
called 'Sanitest.' The idea being
cleanliness and washability,
as in 'Sanitary.' It was an ugly
wall covering of some sort
of pliable but hard material,
which could be washed down,
swabbed, etc., to remove finger
stains, smudges, etc. Beats me
what anyone was thinking. I
never liked the stuff besides,
and it had an ugly tan-based
pattern of squiggles on it as
well and, at the top, as an
edging, this crappy piece
of metal or cheap chrome.
And it stayed there, probably
but 4 years, until the kitchen
itself was redone as the room
was expanded, with the addition
of my father's famous 'extension.'
Sanitest made a deep impression
on me, and not a good one. The
psychological impression that I
got from all that was that the
human animal was no good, a
dirty creature to be safeguarded
against. Who could be thinking
like that? The 1950's fools who
merchandised this stuff, and the
equally foolish people who bought
it, seemed to know nothing of the
human condition and were just
bent on either manipulating it in
a negative fashion to procure sales,
or being suckered into yet just
another dumb product. The 1950's
were like a gold-field of nascent
ideas about un-natural and artificial
aspects of things, a viewpoint
which eventually took over the
entire country, and later, world.
I guess the whole concept was
based on the Latin word Sanitas,
but, no, no one would know that.
-
The world just can't be artificial.
It's real, and always has been and
demands a fealty. Most people
live now as artificially as can be,
with scented sprays, scented lotions
and the rest, all used in order to
somehow forestall an awareness
of being human, of humanity, or
of the natural world and all its
progressions. I feel it's just bad
cocooning. I slept the other night,
in fact, for about 2 hours before
I got up and went to the floor, on
someone's newly-laundered sheets
and bedding which evidently, had
been washed and dried on some
God-awful scented drier process.
It smelled like a whore's floral
backside; my opinion.
-
The concept of life itself has
always been difficult for me  - 
in the standard and traditional
forms of telling and narrative.
I guessed I (we) were underway,
yes, with our own versions of it,
all. Yet, it was questionable and,
without the magical thinking of
the quasi-religious, seemed to need
the boost of some extra-terrestrial
force (which is the same thing, in
reality,to the religious version of
magical thinking). Whenever I used
to hear someone declaim about how
there was no real basis for any of this
belief, and then fall back onto the
necessity for 'Faith' and faith alone
to validify this existence, I shied
away. It seemed to coy; too evasive.
Like something a priest or a Minister
would do instead of having to
'man up' and proclaim the truth
of uncertainty at the core of all
existences. Blind faith alone
produces passive and callow folk,
willing to be steered. It's all just
wrong.
-
Anyone can believe any of a
hundred versions of our incipient
beginnings : magical, religious,
free, controlled. The vast and
broad outlines of some sort of
cosmological thinking have
always been present. We dwell
amidst those definitions and the
narratives it all brings forth.
People have entire careers  -
political, philosophical, comedic,
scholastic, affirmative, or negative  -
based upon the ideas of these
formative concepts, yet, in so,
so many ways it still all just
remains as conjecture, flavored
then with a duty and dogma that
does nothing but advance the
control stigma which eventually
sticks people right into the ground.
Only. The ground.

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