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.