RUDIMENTS 1148.

RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,148

(words were never enough)

The 'myth' of mythology had

always led me along  -  to

believing that I'd see griffins,

two-headed monsters, dragons

that breathed fire, and flighty

wood-nymphs too. None of it

ever happened, of course, but

I still believed. For a normal,

hetero-sexual guy (and I say

normal' because, yes, sorry

to say, I believe that to be the

right and natural way; all you

same-sexers can talk this over

amongst yourselves. Sorry), the

deliverance from any of that

mythology stuff always seemed,

for me, to be the liberation of

the female body, or form. There

was never anything better for me,

so I ran with that as the best of

all mythology, the feminine-form

divine. (Hey! Maybe then that

makes ME a lesbian? Does that

get a capital 'L' yet, by the way?).

-

In its prideful notations to the

modern day, modern Humankind

rebuffs all those 'mythological'

beasts and beings, relegating them

all to some subterranean ante-room

of the older-world's imaginings.

Gods on Mount Olympus, for

instance, being the most-simple

version. I've always been partial

to those accounts of half-man,

half-beast creatures; the failed

experiments of a coaxial 'God'

attempting the materialization

of 'God ideas.' Pretty remarkable

stuff and, certainly, the things

by which cosmic-externals are

elevated : the vast and great

Human memories of archetypes

and phantasmagorias which we

only now relegate to dreams and

nightmares. But it used to be

real. No two ways about it. All

that old consciousness was once

our world.

-

I could sense all that too, in walking

around; a sort of eyes-wide-shut

weirdness on the sluggish streets

of an older NYC. It may have been

1967 when I began my time there,

but it wasn't that at all. I was reading

signposts and traveling in another

time, almost another place. I return

there now, helpless, trying again to

see all that, but the remnants of

everything are gone : Torn, tattered,

debunked. The atmospheres back

then were all different : tattered 

colonial clothes of horse-trails

and small paths, huddled Dutch-style

topped buildings,close to the dirt

lanes and streets. A jagged commerce,

bits and pieces : porcelain, clay,

pipes, tubes, raw lumber. Incredibly,

that too was the 'modern day' then.

As analogous to a dream versus a

nightmare, that old era, ancient

and pre-historic, of strange creatures

and flying forms and biblical tales

and stories  -  all of them were a

poor, poor reach for what really

went on. The self-recognitions and

initiated rites of Man and civilization, 

the pre-language 'describe-the-world

you see' aspects of cave paintings

and etched rocks and walls of stone

proclaimed Humankind's sense of

selfhood only slowly a'borning.

Words were not enough, ever.

-

All those stories of Gods and the

miracles of time and space by which

'Reality' was constructed were somehow

yet present and meshed together in

some weird NYC world that didn't

know itself and had never (known

itself) : Teeming hordes of the lost

and the listless; and all the accidentals

of Nature and Man combined. Two

fronted horses, the half-men, half-lions

of a singular dreams; forever and ever,

rolling over upon itself as Time and

as Energy, as Story and as Myth.

Just waiting for a writer to give

it justice and being. Again, words

were not enough, ever.
-
I think our thoughts were always
meant to be mobile: Not tied down 
to concepts or ideologies so much
as wandering, restless, always on
the move. I think that's where ife's
divine creativity lies  -  the divine
creative 'feminine' I may have
mentioned earlier. I am nowhere
else but lost.
-
'I think it's often assumed that
the role of poetry is to comfort,
but for me, poetry is the great
unsettler. It questions the
established order of the mind.
It is radical, by which I don't
mean it is either leftwing or
rightwing, but that it works
at the roots of thinking.'