RUDIMENTS 1158

RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,158

(ideal time)

Did you know that Humankind

now takes having a roof over one's

head as a human right? Having

evolved from 'an outdoor species

into an indoor one, we've gone

from the African savannah's wide

open expanses, intimate with

Nature and seeking protection

under tree canopies, so that our

genetic hardwiring, built over

millennia, still craves that older

connection to nature.' Hmmm.

No wonder I scan skies and look

to the heavens to forestall a certain

sort of K-Mart innate boredom.

Even the confines of an expensive

car can't solve this new dilemma.

I go, though the way be wild?

-

That's not mine, that 'way be wild'

thing. In fact, as I recall, it's from

Linus, in an old Peanuts cartoon.

None of that sounds vital now, but

in the very late 1960's this Charles

Schulz guy had the world wrapped

with his 'Peanuts' cartoon. I was

never a fan at all, not even a follower

or a reader of the daily strip. Couldn't

have cared less. I hated the roundness

of the character's, and the even lines

and marks of the drawings, and I

always deemed the emotions and

exclamations to be childish. BUT,

I had a friend, here, in Avenel

(dead now, both the friend, and

the place), who thought Peanuts

was high social-science and that it

perfectly captured a form of the

zeitgeist. He was enrapt by the

cartoon strip. I was not, and used

to tell him 'When I see Charlie

Brown in a Vietnam setting, in

jungle fatigues and a helmet,

cradling an automatic weapon,

perhaps then I believe this shit.'

I couldn't stand that Lucy and

Linus and Pig Pen and Charlie

crap, no way. I thought it was

oblivious to society-at-large

and not representative of it at

all; and that its supposed nuggets

of cute wisdom were drivel. As

for the Schulz guy himself, he

and his whole story seemed bogus

to me; but at least he laid low and

unseen enough not to be a social

pain. He was to flip-side equivalent,

in a way, to Walt Disney, the person.

Disney for a while (I think he died

maybe about 1966 or '67?), was like

the John Wayne of America's social

and pleasure fabric, a complete jerk

making fantasy parks for morons and

arrested development types. He too

was one of those representative

American characters who, in those

days, was mucking it up for everyone.

Theme parks and pleasure castles,

all chaste and fake. I used to wish to

tie his Snow White to a bedpost and

have a rip at her just to shut her face

up. Little was lost when we lost

those two.

-

My same friend who liked Peanuts

and Charles Schulz, as it turned out,

was a closeted gay fellow, a serial

romancer of either sex, a jumbled

moire-pattern of twisted ideals and

fractured fairy tales, who did later

take his own life. Oh well. Lucy never

pulled that football away at the last

moment, I guess. He used to walk

the streets with a small, hand-held,

transistor radio tuned to the daily

Dr. Joyce Brothers show. Yep,

another very strange 1960's radio

broadcast wrangler. Like the Jean

Shepherd of self-help talk and social

commentary. She was a weak-voice,

wan and willowy lady who purported

at social science, radio interviews

and the dispensing of advice to others.

Sort of like the Self-Help section of

any Barnes & Noble, or Borders,

bookstore, some years later when

enlightenment and self-improvement

became a working tenet of probably

those same people who used their

yoga mats and Lulemon tights for

self-mastery. I used to think it was

awkward, or perverse, to see a guy

walking the streets with a transistor

radio held to his ear. Very bizarre,

and to listening to Joyce Brothers?

The Bess Meyerson of camp? It

certainly just set me more adrift.

I'd walk through the Broadway/w80's

area, and all the Spanish guys would

be out there, vending and hopping

around, and they too had transistor

radio blaring - even sometimes

'boom boxes' - but at least they were

usually tuned to Yankee games, or

playoff games, or the world series.

This was all different.

-

Distinctions I could never get over:

Peanuts, Charles Schulz, Walt Disney,

Joyce Brothers, Vietnam, napalm,

burning flesh, torched hamlets and

villages, B-52's flaring high in the

sky, remaining death and destruction

to thatched huts, blinded and maimed

prisoners with hands tied behind their

backs, the machine gunning of villages

and their inhabitants, suspected rice

field guerrilla-fighters, political types

on the USA radio and TV proclaiming

their right-causes and excuses for war,

fomenting ire and confusion by twisting

stories and images, conjuring facts up

out of thin air so as to justify the death,

maiming and murder of - besides the

58,000 American soldiers churned

through - countless cadavers of the

Vietnamese, Laotian, and Cambodian

dead souls that Peanuts and Lucy and

Charles Schulz or Joyce Brothers, or

Jean Shepherd, for that matter. had

ever reached for. It seemed as if

'American' social science only saw

things one way, and demanded that

one way alone : a pleasure principle,

a self-esteemed and sacrosanct sense

of superiority, and a righteousness about

national entitlement and statist-self

that saw a jungle and a people and

any indigenous trifle as something

in the way, to be bombed, torched,

or murdered at will. Time? For

America, 1960's time was an ideal,

opaque, but gossamer, whose luck

and timing just, eventually,ran out

and died. This was the start of it all.