RUDIMENTS 301.

RUDIMENTS, pt. 301

Making Cars

There are thoughts that you

debate with others, and there

are thoughts you debate with

yourself. For me, it was always,

with myself, 'How could I be

such a jerk?' Like the day that

my mother tearfully told me

that Robert Kennedy had been

killed (which of course I already

knew about, and wasn't current,

breaking, news; I forget how it

came up), I turned on her, in her

distress, and just said, 'Good;

maybe it'll teach him to keep

his mouth shut.' Looking back

now, that is about the most brazen

and stupid comment anyone could

make, let alone into the face of

their own sad mother  -  sad at

the occurrence  -  and not

deserving the snide swipe

I'd thrown at her. (I noticed,

however, she'd not been sad 

in the same way at all, just

previous, when Martin Luther 

King went down. I probably 

could have used that same 

dumb comment then too). 

Perfect idiot stuff. And, in 

addition, the comment itself 

makes no sense. He's dead. 

What's it going to 'teach' him, 

this 'keeping his mouth shut.' 

What an idiot human I was. 

So, once realizing that, what

was I then supposed to do?

I never really knew, and when

you're young enough for that

sort of illogic, all options are

presented to you as equally

maladroit. I didn't wish to 'go'

anywhere, after any of them.

There are a few years, when one

is growing up, that life presents

itself to you as nothing but a

string of stupidities and foolishness.

Pranks, bomb scares, crazy riffs

to get attention, squirming in

front of others to be sure you're

noticed. I guess that's what

'college' is supposed to collect

for you in one big place; all that

foolish stupidity, acted out, with

ideas of self-importance enough

to think any of it matters. The

'Keys Of the Kingdom' indeed.

(That was a 1941 book by A. J.

Cronin). It was still a big enough

Catholic deal in 1956 to be among

part of my mothers 'vast' library

(I'm joking) of Reader's Digest

Condensed Books.

-

Those things were crazy   - 

monthly, by subscription,

faux-important books

truncated and cut down

to size, (I guess because

they were considered so

important and ponderous

that even non-readers

should get a cut-rate

version of them for their

bulging bookshelves. (Joke

again). I used to look at them,

hold them in my hand (usually

there were 4 or 5 'grouped'

together in one monthly

volume), and think of the

poor author  -  who'd been

evading and fighting with

his pre-publication editor for

months over what to cut

or not to cut, for publication 

-  and then these Pleasantville,

NY, Reader's Digest people

buy the condensing rights

to the book from your

publisher/agent, and attack 

it with a cleaver and, as author, 

you get about a dollar and 

twenty-seven cents from your 

'publisher' for the privilege of 

expanding your (deep) audience.

By the end of the 1950's there

were a number of these high

Catholic books about reverential 

church things, such as this Pope

and 'Keys Of the Kingdom' stuff.

It wasn't until maybe 10 years

later after it had all collapsed, that

the reverence was gone and people

would just begin to laugh at all

that. Irreverence, instead, became

the catchword of the day. That's

how much things would have 

changed. One time, much later,

we went up to Chappaqua, New 

York, Millwood, Thornwood,

all these places. I turned a corner

and right before me, there was the

Reader's Digest Company's

Pleasantville Headquarters (it's

all gone now, and turned into 

office and other facility commercial 

uses), but back when this occurred

it was still in use as their space  - a

large, almost important looking, 

sprawling campus  -  greenery,

space, landscaped nicely, parking

areas, and a high, fine-looking 

building. At that point the only other

commercial place like this I'd seen

was the campus-like headquarters

of Merck, in Rahway. That too was

fascinating to me -   as it was much 

like a college campus for some 

mid-level organization of learning.

Which it was, but instead this sprawl

couldn't have cared less about the

old Greek philosophers or classical

thinking and learning, books, and

Shakespeare and all that. They made

medicine and drugs. That was their

research, and they made them for

profit, but within the campus there,

like Pleasantville, you'd never know 

that.

-

That's where I always got tripped up.

I never understood business. I never

understood why people's drive for money 
led them to do the so-many-dumb

things most people did all day long.

For money. Make bombs and hope

for larger defense contracts. Which

would mean, of course, the bombs

had gotten used up and more were 

needed, and the planes to deliver 

them with, to their kill-the-people

locations. Or defoliants. Or poisons

and gases. To take home a paycheck

on Friday? How could anyone be 

so low? It's not like you're doing

anything good. Working for 

Monsanto, making Agent Orange

in the 1960's must have been a real

blast. But that's just the way it was.

Maybe they should have just made

that stuff in 'Pleasantville' and told

Reader's Digest to go stuff themselves

and leave: 'We have better uses for

this nice location.'

-

These sorts of things were my own

debates with my own self. I never

talked much about any of this with

others  - my mind usually was off

running on some tangent somewhere

and I often ended up manufacturing

my own facts and figures for the

purpose of the tale. That's called

'controlling the narrative,' and of

course that's something writers 

do all the time because that's pretty 

much what writing is. Nowadays,

political types call it all 'fake news,'

but they do the same thing constantly.

In order to keep people under your 

wing, you MUST control the narrative  

-  thus censorship, authoritarianism, 

and controls. Remember, only the

victors write History. If Native

Americans had triumphed, their

version of what had occurred 

would be totally different than

what we'd ever been exposed to

before. They would, let's say, no

longer have to keep their damned

mouths shut.