RUDIMENTS 1150.

RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,150

(a constant movie, repeating)

Sometimes it seems all I ever do

is sit around writing. Reading.

All that literary stuff. I never

know why. I'm tired of that

sort of crowd, though it's a

crowd of one. Me. For the

rest, it's all about missionary

things: Causes. Effects. The old

college bookstore I remember now

resembles nothing so much as a

Red Cross ward trying to do good.

Profit motives notwithstanding.

I'm sick of the good. I'm sick of

the cadaverous world that allows

that stuff. How do any of those

people get on with themselves?

Everywhere one looks, some sort

of false crystal hail is falling.

-

Mostly, our world is structured

falsely too. We start our 'History'

with a Biblical reckoning, and

that's that; even as 'Science' and

research disproves that time-frame

completely  -  showing it to be

without sense, and artificial too.

Yet,as Civilization, we bank

on it.

-

So, my thing about David is gone.

And I can't even recall hos it came

to me, but I remember it was voiced

perfectly. Had I written it down, I

am sure it would have worked. In

some way it was a profile of the

David who became the King David

whose lineage became the basis for

the Davidic line and the Christian

line too  -  of Salvation, for them.

Local warrior-chief, brash and

callous and bold. So too bad I

lost the thread. Mental lapse on

my part, but I simply can't get

it all. I'm afraid, for my own life,

still.

-

My mind nowadays gets all mixed

up; brittle maybe is a better word.

I don't know why. I feel lost. I have

a field of current always running

through me, a form of electricity 

I do not know or recognize, but to

which I attend with a fealty and

a table. What little else there may

be, around me, others still insist

on calling 'Life.' I just want to flee.

-

In the backyard of my paretns' house,

as I was growing up, back by the tracks

there was a flock of pheasant, maybe

5 or 6. This was about 1959, perhaps.

They would descend, or be there upon

the ground, in early mornings. I got

to know their flight well  -  that strange

noise they made, their 'voice.' To me

it always sounded like a clothesline, 

the sound the old pulley made on a

reluctant turn from the housewife's

laundry tugging. My mother did it

often, out the back window, and the

squeak of the pulley so resembled

the flight-sound squawk of the 

pheasant. It became a naturally

occurring sound for me, even to 

the overlap and confusion of the two.

And, oddly, there were no other wild

animals about in those years. Even with

the cornfield of the prison farm, which

was right there, no rabbits or foxes

or deer were present. unlike now when,

even in the midst  of far worse, there

are plentiful deer, and small ground

animals  -  all the sorts of things that,

in my own day  -  DDT had pretty

much eradicated. Not to say there 

weren't attempts by us to go hunting,

or pretend to hunt, these pheasants.

Bow and arrow, sufficed, though I

never 'got' or saw anything for the

hunt. It was a quiet world.

-

Nowadays, when depression and

darkness overtake me, I peer deep

into those shadows, not in my despair,

but in a hope of bringing something

back. Some worthwhile reflection

of another land and vision. It often

enough fails, that effort, but every 

so often something really good 

comes forth. My touch with King

David, I believe, could have been

one of those moments. The story

is exquisite enough, though confusing,

and somewhat brutal all the same.

A young son, adapted for new purpose,

slays a great giant (Genesis 6 tells us

about them), smites his forehead

with a slingshot stone, and then.

with the giant fallen and stunned,

uses the giant's own sword to cut

off its head. This brings accolades,

and eventually supplants the fame too

of King Saul  -  as the furtherance

of the adventure brings Saul's death

and David's new Kingship. Jonathan

too dies, and David is bereft. There 

could have been a story there, for my

information led in other directions,

The unified, selected, 'chosen' of

God people.

-

But Humankind's history hadn't started

there  -  it went way before that, back 

to the stars. We err in our attempts to

go chronological. It's a useless endeavor,

for all these things happen together, and

at once, and recurrently, and still now.

The theater of Life plays on, its constant

movie, repeating.