THE PASTICHE OF DESUETUDE

13. THE PASTICHE OF DESUETUDE:

James Wright said 'if I stepped out of my body I would break into blossom' - well maybe so but I doubt it and the further indenture of that statement is its strangeness by which I mean whatever he means has to be accepted because there are NO alternatives : in other words 'YES, I suppose that would be so but ONLY because you said it' as if I were to say 'had I ever slept on Mars I would turn to a reddish stupor' : just as silly NO? and then we've got the broken datum of handwriting - letters swiftly hauled from pen to paper and back all the while a decaying time lapses over the entire idea of information being transferred in such a way and no one reading NOR understanding it any now : and furthermore I have ALWAYS been enamored of the random sound bite the overheard conversation the run of words without meaning the COME FROM BEHIND win the surprise the jumble - none of these BY THE WAY very 'American' concepts anymore:
　
['Mountain on the edge of eyesight. On its highest peak snow yet unmelted was gleaming pale. So comes snow after fire, and even dragons have their ending! said Bilbo, and he turned his back on his adventure. The Tookish part was getting very tired, and the Baggins was daily getting stronger. I wish now only to be in my own arm-chair! he said.' Chapter 19

'The challenge of our lifetime is a religious totalitarian death cult. We MUST tear it down. We WILL tear it down.'

'Narcissism all to often goes hand in hand with a disturbing coldness, bereft of compassion.'

'That redheads are untrustworthy fiery unstable hot-tempered highly-sexed rare creatures is what passes for a truism and common knowledge today and while we no longer BURN them at the stake we still carry potent inflammatory beliefs about their power - and GREEN is what people have been offering to redheads for years in clothing jewelry and eye shadow but RED is really our color our perfect backdrop accesory and highlight and to a redhead the PERFECT way to shade our color is to deepen it by adding more red.'

'If I tear you apart in this life, will I put you back together in another?']
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There was a time when I studied music - American jazz music - for many many months and days and my absolute favorite tune to the point of fixation was 'Doxy' - a piece by Miles Davis and others *( dox·y (dks) n. pl. dox·ies Slang 1. A female lover; a mistress. 2. A sexually promiscuous woman) which I listened to endlessly over and over constantly without cease until it was actually PART of my brain and I could understand and clearly see every nuance and coloration and break in the action - almost as if the entire piece was a large moving scrim of picture sight and sound for me and it just went on from there as I was able to assimilate many parts of the America I was coming to know (at that time) into this music - the steel-swarm of black be-bop slavery-infested southern lines the swagger the dance to bravado of the street the loose-lipped strength of those who DID and went ahead of others and KNEW and understood and it became all as theme music for me trying and winning and finding a place for myself in a new land - one where I tried and must had to find a new identity and a new persona for the ME of me who was NO LONGER there the dead one the other one the OTHER (and oh how many of us are NOT haunted by that specter that haunt that OTHER which dwells always within us confusing and breaking the mark) ? and the answer to that for me like a magic language was Doxy always Doxy.

['A librarian was a nun without God.']

What is America today as compared to then - then being my first exposure to it - it is NOTHING and the comparison of it is the difference between the small lightbulb atop the lightpost illuinating the street (or trying to) and the vapor-lamp bulb flooding the street with a different sort of light altogether and no one noticung the difference nor objecting nor saying a word about their night becoming a horrid swamp of glowing blue-green in a never-darkening atmosphere of chicanery profit and greed and fear it is the difference between the first year of horse to auto dissemination - that final time when the turnover was made and the ruins of a place were turned over to the marvel and crass stupidity of the new - when trees came down haphazardly and roads were pushed through at will when railroads past their own nasty luster became immaterial to the pronouncements of the up-boldening and later arrivals of transort people travel and cargo - when of a sudden NOTHING meant anything any longer and all became expendable as these NEWER sorts took over : grifters circus freaks millionaires phantom menaces flagons fake G-men madmen bootleggers swamp-dogs killers swindlers murderers cheats salesmen twisted preachers bankers sex-maniacs travelers drayers truckers and thieves.

['That Miss Hush is a cupcake and she never says 'NO' and I've had my way ten times with her already and it's better each time and we really should extend her contract as school-master and really too the kids do love her - no time for tears sister - no matter what the wives may think and if we say 'NO' she'll just move on next year and where's that gonna leave us'?

'You lament the monotony of ass - there's a simple remedy for that. Don't avail yourself of it - too many whores! Too much canoodling! Get on with the work and the race, and put the gamepiece away!'

'She asked me in a whisper (everyone whispers in that prison atmosphere) : 'Can you describe this?' and I said 'I can'. Something like a smile passed fleetingly over what once had been her face.']

I've always worried about everything - sometimes because of that blowing all things out of proportion or at least seeming too until it was often too late to prevent the occurance of what was (mercifully) a 'disaster' of much lesser proportions than I'd been preparing myself for and as good as this may seem it also bore the attributes of the other extreme - some sort of boorish and stupid disappointment in realizing that I'd squandered time preparing for what now appeared to be something I'd not have needed to worry so much about - BUT part of the penalty was time and energy not being returned (for simply you cannot get that stuff back after it's been wasted) and once it's gone it's gone AND it's like that with life too for I now see that any preparation and justification for the fear and dread of death and God and afterlife and all that is not nearly as useful as it seems later on (to us and to others too) for - as Philip Larkin put it in 'Aubade' - which similarly writes off the consolations of religion - 'that vast moth-eaten brocade / created to pretend we never die' and another Philip (Philip Roth in 'Everyman') also puts it thusly : 'Religion was a lie that he had recognized early in life and he found all religions offensive and considered their superstitious folderol meaningless childish and he couldn't stand the complete unadultness....No hocus-pocus about death and God or obsolete fantasies of heaven for him - there was only our bodies born to live and die on terms decided by the bodies that had lived and died before us' - NOW too bad for him I say but if that's the way he really sees it (and I really believe he does) then that's the way he'll deal with it and I CAN understand that but I let it go too - for there will be no seeking out such a flagrant mono-themist Jew for further salvation on my part in this life or the next (any next) but his form of stacking the deck with dread and foreboding seems to be by genetically encoding the enforced means of eventual death upon each of us by what has gone into us from those who've lived before us - who knows perhaps all that IS true yet I still prefer the reality-altering force of creative thinking and the push which goes into my thinking that I can alter the very fabric of my own existence by altering the interpretation and understanding of that which goes into me ("I can change my life' a la Rilke) and misery loves company it's said so there's plenty of folk in the foul room sharing the odor and the sensation of demise fate and predtermined endings and if that's what they perceive as their happiness OK too but it seems very much like an old-people's game to me and I'd much prefer (as I do) to keep my 9-year old wonder intact : the wonder of knocking over a gentleman's coffee cup at an adjoining table in some ancient 1959 Horn and Hardart Automat or watching the jellybeans fall all over the floor as the glass case they are held in for guessing and estimating-the-count for a prize-drawing is knocked down and smashes on the lower countertop nearby - to everyone's horrid dismay and astonishment (while I laugh and watch in wonder).
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I haven't often cared about much : as I see it the world and all the people in it can go to Hell postehaste for they're all idiots and fools and just watching them and their concerns now makes me sick and I often tell others that I live my life 'as if I was already dead and have come back for a while just to see how things are' no more no less - for that entails no interaction no 'reactions' either to the judgements and observations I make no anxieties and certainly no real concerns about categories events values undertakings and repercussions and it allows me still to then keep the single-focus and dedication to other-worldly concerns and developments necessary to succesfully get by and through this meager place and this more meager life SO I wish for nothing treasure nothing expect nothing and rue nothing - all at the same time - and I have no concerns about telling you or you or you off or the truth as I think you should see it about most any matter and the truth that I HAVE about things is perfect truth and perfect understanding and my logic would congeal your logic in an instant anyway (and all this is what I'd be saying to anyone to whom I was speaking) and it also allows me humor whimsey irony sarcasm rudeness bite and cutting as needed HA!!
['Sentimentality is a form of extremity - and a great weakness too']
All of this can I suppose seem to come across as arch superiority haughtiness and all that but on the other hand it is exactly the opposite of that - which quality for some reason people refuse to see - in that I come with NOTHING and I act that way through valuing nothing and having nothing - materialsim is a rank reptilian quality anyway : and HUME it was - the philosopher - who touched on (I believe) the 'qualities' of phenomena in such a way that if he'd smashed his leg on an obstacle or something he doubted the reality of the pain and the collision because he had found that he could not quite be sure of the 'existence' of the phenomena involved - he could not be totally sure of that object he'd just crashed into nor the existence of his leg his SELF and anything other than those items around the occurence (now - it can be said - wincing pain is wincing pain but I suppose that was another story and no one ever said philosophy per se was rational and clear).