TO INFURIATE THE CONVENTIONAL ELDERS

102. TO INFURIATE THE CONVENTIONAL ELDERS:

No matter how one looks at things it is obvious that the dark ages are returning - we view them only reluctantly and without any alternative - as we realize probably too that we have no control (singularly) over any of it no matter what poetry or philosophy or any of the ‘soft’ sciences say (‘a poet AND a warrior – and as a warrior none of the poets can even approach him…’) : wily like Odysseus as impetuous as the Scarlet Pimpernel like Hamlet he pretends to be crazy and like Joan of Arc he comes from nowhere – ardent and innocent – to infuriate the conventional elders like the Athenian rogue Alcibiades he goes over for a time to the enemy side and like Robin Hood he would (were he to) gather a band of outcasts and outlaws in the wilderness and riotously defame slay and change everything he and they could like Lear he is overthrown and betrayed by his offspring .
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These are the things of my remembrance from years of long ago now as I look back and relive everything I have stored : there are dark openings all along Twenty-first Street and in each opening something is happening for it is deepest night and above the street the lit lofts are filled with people everyone doing something all amassed together - art paint music saxophone jazz drugs heroin hemp sculpture madness alcohol everything thrown about and the only overflow as it was seen was in the dimly-lit alleys and alcoves amidst the entrances and freight-locks of each building where in the daytime other trades and crafts flourished until the nighttime came when from the same doorways emerged artists and drunks and jazz-bo’s and boppers and beats saddling to and fro here to there - talking their talk concerning their concerns and the window-starlets at play were to be seen twisting and cavorting while the tall curly-haired men played back and cigarettes dangled in leaping profusion from loosened lips bopping to beat and off-beat and the toiling line of crescendo and melody and counter-poise to music entwined within art and canvas and torso and hind and everything – as it were – was seen to move together as one AND :
(‘Attention is seeing - seeing is an art - as is listening : but one hardly ever listens or sees for everyone is so occupied so busy with the things that have to be done with one’s joys problems and tears and one has no time to see BUT time does not give you sight and time hinders seeing and listening for time is the space for experiencing and experience only dulls the mind and heart AS the mind is filled and the heart has turned away and so there is no seeing…there must be emptiness to see and to listen there must be a quietness.’)….