A GOD IN WRATH WAS BEATING A MAN

139. 'A GOD IN WRATH WAS BEATING A MAN' - (On Something Written by Rudyard Kipling):

I wasn't meaning anything in particular you see : bald-faced lies are nothing for me : it's merely that a passing array of ten million matters came to be and passing my face and hitting my brow and lancing my boil it all turned to THIS one simple fact - I'd been tracing Stephen Crane (like I said like I said) and I'd pretty much been to each of the addresses JUST SO AS to breath something of the air he'd breathed and see what he'd seen (whatever of it was left was none of it left but anyway) - 14 Mulberry Place Newark New Jersey the old Methodist red brick parsonage the Lakeview section of what is now Paterson New Jersey and also the Roseville section of old Newark and then 1064 Avenue A and 143 e. 23rd Street and 111 w. 33rd Street NYC and other spots too and things I'd not known (but then of course I knew a hundred fifteen thousands of things too he'd never known) and in every spot there was nothing but dust DUST like the ghost of a past with no allegiance to me and the dust was the same dust that gets brushed from the feet but I recognized some essence nonetheless in each place : those old kinds of windows which used to be prevalent the sort that twisted outward for ventilation on a center-mounted spike or nail-post-swivel something pretty ingenious from back when people used to care about air REAL air and wanted still to stay in touch with things outside of themselves in ways that would allow the osmosis and exchange necessary to keep things human and correct but it was all supplanted disgustingly by air-conditioning and sealed and tinted glass windows of the modern designs which somehow steal all the life from what we see - no more wood just plastic around the windows which now can't even be opened and no one wants to open anyway and it's all too bad and too sad too but Nature doesn't wear a sombrero in which to sleep and as they said things keep changing and all around us are the results of that change : I don't want to peddle and I don't want to sell because to me it is all unserviceable nonsense the sort the garbageman takes out and in the same way as trash is removed so should all of this be - let's level something anew let's cleanse the ground let's break down the compulsion of this anything-goes culture we have and reintroduce some severity and strictures to people who need it badly and then LISTEN TO THIS ! 'when you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains/and the women come out to cut up what remains/just roll to your rifle and blow out your brains/an' go to your Gawd like a soldier' Rudyard Kipling wrote that and apropos' of nothing I bring it to you but even more intriguing to me in those days was when I found a piece by Crane too which addressed perfectly my then-forming ideas of a world abandoned by God - a God who'd walked away from his experiment and left it all to its own devices to founder and crash or crash and burn : 'God fashioned the ship of the world carefully/with the infinite skill of an All-Master/made He the hull and the sails/held He the rudder/ready for adjustment/erect stood He scanning His work proudly/then - at fateful time - a wrong called/and God turned heeding/lo the ship at this opportunity slipped slyly/making cunning noiseless travel down the ways/so that - forever rudderless - it went upon the seas/going ridiculous voyages/making quaint progress/turning as with serious purpose/before stupid winds/and there were many in the sky/who laughed at this thing' that was Stephen Crane in February 1894 and I always saw that as referring to the vast indifference of Nature and of Creation itself to mankind (or 'Mankind' here) and it's that indifference which astounds us each on a daily level - 'some it straitjackets into an abject fear and a sublimation to groveling hope and prayer/ while to others it emboldens and makes brave every single impulse to conquer and save' - or overcome anyway - but IN ANY CASE and in all ways is NATURE yet indifferent to Mankind and to Creation - and for Nature at any time you can replace the word with God too and it's all the same at that ONE particular level - which is the level at which people live and breath and go on : 'a God in wrath/was beating a man.'