EASTER....AGAIN........AND YET MORE OPPORTUNITIES TO WATCH ALL THOSE 'JESUS, STREET MAGICIAN' MOVIES.......

 Easter is again upon us........The pageantry, The passion, The ism of "Theism".....has always seemed the spectacle of the streets, more than the musings from Palace towers.......As soon as my prefrontal cortex was operationally analytical, I cleaned house of the detritus of mass belief systems that had been earnestly posited, like an underground viral network, whose objective was my potential brainwashing........When I was old enough to write my feelings and thoughts on surfaces that persist in time, stacks of paper, decorated with inked language, began to flow and saturate pressed wood fiber.......and these youthfully skeptical poems entered my existentially exuberant expressivity, displacing the ancient scribbles in the carbon black of cave walls.......It was not until I was 19 or 20, and....reading of Diogenes Teufelsdröckh, then a book that ends in the middle of a sentence and begins in the middle of the same sentence, did I see the exit from the Cave.........

 "Brain Explosion and Facial Disintegration #2"..... 2017

Last in a series of oil, crayon and plastic 'stuff'......I thought I should end the series with this......

INFLUENCERS FROM MY CHILDHOOD....DURING THE SUMMERS OF 1955-1957

My parents were concerned that I was such an eccentric, peculiar, artsy boy.....  They made a decision to send me, during 3 summers of my formative pre-teens, to Camp Dunroamin, near Fayetteville, Tennessee, where my childhood and that of about 60 other boys could be 'shaped and formed' by a couple of ex vauldvillians,  Mr. Jimmy and Miss Havelon, who introduced us to lariat-making, basket-weaving, sand painting, badminton, croquet, archery, skating, swimmin & diving  and riflery.....then, popular activities for boys.....(and providing some summer time for their parents to 'go on vacations'...without the annoyance of driving long distances with cars full of hyper-active boys.....    I had been such a reclusive boy that Mother believed that this experience would lead to my being more sociable.....and 'like other kids'......This experience worked, well-enough, because...after 'camp'.....and now an archery expert and pretty good pottery painter and lariat-maker...and skater......my prestige, among those my age, was enhanced ....and I could better tolerate the company of 'kids my age', rather than seek out the company of Old People, with whom I felt much safer and sustained.........

 

DURING THIS THURSDAY OF FRUSTRATIONS AND TRIBULATIONS......LEAKING ROOF REPAIRS; WATER FLOODING FROM A TINY COPPER PIPE THAT ONCE FED THE WATER DISPENSER/ICEMAKER IN THE FRIDGE.......TOSSING OUT A WATER-DAMAGED ORIENTAL RUG.....MY NEIGHBOR'S CAT HAVING JUST BEEN RUN OVER BY THE ORKIN MAN.....

 THIS OLD GILT-BRONZE ASHTRAY SAYS IT ALL!    

1957.....THE YEAR THAT I ABANDONED RELIGIOUS BELIEFS, ALTOGETHER....AND BEGAN TO LOOK FOR THE SCIENCE BEHIND THE IMAGININGS AND THE TRICKERY THAT WAS UTILIZED TO MANIPULATE AND CONTROL THE 'TRUE BELIEVERS'.......

EVEN COMIC BOOKS LIKE 'TOMAHAWK' AND OTHER 'DC' AND 'MARVEL' AND 'CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED' MAGS OFFERED CONTRADICTIONS TO THE PROPAGANDA THAT WAS STILL, THEN, PROMULGATED IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEMS OF THE 1950'S.......FORTUNATELTY, SOME WRITERS/ARTISTS WERE ABLE TO GET PAST THE CENSORSHIP OF THAT TIME AND OFFER SOME TRUTHFULNESS TO THE NICKLE AND DIME READERSHIP OF THE SMALL TOWN NEWSTANDS......IN HUNTSVILLE, ALABAMA.....THAT WAS "THE GRAND NEWS STAND", DEAD CENTER BETWEEN THE LYRIC AND GRAND MOVIE THEATERS......THAT I FREQUENTED EVERY SATURDAY, BETWEEN 1955 AND 1962.......

 

Vampira Beat Poem (1959) My first exploration of New York City's 'Beatnik Scene' .......There was no turning back to hometown provincialism.......

I was chatting with a friend from my childhood, this morning.......she asked about my "missing period"......"When was that?", I asked......"Well, from 8th grade, till...well, you know.....until now!", she retorted..... I remember, with the advent of pubic hair and my more increasingly questioning philosophical outlook, came a relative disinterest in 'popular tastes'......I was drawn to the 'beat scene'......which there was slim evidence of in N. Alabama....As soon as I was old enough to get out...in a black DeSoto with grey flannel seats......my Life expanded to a preoccupational wall, with Warner Bros. and American International Films, from a frustratingly shunted development, within the context of Pleasantvilleness and middle class takes on 'what Life is all about', featuring Annette and Frankie Avalon.....from The Lyric Theater's continuum of MGM musicals and Disneydom.......to the vehicle-accessible Woody's Drive in...on the 'wrong' side of town......my single contact point for cool, hip cynicism......

Roger Corman connected the perverse dots.......then, I was out of college, with a degree in Poetry..........tune in? drop out? 1967 was the pivot......on one side of the see-saw was the Past.....on the other, a voyage into the deep well of psychoanalytical thinking and philosophical substratum.........where Art is Real and the World of Normalcy....is Illusion.....

THE STRUGGLE OF INTROVERSION.......THE CONVOLUTION OF ENDLESS MOTIVATIONS FOR SELF-ISOLATION

 

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