It is just weird, iyam, for someone to claim the intellectual/moral/emotional high ground by insisting that they have somehow escaped the effects of this alienation and gotten in touch with that special inner self that enjoys these primal pleasures. It implies no one else has for one thing - except for some special coterie of leftists (or something). To me, it's just the obverse of those who've claimed some access to refined sensibilities that would reject McMurty. They too claim that they have access to superior aesthetic sensibilities that the unwashed don't have.
But for another thing, I think it's really weird that anyone buys into or perhaps not believing but using language anyway to suggest that tastes, desires, emotions, etc. are foundational, fixed and secure in some primal way that isn't touched by social relations. So untouched, it's in nature. But after all this time, isn't it clear that there is no unmediated access to "nature". By the time we claim a "nature" out there for us to find and get in touch wich, we've already created "nature" and claimed ourselves as somehow separate from it. Clearly "nature" is nature for us, and clearly social relations are part of what makes nature appear to us as something alien, out there, something that's separate from us and with which we must get in touch.
I haven't had my arm up a ewe. It was a cow. I've seen plenty of farm country and get all sappy thinking about the ho downs and jamborees at the rod and gun club where grandpa called the square dances and auctioneered. I also remember the day I helped birth that calf, going inside to the toilet in the farm house and wondering why it was lined with sulfer yellow. I remember the cracked linoleum floor, the creaky wooden stairs made of plywood, the iron-blood stench of the water, the dead flies in the window sill, buzzing as the spring sun hit them after the winter; the house sided with roofing shingles.
I remember climbing the hill behind that house, wading through grass so tall I could hardly see mom, my aunt, and my grandma so we could pick black caps and make pie. I remember warm raw milk on top of those berries. I remember rolling somersaults down the hill afterward and spitting out dandelion fuzz and scratching at queen anne's lace petals clinging to the scratches on my skin where i'd gotten caught up in the black berry and raspberry brambles.
but why on earth does any of that give me some special access to aesthetic, moral, or political truth? the right to say, "gee, I know you're a bunch of alienated lefties an' all so you probably won't like the music/art/dancing/etc I do. Pity that, since clearly you haven't picked black caps in the wild or poured warm raw cow's milk on them and danced a square dance with the dirt down and gritty peepul as I have.
fucking irritating.
We were out riding a lot today. Hot and sweaty on the way home. I said, "Good day for Dairy Queen." Inside, eating slowly to avoid the headache freeze, a family came in. The father stood back and told his daughters and wife what parts of the menu they could select from. I didn't understand this since he was basically saying they could have anything. He seemed to just be relishing the idea of listing off all the goodies, as if saying the name was substitute for the joy of eating them.
"Whattya gonna have daddy?"
"Daddy already know what he want."
He said this twice and finally said it right to us because we were the audience. The kids and wife were too engrossed in menu selection. Daddy was having a banana split. I laughed and said, "Gosh, that's pretty old school. all these new-fangled flurries and stuff...."
He grinned and said, "I can remember never having enough money for a banana split when I was a kid. I always said, 'When I grow up, Ima gonna have as many banana splits as I want."
Does this guy, a C Lo Green look-alike, also get unmediated access to moral, aesthetic, and political truths because his family couldn't afford DQ? Is it poverty that counts? Or is it access to "nature"? Only the, what?, stolid unchanging machinations of nature can change us so that nothing is the same again?
Feh. Fucking Helen Steiner Rice cards. I was gonna take up water color and pastel classes at the art center. Maybe we can make greeting cards for the left.
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Dennis Claxton" <ddclaxton at earthlink.net>
>To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org, lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>Sent: Saturday, July 2, 2011 2:13:06 PM
>Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] James McMurtry - "We can't make it here"??
>
>At 02:07 PM 7/2/2011, lbo83235 wrote:
>
>
> >Nope. But I know what what it feels like when a spunky,
> >salt-and-pepper, 10-day-old lamb whom you've just chased through the
> >muddy paddock for half an hour pants into your neck and licks your
> >ear as you loft him over your shoulder and walk him back to the
> >holding pens so that he can get his fucking injections.
>
>
>I'll try one more time. So what?
>
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