On 7/2/11 8:09 PM, shag carpet bomb wrote:
> 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.
>