Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Sorrowful Reflections


Donkeyland, A Neighborhood Heart break
Sorrowful Reflections
(1968)


During these sorrowful reflections, which to me is a bold undertaking I have imposed on myself for having taken advantage of the devotion I have for writing the truth about Donkeyland, still rising rapidly in my brain like water filling up once a dry well, is the following account, and now I ask the question, perhaps it is a rhetorical question in that there is no good answer: is it better to have to done something—something you have thought about doing, let’s say a desire of some sort,  and have to repent for it, than not to have done it all  and still have to repent for it for thinking about doing it?  To a person with no limits, no discipline, and no one to stop him, Plato would say he’d do it! Thus, the latter part of the idiom, is possible under such conditions; and as for the second part, chivalry, or just being a man of honor demands it not to be so, assuming he has those limits and discipline, and culture: that is to so, we are not animals are we not? So the man says: ‘Why not just do it, if you have to repent for it one way or the other?’ And in this case, they did it!
       In this case, two cases to be exact that we are talking about, we might say we need to look at the mentality of these men, but when I do, environment and intelligence, nutrition, domestication, it all fits into a proper perspective of cultured men with normal if not higher than average IQs — it all fits into proper ratio for normality—what went wrong then? The question I’m faced here is the same question God may have been faced with in heaven when Lucifer went against the traits within and among the citizens of heaven, in what man thinks is the perfect environment. Did he not go against the grain? Say I can do whatever I want to do? Who can stop me? What was Lucifer thinking?  Primitive he may have been but supernatural he was with all the intelligence of the Universe at his fingertips, yet he brought into the most holy environment, sin!
       The gulf between humans and animals is  negligible, there can be little impulse control, no attention span, no originality of thought, no power of reasoning,  to which are not capable of sustainability in a wild undomesticated animal— in both cases in animal and man it simply might be the soul which in man is eternal,  and the brain which adjusts to culture from primitive to advancement, but this isn’t the case here, man has advanced under discipline and laws, and reviewed his limits, realizing without discipline there are no limits. So now we are back in that so called unsustainable state with the animal—but we are not animals as Darwin would like us be, and there remains gulf between man and animal, we must call this case a phenomenon as with Lucifer in the rebellion of heaven with the two thirds renegade angels—regardless  of race, historical causes.
       Most likely Boas would say to examine epistemology, I have, which is the nature of knowledge, its presuppositions and foundations, and its extent and validity. My conclusion might sound a bit, lopsided: the difference in the logical conclusion reached by these two people and their psyche: they live in an irrationality period of man, primitive man perhaps, for the lion doesn’t even do what they’ve done. They live in a past culture of the Magdalenian age an age some 20,000-years ago in Europe that might tolerate such behavior, how they got there is another story. But we must move on to the premise of this challenging work, eugenic failure, for with these two offspring we do not see an improvement in humanity, from the primitive, but a sliding backwards.

       I am compelled to tell you to assume a standing position as you read this account complete, though in so doing here is another something to think about: the first time was not the last time.  
      I have bethought these two characters, both Washington High School Students, from St. Paul, Minnesota, who lived in the 1960s in Donkeyland, up front, and I write this with a harsh falsetto voice, for the personages involved are Richard Z., and Tom F., I repeat, both Donkeyland brigands, I could spell their name out for you, but I do not intend to, although public figures in the past, they have worn their ‘A’ as in ‘The Scarlet Letter,’ on need to belabor it. Their stories decree and defy all-wise and impenetrable providence, or sense. I will tell you the end first, they both with receive un-expiated punishment.
       For Richard Z., he received a fresh trial, after the first because after his father mortgaged his house to pay the lawyers for his first sexual criminal investigation, and short incarceration, let out on bond, and actually beat the rap, he went back to his old ways of all things. As for Tom F., fortitude awaited him. Thus we can say the rats formed a comradeship in their criminal actions, fast-gathering, and at the end of the road, finding no other means of escape, no refuge, from one step to another—with the impulse to continue their escapades, and nearly without limits, both ended up in a prison cell with perpendicular walls.  But the horror they caused is indescribable in degree, and done in coldness, clammy fingers, crawling and clinging to women. In their attempts to repulse them with their sharp knives, a cold bite, inflictions, the pain and the wretchedness of dirty sex.  Alas, when they raped them girls, women—and I use the plural, they tied them to their own beds, and  the dull echo of their voices stopped with a stuffed sock or rag in their mouths; consequently, they screamed in pain silently. Then the choking, and loss of air began, then came the first symptoms of asphyxia: as their temples beat violently, and they surely experienced a faint sickness, death did not occur in any of these cases, but heavy chest convulsively did, —accordingly we see one limit, and that was because of the severity of the penalty, but should they have continued,  on this rampage, would it not be fair to say, they would have been desensitized, and death would be the next step forward to appease their hunger and desire, they sought? Something to think about. Becoming the prototype of: Carl Panzram; who’s to say?
       If they are reading this, they know who they are, perhaps they are have passed-on, and long dead, and standing in front of God this minute, for this was 40-years ago, or perhaps they are pacing the halls of hell, with their kind. And I got thinking, why deprive them of this little vignette, if those days are not yet gurgling in their ears, perhaps this will bring it back. Just writing this I’m becoming exhausted.
       As I was about to say, I once came to the rescue of Richard Z., I had come out of my Karate Studio, on Payne Avenue, and three guys cornered him, I asked what they were up to, “He was a peeping tom, in my wife’s bedroom window,” said one of the fellows, “and we’re going to teach him a lesson!” And Richard invented a sad story quicker than the eye could blink, and I said to the fellows, “It must be a mistake, he’s a friend, and he must have been simply moshing about waiting for the karate session to stop…” thinking he was so innocent, and I was about to defend him in battle if necessary, and they knew that. His two arms that were seized, they let go of, so this was not to be his downfall, and they told Richard, “You lucked out this time!” But he was from our neighborhood, and I didn’t think such behavior was in him. How wrong can a person be?
       And then, to boot, when Richard got out of prison, coming directly back into the neighborhood, Donkeyland, and drinking with the guys, that that they cared for it, but overlooked it, he wanted to test his new fighting skills on Larry L., also called Lou, the boxer of the neighborhood, this was his second mistake. Lou sliced him up like a turkey, limb by limb: the Dhammapada, has a lot of wisdom to say on this: “By standing alert, by awareness by restraint and control too, be intelligent one could make an island that a flood does not overwhelm,” also, “Engage not in unawareness, nor in intimacy with carnal delight,” in both cases Richard failed, as did Tom. And for the reader, “Delight in the …noble ones.”

No: 1093/7-4-2015