Established Marvel : a Monk by Abbreviation

129. YOUR 'THEN' WAS MY 'NOW', (nyc, 1967-8):

Nothing ever made sense to me and that was just fine because I wasn't really living between the lines of that notebook paper anyway - watching what transpired in the orderly rows and situations of the hourly determinants I'd see everyday : statues to Admiral Farragut and Benjamin Franklin did nothing to deter me from my errant ways because the only thing those guys did to my mind was highlight the perverse duplicity of all the lies and bullshit which had been peddled at me all the previous years : I knew there was no truth to the effect that rightness and work can make one FREE (there was none of that anyway) or any of that boilerplate stuff they'd throw out every Independence Day and Memorial Day all those sinecures for suckers I'd watch - the Veterans on parade all wizened and wobbly on their bad legs and broken frames and the ancient and pathetic charms of military suits and uniforms of death as they showed them off with medals and ribbons all made me puke and drool at the stupidity of these oldtimers who'd never gotten over anything except their own good sense and the armed elites of cops and soldiers and marine guards and political types filled with their own gut-level ranks of bullshit and squalor and all this everyday military bigwig stuff - General Hershey and Westmoreland and McNamara and Johnson and all the rest - just made me squint my eyes in hatred and wish them dead and twisted and burned over twice : bastards all : and yet the streets were rattled with both sides every day and placards were waved and people stormed and marched and walked all the while shouting their sides one way or the other - no alternative allowed thank you - and the nightly news made its mad-clamp dash for stardom by showing the names of the dead (I watched all this once twice too many times over public-space areas and large-screened enclosures set up as shanties and small towns for the indigent where harried hippies hung and hectored whomever passed) - it was a wild and weird world then so different from anything else and there were folk songs and speakers and preachers and the lost and the lame and those who'd 'been there' and seen the action as it went and they told tales of death and destruction and themselves maimed and twisted they groveled and cried before captive crowds and traffic was stopped and buses and taxis waited while cops kept steady lines or tried and the 'amalgamated fisticuffs of brotherhood workers' sometimes struggled with the crowd (union workers waging for wages the warfare they were told) - it was all dark and maddening and useless and bad but it seemed to go on for a very long time.