Page 25 - The Myth and the Moment

Morning

Nowadays the police are not just the last enforcers of social order,
but the only enforcers; everybody knows it, and nobody worries
about getting caught. And the reactionaries blame it on
permissiveness and liberal education and drugs and all that. Do they
have a case, Nathan? Is the child spoiled by sparing the rod? Naw,
can’t be. Anthropologists have thrown all that out. It’s just the
anomie of mass society, a brutal uncaring environment, the urban
jungle. No religious or political philosophy is responsible for that. It’s
just another symptom of the unconscious stupidity pushing us
forward to The End.
Gas station. Do I need—no, I’ll make it, limping along. Phil seems
to have made it. Proving what? The big bad world favors big bad
boys? Already knew that. The race was lost to the swift: the human
race. Didn’t I really want to make it, too? Yes. But I didn’t follow the
brass ring, and stayed on the wrong merry-go-round. Claim a higher
morality than the Phils of the world, do you, Nate? No. I could have
been corrupted. I could still be corrupted. But I went too far down
the road by myself, drew too many conclusions, never developed the
taste for the finer things money can buy, etcetera, etcetera.
Allison was there, too, in the Fifties, trying to make it; but with a
different angle. She was going to make it and be herself, be it never
so humble. Very little amplification needed for her personality. I can
make you love me, says she to the footlights. Being born with a
certain animal charm doesn’t hurt, of course. Glad I kept my
distance; she would have chewed me up and spit me out. A
Cinderella trying on men like shoes: the lucky ones are discarded
because they don’t fit; the unlucky do, and get worn out fast. Right
down to the souls. Is that sour grapes, Nathan?
Nah, those people talked a good game of live hard, die young, and
make a pretty corpse. That was youth talking, the expansive ego on
the make: Hollywood or bust! But that’s part of the stream you have
to swim up, paradoxically: push hard at the mouth of the delta, it’s
wide and rushing toward you; later, having reached the highlands and
the river source, you can take it easy, almost float. Miss the opening
effort, and you sit out in the bay, watching the struggle, and soon find
a way to live with not trying. That’s not sour grapes; that’s wisdom. I
suppose some who’ve run the course without losing their perspective
come to the same realization, and they could be considered superior

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