Each week I sit down to a page that has the words “Insert column here,” followed by blank space. Thus begins the adventure. Sometimes the adventure is funny. I’m afraid this adventure won’t be very funny.
I’m 67 years old as of this weekend, and I am as confused as ever. “You’ll understand when you’re older,” was either an outright lie, or, at best, said by someone who was as confused then as I am now. No, they had to be more confused, because I know I’m confused and they didn’t.
Lately, I’ve been comforted by the realization that René Descartes was most probably wrong when he said, “I think.” He should have said, “My brain just thought the thought ‘I think’; how weird is that? What’ll it come up with next? What’s this ‘I’ business, anyway? Whoa, trippy.”
Former Vice President Dan Quayle never said, “A mind is a terrible thing.” Instead, he said, “What a waste it is to lose one’s mind.” But my own devious mind keeps insisting that he said both of them, no doubt because it wants to be feared and wanted at the same time.
A mind certainly is a terrible thing. I was reminded of that yesterday when I was standing at an intersection preparing to cross First Avenue with Anitra “Her time will come, too, just wait eight days” Freeman, when the light turned red and my mind decided, since red means stop, it was safe to cross. After all, all the drivers have to stop. “Light red; safe to go.”
It can’t be a complete lack of intelligence. It’s the ability to leap to conclusions that should not exist, just because they can be imagined anyway, and then the talent for falling into the waiting chasm of non-substantiation.
It’s a gift, actually. I’m sure it’s how M.C. Escher came up with the staircase that can be climbed forever while always returning to itself. You think it; you draw it.
It called to mind the experience I had with a psychiatrist I saw a couple of times in the 1980s. His name was either Robert or Julian. My current theory is that his name was Robert. But after seeing him once, my mind decided he was Julian. Later, when I tried to find him in a phone book to arrange another meeting, the psychiatrist Julian wasn’t there. In that case, it was just as well because I didn’t really want to see either of them again. But what if they were someone important, like a probation officer?
The Trickster is always going to be the last one alive. You can’t exist without the Trickster. The Trickster grants you permission to imagine yourself into being.
Speaking of leaps into chasms of non-substantiation, Dallas erupted into chaos July 7 because someone decided to fight fear with fear and hate with hate. The senselessness of it is too familiar. It illustrates a kind of failure of sense we’ve seen over and over again.
Before the next issue of Real Change appears, the Republican National Convention should have mostly played out, and its conclusion should be clear. That will be followed a week later by the Democratic National Convention. I have been hoping that they would be full of hilarity for me to write about.
Unfortunately, senselessness just keeps causing more senselessness. It’s only in the movies that the hero finishes the job of killing all the bad guys and then rides off into the sunset leaving the town peaceful. In real life, in this American real life, the hero keeps looking for more bad guys to kill, and in so doing becomes one himself, and then he has to be killed, and then his killers have to be killed.
We can’t make ourselves safe by denying safety to others. It’s a trick of the mind to think otherwise.
It’s not really much different from the trick of the mind that makes you think you should be able to fly by flapping your arms fast enough. They’re arms, not wings. And, no.
We can’t make peace by declaring war on everybody.
We have presidential candidates vying for the opportunity to lead us out of this mess, and I’m not hearing enough sense being said about it.
That’s not funny at all.