Sometimes naked, sometimes mad, now a scholar, now a fool; thus they appear on earth, the free men. – Hindu Verse
‘Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother, Nor customary suits of solemn black, Nor windy suspiration of forced breath, No, nor the fruitful river in the eye, Nor the dejected havior of the visage, Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief, That can denote me truly: these indeed seem, For they are actions that a man might play: But I have that within which passeth show; These but the trappings and the suits of woe. – Hamlet
People will come here and quickly say to themselves – this must be one of the most self indulgent…whatever this is…that I have ever seen.
Yes. Exactly. That’s the point.
People tell me their secrets, you see. And the thing about secrets is – and really, aren’t most conversations not done on social media private? The thing about secrets is, they are poison. If you carry one around long enough, you either break the secret or it breaks you. This is true of other people’s secrets we carry as well.
One of the first things they say in writing 101 is – mine your past. That’s easier said than done when the secrets you carry are almost always not yours alone to bear.
This puts the writer in a tough spot. You have to be tricksy. A little smoke and mirror, a little razzle dazzle. You know. Entertain.
But it’s only razzle dazzle and smoke and mirrors if there isn’t a point. Believe me. I have a point. But it’s no fun if I just say it. I did a lot of work here.
You figure it out.
Aren’t we having fun?
Are you not entertained?
Weeeee weeeee weeee!
The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil is interesting. This is the treason of the artist; a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. ~Ursula Le Guin
One must say Yes to life and embrace it whenever it is found — and it is found in terrible places; nevertheless, there it is.
For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have.
The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out. ~James Baldwin
2 drops of genius (garden variety – it has more zang)
Pain to taste
In a container too small for the ingredients, add and then – whip, stir, blend, mix, emulsify, fold, distill, sublimate, strain, shake, froth and then ferment for 57 years.
When the student is ready the teacher appears. When the student is truly ready the teacher disappears. – Laozi
I love it when I get my ass handed to me, it’s so instructive! – Flying123
Hero, n.1 A fool, properly motivated. a. Said fool, fortunate. Hero’s Dictionary
Sometimes silence is the gift we all need most; sometimes the real gift is having something taken. Peratae Bogomil
Hitch Hereafter
Christopher was in a good deal of pain. Not a lot mind you, not the worst, for say what one likes about the state of palliative care the drugs are beyond reproach. Still, the pain was not to be trifled with, although neither was Christopher.
All things considered, it was a life of satisfaction, gratification, and accomplishment. He enjoyed himself immensely living it. His only regret was the impending sense of loss attendant to, well, everything. He comforted himself with the knowledge that this too, this feeling of loss, would itself be lost – along with pain not to be trifled with.
His last hours of time, a time that included his family, friends, loves and losses, are left to him and his, a span of time, whether it was long or short, joyous or filled with melancholy, are for him and his, sacred and necessarily shrouded, as is for nearly all who go before us.
And so we leave Christopher, our eye turned inward.
This is what happened next.
As the pain at last ended, Christopher would have experienced surprise at the realization of its end if it were not for the overwhelming sense of fascination which nearly superseded all else. Not only was there continuation, there was synthesis, a sense of removing a shoe that was too tight, a sightless seeing experienced through a grounded encapsulated love which transcends and includes all varieties of existence.
He saw his life, from his first inhalation to his terminal exhalation, a great blowing out that is entwined with a sublime taking in, all of it acceptable, necessary, and complete.
And then he was in the bar.
The bar was not large but neither was it small. Not all the chairs were filled but in those that were sat people in earnest conversation, one speaking, another in rapt attention. He sat in a small booth; perhaps enough for four if everyone was friendly and Christopher noticed his hands resting comfortably in front of him, his left gently wrapped, forefinger and thumb around a glass tumbler, three fingers full, two perfect cubes of ice halfway submerged in what could be none other than Mr Walker’s Amber Restorative. With a wry smile, it occurred to him how aptly he had named it after all. In Christopher’s right hand – a cigarette, just lit, the smoke wafting its way luxuriously upwards towards a ceiling he could not quite resolve.
It seemed like a fine idea, so he took a long, sensuous, drag on the cigarette – relishing the glow and crackle, letting the gray smoke fill the air in front of him. Seeming an idea finer still, he tipped a slower sip from the tumbler.
Both magnificent. Better than any other, in fact.
And then she came in.
All conversation in the bar ceased.
It was not a hostile silence. Quite the contrary, every face beamed rapt attention, utter appreciation, and unbounded affection.
He immediately understood why. She was, quite simply, the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. She trickled her way through the bar, making eye contact, sharing a quiet word or two, laying a hand on a shoulder, then moving on. Christopher did not take his eyes off her, no more than any other, but that did not keep him from taking another drag from his cigarette and another sip of his whiskey.
She flowed with a diaphanous grace, her attire both impeccably modest and impossibly alluring. While she did not at all resemble either, there was something that reminded him of both his wife and his daughter.
That was when she noticed Christopher, rooted him with her attention and slid her way towards his booth like a summer stream.
And sat across from him.
At which point conversation in the bar resumed as if nothing important at all had just occurred.
Christopher held up his glass to her, rattling ice against itself and the clear glass. “Not Perrier. So it’s hell for the atheist after all.” Christopher said with his customary dryness.
She laughed, causing every bit of his quantum foam to quiver in delightful response.
She slid a book across the table to him. “Open it.” She said.
Before looking at it, Christopher asked, “Any particular page?”
“Your choice. As always Christopher.” She replied.
He looked down and saw “The Quotable Hitchens from Alcohol to Zionism” Ed. by Windsor Mann. Taking his left hand off the glass he used his thumb to start rifling through the pages of the closed book starting at the end and moving towards the beginning. He stopped a third of the way, then began again, as if shuffling half a deck of cards. Once again he paused, then began anew. Attempting randomness a final time, his thumb between the pages, he opened the book and looked down.
And read:
My own opinion is enough for me, and I claim the right to have it defended against any consensus, any majority, anywhere, any place, any time. And anyone who disagrees with this can pick a number, get in line and kiss my ass. (debate at University of Toronto, 2006)
Beside the quote, tucked neatly into the binding, impossibly thin, was a small slip of paper with the familiar deep notch indicative of a ticket pulled from a dispenser.
Printed on it was the number one.
“You’re up.” She said with supreme good humor.
As Christopher’s laughter poured forth it mixed with hers, finally forced to admit that women are indeed damn funny.
The man who stands corrected strikes a heroic pose. Aphorisms, Apothegms, Axioms
Once upon a time There was a pig who spoke eight languages & did sculptures with pieces of wood & rusted metal he found on his travels. One day he was out in the woods working on a new installation piece & he met a family from a small town in Tennessee. They had been walking for days. The dad saw the pig and said “What are you doing, little piggy?” They were quite surprised when the pig said “Working with counterbalanced forces using found objects.” They all stood around and looked at the piece for a long time. No one said anything. Finally, the dad shrugged turned to the mom & said, “I don’t know much about art but I know what I like.” & then they killed the pig & ate him.
Hero’s fable. The motto? Take what is freely given. Give what is freely accepted. Hic Rhodus! Hic salta!
He was late. He hated being late. First, it was a razor too dull to shave with followed by a bowl of flakes with milk too old to eat with. His beat up piece of shit Ford had enough gas to get him to his job that paid just enough to keep it that way. Then Rodney decided to be a dick and not show up on time; so he had to stay another forty five minutes until he could leave.
He was late. He hated being late. The Army taught him (as it did a great many things) the value of showing up on time. Of course, being the Army, they took it too far, inevitably leading to a whole bunch of standing around doing nothing when the same nothing could be accomplished heaving a mop in the barracks.
So he took up the habit of smoking.
It came naturally, as all addictions do. He kept it up during his time wearing green. When he was discharged at 22, he found himself wandering like the smoke from yet another cigarette, instead of up – through the country – a few months here, a couple of weeks there, bouncing from one futon or recliner chair to another, like a worn out throw pillow too comfy to chuck out.
Most of the women were smokers too, of course. Birds of a feather and all that.
Until that one.
They met at a Wal-Mart. She was there with a kid that wasn’t hers but he didn’t know that at the time. He was there to get a fishing rod but she didn’t know that at the time either.
They met as people always do, by fate. He somehow summoned courage to ask her out. She somehow summoned the courage to let him.
And he was late. Late for the all important first date. He managed to squeeze in a quick shower and shave and the dull razor didn’t cut him too badly. If he didn’t push the beat up piece of shit Ford too hard, he should make it just in time.
As he got into the trailer park, his tires crunched the gravel and that’s when it hit him.
Flowers. He forgot the fucking flowers. No time. Have to improvise.
So he dumped out his last pack of cigarettes into an already engorged glovebox and with the empty carton he got out of the piece of shit Ford.
To spy a bunch of wildflowers next to her trailer.
He picked as much as the cigarette pack would hold, cramming them in and arranging the petals just so.
He held them behind his back when he rapped on her thin screen door.
He wouldn’t smoke another cigarette for the rest of her life.
People thought she was trash, 25 years later, tossing an old pack of cigarettes with crumbly dried wildflowers into an open grave.
People don’t know.
Cliché; n. The people’s phrase, always readily at hand, like a comfy throw pillow you just can’t bear to chuck out. – Hero’s Dictionary
There is an old saying: “Never call a dog with a whip in your hand.”
I know. I had the very same reaction you just did. Or maybe not….
My initial reaction when I read this was, what sick motherfucker would be calling a dog with a whip in his hand? And two, no, three things came to mind in sequence immediately after.
The first was, oh yeah, this is an old saying. I mean, who do you see outside with a whip in their hand? Never mind the leash.
The second thing was, it was definitely a man that originated this saying. Come on, you know you saw a man when you pictured that hand.
The third was, just because the man is holding the whip, doesn’t mean he was the one who made the observation.
I’m pretty sure that was a woman.
In fact, I can see her there, feet shoulder width apart, hips slightly tilted with a fist riding on each, her face, the picture contempt makes when it looks down on the obvious, eyes rolling, smirking, absolutely trying not to laugh, not with but at, that which she sees before her, which is this:
A man, pissed off more than likely, running in circles, whip held high, shouting at a dog: “COME HERE!”
To which the woman replies, softly mind you, because she is no fool, “Never call a dog with a whip in your hand.”
