Kaleidoscope
Sun 5.26.19
Richard Pryor used to do this routine in which he spoke about whites. What he found most bewildering about them was their idea of taking a tab of LSD at a party as their notion of having fun. Some people want to look behind the curtain, most like to flirt with the idea, but few want that reality. Do you remember the movie Close Encounters Of The Third Kind? Sitting in a theater watching its story unfold, I saw that most of that audience, if not all of them believed that there are flying saucers and that they are controlled by beings from other worlds.
Existence is a strange matter. All of the species on this planet have a piece of the puzzle about what unfolds moment to moment in what’s called “life,” but none has been given all the pieces to put it together. It’s like looking through a child’s kaleidoscope. Fascinating, there seems to be a plan, but ungraspable. I look at my cat; she knows things and hears and sees things that I cannot know, but then she can’t write. Even within species the life of an Untouchable living on the street in New Delhi is in anyway in the same category as that of an affluent Canadian mother of two. We have reduced the fact of existence to the most trivial descriptive, quantification system because it’s the only verifiable method considering our limitations.
What if there’s more to this little life we lead, way more? That audience in the movie theater, what do they suspect or know? Once, standing among the stacks of Colby College Library, in the cellar looking for information of a zoological nature it occurred that that I would not uncover the true facts because they were unknowable. There was no truth, no true. For that to occur, I would have to consult an alien to look at what we cannot see as we can only see through the human mind set. The only books with any touch of truth, and on a barely superficial level are written by the creative writers, the artists, and only the very best of them. Art goes behind the curtain, exposes us to an alternative world, foreign, absurd, horrific, exquisite, depraved, extraterrestrial, meaningful and meaningless.
Life as the human world evolves consists primarily of a mythos, a parable that forms and shapes society to the needs of a specific era. Some would call this a matrix, and like Cypher to agent Smith sitting in the tony restaurant with fork in hand on the attack of a thick slab of rare steak says, “You know . . I know this steak doesn’t exist. I know when I put it in my mouth; the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy, and delicious. After nine years . . you know what I realize? Ignorance is bliss.”
But then there are times when a glitch in the program occurs and that juicy piece of steak in your mouth tastes like a dead steer, tough as leather. Who can you talk to about this, without being censured? Shut up! You sound like a crackpot. This will only get you into trouble. Check out Julian Assange; the man did not heed the parable’s message. It’s not what he had to say that got him in trouble, but just the fact of speaking words that are not part of our mythos.
We await our red pill, Morpheus.
Eight o'clock Sunday morning, the police arrive at her apartment in Greenwich Village, "How long have you been living here?" The roommate Elizabeth, after having accepted her half of the deposit money and rent for their new apartment, has called the police.
New York City doesn’t open its arms to welcome her, but she’s arrived and the adventure of her life is about to unfold. She’s come from Maine with an invitation from Sarah Lawrence College to participate in the graduate writing program.
How one becomes a seeress is what this memoir explores. Stories have been specifically selected to illustrate, from the sublime to the practical, a spiritual journey introduced in each chapter by an atout, the Tarot’s major archetypes. From the Fool, to The World, our human journey with its risk and folly unfolds. There is also an artist here alive to her new world seeking inspiration among artists on the Lower East side, learning the ways and foods of her Chinese neighbors, falling in love.
