A Dumb Twit

Deliverance

I was a kid … I saw through everything … with a vision as clear as day … but most people would view me … in my kid condition … as not knowing anything. I used to laugh at that … and I always thought … there had to be something sensible … in the way I was being treated. I did know everything! It was a little harder as I got into my adolescence … and then I resolved to myself … that I'm going to find the mystery of this joke … everybody was playing on me.

 

It was years later … when I realized what it meant … and what the world represents. Knowing implies … a knowledge that is verifiable … communicable … that adds to the quality of life … and which forms a basis of reliance. Without knowledge … all that wonderful visions that played on my eyes … was diddly scratch.

 

Not much later … I came to understand the man … I'd looked up to as father within. I realized what he represented in his attitude … personality … and the fact that he was driving me to learn … and to understand things. I don't recall being afraid about anything in particular. There are folks who like to say … its the adrenalin rush. Maybe so … but I saw within the realm of my visions … something sustaining … that appeared to be the source of all promises.

 

I was therefore inclined to take risks. If I didn't know better … I would have said … that I was prepared to take on all comers. And then it happened. I had brought too incisive an inquiry into areas of concern to life … and it looked like the pillars that held up everything was about to give way. In retrospect I realize I couldn't have done much else … other than to turn the horse I was on … and gallop into the approaching whirlwind.

 

It was like a feeling of falling … I didn't know what to believe anymore … nothing was in anyway familiar. It felt like I had been living on another planet someplace else … and just landed on the earth. I wrote about the pathological aspects in another narrative ...*1 … and so I'll avoid a repetition here. But I knew where I had to go … so I picked myself up … turned over some pages of the Indic scriptures … and told myself … they are all trying to tell me how to live my life … but I already know how to do that … so I cut my strings.

 

It was a crucial beginning … and the first two years … meant everything in the way of … holding back my shock … and to breathe normally. Everything had become disjointed … and I had to find their relation again. I set about doing it … and found a curious help from a Boris Karloff episode … in which this big lug … was hired by a doctor working with human bodies … and then getting our man … the lug … take it in a coffin to be buried.

 

The man didn't know what was in the box … but one day stumbled … and the box opened slightly to reveal hair. The man takes a long hard look at it and says … ' human hair … human hair on human head … human head on human body ' … and then concluded … ' human body is in box.' That was pretty much what I was doing for about two years … to connect all the points around me. When a little girl wandered onto the street … in front of a car … while the mother was rummaging in the booth … I stepped up … and carried the girl to the side. There was the possibility of an tragic accident.

 

For a long time since the fall … I was apparently waiting for someone to tell me what to do. That never came … so I started to take the initiative … in all matters in which I was able to relate … and understand the need. Much later … I was doing a class on … Principles of Marketing … and came to understand how companies spend millions simply to understand what are customers needs. That's the way anyone makes a decision … in what they are doing.

 

I thought perhaps … the passions had been creating too close a guide within … prompting every decision … and diminishing the reliance … by the individual on his own sight … hearing … and the ability to process information … he views in his environment. So I did what everybody seems to be doing these days … I distanced myself from too close a reliance on the passions … and looked out for myself. I wondered then how I had let myself into the passions … in such a way.

 

It was … I figured … the visions I had encountered in my childhood days … that created such a scope of view about everything I came across. I remember thinking then … that the whole world does that … in various degrees of dependency. I on the other hand … had sold the farm … and moved in with this mysterious mistress of the passions … no doubt for better or worse. Its curious that … what serves us so magnificently at times … should become the greatest liability to us … on other occasions.

 

But is childhood necessarily aimed at deluding the child into a fixation … about love … that denies all opportunities to learn? No doubt the child strives … for the survival possibility … but a child born in abject poverty … would seek all manner of possibilities for its survival … including an accentuation on the qualities of love and faith … way beyond anything reasonable. That creates a special emphasis on the infallibility of love … and we realize at a later age … that its us … who are not taking our foot off the pedal.

 

In the light of the creative endeavor … it appears clear that man is destined for an experience of … death and resurrection. However the inquiry I am raising here … is aimed at improving the ways that we can achieve that … without an unusual cruelty … and without the possibility of a chaotic effect on our societies. Our legends speak of the inadvertent fall from grace … but they also refer to a man … willfully walking down the stairs to hades … when he realizes … his time has come. It makes possible our journey back from hell. 

Note : *1

The Stones of Shock

http://www.writerscafe.org/writing/Dayran/1462809/