MORTAL BONDINGS (only connect...)

Human-beings walk in the shadow of their ancestors. In the shade of an old apple-tree. The shadow is as real as the way they walk. If an apple falls and hits someone on the shady side of his head does it make any less of a bruise?

In one ancestral legend a man is threatened with execution unless he shoots an arrow through an apple placed on his son’s head. He refuses to even try and is pardoned for his willingness to sacrifice himself. In a later legend, the man shoots the arrow and splits the apple. He is pardoned for his skill. If the second man had known about the first legend and still have shot the arrow, should he have been executed for his vanity?

If human-beings accept that there really is a “here” and there really is a “there”, then they must constantly be making arrangements to meet either here or there. Unless they choose to meet by chance. But if by chance they never meet, neither here nor there, does that mean they have no relationship? And without relationship human-beings would be aliens even among their own species?

There must be a connection. If there isn’t, how could we ever make it? If there is, who made the connection in the first place? Is it real if we believe it, would it still be real if we change our minds? Once a connection has been made can it really be discarded forever? Do human-beings have the right to discount other people’s connections on the grounds they themselves have already disconnected from it? How can we ever really disconnect ourselves from a connection we once made?

Let’s say there’s a clam, a refrigerator and an expressionist painting. A man eats clam-chowder, takes a cold beer out of the refrigerator and dines while studying a Picasso print hanging on his kitchen-wall. Is there a case to be made that humanity holds this world together? How happy would the clam be without exposure to art? What use would a refrigerator be if it doesn’t keep the beer cold? What profits a man if he gains the whole world and loses his basic connection to it? What profits a woman if a man gains the whole world and she doesn’t really like him?

There are few things more gratifying in life than being caught in an innocent act. getting away with murder still leaves a corpse. Bucking the system still leaves that system unsatisfactory. Having your cake and eating it too can often lead to indigestion. But when somebody bursts open your locked door with high expectations of discovering demonstrably demented villainy in progress, only to catch you sincerely absorbed in a child’s comic-book or a highly-esteemed work of classical fiction, the reverberations of that one moment of utterly civilized propriety can redress the imbalance of a lifetime!

A man can only do so much before a woman tells him it’s not enough. A woman can never do enough for a man to ever not believe she could do more.

Proper channels can never meet in parallel lines. Parallel lines can only lead to different places. Different places can never be the same. What is this telling us about the geometry of being alive in this world?

Suspicion and superstition of course are not the same thing. Suspecting someone of a crime is hardly the same thing as rattling bones over a cloth doll on a night when the moon is full to punish someone with a lifelong migraine. On the other hand, if humans suspect that someone believes that this is possible and they choose to do it and it actually works, is that proof of their guilkt or someone else’s suspicion? Or the other’s guilt and their superstition? Or is it proof of nothing at all really?

There was a woman once who insisted there were certain things she “absolutely knew”. She could not accept the possibility that those things might not be true for somebody else. When asked why she should be so giftedly privileged, she replied “there are a million explanations but only one that makes perfect sense!” Unfortunately that was not one of the absolutely certain things she knew..

Two brothers, Sam and Ray, were walking along a railroad-track. They see a leg lying on the track. “That looks like Jim’s leg!” said Sam. “It sure does!” agrees Ray. They walk a little further, they see an arm lying on the track. “That looks like Jim’s arm!” says Sam. “It sure does!” agrees Ray. A little further up the track they find a head. “That looks like Jim’s head!” says Sam. “It sure does!” agrees Ray. Sam picks up the head and starts shaking it : “JIm! Jimmy! Jim? Are you OK!!????”