His Eyes Set On Destiny

Knowing Your Destiny

Part 12 of 30

In my travels 'round The Big City, I've several times had the opportunity to engage in conversations with others. I met this guy, anyway, and in few days I hope to say a few things about a local monk who also turned me on to some really deep jive on Destiny. Both guys -- even though they’re both guys from around here -- could not have been more different. This guy was distinctive for the piercing fire in his eyes; he definitely doesn't have the gene for lazy eye. He was also distinctive for the force behind his opinions.

No doubt he would object to calling anything he said mere “opinion,” since he lives only by Truth and Truth alone. I kind of doubt his outlook and yet at the same time envy him. How great it must feel to be so certain of everything, not just your own destiny but the destiny of the whole world, the whole cosmos, the whole kit and caboodle and Tyler too! Like a guy I once met hitchhiking as a kid who said people in Texas only drive two speeds, zero and 150 mph. It sounds impossible but he was so certain of it I still can't possibly doubt him.

Anyway, let's get to it, here are some of the pithy (yet deep and forceful) teachings passed on to me by my John Brown-like acquaintance. I’d like to just note one more thing about the guy, his burning eyes. We were at DQ, me trying to eat a hot fudge sundae while agreeing more or less with everything he said, and him basically doing brain surgery on me with his piercing eyes -- it was endless and uncomfortable -- staring into my eyes with a rare heat, literally melting my sundae and making me uncomfortable in other ways too. The neck of my shirt mysteriously squeezed me till my eyes bugged out. I was kind of mad about the melted sundae. But still managed to drink it in a couple gulps.

HIS TEACHINGS:
-- Nothing is ever what it seems. The truth you think is the truth isn’t. The truth you can’t handle.
-- There’s a force bigger than anything imaginable always forever pulling all the strings.
-- Only he and a few trusted others -- “the elders” -- know what it’s all about.
-- You should do a virus scan on all email.
-- Never get your shots.
-- Up is down and down up and both are conspiracies.
-- Potty-training makes boys effeminate.
-- Dishpan hands is a media hoax invented to pay for soap operas.
-- It’s reasonably tough to distinguish Shit and Shinola. Most people can’t. (I had him here, since I recently studied Shinola.)

He had a few other extraneous points but these made up his basic doctrine, what he’s pinning his whole destiny on. In a way, yes, he definitely has it going on. I wish I could be more like him. The certainty would be great. Then the burning eyes, the judgmental fervor, so much like the typical Episcopal priest it’s uncanny, with his divine ability to see through to the very core of all things, definitely a street corner prophet if ever I've seen one, with utter trust in existence and only one fear, hellfire for everyone else.

Fish & Crawdads

No. 11 of 31 -- Thermometer series

Something important to all of us these days is our opinion. We're overcome with opinions, clearly. I'm of the opinion people are wacko crazy, not knowing what's good for them. But just wait. Evolution, and its more immediate cousin, Mortality, will take care of it. Just you wait...

In the meantime, Fish and Crawdads is the answer, keeping the two separate, but knowing they go together. You want Fish, you need Crawdads, you need Crawdads to get Fish. We used to catch Crawdads and keep tubs of them in the shade of our bigger maple tree. They were happy, they couldn't get out, and they did their job, catching Fish. Which we ate.

Fish and Crawdads of course both have the meat of the goodie and the refuse of the baddie. (A term I just coined to have an opposite to goodie.) The meat of the Fish you prepare for meals, the baddie you discard, guts, heads, scales. On the Crawdad, the meat is a small white piece under the tail, big to the Crawdad but small compared to the baddie. And some of them go full King Kong with baddie, enormous claws and heads, then down to, at best, an above average goodie.

Now, these days, your opinion can be the most cantankerous part of yourself. We can stand your loud grating voice, as long as you're paying dues, but if you can't stifle the a-hole opinions, it might get you killed. I personally don’t know very many people who’ve gotten killed for their opinions. If I knew of one, that's someone I wouldn't have had much to do with in the first place. My opinion, Steer clear of certain death!

What we’re concerned with these days is the blog, keeping it healthy, keeping track of it with these great thermometers -- boxes and boxes of beautiful thermometers -- and seeking its survival and prosperity in a world of readers who frankly don’t know their digestion outlet from a hole in the ground. Let alone what to do with it, although I suppose everyone has the basics of that down by simple nature. One important clue, it's not for cucumbers. So we've got that much, but what we haven’t all got is an understanding of the process scientifically. A baby has the diaper strapped on but has no clue what for.

As this great effort goes forth -- filling thermometers, not diapers -- we shall do it in a similar spirit. Doing our best along the way, not worrying too much, and not even trying to understand the steps. Just doing it and worrying about the results when we clean up. But one thing of huge importance is not getting down in the dirt with these bastards and their crazy opinions! Because it'd only spring back on us. So we need a signal. Some bastard shows up, we whistle. That's the signal. Then when we're mostly out of view, twirl your finger by your ear. Meaning he's loopy.

Politics, yes, politics is always in the air at our meetings. But we’ve come this far — I don’t want to ruin it by lambasting too many folks and prematurely driving a wedge between us in spirit. I have to keep telling myself, "Fish and Crawdads," the mission, the goal first. Then someday, after all this is a huge success, only then can our meat of the goodie be openly telling them off and where to get off -- maybe even ceremonially stripping them and attaching Crawdads to the fleshier bits --  then showing them the door.

We used to get rid of fish baddie by dropping it to the turtles, enormous turtles, like a yardstick across. That's a good way to get rid of things. I saw it happen. And no one ever got caught.