I’m not sure when it happened but at some time I must have
been transported to another planet. (Then
again - it may just be flashbacks.) In
this new world everything is all whacked out.
I haven’t seen the Mad Hatter yet but I did see Pippy Longstockings the
other day. At least I thought I
did. It turned out to be some guy of
about 18 wearing a skirt – well, maybe - it may have been culottes or just
really baggy shorts. But what really arrested
my attention were his socks. Socks or
leotard I can’t be sure which but they were very colorful. Horizontal stripes – all the way up his legs. I mean - these are what my daughters would
have worn when they were six!
When I was a kid, they would have put you in an institution
for dressing like that; your parents could have visited on the first and third
Thursday of the month. But these days
you can wear your hair any color, dress in anything, decorate your whole body
with tattoos, pierce and attach hardware. When I was in grade school one of the
highlights of a trip to the library was to look through National Geographic
Magazine to see aboriginal Africans with their tattooed bodies and bones and
stuff sticking out of unlikely places.
These were not things we did in our country. It was only done in far away, strange places by
superstitious and ignorant people.
Remember the Ubangi’s? I saw one
the other day. Only he was white and
living in Cleveland.
Another thing I never saw as a kid was a mosque. Muslims were in Byzantium or somewhere - and
Hindus were in India, Buddhist in Asia and everywhere else was Christian. How quaint.
And Mexicans were either in Mexico or in a field picking tomatoes. Everything was so well ordered; like produce
at the grocery store - everything in its own place. Ho hum.
So I rather like this new world. I enjoy the entertainment people provide. My grandkids can learn Spanish in
school. Not from a text book but from
their friends. How cool is that? (Did you know they don’t put all
the words in a Spanish textbook?)
If I hadn’t seen Pippy Longstockings at the store, I
wouldn’t know how well adjusted I am - or just how narrow minded. If we consider the limits of the human mind, to
think yourself well-ordered means you are ignoring a great deal of the world
around you. If this world could make
sense, it would indeed be a small and boring place. As I work out the puzzle of life, it’s the misplaced
piece that spoils the picture. Pippy somehow
belongs there and if he/she doesn’t quite fit there’s something messed up. I’ve grown tired of trying to make the puzzle
look the way I want it to. It’s my
superstitions and ignorance that lead me to dark, confined places. If every snowflake is different, it shouldn’t
be hard to imagine every human being different - right back to the beginning of
time. How awesome is that? As long as there is the possibility of one
more never-before-seen combination of matter - how pitiful to deny its
existence. Every next manifestation of
being holds the key to what follows. No
exceptions. The only thing getting
crowded is the mausoleum we call our head, where there is no room for new
possibilities. The open and free mind
expands to deeper, truer understandings.
The universe itself is expanding.
Continually becoming more “roomy”!
It’s the very nature of living things to grow, to propagate, to ever
expand beyond current boundaries. And
contradicting nature is never a good idea.
Whoa! Hang on there
bubalou! What the heck! Sorry if I got a little preachy there. Pippy really got me thinking and I guess a
little carried away. It’s just the
nature of the stockings I wear.
