I have seen a turkey on a toilet. Now I can die.
You may recall last year I saw a chicken on the hood of my car and a fat boy in a house frame. I thought it was safe to shuffle off my mortal coil back then, but it seems God still wished me to see a turkey on a toilet.
The turkey at the heart of the matter was at the road side, which isn’t by itself unusual in any way. That there was a discarded commode at the road side is unfortunately not too unusual either, but to have them in combination – and in such a combination – is interesting.
Oh but the world is delightful! I’m not being ironic here; it really is.
You might say it doesn’t take much to impress me, and if you did you would be right, but that’s a good thing. Here I wish to insert a pun involving the words fowl and foul, but I can’t come up with a decent one so let’s just pretend I did, and move on.
I had a girlfriend in college who gave me a Birthday card on which she had written, “The littlest things delight and amaze you.”
True or False?
It’s not really for me to say. I would like to think it was true.
Now, today – ah, that would be yesterday since I’m writing tonight what I intend to post in the morning – I had one of those sudden realization of mortality attacks we old farts occasionally get. It was quite pleasant, though. I became light-headed, a little euphoric. What was I working with, you may be asking, knowing that I use a lot of chemical detergents and such? Well, it was just Murphy’s oil – nothing which is known to cause hallucinations in laboratory rats.
It was a certainty of continuation that washed over me in a sort of pleasant nauseous wave. Dreams were remembered at once in perfect clarity, and an angelic voice spoke to me saying, “Do you want me to vacuum upstairs?” The voice belonged to Elizabeth, of course, the White Tornado.
Hey, I’m liking this personal stereo, by the way. I listened to the Cow Album today. Holy schmack! It’s wonderful. Pink Floyd’s “Atom Heart Mother,” of course, is what I am referring to. Gracious, what awful grammar. To be able to hear “Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast” is… well, it’s like seeing a turkey on a toilet. I have been whistling/humming and dreaming a happy little melody from that memorable instrumental suite for many years without having a copy of the album to listen to.
Marmalade, I like marmalade
Yes, porridge nice
Any cereal, I like all cereal
Yes, porridge nice.
Well, it’s instrumental but there are spoken bits in between movements. It resembles a breakfast meeting of at least two Englishmen in Los Angeles, perhaps members of a Rock band in a hotel. I have always pictured the scene as sunny. Large windows look out over… something, but I think of it as being in an upper floor, not on street level. I don’t know why. But you can also hear the fry pan noises, the eggs being cracked open, and at one point Rice Krispies snap crackle and popping, followed by the sound of them being masticated and swallowed.
Gee, that sounds dreadful. Just imagine it through headphones.
Yes, continuation. This mind will not cease to exist when it dies. What came over me was a feeling of certainty about that. Is that narcissistic? No no no, but asking the question, “Is that narcissistic?” is narcissistic, so I’ll quit while I’m ahead.
Ah – there is nothing binding the particles of matter that bind particles of matter together except thought, you see. Mine. Yours. God’s. And we know there is continuation. My mother died, yet the world is still here. The part of it she was responsible for holding together is still together. It hasn’t vanished.
Snap, crackle, pop – now chew on this: God is a person, like us in every way but one very special way. And in that very special way there does exist a human body like mine, like yours, with blood in it, with bones, with skin, that doesn’t ever change or die. In this way it defies the very first principle of all things made of matter. The time in which this human body lives is a completed circle rather than a line which runs from embryonic transparency to the solidity of an earthly grave. In other words, God in the person of Jesus does something which is impossible even for God. It’s a mystery.
What good is having a religion you don’t believe, by the way? Why on earth do so many people have religions they don’t believe? If someone took the time to explain what precisely they are supposed to believe they would say something like, “Well, I can’t believe that.” Oh that’s funny.
Imagine one who worships his own body. That would be most baby boomers – the useless generation. They die eventually and then they must worship a rotting thing, planet Earth, “Mother” Earth, the worms that eat them, money, sex, and so on. Perhaps it’s safe to say people have religions they half believe and are hedging their bets on the other half, the half they don’t.
Courage isn’t possible without faith because courage requires a love of life profound enough to be willing to lose it. That is why a million public service announcements remind us to look both ways before we cross the street, brush our teeth twice each day, report our neighbors to the police if they seem to be acting inappropriately, teach our children to fear people, and so on. Courage is impossible for a faithless culture – or, anti-culture. See, if you don’t fear God your only God is Fear. What is lacking is this understanding of continuation that I have been writing about. All of our current academy education is geared towards the exact identification of each worm in the grave, its species, its DNA, what-have-you. It doesn’t challenge the mind with ideas beyond that.
Philosophy courses teach one what to think rather than how to think, and so it really isn’t philosophy anymore. It is merely a propagation of the antithesis of philosophy. The anti-culture swims in oxymoron’s: “social sciences,” “entertainment industry,” and so forth. Bereft of the ability to see the transcendent in the world, one is left with nothing but the worms to examine, to love, to praise. And all Hope is embodied in the acquisition of creature comforts, medicines to mitigate minor sufferings, and so on. These are the happy worms that eat us just the same.
This is getting rather long, like life. Yes, life is long, and there’s a little bump at the end. But I have to grab whatever opportunity I may have to write. It’s not like last year at this time. Last year I was here all alone for days at a time. I visited blogs quite a lot. Now I can scarcely keep up with maintaining my own. I had thought of starting a LIVE 365 radio station, but when? Such things as turkeys on toilets continue to convince me I continue for a purpose, and The Squabbler, with his voice like freight trains, still whispers at my ear.
