Dear diary
If I were to meet a genie who offered to grant all my wishes, what would I ask for?
I’m sure that I would initially draw a blank—like writer’s block, I’d experience wisher’s block—because I would not want to reveal the shallowness of my desires by asking for something materialistic like a new car.
Plus, when I wish for a new car, I instantly think: Why didn’t I ask for a luxury pontoon? Because that’s obviously a much more stylish way to travel. Fortunately, the genie placed no limit on my wishes; so I can just leave the car parked where it is, or wish it away.
As far as I understand, there’s a practice—I think they call it a “sport”; and I think it’s illegal—where a bunch of humans huddle in a circle, and two doves are thrown into their midst, and the humans incite these doves to fight each other.
I think to myself: If these doves had encountered each other in the same location, but without their human provokers, they might have struck up a friendship instead of fighting to the death.
And this made me begin to wonder about our world: I say that the “rules of existence” were devised by someone who wanted us to fight each other. And by us I mean all creatures, insects included.
While strolling down the sidewalk the other day, I accidentally stepped on a bunch of ants. There were about six ants destroyed by this one small mistake. Why do we humans share a world with ants? It’s not even a fair fight. And nobody is enjoying the antagonism.
Some people decide to eat only vegetables, in order to avoid harming animals. This practice intrigues me. I like the idea that, if we simply abstain from eating meat, all animals will live a painlessly eternal existence. As if our world was created by something benevolent.
The truth is that uneaten animals also expire. Everything ages. Yet, to paraphrase Nietzsche: Some people die too early; some people die too late—the trick is to die at the right time.
So, after striving to maximize the quality of their life, we should put great care into discerning when it would be best for each animal to make its exit. And we should assure that the end is always quick and painless. The same should be done for humankind. To death, Walt Whitman says: …when thou must indeed come, come unfalteringly.
2 comments:
I rarely comment on the photos that accompany your entries, but I'm a little concerned here: instead of fortune cookies, are those fortune pieces of chicken floating on a lake? Or small strange shaped islands that LOOK like pieces of chicken and maybe actually ARE pieces of chicken..I know that every piece of chicken that I've ever run across floating on a lake always had a fortune to offer me, so I'm assuming that this is your representation of that phenomenon, which I had supposed for years and years only applied to the Incas, the Aztecs, Colonel Sanders, and for some strange reason, on a rare occasion, myself. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to return my luxury pontoon to my genie as for some reason this model came equipped with a game show host instead of an am radio as I had asked for. OH, btw: https://www.tumblr.com/blog/qualoinfinity ..Still working on layout and what have you.
Oh I’m very happy now!—I just read thru your first installment—I gotta figure out if it’s possible to comment over there on Tumblr yet—I totally love it!! …Plus it’s so nice to read your writing in a decent font of attractive size & shape (instead of how the defunct Fiendster network always presented everything—btw, your layout looks great to me: I prefer clarity when it comes to text; no distractions!) …In my spare time, I happen to be reading a thick novel that is considered a classic but which is dragging (I will refrain from naming it, because my point is not to bash it: I think it is good; but the truth is that it became sluggish), so it was a welcome break to see that you had begun: I was happy to dive into your weird-fun journey (or I should say: your narrator’s hypothetical-yet-real dream)!!
...Yeah, and those pieces of chicken are a detail from a big photograph that I found in a publication called Rocky Mountains Skylines, which is a stapled pamphlet priced at a dollar and a quarter: the picture is captioned “THE NARROWS AT MALIGNE LAKE – A WORLD FAMOUS SCENE” …and those fortunes are from actual fortune cookies… I was short on time today, so I had to steal an image from my old Fiendster folder: I swear that this was the first picture in line to be showcased (again), but it sort of seems fitting… so maybe there is, after all, something not quite nonsensical that insists on rough-hewing my disasters!
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