X, X, and X

Dear diary,

There’s something obscene about adults. Not just naked adults doing deeds, but adults in general. And I say this as an adult myself. Kids are taught by their parents not to watch movies. I suggest that every adult should be concealed from sight, whether groomed or unkempt: there should be a section at every grocery store that remains hidden by a large drape, so that businesspeople can purchase their food invisibly. For if children witness adults pacing about in the world, it will be like when the Enlightened One first locked eyes with inconvenience. Children will lose the desire to maintain their vim, if they guess that Nature is funneling them toward…

Maturity, prudence, mellowness, responsibility, experience? Fairness? I don’t know if any of these are the right words to use – that’s why I left the above paragraph unfinished.

To be mature does not seem so awful, now that I think about it. But do I say this as someone who has matured? Presuming my opinion counts, I don’t feel that I’ve matured at all; yet I don’t remember ever being immature either.

William Blake writes in his Proverbs of Hell, “Prudence is a rich ugly old maid courted by Incapacity.” And I can’t escape the memory of the former U.S. president George H.W. Bush voicing that disyllable: “prudent.” I never liked his way of speaking: he pronounced his words like a blank: that guy is the perfect example of a lousy adult.

Having given a thought about the first two words in my list, should I continue to speak on the rest (mellowness, responsibility, experience, and fairness)? —No, I should not.

I’ll say a word on fairness, though. Fairness of opportunity is a good thing. If humankind is unfair to a certain group, then the child who has the potential to be the next Ludwig Wittgenstein might end up as…

What’s a decent name to complete that sentence? I don’t want to choose some comedian, like W. C. Fields or Groucho Marx, because those guys are heroes; plus this would imply that it is unfavorable to go from philosopher to funnyman, whereas it’s wholly the opposite.

After mentioning him just now, I hastily checked an encyclopedia entry for Fields, because I wanted to make sure that there wasn’t some scandal in his life that would disqualify him for praise. He seemed clean… or rather dirty in the best way possible. Anyway, in my quick research, I ran across a couple of phrases that I wanted to quote here, simply because they sparked my fancy: one was “…settle into a respectable trade…” and the other was “…sent her a weekly stipend.” (I did not test Marx, because I have faith.) Also there was this section heading printed in bold, which I smiled at in passing: “Alcohol, dogs, and children.”