Dear diary,
I once heard a TV detective say the phrase: “Just the facts, ma’am.” And I remember hearing another person say: “The whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” And I can imagine someone who is serving as a witness in a court case saying, “No one can confirm this, but what really happened is…”
So why is it worth recording one’s thots, just as they are, however they happen, in all their dim·spangled·ness? — I never said it was worth it. In fact, it might not be worth it. I’ve wondered in this direction before: How can one discover the worth of a thing? And the answer is: Look at its price tag. OK, so it turns out that the job of “thot catcher” is paid the same as the job of “mother of men”. And it says in section 21 of “Song of Myself”
…there is nothing greater than the mother of men.
This, then, is the manufacturer’s suggested retail price, the price at which the product’s creator recommends that the retailer sell the item. That’s why so many of our mothers are billionaires, here in the U.S.A. For there’s no greater job than being a mother: You’re sustaining and improving the life of the beings of your species; and you’re paid accordingly. A good mother will pull in a higher salary than a bad mother. And all mothers eventually accumulate vast fortunes, on account of their labors.
Me, I get paid by the thot. Even if it’s a seemingly disjointed and meaningless thot, like “Three weeks ago, while at my favorite park, I saw a type of caterpillar urging over the earth: this thing was as thick as a thumb, and instead of being wrapped in colorful fuzziness, its outside looked exactly like a leaf—as if you plucked a rich deep green leaf off the branch of a tree, and rolled it up, and filled its hollow center with caterplinnards (the innards of a caterpillar), and then told it to go creep near Bryan.”
For that thot, I just banked sixty bolivars. So this is nice, and it lures me to want to record more thots; because a man who has little or no cash in his bank account will only be able to afford the cheapest housing. And cheap housing looks like tawny boxes stacked one atop the next: three high, at the least. Together they form an apartment complex, shaped like a horseshoe, which wraps around a crumbling parking lot. There are speed bumps everywhere, & tilting signs that say “SLOW”; and when you look, from the outside in, at the windows of the places where the poorest souls reside, you note that their dressings—their blinds or drapes—are always disheveled. Sometimes people tack blankets or wrinkled bed sheets over their windows, to block out the sunlight.
However, it also says, in section 48 of “Song of Myself”:
And I or you pocketless of a dime may purchase the pick of the earth…
So, being a well-paid, well-dressed writer of thots, or an ultra-rich mother, is not the be-all and end-all of existence. (Tho the earlier quote that I shared does assert exactly that about the latter profession.) But I’d still rather avoid having to live life lowly; and I’d rather not have my choices of recreation limited to studying the types of weeds that grow at the roadside.
Yes, I’d rather live in a place that looks inviting, with wealthy moms starring as my neighbors. But now I’m reminded of another proverb that I’ve often heard people repeat: “Be careful what you wish for.” For now that I’ve achieved the American dream of living in a tasteful building with 99 mothers, we’re faced with the problem: What should we do with all these kids? Cuz there’s children everywhere. You can’t have moms without children: the concepts practically go hand in hand. It’s like when the package of a flashlight boasts “Batteries included!” But after you purchase the flashlight, you can open its side compartment by using a flathead screwdriver, and remove the batteries and toss them into the ocean. My point is this:
Living children are not batteries. You can’t just dispose of them, or hide them between springs in plastic compartments. If all 99 of your neighbors are affluent moms who raised their chickens right, then you need to multiply the sum by three, because that’s the average amount of kids owned by modern households (the first two children in any family only replace the parents—for the parents eventually will die, and their positions in society, now vacant, are filled by their offspring—thus a mere two-child household will make humankind’s growth rate flatline, whereas a three-child average yield will increase the number of global residents, thus helping us reach our goal of overpopulation), and that’ll give you the total number of children that you can expect to be dealing with: in my case, 99 x 3 = 297; and then you add in the rest of the apartment complex’s residents who are NOT mothers—besides me, that’s just the Father and the Holy Ghost, which counts as a person under our slumlord’s rules about pets—thus inflating the sum to an even 300.
So luckily our government has an agreement with the government of Sparta: we can send all of our children to them, and they’ll give them care. They’ll raise them for us; and we can visit them, if we want, but we don’t have to put up with them in our living quarters. This way, Sparta gets the foot-soldiers that they need for their militia; while we receive assurance against their attacking us (Sparta, not the kids; yet save that idea), with the bonus of reducing the noise pollution in our building. And all the moms here can maintain the healthy glow that comes from being a good parent, while remaining free of the burden of skirt-clinging tykes. They even have time to attend my daily poetry readings in the park. And they can all join my church.
The other alternative would be to camouflage our children, literally, by dressing them up as houseplants and teaching them how to sit still for days at a time. But I prefer the Spartan option, because, when you’re out on a date with a mother, and your eyes happen to catch a glimpse of one of the potted kids, you feel a twang on your heartstring: you want to abandon your sophisticated pleasures and go rescue the little soul from its vegetative state.
Nor does it matter if you teach the kids to keep their eyes open or closed; because, in the first case, you might meet their gaze, and to lock eyes with a prisoner will obviously sour the mood of any festivity; and yet, even if the child’s eyes remain shut, once your attention alights upon this face that seems to be sleeping amid the ferns, you cannot help but question the wisdom of your tradition – you ask yourself “Is it really worth putting the future on hold, just to bask in a few brief thrills before we expire?”
Because we’re all going to die. And then our atoms reconfigure. Then we blog about the things that we observe—we share our thots. And we have no recollection of the accuracy of our imaginations. For, as Blake always sez, “Any thing possible to be believed is an image of truth.” So the doctrine of reincarnation is wholly false, because we have no MEMORY of the infinitude of transformations that physical matter (which is not us; yet save that suggestion) actually endured. Now whose side are you on: Dirt’s or Lightning’s?
For the human brain consists of many clods of moistened soil. And thunderbolts, which are electric, dazzle throughout it. Now, one of these things—the dirt—gets to live on & on, and continue unchecked; whereas its helpmate—LIGHT—must intermittently undergo fits of amnesia. And whenever the light enters into existence again, it recognizes itself in all other minds. And it loves its reflections. For every thing that lives is Holy.
(I confess that I stole that ending sentence from Blake’s Marriage of Heaven and Hell, but please don’t take me to court and throw me in prison for plagiarism, O transnational corporations; for it is you who own the rights to all productions, thus to you goes the glory. Amen.)
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