God damn you hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup, but within y'all's full of extortion. O my dearly beloved but alas blind scripture writers, cleanse ye first that which is WITHIN...—from The Gospel (according to Matthew, 23:25-26)
For no reason I give the biblical quote above; & for no reason I share the following photo of my earthly father with a former coach of our home state’s American Soccer Team. He was proud of this photo.
Deary diar,
I’m different just enough to be problematic. I don’t share the values of my culture, of my time. I’m not enough like other souls. Other souls feel pride: pride in their family, pride in their country. I feel nothing but shame. I’m ashamed of my family, my country, my culture, myself. I’m even ashamed of others’ families & cultures. This whole dimension feels shameful to me. That’s it’s flavor – that’s what I’m gonna file it under, in the god realm.
Could it be that your average person would not care if the Museum of Modern Art disappeared? That’s maybe the only thing I’m not ashamed of: the artworks that humankind has created. I abhor museums, but I’m a little proud of them and I’d hate to see them go. Were they to vanish into thin air, I’d be sad. But I doubt that the average member of the fill-in-the-blank class would care one bit if all the museums got taken. If aliens in flying saucers were to come and laser them all away, the average stockholder would react the same as a dog would react if you took the mass of gold bars from its kennel. Dogs can’t eat gold, therefore feel free to steal it, Mister Martian; just don’t go near the liverwurst or I’ll bark.
What’s the current age’s answer to the Royal Library of Alexandria, which the encyclopedia calls “one of the largest & most significant libraries of the ancient world”? I’m told that this place burned down, and that many scriptures were thus lost to futurity. As an inhabitant of the future, I do hereby swear that it hurts to lose something one never possessed. It’s like the flip-side of hope. Hope is the idea that “Something good might happen!” whereas this nameless pain that I feel about the loss of our never-existent cultural treasures is the realization: “True goodness cannot happen: it always gets thwarted.”
And people drive their cars around at night. I don’t think I wanna go back to hearing the endless clip-clop of horses’ hooves, but I really hate motorcars. I’m very much ashamed of them. They’re loud, they’re crude, they’re smarmy, and the doors slam when you close them. I’m awakened from slumber numerous times, by people next door entering and leaving their automobiles. The frame of a car should be made of a soul-permeable substance, so that people can enter and leave their vehicles noiselessly – yes, now, the only sound that one hears, when one’s neighbors transcend the boundary of their carriage, is a faint moist plibt, like when two soapy ghosts become one christ. I could easily sleep thru that. But even if it woke me, it’d be a pleasant diversion: a hint that the outside world is simmering, simmering, ready to boil: Armageddon is right round the corner.
So this new house we bought has spider webs coating its exterior. It’s basically swaddled in a cocoon of gossamer. So, as long as we stay here (in other words: so long as no ultra-rich patron offers us a lifelong residence in his chain of hotels), we remain literally enwombed in a silken purse spun by carnivorous insects. They’re presumably trying to protect us in our pupal stage.
What I’m failing to say is that we need to wash our house. The outside of our cup. For this natural webbing is causing offence to our fellow homeowners. We—my sweetheart and I—only live in the house, but all our neighbors have to look at it. So once we get all the cobwebs washed off, the dull siding underneath will, at last, show thru, and (at least) offend our neighborhood differently. Onlookers will go from exclaiming “Why don’t they power-wash their shack?” to exclaiming “Why don’t they give their shack a coat of paint?” And on and on. One’s neighbors will not be satisfied until one’s abode resembles an onion-domed mansion of pleasure. And then passersby will accuse one of being a brutal dictator whose gains are ill-gotten: for nobody could gild such a palace from hard work alone.
No, you can’t win with your neighbors; you’ve just got to let them crucify you: don’t utter a word in your own defense. If they accuse you of being a manifestation of the Alien Deity, simply answer “Thou sayest.” Uphold the enigma.
So that’s why I spent last afternoon cleaning my boss’s ranch house: He owns a power washer, and I was learning how to use it. I’ve never operated one before. You plug a regular garden hose into the side of a machine; then pour gasoline into the hole at the top (make sure you spill some gas on yourself while pouring, in case the tongues of fire fall from heaven again); then you turn on the water at the faucet, and pull the trigger to let any excess air escape from the system; now you’re ready to press the red button labeled “EVIL” (also called, in certain models, “SIN”; “TOUCH ME NOT”; or “ENTROPY”; it’s basically the same concept as was implemented at the creation of the world, when Yahweh typed “RUN PROGRAM”): this ignites the engine, thus increasing the force of the water that streams from the nozzle. Aim this stream at your domicile’s dirty parts. Now you’ve baptized your home in the name of the soapy ghost.
Actually I found that power washing isn’t the most efficient way to cleanse an exterior. Nothing beats manually massaging the surface of the house with a soft & densely bristled brush. For the webs that spiders weave are tenacious. Instead of swiping at them umpteen times with a machine-backed jet, after which they’ll most likely still remain, why not wave them off with one arc from the human arm?
*
The moral of this one, as far as I can tell, is as follows. Never use a robotic mechanism to do a task that can more effectively be done by your own organic body. But go ahead and employ an android if she really proves better at the job in question. Yet ink pens beat touch-screens like scissors beat paper. For the whole idea of abolishing the webs of spiders with a single hand-gesture, as compared to using a flame-thrower whose plume is expelled so erratically that it cannot even light a candle in daytime, should remind the gentle reader that every power of the universe was concentrated in your spark from before you were born. And you are not your brain: you are flux itself, which allures and provokes all brains. So change your mind like shoes; but not the kind that are made by slaves; for the hour of scarcity has been superseded by abundance, as potential is in the act of usurping necessity. Anything artificial can be believed in, and anything believable can be replicated infinitely; and money is fake, thus let it flow freely to all.
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