Wisdom of the ages Jan. 10, 2024
I had planned to take the train to a meeting in Bayonne last
night, but when the schools suspended after hour programs, I decided maybe the
meeting might get cancelled as well, and the last thing I wanted to do was wade
through the storm waters to arrive at City Hall to find the doors locked and
the security guy telling me to go home.
So, I got to sit home and listen as the wind howled outside,
and the rain swept across our quiet street, drenching anything and anybody who
dared to make the trek out of doors.
Fortunately, the internet remained up and running since I’m
in season six of the X-Files, a tribute to my best friend, Paulie, who passed
away four years ago this month.
He always claimed there was truth hidden in each episode,
part of his particular variety of insanity which has since become mainstream –
hell, this week, a professor from Havard went on a rant about space aliens, proving
once again how degraded our education system as become, following up on the heels
of the antisemitic Harvard president forced to resign because she plagiarized another
black woman’s work to get her job.
We used to hold out hope that college would make us all
better people, when in fact it simply feeds into the mental and social
illnesses we carry with us already, so we have idiotic protests trying to
resurrect the 1960s when liberals and radicals used to spit on soldiers returning
from the war in Vietnam. Freud was right when he claimed human kind hasn’t changed
much from our days in the caves. We are still pathetic creatures, who get our
strings pulled by puppet masters with an agenda. Our children believe all this
crap and we – adults – have to put up with their ranting and raving with the desperate
hope they all might grow up someday, an unlikely scenario.
This morning the sun peeks out from behind the clouds,
promising us a reprieved until the weather forecasters can stir up another storm
with which to terrify us.
My plans include a train trip back to Bayonne for another
meeting, since this is what I do, and this is what I’m expected to do.
I don’t know what I’m going to do to mark Pauly’s passing
(he died on Jan. 26) or for that matter, Peggy’s, the 25th anniversary of her
suicide will come next month on the eve of St. Valentine’s Day, just prior to
her turning 40.
This idea that we might wish for immorality is somewhat
silly, unless you have the fortune of having Cupid accidentally stinging
himself with his own arrow and falling in love with you – and you happen to be
pretty enough to make the local goddess jealous of you.
Most of us survive our impulses, seeing love come and go,
seeing friends pass on, and if we live long enough, we find ourselves on islands
of our own isolation, coming to realize that life was never as good as it was
when these people still walked among us.
As I watch X-Files, I keep hoping Paulie’s heaven is what he
always wanted it to be, full of space aliens and uncovered plots by the U.S.
Government to keep us unaware of our having been invaded.
This is more or less a pleasant distraction from the real
issues in our lives, the desperate need to love and be loved, to fell
important, to leave our mark on the world so that future generations (who might
not be trying to rewrite history) will remember us as people who have made a
difference.
I’m not sure I have or ever will. I just keep on keeping on,
hoping that when I arrive on the shores of whatever planet Paulie occupies, I
can look him straight in the eyes and claim I lived a good life, space aliens
or not, and that I survived the storm, taking my train to wherever I need to go
and getting their unscathed, abducted by a conductor, not some dark eyed
monster from beyond our galaxy.
Of course, I would get a poor grade from that Harvard
professor who is selling us delusion rather than inspiring us to greatness,
teaching us silliness when we came to him for wisdom, and maybe I’m just old
enough to realize when I’m being lied to.
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