I believe in Vanity

Today we go on a hunch, a rolly polly hunch, all out to lunch. It's nineteen hundred and sixty one, the year that you can turn upside down and it's still 1961. Twenty fifteen is still a long way off. By then there won't be cars, we'll just snap our fingers and we'll be there, where we want to be.  Neat eh? They'll call it virtual reality, an effervescent mentality, a psychedelic duality.   Da.

Komm, Herr Jesu; sei du unser Gast; und segne, was du uns bescheret hast. Amen    Sitting in a hot little one room school, our youngish teacher fresh from teacher's college inspiring us twelve kiddies to eat our wilted sandwiches before we enliven the schoolyard with playful abandon in the dandelions.

When you are young you don't question. Beliefs you are told is just the way the world is. And after some sixty and some odd years I still catch myself, when I remember an embarrassing situation from the past, thinking “Our Father who art in heaven,” and then I catch myself. Tried for a while to change it to “Hey diddle diddle, The cat and the fiddle,” but my mind wasn't always quick enough so I just gave up and live with “Our Father, Oh what the ...”

As little kids, we'd get all decked out in our Sunday duds and off we'd drive to church. Walk on the sidewalk with all the other folks and up the big steps and through those big doors, and that's all I remember. Whatever went on inside must have numbed my head. No recollection whatsoever. Likely just a lack of frogs. I do have this feeling from my early recollections, that the earth is about five thousand years old and the flood was a sort of turning point in human history.

And then we snap, snap our fingers and the earth is four point five billion years old in a thirteen point seven billion year old universe. But hey, that's young in the scheme of this infinity, a virtual reality, an effervescent mentality, a psychedelic duality.

The biggest problem I have with writing down this stuff is I don't wish to cause a lot of waves. I understand the battle which ensues in one's being when one's childhood mindset is trashed. Breaking from a deeply religiously ingrained social network can lead to horrific inner turmoil, withdrawal, anger, a mind full of subterfuge and trickery using all means of substances and mental ploys to achieve some sort of adjustment. For many it is too much, and I do not wish to berate anyone for their cohesion. Gentle waves are easier to piddle through.

In passing we may note that our war on extremism is not going to respond well to bludgeoning. Western thought has taken millennia to reach the silliness we live with today. A hurricane smashes everything while gentle waves can create pleasing smooth beaches (even if we piddle).

Oh those war years, the years of delightful insurgency, no urgency, all the shortcomings of an industrious scoundrel. That high school boarding school teaching us the apotheosis of becoming tomorrows uplifting leaders. Right, becoming a disquieting legend for sawing holes through the floors to escape those insufferable study periods, pilfering the pantry for nightly midnight snacks, skipping the whole of June grade twelve to thumb irresponsibly all over Saskatchewan, passing out rather inebriated on the middle of the local highway, yes leadership induces quite the sublimity. Somehow Mennonitish conscientious objection didn't go hand in hand with the vagaries of subliminal upmanship. Yipes.

I believe in vanity, the insufferable arrogance of man, maker of divine providence.

And in virtual reality, an effervescent mentality, a psychedelic duality.

Which was conceived by the ingestion of mushrooms, born of Mother Earth;

Suffering succotash, those things were potent, damn near died;

But we rose again, the third day, from the dead;

Minds blown unto heaven, a virtual reality, a psychedelic duality;

From whence we can judge man's mentality, the quick and the dead;

I believe in Faeries.

I believe in fortunateness, the effervescence of ideologies, the ensuing wars;

But our luck has run out;

Mankind is consummated;

I believe in vanity. Amen

Wandering around our continent, spent years of abnegation, denying comforts, denying acumen, denying camaraderie. All hinging on those magical words of subordination, “Are you saved?” Ah yes my friend, I am saving myself from the vagaries of subliminal upmanship. I wander with passion, fulfilling in a fashion, a mission of wishin to be left quite alone with my thoughts, and my vanity, is it greater than yours? “Are you saved?” from what may I ask, is it hellfire or really from having to deal with... snap, snap, the earth is four point five billion years old in a thirteen point seven billion year old universe, a virtual reality?  Twould be simpler to ignore it for just some cohesion. But vanity rules, abnegation or not.

So we sit here in our one room school, in a field of dandelions and our youngish teacher fresh from teacher's college inspiring us to turn 1961 upside down, virtual reality is not yet born. But we have vanity. Snap, snap. Do we really have a hunch, this wilted lunch?