Demented morals

Shshshsh ... listen ... is that Wagner you hear? Shucks anyhow, it's just those frigging Martians. They're playing with the elevator cables again, does sound like an acapella choir though, not? That tenor must be a real live one though, thinks he's in the shower.

They run that nursing home, those Martians. Play with people's minds they do. Got my wife stealing pastries from the nice couple across the hall. Always hungry she is, sneaks across the hall when the nice lady goes to the john and hubby's not looking. Probably better to be a thief in this day and age than in Jean Valjean's time. Hasn't got found out yet anyway, my wife, hides the proceeds in her dresser. She confides in me though and we laugh and laugh. Jean Valjean would have been proud, those poor malnourished residents. Those Martians know a thing or two about treating the elders. My wife was scared of them at first, but now she looks forward to their visits every night when the lights go dim.

We tried in vain to talk some sense into her. Said we “They spend their hard earned money on those pastries, our dear. Now they're hungry and starving, look what you've done.” She looks rather puzzled at us and knowingly asserts “He steals them from the pantry every day after lunch, that little sneak, and he eats the food off the plates of the people who sit next to him, he's not hungry.” Seems those Martians have got the whole place a thieving. We talked to the staff about the whole affair, not wanting to be the devils advocate here. An attitude out of Mark Twain seems to prevail here, those Martians were craftier than we thought. It seemed watermelon obtained by art was somewhat tastier and it saved them from distributing snacks every evening if we got the gist through their snickers. Also something about thievery keeping them out of trouble. Now that's our kind of perspective after catering to our dear's whims for the last three years.

Maturity is seeing our worlds for what they really are, quoting from the Martian Book of Knowledge as we cipher our wife's oracles. As we age, it would seem, we loosen our grip on indoctrination and subjectivity and the universe becomes this vast playground of formation and reformation. All things are possible and it becomes impossible to judge as the basis for all is infinitude. Seems Martians cater to nursing homes because that's where they find the highest levels of this maturity. Who knew?

So we're planning the great escape, our wife and us. We figure in summer when it's warm we can stash away lots and lots of food if we make a big bag to hang on the back of the wheelchair. Then we'll sneak off one evening and we can push her down the Trans Canada Highway all the way to Vancouver. We can eat blueberries that we'll pick on the way too. The Martians have told her they'd sneak her into any nursing home on the way so we could have a good sleep and stock up on pastries. It gets kind of obvious how the Martians enlighten the less mature of us, using our best intentions for our loved ones to teach us how to play gleefully in our universe free of indoctrination and subjectivity. We're starting to hear Wagner most everywhere if we sit quietly and listen. It always carries this expression of the world's essence, namely, blind, impulsive will.