pay no attention
to man behind the curtain …
life’s better that way
Of late, one aspect of my life has been put under a magnifying glass and it is terrifying to live with.
Not hungry and eat too much.
Can’t sleep but always sleepy.
All because I can see under the ice as it gets thinner.
Prior to this, for all I cared, the ice was thick and opaque and I skated smoothly over the surface.
Now the ice is transparent and getting thinner.
Not there is anything under the ice that wasn’t there before.
It is three months to Christmas.
The world will be different in those three months.
This country will have gone through it’s most contentious mid terms elections since the Civil War DID divide the country into two parts.
Artificial Intelligence will have had another three months to kill all of us.
Maybe my personal crisis will be resolved.
And maybe a hurricane will come and wipe out the barrier island I live on.
There all sorts of unforeseen changes coming that if I could FORESEE would mean they would not be unforeseen.
But maybe it’s better NOT foreseeing.
There is nothing new under the ice.
It’s just that I can see through the ice and see what’s down there.
Herman Melville, in his book Moby Dick, described life this way:
. All the oarsmen are involved in its perilous contortions; so that to the timid eye of the landsman, they seem as Indian jugglers, with the deadliest snakes sportively festooning their limbs. Nor can any son of mortal woman, for the first time, seat himself amid those hempen intricacies, and while straining his utmost at the oar, bethink him that at any unknown instant the harpoon may be darted, and all these horrible contortions be put in play like ringed lightnings; he cannot be thus circumstanced without a shudder that makes the very marrow in his bones to quiver in him like a shaken jelly. Yet habit—strange thing! what cannot habit accomplish?—Gayer sallies, more merry mirth, better jokes, and brighter repartees, you never heard over your mahogany, than you will hear over the half-inch white cedar of the whale-boat, when thus hung in hangman’s nooses; and, like the six burghers of Calais before King Edward, the six men composing the crew pull into the jaws of death, with a halter around every neck, as you may say.
Perhaps a very little thought will now enable you to account for those repeated whaling disasters—some few of which are casually chronicled—of this man or that man being taken out of the boat by the line, and lost. For, when the line is darting out, to be seated then in the boat, is like being seated in the midst of the manifold whizzings of a steam-engine in full play, when every flying beam, and shaft, and wheel, is grazing you. It is worse; for you cannot sit motionless in the heart of these perils, because the boat is rocking like a cradle, and you are pitched one way and the other, without the slightest warning; and only by a certain self-adjusting buoyancy and simultaneousness of volition and action, can you escape being made a Mazeppa of, and run away with where the all-seeing sun himself could never pierce you out.
Again: as the profound calm which only apparently precedes and prophesies of the storm, is perhaps more awful than the storm itself; for, indeed, the calm is but the wrapper and envelope of the storm; and contains it in itself, as the seemingly harmless rifle holds the fatal powder, and the ball, and the explosion; so the graceful repose of the line, as it silently serpentines about the oarsmen before being brought into actual play—this is a thing which carries more of true terror than any other aspect of this dangerous affair. But why say more? All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life. And if you be a philosopher, though seated in the whale-boat, you would not at heart feel one whit more of terror, than though seated before your evening fire with a poker, and not a harpoon, by your side.
But why say more?
All men live enveloped in whale-lines.
All are born with halters round their necks;
but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life.
And if you be a philosopher,
though seated in the whale-boat,
you would not at heart feel one whit more of terror, than though seated before your evening fire with a poker,
and not a harpoon, by your side.
What does he mean?
Well, summing it all up, I think Mr. Melville is saying, Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain.
Life’s better that way.
