By Tom Kando
Today, I want to be creative and to try to entertain readers with some product of my mind. I am an organized fellow. I divide all my issues into separate files. This is proper, and it is functional. In other words, it is good (a moral concept) and it works (a pragmatic concept). See, here I go again: I sub-divide an idea into two parts. Organization.
So is this what I am - organization man? Is this why others respond so little to me?
Nobody likes an organization man. Where are beauty, humor, love, excitement, adventure? Organization is dull. You want beauty, humor, love, excitement, adventure? Okay: number one, beauty: Mozart. Number two: humor: Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. Number three, love: I love Leah. Here I go again, I make a list. I am the organization man. Let me try again:
Beauty: Quadrupedante putrem sonitu quatit ungala campum
Well, not the greatest, but the only thing that came readily to mind - some Latin verse I learned in high school. I believe it’s iambic pentameter, and it says, “with four-footed sound, the nailed hoof thunders across the field.”
Maybe I can be better at humor... Let’s see...What’s funny?
! The Hungarian word anus means “mother,” I believe. Vulgar, not funny.
! The French invented the word ordinateur for computer, because if they had kept calling it a computer, in phonetic French this becomes con-pute-heur, meaning “cunt,” “whore” and “hour.” Vulgar and (a little bit) funny.
But I cannot entertain readers with products of my mind without a theme. There cannot be a stream of consciousness without a topic. How about the topic of cliches, and starting out with one specific cliche?
Yes, this is a good topic. It can include humor, wisdom, intelligence, it can benefit readers, it can be interesting.
Examples of Cliches:
! #1.: “Most cliches are true.” This is a cliche, but is it true?
! #2.: “Absence makes the heart grow fonder,”
! ...or the opposite: #3: “Out of sight, out of mind.”
Both true: Say, you've broken up with a person you love. The longer the separation, the more you miss her (cliche #2). But you must try to steel yourself and force yourself to care less, as time goes. Try to forget her (cliche #3).
! #4.: “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” True. But we just saw that a
cliche (e.g. #2, above) and its opposite (#3) can both be true. Now what about a cliche and its “mirror image” - can they also both be true? Cliche #4 means that we should not have good intentions. Should we therefore have bad intentions?
! Cliche #5: The road to heaven is paved with bad intentions.
Such logic would make Aristotle cringe, but let’s think about it for a moment, as if the nature of our intentions (good or bad) were both a sufficient and a necessary condition to end up either in hell or in heaven. Let us assume that cliche #4 also renders its mirror image - cliche #5 - true.
It follows that if I plan to steal, cheat, lie and hurt others, I will end up in heaven. Hmm...
Maybe this is where I could have done a lot better in my life - as could many others: What if early in your life - say when you are ten years old - you plan to become a criminal, you plan not to go to college, not to have a good job, not to raise and support a family and children, but instead you plan to just use and sell drugs, be lazy, exploit others, etc. Of course, you also plan to do these things smartly, getting away with them and avoiding punishment. These are your intentions, your plans.
So let’s say that now, it’s ten years later. You are twenty. Okay, you have achieved some of your goals, you have done some bad things, but many of your plans have not materialized, because that’s the nature of most plans - they mostly don’t materialize. So you have taken and sold some drugs, you have hurt people (your parents, your friends, etc.) you have stolen here and there, etc. But you haven’t really succeeded.
So you scale down your ambitions. Maybe you will get your high school degree after all. You might even get a job (just for a while, because it’s against your principles).
What about ten years later? Now you are thirty. Well, you have slipped even more: After fucking everything in sight for many years, you met Susie, and you tried to abuse her like you abused all your previous girlfriends, you wanted to dump her after you used her sexually and took her money, but somehow you couldn’t quite do it. You kept backsliding and going back to her. In fact, you even moved in with her. Now, even the M-word (marriage) has begun to surface, God forbid.
And then, you turn forty: Now, you are married to Susie and you have three children. You went back to college, got your MS in Computer Science, and you have been working for a software company for four years. You own a fine home and your children are about to go to college, with you paying for their higher education.
By the time you turn fifty, you have joined the volunteer organization Habitat and donated three months of every summer to go down to South America to build homes for the homeless.
Also, Susie’s brother, who was on kidney dialysis, needed a new kidney or else he would die, and you gave him one of yours.
By the time you are sixty, the value of your total estate is about five million dollars, including your house, your summer home in Hawaii and everything else you own.
Susie, alas, has had an affair with your boss, and she wants to divorce you and marry him. You totally understand, and you hold no grudge against either of them. You facilitate the situation as follows: You liquidate your entire estate. You make provisions that Susie and your children automatically receive the first two million. The remaining three million dollars, you give to the International Children’s Fund, stipulating that it all be spent to rescue some of the millions of children orphaned by AIDS in Africa. Then, you move to a region in rural India still plagued by leprosy, and you dedicate the rest of your life to the leper colony which you found there.
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