Into The Desert (pt 1)

The pineal gland. A small, organic husk of uncertain function and evolutionary origin alleged to lay at the top of the spinal column, just behind the parietal lobe.


I say “alleged” because your average sober-sided, state board-licensed physician is almost obligated to slam the door in your face should you introduce the topic. If you care to make it your life’s quest, you could rack up hundreds of miles and spend months commuting from one sh*tty motel room to another, fighting the bean counters over stale greasy receipts for every single expense line item, and you just might be able to find one freak who won’t immediately set the dogs on you—a freak still technically meeting the statutory requirements to practice medicine. Pending any disciplinary hearings, at any rate.

Should you care to do so, I recommend that you start your search in the American Southwest. California, Nevada, Arizona, Texas. The fifty-mile perimeter around the border between the United States of America and Mexico is as much a mental or spiritual interface as it is a physical buffer. Here the hordes of blissfully fat and happy prefab McMansions of the nouveaux bourgeoisie subtly shading into patches of nervous lookalike ranch houses, gradually yielding to widely-spaced patches of desperate, rusty trailer parks, and ultimately collapsing before sparse collections of widely-spaced indifferent dusty shacks, incoherently scattered in the eerie desert, far from the office parks, shopping malls and factories that serve as the centres of gravity holding the Anglo world in orbit.

That’s where I found MY freak, in a tinny old Winnebago about five miles outside a town called Nogales. I couldn’t give you any more precise description even if I were so inclined, since the weedy dirt path leading to it is not heralded by any interstate exit ramp, not marked by any bright blue sign post, and scarcely distinguished by ruts of regular vehicular traffic. Even the reach of the telecom behemoths does not extend this deep; no towers in range--not enough fat to draw their interest. Your iPhone will register no geographic coordinates here before the keypad chokes on dust and the screen cracks in the 43º heat. That I was able to find Dr. De Selby at all is a tribute to the enduring appeal of filterless cigarettes, American corn whiskey and the inability of a truly exceptional man to conceal himself even in the wilds of such a lonely landscape.

Lamplighter bug

Gryllus luciferens. Insect, member of the family Gryllidae, formerly found in grassy regions within the Mesopotamian plateau. Varying from dark to light brown in colour, and similar in appearance to the common field cricket, but with longer wings extending to the end of its thorax. It is the friction from the beating of these wings that accounted for its most remarkable characteristic--the ability to spark the methane vapours emitted from its abdomen and maintain a highly luminescent flame. Hence its common name.

Referenced as early as 3,000 B.C.E. within Sumerian cuneiform texts as 'unam sampge' (i.e., 'seat of radiance'), this insect was commercially cultivated and highly prized for its illumanatory properties by the literate classes until about the 6th century B.C.E. when, amid increasing miltarism and political instability, certain kings decided that this literacy gaff had gone quite far enough already, thank you. No authenticated sightings of the lamplighter bug are known after the 1st century C.E., and it is now believed to be totally extinct.

This species may hold a unique position in the history of human domestication efforts. Not only is it one of the very few insects to have acheived a fully symbiotic relationship with man, but some commentators have hypothesized that it was actually the lamplighter bug that domesticated man, by teaching him literacy, rather than man who domesticated the insect.

Very few indeed . . .

Well a full week has come and gone since His Holiness released his open letter to the people of Ireland.

www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/letters/2010/documents/hf-ben_xvi_let_20100319_church_ireland_en.html

Lots of comments on it back and forth, some favorable, some less so.

www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2010/0321/breaking4.html
www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2010/0321/breaking3.html
www.independent.ie/opinion/letters/un-should-probe-popes-abuse-role-2114085.html
www.independent.ie/opinion/letters/popes-weasel-words-add-to-victims-pain-2108824.html
www.boston.com/news/local/massachusets/articles/2010/03/21/popes_letter_stikes_a_mixed_chord/
www.nytimes.com/2010/03/22/world/europe/22ireland.html
www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/ireland/article7069646.ece
www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=2706994
www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/mar/22/pope-letter-ireland-abuse

One thing, though, that surprised me was the amount of attention some people gave section #4, about the secularized climate of society.  Some openly questioned the relevance of such a discussion in a letter ostensibly charged with assuring the public of the hierarchy's commitment to conducting matters in a more transparent manner.  I'm a simple man, so I won't claim to know about all that. 

But one thing the 'nay-sayers' can't deny:  There is very few 10 year-old orphans what are able to give a satisfactory account of Vatican II.

Reflections on a Shadowy Past (pt 1)

" . . . . But the spiritual dangers I have enumerated are not the only ones which beset the savage. Often he regards his shadow or reflection as his soul, or at all events as a vital part of himself, and as such it is necessarily a source of danger to him. . . . "

Sir James George Frazer, "The Golden Bough", Chapter XVIII, Section 3

 I hated that job. I hated it from to top to the bottom, from the East to the West, from the beginning to the end, from the inside to the outside, up one side and down the other and along each and every last of the 360 degrees of the compass and all of its constitutent minutes, seconds, radians therein.

Even in my dreams the loathesome voices of venal, mundane clients would crawl into my ears. The endless luncheons listening to blather. About their faded high school sport glories. About how they'd just discovered a "whole new paradigm" to "leverage latent workforce efficiencies". Constant vanities, petty politics, veiled intrigues. "Have you figured out why that other guy's calc's are wrong yet?"

But I was exhausted, broken and demoralized. As much as I loathed the very thought of having to sit through another board meeting trying to conjure a spark of enthusiasm from my flinty soul, it really felt like there simply was no other option. As I dragged my dead *ss from the bed and shifted my weight listlessly toward the bathroom for my morning toilette, I could only think about how the busy season was closing in fast, and how three other project managers had quit the previous week. Even if I had identified some other, more promising position, I didn't see how I could just up and leave the team at that moment. Somehow I would have to hold on, coast on the fumes, skillfully ride the oncoming currents and glide the crew to a safe landing home, like some wounded flyboy in a cheesey WWII melodrama.

Yeah, right. When I looked at my face under the pale light of the washroom mirror, I looked less like a young Montgomery Clift and more like a mouldering stuffed canary with mangey patches of missing feathers. And a pudgy one at that, with baggy eyes and wiry five o'clock shadow.

"Lord," I thought out loud as I stared stupidly at the shaving water spiraling its way down the drain. "I hate that f*cking job to my very soul."

"Amen." A hollow, tinny, echo-like voice from the mirror above me.

My guts sank to the floor.