28 November 2021
Dear sister,
Thank you for the exchange of Thanksgiving notes. I know you appreciate our Mother would not have deemed such succinct (m)utterings (!) “letters”, short bursts of hastily written thoughts, the electronic equivalents “twits” or “text messages”. A LETTER back in the day required a ream of typing paper on hand and, at a minimum, two, even three dozen sheets of carbon (!!) paper. If only to honor the memory of two dear now departed souls – our Mother and my oldest and best friend, an M.D., I shall assay an honest-to-GOD letter to you and others of our family and close friends, thus honoring and carrying on my Mother’s preferred practice.
Today as you also appreciate, your brother a veteran Doom & Gloomer, I speak more usually about that which is artificial, human conceits at best, after Nature’s own natural took a discrete if not discreet back seat to “progress” and “progressives”, “environmentalists”, “anti-individualistic socialist communitarians” (aka “communists | corporatists” in older lingo). [We have re-buttered up!!] As seems the age-old practice of The Power$ That Be, TV adverts had warned us: “It’s not NICE to fool Mother Nature!”, which TP$TB proceeded to do with margarine and few gazillion other “modern products”. In our lifetimes, all that consummated merely Phase N of countless other forays in the “material world”, battle grounds and fronts each and all in The War Against Mankind. “…With no part left untouched…”, as Arlo Guthrie wryly commented during his “Alice’s Restaurant” ballad in a verse dealing, appropriately enough, with his draft-era physical examination prior to induction into the US Army (right, as if, “I will not comply”!).
As an unabashed veteran Doom & Gloomer, I often refer to seemingly more innocent decades, especially the Age of Global cooling warming “weather climate change”, which scam still lurks beneath, around, and layered over the Great COVID Scamdemic, the latter fair to call the biggest psychological operation in recorded human history. In actuality, given real and true and accurate history edited and re-written by victors probably for several millennia – I know, hard to fathom off the top of one’s head! – we got born into the heyday of predators salivating for prey, TP$TB having prepared the way for centuries literally! Both in fact and in conviction, The War Against Mankind commenced so long ago we seek its beginnings in earliest extant myths. As a passing reference, the words Archon and Gnostics and Phoenicians might suffice as I move on from here to other topics germane to the day.
We have long since entered decades – I optimist deploy the plural while Me pessimist scoffs quietly behind hands covering a wickedly pained grimace! – when funerals outnumber both weddings and christenings counted together, a time exacerbated by many not getting “hitched” and not having children! We might speak of the commonly practiced scattering of ashes of one’s (then) former vehicle. Graves per se seem so yesterday.
Soon we shall have the option of “donating” our physical body – preferably along with still functioning organs, not only to Big Science but also to Big Med and its joined-at-the-hip evil twin, Big Pharma, born respectively of (a) body mechanics and blood letting and (b) patent medicine, never venturing much further into healing and health, both “Biggies” today primary perpetrators and consumers of fresh baby parts obtained from still living, viable babies in the womb. Can there be greater sin? The science-fiction-y, futuristic, dystopian novel Soylent Green pulled a punch or two, as it turns out. The Truth of Reality goes much darker, unto blackness itself.
My dear doctor friend, may his soul find spiritual balm, immediate rest, and indefinite solace (not solitude!), had an oncologically nasty exit from this plane. Before the terminating worst, he and I had engaged a series of occasions extending over several years to discuss “after life”, whether or not it “exists” (!), all the usual considerations. As so few seem able today, he and I agreed, most of the literature (secular and spiritual), nearly the entirety of religion, appeared intended to obfuscate, to conceal, and to befuddle and fool common folk, all the while taking in high-falutin’ educated atheistic, agnostic, skeptical, solipsistic elite AND self-righteous, dressed-to-the-hilt religious poohbahs. Politics and religion and worse subjects (to most I know!) dominated our discourse and written exchanges.
For example, four to five years ago, I could not disabuse the good doctor of his reflexive, hopeful support of Donald J. (!) Trump as “POTUS” any more than I could dissuade his polar opposite in a friend (Ph.D., Psychology) suffering to this day from TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome)! JUST WHAT IS IT about the sheer logic, symbolic obviousness of the good Rev. Dodgson’s Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum that modern, thinking folks cannot grok?? I do not understand! Perhaps when I too get to the “other side”….
Many, many years before in college (1966-1967), we and others would sit late at night through to wee hours in our first-floor, sex-segregated dormitory hallway – serendipitously well designed as a site of “super-ball tournaments”. (We relegated such “serious”, standardized games as contract bridge [of which I also partook] to the common dormitory lobby.) Backs against painted concrete blocks, never a thought for creature comforts, we vigorously discussed, rationally or metaphorically, Life, Death, and The Reason WHY. Later hindered by inexorably advancing age – now both of us “doctors”, he and I, he the kind that (used to) help people, aided by broader, more diverse experiences than we had then to share at ages 18 and 19 years, respectively, Dr. He and Dr. Me managed again and again to solve the world’s main problems at least partly and to answer questions of mutual interest to us.
Then, the Earth turned sufficiently to declare a new day dawned – whereupon, eventually, always, he and I and all of us found the very same problems festering anew! Nature had renewed, only Time “wasted” and, in a slightly smilingly sense, only our losing a degree or two of physical and mental stamina for the next day or so. Overall, we gained little and lost Nothing to the maya of moments ahead. In recompense, to a certain fateful time, as grown-up children, hand in hand, Dr. He and Dr. Me reaped rewards of solidarity and depth of friendship, the capital “F” variety that sufficed us both unto the day, to this very day, as we might rhyme.
In the end, which my doctor friend encountered before us, an uncountably large number of souls gone before and lined up behind, the latter abiding in patience (or not!), awaiting the unknown appointed hour, a welcoming spirit contending with feelings of fear, fragments of memorably imprinted lines of songs come to my mind in GOD’s way of teaching, for instance, the following: “…my only friend”, “you go your way, I’ll go mine”, and “the love you make is equal to the love you take”. Lost in the witting welter of bad influences that beset mankind, immersed in cesspools constituted by comparatively few poisoned springs from which putrid, fluoridated flows emanate for our imbibing, I too struggle to grasp firm hold of outstretched arms with life-jackets and floats, scarcely able to believe, much less have full faith, despite eyes wider open than ever, certainly blinded neither by sunlight nor by electric torches, still seeking to see unfiltered Light, a Fool’s Errand, of course!
Yet, I have confidence. I shall not find myself alone when I embrace my personal end, albeit in an atmosphere of not knowingness, with doubts hardly commensurate with those of Thomas, so magnitudinous for (reportedly) a direct apostle of the Master Jesus, for GOD’s sake! Like “folk tales”, I wonder whether that New Testament story (among so many others) got included for its pedagogical worth, if not as a deliberately ironic “faithful account” by editors and re-writers of “books” of the New Testament. I find it impossible to accept that degree of skepticism in a man who had a spiritual awakening and came to greater maturity under the tutelage of the Master Jesus. After all, ancient myths had incorporated this theme (rising from the “dead”, or ashes, if you will, not to mention, in the lifetime of Thomas himself, the fate and resuscitation of Lazarus!). Nothing new under the sun! Though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death….
When I do come to an end, I shall think it not too much to ask of GOD – an early, post-mortem “To Do” if not a reward for good, certainly not stellar behavior – to permit my tracking Gordon down on the “other side”, to be together again, this timeless moment on the banks of the heavenly river flowing infinitely slowly, to hash over by then to us almost mythical times. We shall once again ponder next adventures, whether together or apart. Still alive and “kicking against the pricks” – an act against which John Irving (“The Hotel New Hampshire”) strongly counselled – I remain grateful for the moments Dr. He and I shared this lifetime, face to face, in writing, and mostly in spirit.
See you anon, dear Friend, after we both doff the title “doctor”!
Did my best, sister, several drafts! Environmentalists will applaud my savings on “carbon paper.” All the rest, not sure! 😉
May our hearts, the hearts of all mankind, be filled with Love, Joy, and Peace, always.
Alan
28 November 2021