Rapture

ok, let's see if I can recreate what MJL told me this morning. Ugh, I'll probably get it wrong, but I will try.

"I see", said the blind man, "a hole in the wall."
"Liar!" said the dummy, "You can't see at all!"

Am I close, M?

At first I "got" it, but I didn't fully get it, because I wasn't allowed to say dummy growing up (by my teacher parents), and I didn't think of the ventriloquist"s dummy.

MJL said...the blind man can't see and the dummy can't speak, so it is all a lie.

I can't even remember what sparked that comment at that moment. Apparently this is something little Irish children grow up hearing?? I was tempted to whip out the
"Miss Lucy had a steamboat" song for him, but I showed restraint!

But...I spent lots of time in my car today wondering whether I am more the Blind Man or the Dummy. I had decided on the dummy. It isn't a bad exercise, pondering the deeper significance today, the day of the fauxrapture, whether one is the blind man or the dummy. Duct tape over the eyes? Or over the mouth?

Looking deeper though, the question isn't am I the blind man pretending to see, or the dummy pretending to speak, it is who is worse? The blind man is only delusional, but the dummy is both a liar and a hypocrite for calling the other one a liar, when he himself propagates a lie...

well, now that I think of it that way---I'm not the Dummy. I despise hypocrisy. So, I'll be the blind man, pontificating about holes I cannot see. Sylace says, "look! there's a hole!"

Now, before anyone starts trying to puzzle out if there is any deeper meaning to all of this, let me say, I'm sorry. There isn't. It has just been such a strange day. All the weird rapture talk and all the jokes. Some poor blind man convincing others of something he sees. The rest of us jeering that he is a liar, when what on Earth do we really know or claim to know about when or how the rapture might occur. Reid told me today that there is a bible passage that says no man can know the date of the rapture, no matter what formula he uses. Maybe those people were happy for a few days this week.

Although Reid did tell us about some people euthanizing their pets in preparation. WHAT self-respecting Vet would do that???? Oh, my goodness, MJL was watching "you Don't Know Jack," starring Al Pacino. It was very well done, but too upsetting at this time for me to finish watching. Another euthanasia reference within 24 hours. And when I came home tonight to my dark front porch, I felt that creepy feeling like I was being watched. I was sure that as I walked up to my front porch there was someone sitting in one of the chairs. It was but a spirit...

We had one that lived in our house in Arkansas. Reid, and Guy, and Ali, and several others (of course I did) saw him on the stairs for the first two years we lived there. There was a dog I would sometimes walk around in the hall, only to realize once again that we didn't have a dog. And when we did get a dog, she would always avoid the exact two spots where the ghost dog would lay.

I had lunch with Tom K. today, he said he has never been able to fathom most of the bizarre motivations that move people, and he doesn't even try. He said (being trained to lie motionless for as much as 24 hours) as long as he has a book and can see some water he can remain content for hours on end. Tom is just a sailor. I think Tom has been a sailor for many, many lifetimes.

I think MJL was the lord of some ancient holdings in the past. I can see it. He doesn't think so. I think his nose is quite regal. He has graciously agreed to lift his ban of pictures of him on my blog. Smiley face.

I suppose I am more the " looking for something rapturous to move me" kind of person. I kind of understand how one could get sucked into that sort of dream...that Jesus was coming today. It isn't a bad dream to have.

I was going to study, but I wrote this instead. It's one am...no rapture. What was that old phrase? Faded paper flowers after the ball.

I googled that to see if I could determine from whence that phrase came. The result that caught my eye was a reference to The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood, which I swear I had just asked TK if he had read. The coincidences keep going. The Handmaid's Tale is in my top 50 books I love. I would also highly recommend her book Oryx and Crake, which is in itself a post-apocalyptic tale that skews into the brutal and surreal.

Pg 297 of The Handmaid's Tale:
" ...faded paper flowers, worn satin, an echo of an echo. All gone away, no longer possible. Without warning I began to cry."

Is it possible then that I remembered this particular turn of a phrase from this book? Faded paper flowers...surely not. Who could remember that?

Thank you for your indulgence here, on this strange strange day, when I woke up beautifully, and people and spirits told me things I didn't need to know, and no one I knew was taken into heaven.