I’ve got my priorities straight. My priorities should be your priorities. What I think is important is what you should think is important, at least in the public arena. In the privacy of your own home, I guess, it is probably okay for you to watch the Macramé Channel instead of the NFL Network, which is what I watch. But out in the world where your actions affect others, most notably me, you ought to act exactly as I act. This truth, in the callowness of my youth, I held to be self-evident.
I now know that my priorities need not be, and probably aren’t, yours. Self-evidence is, I’ve learned, a shifting proposition.
Take, as an example, littering. I place a high priority in littering abstinence. Discarding unwanted items willy-nilly debases parks, beaches and the rural landscape, reduces the pleasure of walking city streets, creates more work for overburdened clean-up crews and is generally rude. (By the way, I’ve always wanted to use the term ‘willy-nilly’. Do you know the origin of that phrase? Well, it seems that in the olden days… Oh.... Perhaps we can discuss that later.)
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You and I create ourselves from the stories, anecdotes, musings,
memories and ephemera that we would have be true.
Click on previous stories to gain a more complete view.
Friday, February 9, 2018
Tuesday, January 23, 2018
I Don't Eat Lamb
Here's a story from my early childhood that either happened or didn't happen, depending on who you're talking with. In the Spring of my fifth year on Earth, I lived happily in a small house on the west side of Cleveland with my parents, an older brother, and at least one or two distant cousins, recent immigrants from Greece who occupied roughed-out bedrooms in our attic.
It came to pass in those days that I arrived home from kindergarten on one occasion and found, to my great joy, a baby lamb living in our basement, next to the old coal furnace. My new pet greeted me with soulful eyes and munched on straw that I fed him. My life, at that time, was a constant series of surprises so I didn't question the lamb's presence. It was just a new fact of the world that I had encountered. I sensed an unease, however, an undefined sense of impermanence, in my new pet which, since that was already my own constant state, I didn't find unusual.
It came to pass in those days that I arrived home from kindergarten on one occasion and found, to my great joy, a baby lamb living in our basement, next to the old coal furnace. My new pet greeted me with soulful eyes and munched on straw that I fed him. My life, at that time, was a constant series of surprises so I didn't question the lamb's presence. It was just a new fact of the world that I had encountered. I sensed an unease, however, an undefined sense of impermanence, in my new pet which, since that was already my own constant state, I didn't find unusual.
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