LIBERATION

Eating breakfast – oatmeal cooked with thin green apple slices, topped by a handful of dried cranberries, garnished with peanut butter, yogurt and walnuts, a dash of cinnamon – doesn't it seem endless? -- suddenly I am visited with a phrase out of nowhere:  the beyond within . . .

Brilliant! If only I could think up such stuff. I don't think that way. But if I did . . . but no doubt probably someone already has . . .

Sidney Cohen did, in 1972, he subtitled it The LSD Story.

Of course then, along with many others, I did acid, a very interesting phase of redevelopment. Even now there are mementos that, unlike those in scrapbooks and photo albums, still retain their original colors. My personal museum has some exhibits that are not neatly framed. Visitors, were it possible, might point to Kafka's No Exit sign over the door, hung askew. Actually, Franz, to be imprisoned one must first build it. Once in there, the sign seems an after thought. The guards are mainly close relatives. And you, singing 'gimmie that good 'ol fashion rhythm', might find it way, way too free out here.

Well, I thank who or whatever, whenever something like this drops in. This is not just anybody's museum. Not even mine. Thing is – what to do with it now.

My first bemused thought: what a great paradox, followed by, what a contradiction in terms. It would make a great title for something. In fact as we've seen, it already did.. But except for some categorization, there is no beyond or within. Where would anyone go to experience all that is or is not, or however you'd like to put it? Zeno's impossibility is vaporized.

Said the Bard: All the world's a stage. Plays on my stage employ many actors. My actors are free to appear in many plays.

Oh yes, we have civilization. The stupidity, evil, brutal murders, rape, pillage, plunder and profit taking. We've learned from history? Maybe if we'd gathered in Kafka's one room school house for a lesson. Not many fit in there, and the rest are running scared, or rampant, due to insane proclivities, heredity, an accumulation of relations.

It's time to stop looking elsewhere. The quietest possible moment is the utter silence of having let it all go, and the courageous will stop arguing. Common sense won't settle it. Or a piece of chocolate cake. Unemployed actors argue about what it is, as though examining some mystical artifact, turning and tumbling over and over within a mental block.

My block heads chuckle, having gotten free.