the news from the
(ivica)
"If, as you get older, you feel you are also growing stupider, do not
worry. This is normal.... "
(Margaret Laurence)
I finally met the
Thousand-year-old
He didn't
look like anything special. But like Madame Louise
Mars (from a suburb of one of Fat City's uglier outlying little commuter communities)
told me Sunday: "Looks ain't everything,
kid!" Louise Mars (as usual) knew of what she spoke. Once, she even voted
for Prime Minister Rocky Trudeau. But now she's a firm
believer in her new philosophy. (She saw the light!) She calls it Here-And-Now.
(I think she changes her philosophies like golfers
change their swings: there's always a better one around the corner.)
"But
there exists a prejudice against a divorced woman not just in France but nearly
everywhere."
(Mavis Gallant)
Madame Mars took me there. So I met him in Place Jack Carter in good old Hochelaga. It's hard to believe
that Charles Dickens once stood around here or that the Iroquois loved to
surround the place.
The Thousand-year-old Man
lived with his children. He married a new wife every year. (That would do it to
ANY man!) They would sign a one-year contract. And he
never felt the urge (so far) to re-sign with any one of them. His home is full
of kids. They drop them off for a day, a weekend, or whatever. Some mothers
dropped them off permanently---they "wanted to be free!" It was all
the same to our man. He's got 11 kids so far. He calls
his home: Das Dorf, which
is "the village" in good old Anglo-Saxon.
Any worries for the future
of your children, Mr. Thousand? "You can call me
M! Well, yes...all you baby-boomers out there! These drunks, smokers, and
druggies are damaging themselves... and my children will go bunkrupt
trying to doctor and nurse them back to health. Make the tobacco companies pay
for the human carnage they're causing. And make the booze merchants pay for their good work. And confiscate the drug dealer's profits!
And tell the people that are smoking,
drinking, and drugging that they as patients will have to pay their fair share
for their medical bills. There's no reason for the
truly sick to lose their lives and health...there is only so much money to go
around! Don't keep shooting yourself in the foot and then constantly beg for it
to be fixed for free...."
So I asked Louise: "Why do you
think he's called the Thousand-year-old Man?" She said that he would watch
a tv show or movie and actively paint each interesting frame (in his head). He
would read a book and really (really) absorb it. He would actually live in Shangrila, Middle-earth, The Dallas Cowboys football game,
and a Turkish earthquake. He had thousands of songs which
he elaborated into personal little movies.
He would (strongly) imagine
living, walking, shopping with interesting women he had met. He would imagine
all the kids he met as his own and think-feel how he would raise them. He would
consider various people as his best friends and try to come up with the perfect
favour. He would ask about your childhood (and then
live it...to discover what it was like). He would live an interesting person's
story, as if it were a personal dream of his own.
"Written at a time when Conrad was suffering from
physical pain,
and from the humiliation of poverty, Nostromo...."
(Joyce Carol Oates)
She said something strange
too. She said that he always made time for people! If the Thousand-year-old Man
ever decides to run for public office, he will get my poor little vote....
bye for now, ivica-counting-the-days
"You cannot expect governments to do anything about
it.
After all, their dependence on stupidity is notorious.
Stupidity is the great vested interest, with holdings everywhere,
and the full support of the media."
(Robertson Davies)
[.LONGITUDO.LATITUDO.ALTITUDO.TEMPUS.]
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