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Wise King Taken by the Foolish Oneessay no. 1 The AttackDan Plonsey Keywords: art, ignorance
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Re: 9-11, of course it's also between men and women. Or, between the baby and the parent: Pushing over buildings is something we learn to do long before we can build them, and many of the aspects of the attack are like a young boy's fantasy: flying a plane, smashing into someone else's stuff, wanting to antagonize bigger folks until they want to take a smack at you... It's a response to every awful mother screeching at the kids to shut up, and every bullying father strutting about threateningly, "Are you saying I don't know how to be a father???"
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Baby Mischa cries for his mother, but his daddy comes instead and tells him that he, the daddy, loves him, and that his brother does too, and so does his mommy of course. His daddy tells him that he, Mischa, will one day drink up their love as he now drinks the mommy's milk. And Baby Mischa listens and looks around, and maybe he understands something, or maybe not, but for a short time he does at least stop crying, and perhaps stops thinking about that need for mommy/milk, but the daddy can tell that it's quite an enormous effort to do so, and before long the baby remembers what it was that he wanted and cries again. The daddy smiles in acknowledgement of that small step that may or may not have been made, an escape, if only for a moment.
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Who is the Wise King? What is wisdom? Wisdom is "the ability to discern inner qualities and relationships." And by "wise," do we mean "marked by deep understanding," or, "possessing inside information? Wise head, wise heart, or wise ass?
The Fool: "a person lacking in judgment." Or, one who is fooled: "a dupe." Or, a person hired to amuse his superiors, a jester. "Marked by or proceeding from folly," and "lack of good sense." Good sense being "a capacity for effective application of the powers of the mind as a basis for action and response."
So, good sensitive people: let us formulate a response to the nine eleven attacks which derives from the powers of the mind. (The nine eleven acts themselves being good sense applied in service to a purpose of incredibly bad sense.)
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Something is spattering in the kitchen. Or it's raining, maybe? Neither: it's water running and rattling in the bathroom sink. I don't know why it was, but now she's turned it off, and I am reassured: innocence has prevailed here in the house. This time...
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Family myth, altered to suit the mood: Did I ever mention that my Grampa Lou (my dad's dad) was a pen salesman? And before that, cigars. But he didn't drive, and he lived in Los Angeles! He'd had some accidents or tickets; he was flustered, or maybe just afraid of the police, maybe a little more than most people. Yet he could hardly keep an entirely low profile, for what is a salesman? The wise guy with the inside information, or the jester whose purpose is to tell funny yet ultimately security-enhancing stories to his "betters": the customers, who are always right. The salesman is puffed up, a little larger than life, but he must defer to both his customers and his bosses. He is beneath everyone. But Grampa Lou was married to a Commie, and may have been one himself, though he usually didn't talk much politics. In fact, he wouldn't let Grandma Betty subscribe to subversive journals or sign anything, and he used to walk his garbage around the corner to a dumpster every day. Could he have been a professional spy for the USSR? Grandma Betty claimed (after Lou's death) that he had been a spy, early on, but had quit - and that was why he wouldn't subscribe to lefty things or travel to his home country. Wouldn't the cover of having once been a spy be the best cover if anyone discovered anything of his activities? Did Grandma know? Or Dad?
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If we were forced by necessity - having no rocks - to catapult artistic masterpieces at infidel attackers, there would be those lucky ones over whose heads the works would fly, who would then celebrate, if ever so briefly, this immaculate and unexpected appearance of art, over their walls, which, no matter how brief an exposure, is surely sufficient to transport the soul, instantaneously and effortlessly: the most infinitesimally peripheral glimpse sufficing for anyone happening to look up from their business... These souls will be swept away to heaven or enlightenment, or to some other place from which there is likewise no escape...
-- Dan Plonsey, October 2001,
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