On Exhibit: Epiphanies

Have I ever had an epiphany? Good question. I’ve had several. There was the time my father told me an ingot of lead has more space in it than lead. That turned my world upside down. I know what Kerouac meant when he wondered why he didn’t fall through the ground while he walked. In Buddhism, matter isn’t a solid or static reality. There is no core, no permanent address, or independent essence. Nothing exists by itself. It only exists in relation to other things. Wall Street does this every day. The only difference is, they believe their illusions have value, and that juicing the market is a wonderful philosophy. There’s more value in Beethoven’s chamber pot than the entire net worth of Wall Street. My second epiphany was hearing Dylan’s Like A Rolling Stone in August, 1965. It’s an epiphany that never seems fully revealed, and has, in fact, altered my view of it rather dramatically, as if it had a protean soul and changed hues like a twilight on the eastern seaboard. The song is quintessentially urban. Its imagery was highly surreal those many years ago, but now they’re daily equations, common, everyday occurrences. Dylan’s song was strangely exhilarating, as if the self-imposed exile from mainstream culture and consequent vagabondage constituted a triumph of some sort. 61 years later, the populations of the homeless have exponentiated as home prices have become increasingly unaffordable. The tents and makeshift shelters erected in zones of urban desolation are anything but triumphant. The exhilaration of Dylan’s 1965 recording is gone, but the dissociative imagery remains uncannily accurate. A mystery tramp walked right past me this afternoon and negated my smile of public fellowship with a dirty look. There’s been a major disruption in the social fabric. During a time of genocide, the unspeakable gets normalized. Hegel said the opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference. And remember that diplomat with the Siamese cat on his shoulder and that awful discovery that he wasn’t really where it’s at and took from you everything he could steal? I’ve had epiphanies keep me awake all night. Epiphanies for things that happened 50 or 60 years ago. Oh shit. Now I know what that guy meant. Might be one such script. We’ve all been there, gazing at a bright new revelation in our mind, and glad it doesn’t make us do a survey when it’s over. Although, of course, it does. And thereby hangs a tale.