day.
Good place to pause.They've just called us.
Hi again.Well, here I am, Bloody Mary in one
hand, pen in the other, using Rushdie's book to lean
on.Got an aisle to one side, empty seat to the other,
so I can spread myself out (already taken my shoes
off).Bit less crowded than I'd expected at this time
of year.Jacksonville here I come. (I guess if it had
been Harvard they'd have paid for Clipper Class,
but you can't have everything.)
Right.The coincidences I was talking about.I
started reading The Satanic Verses in the
departure lounge there, and how does it begin?
With two guys falling through the air after being
blown up in a jumbo jet.Great.I mean not that I'm a
nervous flier or anything, but this is not what one
wishes to read before boarding a plane, correct?So
that's one.Plus those other two instances; of travel,
a conversation/argument started by a book (by two
books), reason against faith both times, somehow
seem to belong together with this journey; bus,
train, plane, a travelling trinity of functioning
technology to compare and contrast with the
paranoid psychoses of religious belief.
What do you do with these people? (Never mind
what they might do to us, if they ever get the whip
hand; what chance would I have to teach 'Reason
and Compassion in Twentieth-Century Poetry' in
Tehran?) Reason shapes the future, but superstition
infects the present.
And coincidence convinces the credulous.Two
things happen at the same time, or one after
another, and we assume there must be a link; well,
we sacrificed a virgin last year, and there was a good harvest.Of course the ceremony to raise the
sun works - it comes up every morning doesn't it?I
say my prayers each night and the world hasn't
ended yet
Dung beetle thinking.Life is too complicated for
there not to be continual coincidences, and we just
have to come to terms with the fact that they merely
happen and aren't ordained, that some things occur
for no real reason whatsoever, and that this is not a
punishment and that is not a reward.Good grief; the
most copper-bottomed, platinum-card proof of
divine intervention, of some holy master-plan,
would be if there were no coincidences at all!That
really would look suspicious.
I don't know.Maybe I'm the one who's wrong.I
don't mean that either the Christians or the Muslims
actually have the truth, that either the geriatric
gibberings of Rome or the hysterical spurtings out
of Qom contain anything remotely resembling the
real bottom line about Where We Come From or
What It's All About, but that both might represent
the way humanity truly wants to be; perhaps they
are its truest images.Maybe reason is the
aberration (thought perishes).
A little girl - long curly blonde hair, enormous
blue eyes, with one of those unspillable plastic
cups held chubbily in both hands - has just
appeared in the aisle beside me, expression very
serious.She's gazing at me with that disinterested
intensity only little kids seem to be capable
of.Gone again.
Absolutely gorgeous.But how do I know her
parents aren't Christian fundamentalists and she
won't grow up sincerely believing Darwin was an
agent of the devil and evolution a dangerous
nonsense?
I guess I don't. (Hey!I used 'guess' instead of
'suppose'!I'm thinking like an American already!) I
guess I don't, and it wouldn't matter if I did.Let the
crazies burn rock albums and hunt the Ark on
Ararat; let them look stupid while we look to the future.We just have to hope there are always more
of us than there are of them, or at least that we are
more influential, better placed.Whatever.
Whatever indeed.I smell food.My semi-circular
canals tell me - I think - that we are starting to
level out, reaching our cruising altitude.Dark
outside the windows.Last coincidence:
I never did specify in the poem, but the wee daft
town - dismal, rain-soaked - in 'Jack' was called
Lockerbie (about the only time you might have seen
or heard the name was when we were driving up to
Scotland - it's just off the A74, not far over the
border).And - according to this handy route map in
my very own complimentary Pan Am in-flight mag
- we'll fly right over it.I suspect old Jack kicked
the bucket years ago, to go to whatever award he
imagined might be his, but if he isn't dead, and he
does look out of his window tonight (and he finally
cleaned his glasses), I wonder if he
(Piece PP/n.k.no. 29271, recovered grid ref. NY
241770, at 1435 on 24/12/88. A4 Refill Pad, part,
torn.)
The State of the Art
1: Excuses And Accusations
Parharengyisa Rasd-Codurersa Listach Diziet
Ja'andeesih Embless Petrain Sma dam Kotosklo
da'Marenhide (location as name) (c/o SC) 2.288-
93 Dear Mr Petrain
I do hope you will accept my apologies for