#1858 Dinosaurs and Mermaids

Dinosaurs and Mermaids

“The Enemy wants to bring the man to a state of mind in which he could design the best cathedral in the world, and know it to be the best, and rejoice in the fact, without being any more (or less) or otherwise glad at having done it than he would be if it had been done by another. The Enemy wants him, in the end, to be so free from any bias in his own favour that he can rejoice in his own talents as frankly and gratefully as in his neighbor's talents--or in a sunrise, an elephant, or a waterfall.”

― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

Each species survives because of it's own instincts.  We are so glad we can take life one day at the time...not knowing what the future holds.

Elvis Presley died 39 years ago today on August 16, 1977.  We older folks remember exactly what we were doing on certain days.  This 86-year-old blind-veteran remembers what I was doing when President Roosevelt died, when President Kennedy died.  I remember as if yesterday, at 11-years of age, what I was doing when I heard the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor.  I remember what I was doing when Elvis died.

My first thoughts were of a young man, piling into an old car with other young men, base fiddle strapped to the top of the car, all with instruments heading out for a Saturday night gig.  I was a student in Memphis, TN living in one of those old, antebellum mansions that had been converted into small low-rent apartments on Washington Avenue near the medical units and hospitals of the University of TN.  I was one of the poor students, living among other poor white people and Elvis' family lived in an apartment near mine.  This was my first vision of Elvis Presley.  Later, he would first be entombed in the mausoleum (Forest Hills) of the cemetery where I worked, attempting to get through school, selling pre-need cemetery property.  Near the White Haven area of the city was the  columned-mansion which would later become Graceland and where he and his family are now buried.  Elvis makes more money dead than when he was alive...such is his fame.

I have written about selling collectibles online.  I advertise that I buy collectibles.  One lady called me, she was desperate for money for surgery, she said, "I have a large Elvis collection, would you be interested?"

My driver drove me in my car to a large, mobile home housing project.  The woman's home was full of Elvis memorabilia.  She said, "Elvis has been my life but if I am going to live I must have surgery, I must have money."  We came to an agreement about what I would pay for her collection.  She said, "You are an answer to prayer.  This is all I own, all I have to sell."

GUILT IS THE CURSE OF THOSE WHO CARE.  I first felt some guilt about buying the collection of a desperate woman.  Innocence can only be lost, cannot be taken.  We are all innocent in doing what we have to do...she, raising money for her care, me, making a living.  I stopped being judgmental, many years ago, as I witnessed the desperation of human-beings around the world...survival.  This world-traveler, hotels and living accommodations, third-world countries...I could get very judgmental about prostitutes hanging out in hotel lobbies-fathers attempting to sell their daughters to "Rich Americans".  In Thailand, both in large cities and smaller places, there were hotels with showcase type windows, where standing and looking in you could pick out your female or male sexual interest.  The girls were dressed in gowns, THEIR way of making a living.  It tortures every synapse of my neural system to even consider what it must be like for one human-being to desperately sell herself or himself to another.  I can think of nothing more degrading than to sell the most personal-private part of your body to another person.  I heard one man, in a city with a disaster, his home destroyed-his family lost say, "I know people get over these things but I don't know how." 

Most Americans, even my family-friends-associates do not have a clue, have no idea of what I am talking about, or what the opinion media molders are talking about when they bring you to the reality of the real world...how most of the world lives.

We mere mortals, have no idea of what knowledge is hidden from us.  Do you think that the prophets-physicians-pastors-poets of history could have foreseen the 21st century world...a world of metal tubes flying at tremendous speed through the skies carrying people to destinations:  A world of individuals talking to other individuals any place in the world on a small instrument held in their hand: A world where wars are fought, one nation against another totally impersonal, using complex chips that regulate robots and drones.  One nation can bring destruction on another almost, without the frailty of human emotion becoming involved.

I stood in that harbor in Copenhagen, Denmark where the product of someone's imagination, a mermaid is depicted in sculpture.  We all read about dinosaurs, I will never forget, at sunset, watching huge kangaroos, their long necks, crossing the road.  Imagination or reality, Elvis' music that makes old women dream, power-plays among elitist, the most complex organism know to man, the mind of genus homo (the mind of man) is still God's greatest miracle in the universe.  It makes the speed of light, molecular formulas involved in the Periodic Table, magnetism of electrical circuits, the careful design of every snowflake that has ever fallen, all these things seem like nothing compared to the mind of God, who can understand and perhaps appreciate them?