-- If everyone were "wise," what would become of "wisdom?"
And if everyone is already wise, isn't wisdom overrated?
Overrating seems to be a popular pastime.
How wise is that?
-- Certainly "the apocalypse" is a money-maker of an idea. The awful-terrible-frightening-punishing event is huge -- huge-r than a tsunami and, in the money-making world, it's coming to a theater near you ... boom! Just like that! The world turned upside-down ... and not for the better. Fire and plague and death and famine and locusts and war and, oh yes, there are wrath and punishment coupons available.
The apocalypse is as horrible in its way as whatever preceded it is idyllic and serene in its. The apocalypse descends like a "terrible swift sword" and, voila! -- you're fucked... in an instant ... in a trice.
But what if whatever the apocalypse is (outside a money-maker, I mean) were not swift and devastating all at once? What if it came on little cat feet, slowly ... so slowly and yet with such certainty that the money-makers could not make any hay. Tiptoe, tiptoe, tiptoe ... deserts and death and floods and diseases and wars and screams ... tiptoe, tiptoe, tiptoe...
If the apocalypse were no longer the big-bang box-office hit it so frequently is, would it, like its opposite number, whatever that is, be anything to write home about? Would fleeing or repenting or boarding the Good Ship Lollipop have much zip? How would it differ much from right now?
But of course right now can seem pretty pale and juiceless ... maybe a good apocalypse is necessary to jazz things up. Tiptoe, tiptoe, tiptoe....
-- A lot of snow is promised today. Maybe, as with many promises, it's the truth. Maybe, as with many promises, not. It's just a trickle and a tickle at the moment, kind of an hors d'oeuvre ... the duck flambé is supposed to come later. Eight to fourteen inches? We'll see. In the meantime, and not for the first time, I think how fortunate mankind is that each flake does not carry with it some small sound -- a musical note, perhaps, or a small scream. Imagine the tsunami-like hugeness that such an all-over-and-everywhere sound might have. Every flake a sound, however small. Lordy!
Maybe the snowflakes are saving up for the apocalypse.
-- And for some reason the old World War I Irving Berlin song -- in all its quaintness and all its implicit horror -- comes to mind:
Will the snowflakes of the apocalypse reprise that toe-tapper?
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