50.5 % Crazy
<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” />
People say in times of high stress, “I’m half-crazy.” I say to you that you need to be 50.5% crazy to dare to seriously begin a true comic resistance to the dawning yawning fascism. To dare to do one step against it. Do one .5 extra crazy thing. Shift from CocoPuffs to Fruit Loops. Make a subversive gesture.
My pal who is 99.314% crazy (he can handle it) says that rut-resisting can be simple in the beginning. When you park at work, instead of parking on the side of the building, park on the front of the building. This mild jolt can change a lot. (I heard someone suggest once that if you parked five minutes from work, at least you’d get ten minutes of exercise every day.) But here we’re talking about dedicating your first subversive act against the fascism, the present chilling alliance amongst church, state, and corporations, sadly all soulless in these cadaveric times.
Remember at the <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />Alamo, William Barret Travis drew a line in the sand. We are defending a wider kinder freedom now, disciples of merriment. A freedom from the oppressions of Creed, Greed, and Breed, the three pitiless horsepersons of the apokalypsis. You need to take your first .5 blessedly ridiculous, subversive step across the slightly-more-crazy line. Do something special and quirky or quaint to you. Dedicate it to the lighter, jollier, sillier, sweeter life in which we don’t join our funds to make atrocious weapons to blow legs off eight-year olds in Iraq. As an hasyasattva or silliness warrior, increase the gladness of all sentient beings by a groat or two groats.
The way that a butterfly (I always thought flutterby was a better name) lands on a flower is the hieroglyph of the word deft. We must become deftly mad. Right now. Swiftly and deftly mad. If you think you prefer the comfort of being a lemming, do remember that the cliff edge is near and will suddenly appear. You are already indirectly participating in horrible acts. Immense tax cuts for the revoltingly rich and we have no universal single-payer health care. This is a not-so-distant evil from your door, pilgrim. We need more squawking. A vote is a squawk. Friends don’t let friends vote Republican. Friends make friends vote. But the key to changing from a ‘good American’ who stands by, who complies with the evil of others, is to begin to feather by feather build your wings of subversion until like a wiser Icarus you can fly from the charnel prison they are slowly making America into.
The ‘boiled frog’ example is horrible and I almost apologize for your offended sensibilities. (If you’re very squeamish, skip down to the next paragraph.) If you throw a frog into boiling water it will leap out. If you put a frog into cool water and bring the water to a boil, the frog will complacently allow itself to be boiled to death. We are frogs in damn hot water, but it crept up on us the temperature change and we get used to the daily outrages. Oh, another outrage, ho hum, hum ho.
The Path of Ridicule, the Ridicule Way, the Way of the Mirth Warrior, here lies a crazy sanity that can last, and proceeding in a mirththirsty way is something we will be able to look back on and be proud of. We won’t have the horrible secret grotesque festering regrets that the killers of earlier wars harbor against their not-sweet dreams. You will get strong as you practice the kung fun of small subversive mirths. Do something deftly daft today. Begin.
=====
copyright flan 2005 all rights reserved
for fuller