Aeronautic Primates and Other Delights

A couple weeks back I saw a movie called What the #$*! Do We Know?. I may have mentioned it. Blew my mind then. Blows my mind now. And I haven't even been back to see it a second time, though that's certainly a plan for the immediate future.

The premise of the movie is laid out in the title - What the fuck do we know, anyway? How much of reality can you say is real? How much of experience can you say you've experienced? Given the immense and driving force of our abstract brains, why are we so reliant on physical objects for understanding? Especially when quantum theory is telling us that the physical objects may not be there at all?

I'm not talking The Matrix here, folks. That was child's play.

Perhaps the single most bizarre/enlightening thing to come out of What is it at once strengthened my agnosticism (bordering on atheism) and gave me a true sense of divinity.

( And awaaaaay we go. )

I went to this sub shop across the way from the AG's office for lunch today. Crap food, more expensive than I'd like, but I'm in a section of town where I don't have a lot of choices.

There's two windows at this place - one on the outside for pick-up when you're orders to-go, and one on the inside for ordering. I'm on the inside ordering up a meatball sub (too spicy and waaaaay too messy today, actually), and standing by the outside window is the grizzled man, probably in his mid-40s, maybe older, possibly just seen enough in his life to be much younger and not look it.

His hair is under a baseball cap, his whiskers are on the edge of beard, his skin is an inebriated shade of red and entirely made of leather, his eyes have fallen into his skull at some point. And he's bothering the workers of the sub shop for money.

Not panhandling, mind you. He'd given them a check to cash, looks like a paycheck when I see it later, and they're taking forever to get back to him about it. Why a man takes a check to a sub shop to get cashed is well beyond me. Nowhere was there a sign that said "Maisie's Sub Shop and State Bank" but whatever.

Eventually, he comes in to get out of the cold (yes, it's a little chilly and drizzled here in Arizona today). He bitches, moans, complains, waits impatiently. Finally, somebody from the back room comes out, aggravated, and slams the check back into his hand, telling him they just don't have time.

Dejected, he starts muttering to himself, and rips the perfectly good check up into about 12 pieces, tossing perfectly good money into a trash bin.

This is where it gets... interesting. He turns around, looks me dead in the eye, says something in a foreign language, and then, in English, "I love you. But you know what? You shouldn't love." Then he makes a move as if to kiss me, abruptly turns and storms out.

And I'm wondering if some sanity can be found in the madness of somebody who would be described by my mother as a "transient." I'm not one to dismiss something so completely random as that. I'm a firm believer that in all chaos is a delicate order. In all order, a madcap chaos. So, it leaves me to wonder where this singular paint droplet is in the portrait of my life, in the portrait of the world.

What purpose does it serve? What events does it enhance? Or is it like a Pollack painting - it exists in its own beauty, without particular need for interpretation or meaning?

Strange days, my friends. Strange days.