Cosmic Debris in New Orleans

Po Boy Views
By
Phil LaMancusa
Bread and Bones
Or
Sacka Wacka Crackerjack
Big Red would say, when one or more of us kids were disappointed with our lot in life, “well, what do ya want, egg in your beer?” It used to really piss me off when she said that. Now, is that just me or might that be a normal normal person’s reaction when someone has the nerve to tell them to accept their fates?
Well, yeah, I do want egg in my beer. I also want cream in my coffee, icing on my cake and a chicken in my pot. I want a little sugar in my bowl and a little steam in my clothes. I want love that’s better than chocolate and I want my life situations to be a piece of cake. I want lime de in de coconut, is that wrong?
Don’t you get tired of hearing me kvetch? Yeah, me too; but what would we do if we were comfortable with our lives? Would we play the lottery, the horses or the video crack machine? Would we plan that vacation, cruise or weekend getaway? Would we clean up for company, look for a better job or take a class in hula hooping? Would the monkeys have climbed down from the baobab tree and taken over the planet if life among the bananas was all that?
And yet, life itself is not in the habit of letting us get comfortable, is it? There’s always some slip up, roadblock or speed bump… idn’t there? Did you ever hear the saying that “life is hard and then you die”? Now, doesn’t that blow goat? Whoever came up with that one should have their Winn Dixie card taken away from them.
One would think that at some juncture people as a people would look around and realize that WE are all in the same boat and that WE should be kinder to eachother. If you ask me, it’s all that damn monkey’s fault, I mean, how bad was it up in that tree?
Opposing thumbs, the use of tools and walking upright; is that so special? No. It leads to diet, exercise and makeup. It leads to deep frying turkeys, and how weird is that? And smoking tobacco… don’t get me started. Do you think that when Prometheus gave man fire that he had that kind of thinking in mind?
Orrrrrr… are you the one that believes that there was a ‘Higher Power’ that started, and is responsible for, our collective human fiasco. What is your cosmic theory of the creation of humans?
1. Created from dust,
2. Never having not existed,
3. Pulled from a celestial navel,
4. A rib or…
5. ever heard of the Great Arklesneeze? Yep, we came right out of God’s nose.
Big Bang anyone? The Hopi and the Sumerians believe that the creator of man was a woman, how’s that fly with you? Does any of that give you great pause or are you just as happy as a clam to be here? Blissful as a hog drinking beer, contented as a cow or just ducky? Are you as free as a bird, did you catch the early worm and is the world your oyster? Any of the above animals describe you?
Of course not, you’re a canary in a coal mine, same as me. Whatever can go right is by pure chance; whatever can go wrong… will.
No, it doesn’t matter if you are passive aggressive, impressive compulsive, attention deficient or a cockeyed optimist; as you go skipping through life, the universe will trip you up and have a good laugh about it. Consider God sitting somewhere (comfortably) with a TV remote and every once in a while flipping to your channel to see what’s up with your situation comedy before getting bored and finding something else to do to you, like breaking your refrigerator, getting your car booted or getting laid off from work. Or the cat hocks a hairball into your new shoes, or you run out of toilet paper at the wrong moment, or you overdrew your account by some teensy weensy amount and the fee is thirty-five bucks? Well, whaddya want, egg in yer beer?
No, if I’m like you, I want answers. I don’t want spaghetti in a bucket, chicken in a basket or pigs in a blanket; I am not container oriented. The fundamental difference between me and them monkey-types is that somewhere in this thing that we call evolution my brain pan got stuck on “why?”
I think that that’s the same as you or you wouldn’t have put up with me for this long; or perhaps I’m wrong (and I’ve been wrong before) and you don’t want comprehensive so you’ll settle for superficial. You may not want to believe that your dreams mean something. You may not believe in luck, destiny or magic. Immortality. Kismet.
You may not think that you should have more control on the things that befall you in your short journey on this physical plane; it just so happens that I want a say in what goes on in my life. From my mouth to god’s ear, eh?
Not so fast, Buster, it’s more like: in life ‘you pays you money and you takes your chances’ and whether you like it or not, the best you can hope for is to die in your sleep.
In that case the only future lies in agnosticism, atheism and cynicism. Existentialism, hedonism and selfishness. Good guys finish last, look out for number one, give no quarter and take no prisoners. Well, of course we don’t believe that, do we?
We believe in physics, don’t we? And more specifically we believe in the theory of String Physics, which can neither be proven nor disproved. And furthermore here’s the qualifier: String Physics is based on faith, go on, look it up.
Now here’s what saved me, and Lord I’m saved; the theory of String Physics has us believe that each of us exists and performs on multiple planes. We exist in parallel universes, simultaneously; at least nine at last count. This theory does not let you ask why, it just is. So that gives rise to the other portion of my brain that says “does that mean…?”