Seeming
Perhaps we are all really three people; who we are, who we think we are, and who we seem to be. Most important is the seeming. That is what the rest of world relies on. So, a painfully shy person seems to most people to be arrogant and they behave accordingly. And the treatment makes her only more shy.
- - - - -
Amandi Khera seemed to have a heart of iron - cool and hard, with a passionate molten core. And if you ever found yourself engaged in an impassioned debate with her on aesthetics, ecology, ethics, mathematics, social justice, economics, science, art, third world development or epistemology, she would take her heart out and crack you with it until you were bruised comatose, or fled.
- - - - -
Asleep in their quarters, on a double bed mattress a little too hard for Ichiban and a little too soft for Sally, the couple was blissfully unaware of the monkey dressed in a black Ninja outfit.
Taskmaster Monkey’s grey eyes peered out through the narrow slit in his mask as he hung by his tail from a lighting fixture. In his hands, he held a thin gong striker. A sudden torque with his prehensile tail and Taskmaster Monkey launched himself at Ichiban’s sleeping body. He landed, not heavily, so much as ‘startlingly’ on the soft area between Ichiban’s rib cage and hip bone. Then bounced up onto Sally’s forehead. From that perch, Taskmaster Monkey struck the bed chime frantically.
“Wake! Wake! Wake! Wake! Wake!” he cried, before bounding off, out of the room. Ichiban, who had been vaulted into a sitting position at the blow to his viscera, said only,
“Serene, isn’t it?”
From opposite sides of the bed, Sally and Ichiban smoothed the sheets and re-set the quilts. Then, Taskmaster Monkey, now wearing his monks robes, strode nobly into the room and struck the bed chime, once. The three of them bowed.
“The Reverend Udon will introduce a dharma talk in the Main Hall,” Taskmaster Monkey said.
- - - - -
Some priories are known for the dharma talks delivered, spoken, by their abbots. Some priories, which are only surburban dining rooms converted for the purpose, receive their ‘enlightened words’ via cassette tape.
Reverend Udon’s dharma talk was on dvd.
Incorporated into the altar pedestal of the Main Hall, beneath the stone Buddha so contrasted with the 16th century French palace decore, was a tv/dvd combo. The Reverend Udon started the player, and George Clooney, in Desert Storm fatigues appeared on the screen, talking to his “Three Kings” co-stars, Mark Wahlberg and Ice Cube.
- - - - -
“What is the most important thing in life?” Major Archie Gates asks.
“Respect,” says Seargent Barlow.
“Too dependant on other people.”
“What? love?” asks Conrad.
“A little Disneyland, isn’t it?”
“God’s will ,” says Chief Elgin.
“Close.”
“What is it then?”
“Necessity.”
“As in?”
“As in people do what is most necessary to them at any given moment,” Major Gates lectured his new initiates in covert ops. “Right now what is most necessary to Saddam’s troops is to put down the uprising. We can do what we want. They won’t touch us.”
“Alright,” says Seargent Barlow. “I’ll wear fashionable Kevlar.”
- - - - -
Amandi Khera seemed to have a heart of iron - cool and hard, with a passionate molten core. And if you ever found yourself engaged in an impassioned debate with her on aesthetics, ecology, ethics, mathematics, social justice, economics, science, art, third world development or epistemology, she would take her heart out and crack you with it until you were bruised comatose, or fled.
- - - - -
Asleep in their quarters, on a double bed mattress a little too hard for Ichiban and a little too soft for Sally, the couple was blissfully unaware of the monkey dressed in a black Ninja outfit.
Taskmaster Monkey’s grey eyes peered out through the narrow slit in his mask as he hung by his tail from a lighting fixture. In his hands, he held a thin gong striker. A sudden torque with his prehensile tail and Taskmaster Monkey launched himself at Ichiban’s sleeping body. He landed, not heavily, so much as ‘startlingly’ on the soft area between Ichiban’s rib cage and hip bone. Then bounced up onto Sally’s forehead. From that perch, Taskmaster Monkey struck the bed chime frantically.
“Wake! Wake! Wake! Wake! Wake!” he cried, before bounding off, out of the room. Ichiban, who had been vaulted into a sitting position at the blow to his viscera, said only,
“Serene, isn’t it?”
From opposite sides of the bed, Sally and Ichiban smoothed the sheets and re-set the quilts. Then, Taskmaster Monkey, now wearing his monks robes, strode nobly into the room and struck the bed chime, once. The three of them bowed.
“The Reverend Udon will introduce a dharma talk in the Main Hall,” Taskmaster Monkey said.
- - - - -
Some priories are known for the dharma talks delivered, spoken, by their abbots. Some priories, which are only surburban dining rooms converted for the purpose, receive their ‘enlightened words’ via cassette tape.
Reverend Udon’s dharma talk was on dvd.
Incorporated into the altar pedestal of the Main Hall, beneath the stone Buddha so contrasted with the 16th century French palace decore, was a tv/dvd combo. The Reverend Udon started the player, and George Clooney, in Desert Storm fatigues appeared on the screen, talking to his “Three Kings” co-stars, Mark Wahlberg and Ice Cube.
- - - - -
“What is the most important thing in life?” Major Archie Gates asks.
“Respect,” says Seargent Barlow.
“Too dependant on other people.”
“What? love?” asks Conrad.
“A little Disneyland, isn’t it?”
“God’s will ,” says Chief Elgin.
“Close.”
“What is it then?”
“Necessity.”
“As in?”
“As in people do what is most necessary to them at any given moment,” Major Gates lectured his new initiates in covert ops. “Right now what is most necessary to Saddam’s troops is to put down the uprising. We can do what we want. They won’t touch us.”
“Alright,” says Seargent Barlow. “I’ll wear fashionable Kevlar.”