how about a little perspective?

[note: past 'soapboxes' have been known to deal with the art world. This one doesn't... or maybe it does....]

So...maybe we live in a world where the biggest questions are wrapped around the proposition that we go someplace after we die.

Quite a few of us seemed caught up in wondering to themselves and aloud: What happens when we die? Where do we go? Who will I be when there is no more me? There must be something... isn't there... someplace I go?

First off, before I scare you off before even starting this edition of 'Soapbox', I want to let you know I'm not even going to attempt to answer those questions for you. I know quite a few people have figured out the answers to these questions to their satisfaction, and really, that's all that matters. But a lot of us haven't. You have to admit, in this area of discussion, there's a lot of gray area. So I'm going to begin this edition of the 'Soapbox' by stating it simply and sweetly, that I have no clue as to what lies, with any certainty, beyond this mortal life.

But... I have my suspicions.

I just think we may be looking in the wrong place.

Maybe we could ask the question from another perspective. Instead of asking where we are going, perhaps we could humbly ask where we came from. Could we? Would we get the same answers? Would we end up in the same place? And, Mr. Soapbox, for crying out loud, who would we ask?

Well to answer the last question, I think we could start by asking ourselves.maybe poke around and peek behind the bushes of what we might already know to see if there's a small speck of Truth hiding in there. And since this is the 'Soapbox', I'm going to 'go off' for a bit on the question of where we came from and how it relates to Who We Are, totally forgetting for now the problem of where we are going. After all, how can you possibly know where you are going if you don't know where you are right now?

*

Some say it's all in the genes. Others say it's environmental. Still others peer from behind the Wizard's Curtain of Psychoanalysis to study how your mother's Type B personality clashed with your father's inheritance from a violent North European gene pool. And they will study on.

But we do all have to live our lives sometime, don't we? It sure would be nice to understand some of what we go through before it's all over, wouldn't it?

So, I have two stories to share with you. A short one and a longer one. They say that sometimes the easiest and most likely explanations are the short ones. Sure, Occam's Razor. Well that only goes for anyone outside of the 'Soapbox' world. In here, the longer ones are always more fun.

The Short Story:

So you had a father and a mother. We all know how they got together to produce you, right? Sure. Sperm and Egg. Over time, a delivery more certain than any mail service, and unlikely to be slowed by foul weather. After a fertilization process usually described by doctors to be so clinical and sterilized as to be deprived of life itself, your cells multiply nevertheless. You grow, look something like a small frog for a while, then erupt in a real life bundle of joy for two people who had a whole lot of fun nine months ago.

Not much fun was it?

Okay. Now for

The Longer Story:

First of all, your father's gene pool was more exciting than you might have ever romantically dreamt it to be. He certainly had his moments. Little did you know that trapped inside that writhing puddle he passed to your mother were centuries of microscopic memories and experience...

...sleeping under ferns dripping morning dew on his nose to wake him up a million years ago...

...ducking out of the way as a tree branch swings just over his head, as he follows an older brother deeper into the woods...

...the satisfying feel of charcoal on his fingertips, after another painting on the wall is complete...

...and more recently, when at age ten of his present life, he thought that yes, this pillow will make a fine parachute when I jump from the roof...

All these and a million more learning experiences packed into that one little swimmer. But the real story is still to come.

The real story begins with your mother.

So... she's donated her million years of genetic material (which is at least as breath-taking as your father's, but there's more to tell in her story to follow), and she knows that she's carrying you now. A little nervous energy, a bit of heavy breathing, a lot of pacing the floor wondering about her future, and now she's thinking of taking care of herself. All for you.

And what are you doing? After a few thousand cell divisions, you're still not exactly taking off on a life of your own. Not yet. Far from it. And this is where the big question comes in:

Where are you coming from? Where did you come from?

You really want to know?

How's this for one possible answer?

You came...

...from the chocolate pudding and quart of cookies-and-cream she ate last night...

...from the salad she's eating today, made from a head of lettuce brought over by Mr. Ely 'one tooth' Sharnhorst, a bent over old man from two doors down who doesn't quite make sure that all the rabbits are kept out of the garden... and then your mother didn't catch it either when she washed the lettuce, so you ended up with a tiny bit of rabbit dropping coursing through your small intestine...

...from the microwave popcorn with too much salt she ate two weeks ago watching "Steel Magnolias" for the thirty-seventh time because she just loves Dolly Parton, but that night the movie just seemed so old and it gave her an upset stomach, which gave you an upset stomach and so she introduced you to antacid tablets for the first time...

...and during the remainder of your time inside, there's so much more...

...shots of nicotine a few times a week even though she knows she should quit smoking, the taxes on the damn things keep going up, and besides, one of the cigarettes gave the both of you a really light head one day because the tobacco in that one was cut from close to the edge of the field where a young man named Johnny 'I got yer weed' Farmer, who, unbeknownst to his father, was trying out a first crop of Sensimilla Red, only to go out one day and find the inside row had been taken out by the combine. Oh well, someone's going to have fun smokin' that.

where did you come from?

...from Herc' Stafford, who while driving his '74 Pinto four states too far from his home state of Mississippi, makes a right turn from the left lane in front of your parents, giving you your first taste of adrenaline as your mother sprains her wrist from pushing into the dashboard too hard, the shock of which twists one cell in your body in such a way that almost three years from now, on your second birthday, you inexplicably try to eat through the toes of your brand-new Sylvester slippers, bought by your mother during an unscheduled blue-light special on aisle seven announced on a whim by the manger of the store, Bernie Callas, who was just so damn happy about finally getting laid the night before...

...from your mother's craving to one day go to a fine French restaurant and order truffles, even though she had no idea what they were, but they sounded like something one should eat at least once in their life if they ever wanted to use the word 'culture'. So she orders truffles, and ends up getting the one stepped on three weeks earlier in Bordeaux by one Jacque Blanc, who had his truffle-hunting pig with him, but while the pig was off sniffing away in another quarter of the woods, Jacque found a truffle himself when he absent-mindedly tripped and kicked aside a rock while feeling guilty for thinking about his best friend's fourteen year old daughter. Picking up the mangled truffle he found uncovered by the rock, he thought, oh well, no one will know... but you ended up once again with your mother's indigestion and inherited a tendency to call 'Twinkies' 'hors d'oeuvres' just because someone named Jacque halfway around the world couldn't keep his pig nor his imagination on a short leash...

where do you come from?

...from the cup of tomato juice your mother just had to have every night before bed...

...from the fried rice she sometimes made, adding sauces imported from China, made in places with names she would never know how to pronounce, by people who lived earning as much in a year as your father did last month...

where did you come from?

...from the air she breathed, only slightly tainted from the magnesium refinery across the river which was heavily subsidized by the government last year which said that 600 parts per million of anything couldn't possibly harm you...

...from the rainwater your mother drank when a thunderstorm came by and she just couldn't resist going outside, feeling the wind, and tilting her head up trying to swallow a flash of lightning along with the rain...

...from the two red M&Ms your mother ate, bought before leaving the doctors office during a third-trimester visit. It was one of those small glass machines which are just invitations to guess how many beans are inside... she put her quarter in, got a handful delivered to her after turning the rust-flecked knob, and after a moment's thought, found a wastebasket and threw all but the two red ones away because, well, she just felt like red ones that day, dammit, and besides, pregnant women don't need a reason.

All this and more.

Get the picture?

Because we could take the issue much farther if we wanted to. The long story is actually infinitely long. Because the rain your mother swallowed had a long history behind it, too. And you don't even want to hear about the tremendously long chain of events that brought ole Herc's Pinto turning in front of your parents car. Even space doesn't have that much space.

Although it's fun to write (and fun to read, I hope), we all have lives to get on with, so I'll let you think about the rest of the story yourself.

But there are two points to the long story.

One is that you can actually connect blue-light specials and truffles in the same essay.

The other is that you can connect everything into this story. I don't claim to know a whole lot, as I've said before in a previous 'Soapbox'. I only claim to think about it. So please keep an open mind (and please feel free to differ with me), when I say that maybe that's where we come from. Everything. If nothing else is found on this web site that may inspire a thought of Truth, maybe this will:

Nothing exists in isolation.

If you don't think so, just run to your room and lock yourself in the closet for a while. Try to stay away from all you see around you. And you can, for a while... until you figure out you need the closet itself to keep up your illusion of solitary confinement.

...because...

the closet was installed fourteen years ago by one Jeffrey Peterson, who couldn't screw in the upper hinges quite right because he doubled over every couple of minutes laughing at a joke he'd heard that morning during too many cups of coffee over at Marty's with the crew, so from that day forward, the door has always had this peculiar squeak, like the sound of someone holding their sides whenever you opened it.

See what I mean?

Everything. The word means nothing less than itself.

where did I come from?

Everything.

where do I come from today?

Everything.

So who am I now?

aaah. Now I'll leave you alone and let you think about that one.