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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thinker |
Much like those oft-repeated stories about typical human corruption and still-horrible wastefulness, hurricane season comes every single year, though if you rely on most t.v. networks for schooling, you'd think that they just dropped out of the sky for the very first time. It's baffling to me as to why some people think that their audience is the same drug-addicted moron with ADHD (off their Ritalin), wide awake at four in the morning, and yet, the scam continues. Until network executives understand that we're not all dumb, rich, and white like they are, we will continue to suffer under the same delusional fantasies that persist with the mentally ill and their limited perceptions about, say, storm clouds, with this confusingly modern science called "Meteorology", something so insanely difficult that apparently only magical people with special superpowers can decipher its secret coding.
Until that one day when recognition finally dawns over the features of the disordered, we must suffer through their hypnotic cloud of confusion. With my friend Lisa, there aren't even the basics of "A,B,C" and "1,2,3", because German-American farm daughters from rural/suburban Minnesota apparently skate by on their finely honed bisexual cheerleading skills from high school, chased with copious amounts of alcohol. I didn't mind it, as much as I totally don't get it as a lifelong cultural reference, because drinking coupled with her perpetually confused pansexual identity questioning just ain't my bag, baby, in any century. She was (like most RISD-oids from that time) functionally illiterate, with a much lower IQ than the average college student, which made me continually question the high price tag attached to my supposed Ivy League education, but it's been cleared up in this century, thanks to pioneers in education like me.
RISD students can now study Liberal Arts concurrently at an accredited Ivy school like Brown University, along with their art and design studies (I made my own program between my SUNY school of choice and RISD back in the day, because there were no programs for people like me), making for that essentially well-rounded student who needs to be multi-faceted to be a genius in this world. My former classmates don't have those star qualities, but they did(do) have inflated senses of self that blew up like the strong winds buffeting us as we walked around College Hill in the fall-time.
Lisa is one of those farm girls who tries her hardest to appear sophisticated (she naturally adopted the typical "Art Fag" look that's necessary for Midwestern bumpkins who are in way over their heads), by pretending that she wasn't actually a country bumpkin from the Midwest, which only works if you're around other lying, cheating art school students who are Idiot/Savants* like you. I have no such luxuries in this life. Self-deluded behavior does absolutely nothing to further my cause. Needless, Lisa boasted about her scholarship in Fashion Design, because it's one of the least popular majors at RISD (why go there, when you can attend F.I.T. or Parsons for fashion), but it gave her an ego both crippling insecure and wildly arrogant at the same time; a manic/depressive rollercoaster ride that seemed to be up-and-down like the weather outside, except that the weather always wins, if you are ever dumb enough to challenge Mother Nature to a contest, which she is.
Me and my Armenian friend from Massachusetts wanted to go outside in the electrically-charged air for a thrill-ride, which Lisa tacked onto, like she did with all of my friends. She's that awkward third-wheel kind of kid who's too retarded to understand that you want to be alone for awhile, or "vibing" with your East Coast friend, or on a solo date with your boyfriend. She was exactly like that as an older, near-30 undergrad we took care of. And so, with eyes rolled, we let Lisa tag along with us. Like any kid, she was happy and a little freaked out at the same time. She enjoyed the really strong winds that blew the leaves and water directly into our faces, laughing at the static charge that put our little hairs on end. She found an old pair of jeans blown up against a wrought iron fence that drove her delirious with happiness for awhile, so we were glad. While she was occupied with her new object, we could talk and enjoy the spectacle in our more experienced fashion.
We took a turn through Providence's infamous Roger Williams Park, with me contemplating a lift over the tall fence that girded the park so I could stand on the edge of the statue, underneath his big outstretched hand for an unusual, impromptu, hurricane-season-only photo op (we decided against it after one or two tries, because it was way too tall for our short trio), so we turned around to leave the park. In a rather unfortunate (and also highly fortunate) coincidence, one of the biggest oldest trees in the entire park slammed down loudly to the ground, right in the spot where we had been standing just a few moments earlier. Uh oh...me and Ed were delighted with this rare sighting, with me present-minded enough to crack a joke about some broke-ass Philosophy 101 class at my SUNY school, when I took on the idiot Professor during his lame "tree in the forest" exercise, because it means nothing to an actual thinker like me: "There you go! Proof positive that trees actually do make a sound when they fall down, even if no one is around", or something like that.
I love the wildness of our forests and raging Nor'Easter storms** like they are the salt in the blood that runs through my veins, but Lisa took a turn for the worst. No more giggling over an old pair of discarded jeans, no more joking about the current you could feel in the air...
no, she was like my young niece during a family ferry ride to the
Aran Islands: at first all happy bouncy giggles, until that first brutal seasickness sets in. She grew pale and shaky, like the cushioned Midwest girl she really is: "Guys, I don't like hurricanes anymore.
I want to go inside", less than a block from the big old house we were renting. OK, sure, no problem. Ed and I burst through the door to tell our stories to my housemates, excited as energetic young people always are, but Lisa was rocked to the core.
She shut up quickly, nursing her de facto cup of organic hippie tea that's essential for nursing a person with such a delicate sensitive nature like hers through nervy encounters with big storms, in this brush-up with reality that her types do everything to avoid, like moving to the West Coast to assume a totally new identity, but that's a story for another day. Today belongs to the wet wilderness of this gloriously tempestuous, wildly beautiful East Coast Autumn that holds an eternal truth for me, and I wouldn't change a thing about it. Not one single thing. Enjoy the Fall weather this weekend, my dear friends, come rain or shine.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savant_syndrome
** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nor%27easter
