BRAINTANGENTS: PIECES OF EIGHT

PIECES OF EIGHT

Last night I went to sleep "beside myself" over an argument. I was raging against an injustice. It was something I could not accept. What has the power to inspire moral indignation like inequity? “Let it go” I told myself as I tried to get to sleep. “Let it go, let it go, why or why can’t I let it go?” It’s putting it mildly that I have a tendency to obsess about things on occasion and this was such an occasion.

The problem? This was an injustice I did not have the power to correct.

I tried logic “now, now, the world is full of injustices, just look at our political leaders”. I coaxed a smirk out of myself on that one; but then I returned to my situation and I went right back to my ranting.

In that mood, I fell asleep and drifted into a dream. In the dream I was given custody of a beautiful pet parrot. I set up his cage, but something told me I could trust the parrot and trust myself. The parrot needed to be let out to fly free and I knew that it was a crazy risk, but I also knew somehow, that he would be back, so I opened and cage and the parrot flew out through a window into the sky. He flew and flew and then circled back. I talked to the Parrot, and said “come on now, time to come back” and he understood me and came right back. I felt that the love and care of this parrot was my grave responsibility and I understood that with the long life span of a parrot, this was a lifetime responsibility.

Luckily I wasn’t in a Monty Python episode, and when I looked up "parrots" on the web, I found the birds used as a symbol of the soul in India, and stumbled across this poem:

'The parrot, who is yearning to see you, is in my prison by the decree of the heavens. "She sends you greetings of peace and wants justice, and desires a remedy and the path of right guidance.

Apparently a parrot has come to me to steer me on the right path. Sounds good. Whether the parrot helps me transcend being dragged down into the muck of moral indignation remains to be seen.

TANGENT: But spirit animals, aside, I remember a wonderful fictional parrot from Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s masterpiece “One Hundred Years of Solitude” (and also made an appearance in Love in the Time of Cholera). This parrot had lived more than a century and still spoke “pirate” at the most inopportune times. My memory is fuzzy on these points, but that parrot touched something in me because by virtue of his long life span he connected us to times long past. He was, in essence, living history, an animate continuity.

Speaking of Moral Indignation, just saw Good Night and Good Luck, a movie which "the unemployed critic" on Amazon calls "essentially...a victory lap for liberal ideals". This movie somehow managed to leave me both bored and awe-inspired at the same time. What a pleasure to watch the intellect triumph over fear tactics. I think I REALLY needed to see that, a nice quiet shot in the arm. Good job George!

A friend of mine sent me this parody of a pharmaceutical. If all else fails, I can take one of these: