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Tripping out of Trees (May 14th, 2008)
When I was ten years old and inhaling every Beatle song I could find, I came upon these two lines from
When I Get Home
:
...Come on, if you please
I've got no time for trivialities...
Thing was, I didn't know the word "trivialities." So my budding brain did what human brains are wont to do: it came up with the best fit it could find from the words it did know, guided by a dubious sense of phrases John Lennon might sing. Of course, I was unconscious of my own sleight of mind. What I heard was:
...Come on, if you please
I've got no time for tripping out of trees...
Even at ten, this struck me as a peculiar exhortation, but I'd already noticed that British English was deliciously odd. I figured maybe this was one of their quaint expressions: "Right! Come along then! Can't lark about tripping out of trees..."
We live in made-up realities. Our brains generate our perceptions from clues and heuristics, and often our fabrications tilt us askew, with hilarious or tragic results. How many neuroses, phony lives, wars, inquisitions, superstitions, and soul-stultifying doctrines emerge through this process, or emerge when ruthless leaders manipulate the process?
After a day of altered consciousness, I struggle to comprehend the epiphany that seemed so clear at the time. What was it? Tripping out of trees? Wha?? A few months later, I alter my consciousness anew and get it again: "Oh ...trivialities!"
Hicks, hippies, red states, blue states, terrorists, narcotics, economic growth? Tripping out of trees.
Religion, history, America? Tripping out of trees.
The life I remember? Me?
You?
Klatch of other Strange Thoughts:
2009-08-25 -- The Numinous Shore of Partial Understanding: A Scenic Ride with the Base of Natural Logarithms
2009-03-17 -- Background Food: A Modest Business Proposal
2009-02-07 -- A Defense of Massive Conspiracy Theories: ...from one of the few who doubts them all.
2008-07-17 -- Immortality, Part Two: Prisms, Zombies, and Occam's Razor
2008-06-07 -- Immortality, Part One: Identity, Continuity, and the Star Trek Transporter
2008-05-08 -- Color Octaves: Sight, Sound, and Elegant Recurrence