The Examined Life

Speaking of future events...


I once spent a whole morning looking for a stepladder, back at the former hotel where I lived for many years in a spiritual community in the north of Scotland.  I went upstairs, downstairs, around and around; even checking the building from the outside...

I began fantasizing.

He got a step on the defender.  He was clear, no other defender between him and the end zone.  Running as fast as he could, he looked back and high for the ball, for it to nestle sweetly into his waiting arms -

and there was no ball.

'Officer, have you seen a stepladder heading this way?  It's about six feet tall, with two of its legs painted red at the bottom, like hooves.  It's trying to escape.  I mean, it does have legs...'

And then I realized.

They hadn't been invented yet.

It was all a dream.

And that's how, and when, I became enlightened.


P.S. I found it after lunch.  (From a tipoff.  It pays to solicit help, sometimes...)  And thus, came crashing back down to Earth.  (Like David Bowie in that film.)  But I was never quite the same, really, after that time in no-time.  In a sort of suspended animation.  In which anything can happen.

Or not.  As the case may well be, too.