Goethe and the proverbial substance

In its finality, the cul-de-sac of knowledge impresses those who've been disappointed by education as the mode and mark of social evolution. It is where, in order to learn more (that is, to drive through the proverbial living room of the proverbial house at the end of the cul-de-sac and out into the backyard and through the proverbial fence and into the darkness beyond, perhaps into a ditch or ravine of some sort where we might meet an early but satisfying proverbial death), we must peer over our shoulders at what we learned before we turned into the cul-de-sac o'proverbs after we bought 'cigarettes' at the proverbial corner store when the (proverbial) man said something kind of profound but not so much really because he was selling cigarettes at a corner store and of course every once in a while he'll say something that's not completely bereft of substance as he exhales. That sort of thing makes me feel warm inside.

That reminds me of the time when Goethe and I were camping in a totally appropriate male-bonding sort of way, making 'smores and conversation and dispensing wisdom and recyclables (and recyclable wisdom) across arcades of sparks and embers. He was sugar-high and said something like--and I am translating his medieval German--'Yo Cauliflower, monkey library Simon as scallops handbanana cheek absolute yellowcake* sportyshine leaf-faucet National Public Radio fork.' I'm paraphrasing; my medieval German isn't as superbly excellent as my English.

My memory does fail me at times, but this time I am fairly certain that what G-Tonez was trying to tell me was that we must reflect upon our past if we are to avoid living hand to mouth. To me this just sounds like an elitist assault on the decent hard-working hunter-gatherers in society, especially the ones who have amnesia. But even though he probably meant collective and mostly scientific memory--the (proverbial) shoulders upon which we stand before we can advance as a species--social memory is no exception, I think.

The problem is that memory does fail, and social memory is no exception. One might say that, because of the sheer noise involved in the laying down of memories on a social scale, it is impossible to nuance them with those subtle (and essential) features that temper the imagination and tame the reflexes. Indeed some social memories occupy such an inflamed corner in our collective mind that even accessing those memories tends to lead to wildly impulsive, base, even animal responses. Case in point: September 11, 2001. Despite it not being the first nor the worst event of its kind, our self-proclaimed keepers of the social memory (journalists, politicians) have wrapped us so tightly and rigidly in the inflamed axons of its memory that to move one way or another, to reach into our pockets for nuance, becomes impossible at least as part of the mainstream discourse.

Whenever I use words such as 'mainstream' and 'discourse' I know that I've gone too far and need to shut up.

* I would like to stay off the no-fly list, please, because I have places to go from time to time.