earthling

Earthling: No Veronica

It’s always one of us, isn’t it, it’s never them, it’s always us. “12 Year Old Takes School Bus For Joy Ride” reads the PCNH front page headline this morning. How do we know HE was 12, well, they caught HIM, didn’t they. It never even occurs to us that maybe it was SHE at least this one time. But no, it’s always us: HE was out bike riding before dawn, HE came upon the bus, the key was in the ignition, so zoom. I could drive at twelve too, my father promised to teach me to drive, and the Sunday after my twelfth birthday, the family went out into the woods at the far west end of Bay County, and I drove. These days, I prefer that Linda drive.

With no idea how it is now, and couldn’t care less, I remember that when I arrived at the University of Florida in September 1953, the student body was ten thousand, a real man’s school said to be ten to one males, and I believe it although I never actually counted us, but judging by my classes, that was true. Word was that our sister university in Tallahassee, not far evolved from Florida Normal College for Women or some such, was ten to one females, and I wondered what the hell am I doing here in Gainesville. But UF was macho, I certainly wasn't about to go to a girls' school, besides, when I graduated from high school any other than Gator was unthinkable.      

Is the world changing? IDK, I thought so for a while when Golda Meir was Prime Minister of Israel, but she turned out as hard as nails as any male, and Margaret Thatcher too. I was thinking for president, maybe a grandmother who’d never stolen a school bus, but one possibility didn’t even have enough sticktoittivity to finish her term as governor and another gets so balled up in signing copies of her book that I'm wondering if she’s lost touch, her clock ticked, her alarm rung, and her luna set.

So I’m thinking maybe stick around to watch Adonai finish evolving us into Veronica, the ultimate and final true image, still adama but an androgynous race -- not huMANs -- and not perSONs but -- huperdottrs or hyperdottrs. Genderless, they will have finally overcome our vicious animal drives and fierce competitive nature.

Of which speaking, on YouTube I’m watching BBC programs about The Amish, so-called Pennsylvania Dutch or Deutsch or Deitsch, peaceful, gentle folk whose buggies I’ve driven along behind, who are trying to hold on to The Old Ways, the ways of the elders, meaning life as it was in German-speaking areas of Europe in the sixteen and seventeen hundreds. Why stunted in that particular era beats the aitch out of me, and from living nearby and watching them in person, I know they squabble amongst themselves, and punish each other, and break apart into groups of the last surviving remnant of the one true church just like the rest of us. And their practice of “shunning” is quite cruel. But their rolling farmland is lovely. Quaint, horses instead of cars, 

maybe they’re a start. Toward Veronica. But I don’t think so. The husband is still unquestioned head. The family telephone is in a tiny booth out at the edge of the property because in the 17th century there wasn’t one inside the house. If you can’t have a car, you might have an electric golfcart built in the style of an Amish buggy. 

Where to recharge the battery on a farm that’s not electrified IDK, a charging station out next to the phone booth? The picture of a beautiful little loving family of six riding to town in their horse-drawn buggy to enjoy pizza lunch at Target seemed oddly asynchronous.

Not at all to make fun of them, not even the Amish limousine,

they’re just a quaint subset of all the rest of us who are certain that we have it right. Adam is not a male being in God’s image, but adama, earth, dirt, from dust. Doesn’t resemble God at all. Veronica? Not yet.

W+