Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world…
John Lennon could imagine. Imagine that? We say it all the time. Why, just imagine that? And we do. I guess we do.
It has occurred to me after all these years that I have a faulty imagination. I kind of always intuitively knew that, but then I would imagine something just fine, and go, “naw, I must have been mistaken. I imagined that just fine.”
What I think it means is that there are many kinds of imagination, and since my mother neither drank nor smoked during my wombish months, I can’t blame her, but some connection obviously didn’t get connected quite right.
I didn’t realize it as a child, since I had no model to relate to. There is no book that a child reads that acts as a syllabus for childhood. Having no siblings, I guess the only model I had were adults. In fact, perhaps I can blame BOTH parents. Since neither occupied the world of “child” except in some emotional sense, my models had long since put “childish” imagination to rest. So I was stuck with adults to model after.
So, I had no imaginary friends. Now they say that onlies like myself are wont to develop invisible friends to make up for the lack of siblings. But obviously such is not the case, since I did not. Or if not, then we are back to concluding I missed some bolt or nut on the Ford production line of creation. Bottom line, I never “saw” ghosts or other such ethereal creatures. No monsters under the bed either. I started and stopped “Alice in Wonderland” innumerable times and threw it down in disgust each time. What kind of tripe is this? Rabbits that talk and, well, you probably know the story better than me, since as I said, I never read it through.
I have no problem imagining living in space and traveling around the galaxy however. That seems eminently imaginable to me. Star Trek, Star Wars, all seem rational and possible. In fact most science fiction seems plausible.
As I’ve aged, I don’t think of fantasy as plausible of course but I can appreciate the story. The Chronicles of Narnia are amusing, as are all the Harry Potter movies.
I guess in my extreme youth I had no truck with fantasy, but required that things be possible. Perhaps that is the difference. Logic denied talking animals, but not robots.
Thus my stated problems with religion and faith. Pretended faith was of course absurd if one believed in an omniscient God. So as those of you who have read my spiritual journey in the autobiography section of this blog, I had a rather long journey before I could reconcile God with reality. And of course, Christianity, for me has been an adjustment of doctrine to fit logic. It must in the end be logical. After all, the mind is designed to think rationally, thus it seems to follow that God should be logical as well.
I say all this to say that, if there were not a God surely we would have created him. He comes in so handy at times.
I have in mind politicians. God seems designed to be of service to politicians. It seems the average politician imagines God whenever they get into a sticky situation. I’m finding Mark Sanford just hysterically funny these days, as he now thinks pretty much all he has done was for a greater purpose of teaching him greater truths. God of course made him do it, for his own good. Course, he frames it a bit differently but that is essentially where it ends up. Forgive me South Carolina, but God wants me to continue as your governor and I’m gonna work on my marriage, since of course it must get stronger now that I’ve gotten by my soul mate and know that a commitment is a commitment.
And then of course there are the fallen religious gurus. They are just about the best at invoking God as the imagined savior of their teetering careers. They rush off to rehabs and redos and come back “fixed” by God and ready to resume the pulpit and the six figure life style.
Not to mention the entertainers. Each award received in mock humility. . . ” This statuette belongs to God who made it possible.” God of course makes actors act, runners run, and baller’s ball (oops), all the will depriving their competitors of such efficacious help for “mysterious reasons that we will understand at the pearly gates.” It seems to me that I’ll be standing there an eternity just having all those “mysterious” occasions explained, but no matter.
This is their imagination anyway, not mine. I can’t imagine too well, as you recall. Which undoubtedly explains why I can”t write a fictional story/book or design a quilt that ever turns out right. I simply can’t imagine the colors right, ever. I don’t imagine food well either, and so don’t do too much freelance recipe design. The Contrarian thanks God a lot for that.
I seem fine as long as I follow some one else’s imagination. The pot roast turns out magnificently.
But I must admit I feel short changed. I mean when I was little and told I could be anything I wanted to be (not really since girls were still limited to a real degree), it was most untrue for me. There was a slue of things I couldn’t imagine doing. Inventing was out, and as I said, fiction writer. Probably anything with the word design in it.
I wonder, if that means I’m “handicapped” and am eligible for some form of government assistance? I can imagine turning a liability into a money making affair. That sort of imagination seems to be still working.
Existential Ennui 