Life’s Not A Journey But An Entanglement

In Sri Lanka I was taken to a museum of

tribal masks once used to frighten away

all kinds of medical problems.  The museum

was in the basement of a small house on

the way to Galle. The ceilings were low,

the floor uneven and I was the only one

there.  I don’t remember being scared

by any of these masks, some which were

lit by flickering spot lights for effect nor

was I interested in the tags relating what

the mask might cure.  When I left the attendant

probably sensing that I wasn’t going to buy

anything from a glass case of curios,

flicked a switch and all the lights went out. 

When I first got here, my wife’s father

was barely hanging on with terminal cancer.

We took him to three government hospitals

but he didn’t want the radical surgery

doctors prescribed.  Instead, we drove him

to a man who made an elixir “from the tree.” 

Buddhists have a strong bond with the natural

world and the strongest of these may be to trees:

the Papaya, the Mango, the Jack Fruit, the Palm,

the Po and others.  The medicine provided in

an empty whiskey bottle I doubt had any positive

medical value, but that natural bond with the

Thai world sublimates and softens the heart

and ultimately cures the skeptic of heretical

beliefs.

FG    5/6/2016

I didn’t know what to title this piece which seems broken into two separate memories.  Entanglement seems to be a fad word out of quantum physics.  It has something to do with electrons mimicking each other’s spin (information) no matter what the distance from each other is, and simultaneously, too.  If you believe that life is a journey, a football game with x and os that you can strategize and win, you probably believe that superstitions and snake oil cures are to be laughed at.  On the other hand, well . . . .