A Sackful of Sayings No. 16

Truth is neither absolute nor  self-evident.  There is a truth, to be sure, but it needs to be minutely analysed, set in historical context and carefully interpreted.  That is why in court you are asked to swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.  Whatever you say or believe will be contested. Be prepared.

If common sense were truly common, we would not need parents or schools; instincts would be enough.

Some things in life are too important to be taken seriously.

The questions remain unanswered or unanswerable: 

     Did the Lone Ranger allow the bad guys he shot to keep his silver bullets? 

     Were they of pure silver because he assumed that the range he rode through was a land of ghosts, vampires and zombies? 

     Moreover, with his mighty and steadfast stallion named Silver, was he himself a masked man because he too was a phantom under the control of his faithful Indian guide and companion Tonto?  

     And as for the meaning of Kimosabe, whether Spanish or Navajo, it is not merely a term of endearment or the designation of a close friend, but an allusive term for the kabbalistic experience of sacred foolishness. 

More on The Lone Ranger

Before he and his fellow Texas Rangers were ambushed, leaving one alone to revenge himself on the evil doers in the Old West, he was known as Avram Schwartz.  Script-writer Fran Striker (not Streicher or Streaker), working together with station director George W. Trendel, invented the legendary figures in the late 1930s.  But all these beginnings—myths, legends, adventure stories—would have been as nothing without Rossini’s William Tell Overture.  When you hear those thunderous trumpet calls and tympanic beats, you too can travel back to yesteryear and enter the world of the unreal. 

All people at all times and in all places, or even most people, most places and most times, do not think, feel, perceive or remember how we do or what we do; nor do the men and women we meet in our daily lives; nor, when you come down to it, do you yourself see, experience, conceive or recollect the world consistently or coherently from one moment to the next. So we cannot presume to know anything in or about the universe except that it exists in some way or another.  What it means to exist, well, that is another story.

Wherever you were born and no matter how much you try to think of yourself as unique, you will always find pants that fit in the department stores.  Style, color and  decoration don't matter: face it, you belong to the human race.