I hate being taken: being taken for the jerk I occasionally am; taken for a dope, a dupe. I used to get angry, try to wreak revenge, seek retribution, until I heard my beloved say so clearly that I couldn’t avoid hearing: that the only blame that hurts, that really smarts, is the aura of self-destruct and her-destruct; that vengeance hits the air and gets reflected back into one’s self as if the world were a deliberate mirror. I could lie, rant and rave, and threaten, and curse curses, but I would do nothing!
The other day, I read a review written by a dupe. For twenty years or more he had been taken, willingly, I’ll bet. And the winds of time blew time’s ghost from pillar to the post of…a new crowd; a new insight, a next in-crowd, this cynic’s pleasure-displeasure at watching last year’s stars trying to maintain their arc in public view, when the winds change. Now, duped; now, a confessional; now, a new theory from his new camp. What’s new? A new metaphor. You don’t like the old one – try a new one! Before it was the computer as a metaphor for the brain; now it’s the brain as a metaphor for the mind: next it’ll be…
Dupe! Dope! “Should I write a letter? I wrote a letter.” Do I criticize him, his conversion, his recanting, his re-telling his re-thinking? No. I use his plight to attempt to understand my own. I used to be too young, too eager, too much in a hurry. Now, my own dupe, I have too much to confess to my self’s hearing, to worry him about his…