Wherefore Art Thou, Oh, ROMEEO

Before anyone begins worrying about my spelling abilities, I'll explain. I've spent some considerable amount of time, this AM, on a discussion board among Mental Health types. I don't recall what the topic was ... maybe it was the one about 'staying on topic.' Invariably (maybe that's hyperbolic but that fits, too), it turns into a pissing contest, especially among men and maybe even more prouncedly among old men. "Makes sense," you say, "old men's prostate glands tend to intrude on their ability to even piss with the wind ... and even on a good day."

Any case, in my own way of thinking, I refer to these interchanges as ROMEEO ... Retired Old Men Eating Each Other ... A new form of Porn, I suppose.

An apparent NOG (Nice Old Guy) from Down Under accused me of being "patient." Funny. I never thought of myself as particularly patient. Now, M, m'Lady of 50 years, she has convinced our friends that to live with me, she must have the Staying-Power of the Ages to endure my puny puns (oops!) and my insufferable humor. I do think that as I've slipped and slid into the Last Quarter, I have developed a kind of "shared arrogance" ... that is ... I don't give two-hoots or two-anything-elses if someone disagrees with me and hope for them that they feel the same.

Arrogance for All

is my motto. But that does need a bit of parsing. I think it was Master Ishmael in the Babylonian Exile who said:

Every one should say to themselves: The World was created for me.

The key, need I add, are those words "Every one." I spent many years writing about the Old Testament character Joseph's two dreams that got his brothers to want to knock him off. Without a Bible in sight, here's my memory of them:

We were gleaning in the middle of the field and your sheaves stood up and bowed to mine.

Hey, Guys, I had another dream and the Sun and the Moon and the Eleven Stars bowed to me.

I remember thinking about these while a kindly Old Man was presenting a paper to a large audience ... it was Winter 1978. I had previously read his paper, giving me time to enter a quiet reverie.


Why did the Brothers want to knock-off this adolescent egotist? Each of us is tricked by our senses ... "All sounds come to me, as to all visions! I am at the Center of my own Cosmos." Over the years, I came to believe that the Brothers' rage connected to their sense that Joseph's narcissism went beyond a willingness to share this self of self-centeredness with others. In Joseph's view, not only was he at the Center but no action occurs except through him and people are essentially all the same ... sheaves or stars ... all the same. Hell! He didn't even deem to list his Sister amongst the sheaves or stars. I remembered, as well, a comment Kazantzakis offered up in his Last Temptation book. Jesus has become entangled with multiple women and shares his difficult feelings about this, his guilt, with Paul. Paul says to him (essentially):

Don't fret, J ... There's really just one woman ... 

They're all the same.

Too bad that a lot of the ROMEEO's I meet are like that. They believe they possess the only Truth and I fear will only feel that way moreso, as they travel through this Fourth Quarter with all its slaps and insults against which they sense they must protect.