by LJ Frank
Marriage, politics, and religion change a person and when combined with a specific powder, spice and oil can poison the body and further confuse the brain. The mind becomes bewildered if not lost. The personality of a given person can be altered in a dramatic fashion.
How does one alleviate that which causes conflict? How does one become the best version of oneself that is so often advocated? A plan is needed.
On the table in my apartment was a bottle containing a mixture of polonium, a poisonous element but it takes time as do most poisons such as arsenic, hemlock, methyl cyanide, Digoxin, Foxglove, Tetrodotoxin, Botulinum, alcohol, LSD – the list of things that can affect and alter a person’s life is endless. Many poisons in small does are relatively harmless and used in cures…there’s always a “but what if”.
Just about anything can serve as a poison for someone. Poisons are about dosage and the age and tolerances of the individual(s) in question. What can the body assimilate without dropping over dead? Poisons are all around us. Breathing in sewer gas is deadly along with a host of other air toxins streaming around the planet in any given minute. Then there’s venom…if you’re going to dispatch someone venom adds to the complication unless you are expert in handling the snake or whatever creature it is.
I suspected the worst of the toxic environments in which I live might be politics, and when combined with marriage and religion, it can be fatal to the reasonable, stable mind, sometimes taking weeks, months, and even years – stretching across a lifetime. There’s no physical life after death as far as science is aware. Dogmatic apologetics and theological rationalizations abound.
The idea with existence is to moderate your toxic environment. Distance yourself. Experiment wisely and bring no harm to anyone else unless you decide that it becomes a necessary part of life’s equation and your survival. Why go to that length like some politicians without a compass of integrity?
Think before you plot.
Life is existential and it’s not a film noir or technicolor entertainment news program. Celebrityhood is fleeting and offers too much superficial, psychological drama.
Things happen. My popular boss lived in another town, we communicated through the Internet. He died last week from some mysterious ailment I was told by a colleague. Apparently, he was buried the next day. I’m not sure. I received a telephone call. He may have been poisoned. I’m not sure about more things than I wish to contemplate.
I walked to my office and sat at my desk and heard a drumming sound. I thought it was all in my head. It was merely that of my fingers tapping the top of my desk.
In her academic office across the city from me a professor was also drumming her fingers on her desk. We were both plotting. The plots were both similar and critically dissimilar.
The professor told me over a cup of expresso the previous weekend that to be a successful strategist there’s always a plot within that adds character and depth and is part of a larger life story. Plans are stories made up in board rooms or in tiny cubicles in the back of a business jutting up against an old brick alley or in some luxurious office in a skyscraper or in a lobbyist mind. The plans all retain versions of the same elements.
“Have a vision, a plot, a strategy as a means to carry out the goal, with no visible links to you if you don’t want or need the recognition. It’s a plan that one crafts before the act is undertaken and acknowledges the possibilities both negative and positive…that is, the downstream effects. Even when not written down it needs to be mapped out in your mind in detail. If you have an accomplice, then by all means make sure you both understand what’s at stake and who is responsible for what. The idea of not writing it down is not leaving any trace back to you or your co-planner, especially if the stakes are high.
The professor belonged to the Mensa Society. She was brilliant but then so am I, on occasion. She was also my wife. We were like clover honey and olive oil mixed together. Our reaction to each other when heated was not measurable. Why should it be?
She was also tall at 6’2” and I was a head or two shorter. I didn’t notice until it was pointed out to me. I don’t think in terms of height. More in terms of purpose of existence. That’s what drew me to her. She once told me that when she was in college that she spoke to God and wondered what it would like to have had sex with one of God’s prophets. It wasn’t sacrilegious. She was a very spiritual and sensual individual wanting to experience life on a higher plane and worried there was no purpose and wondered if she would have found greater meaning through physical intimacy with the divine or divinely inspired. She was an inspiration seeker and ritual was an important foundation.
I received a call from a former colleague and lobbyist who also was my wife’s first spouse and had a life changing experience when he said he transitioned but stopped with no further detailed explanation. He worked for a firm that was a pharmaceutical linked enterprise whose private motto was – cure comes in diverse, complex, revenue generating formulas.
“It’s that time,” He said in his tenor voice.
“I know. I’ve been thinking it through from different angles.”
“And?”
“How do we know for certain?”
“You don’t. Neither do I.”
“But she was your first wife.”
“So, we both agreed to this over a month ago. We’ve both had time to think it over.”
“She’s at her office right now. Then in about an hour will drive to the cathedral.”
“The priest?”
“Yeah. She likes chatting with him and confessing her sins. It’s ritualistic and a turn-on.”
“I know, she likes that kind of thing with him”
“How do you know.”
“The priest is my lover.”
“What? How do you keep things straight?”
”Straight’s a dated term except when drawing a line on a piece of paper.”
“And about our wife. The three of us meet at the coffeeshop, where it’s been arranged that she is served the flowered tea?”
“Yeah.”
And that should counteract her plot of trying to completely change my personality and cause her to be more whatever?”
“Correct.”
“This strikes me as insane.”
“Look around you. What’s sane?”
“What are the side effects?”
“That’s the beauty of it.”
“Meaning?”
“The side effects that could happen would be she won’t recognize either of us or…”
“Or what?”
“She thinks she’s the husband and we are her wives.”
“So, in which case we dress up like priests to confuse who is whom?””
“Something like that. But there is one more thing in that she drops over dead if the dosage is too high for her body.”
That afternoon the three of us gathered at the coffeeshop. The tea was served and we drank it and ordered a second cup when the server approached me and asked to talk to me privately.
I got up from the table and walked with him to the checkout counter when he leaned over to me; “your sweet wife came in before you and your friend were seated, and said that you both would like this in your tea, that it was similar to a Matcha green tea antioxidant and handed me a plain packet of green powder. It appeared harmless. Please, forgive me…I”
“What?”
