Views on Epiphanies

"Is that an Epiphany in your pocket? Or are you just happy so see me?"

It's a cliche to open a piece of writing with a dictionary definition. John Grisham told me this once while he and I were eating foie gras on the Titanic with Darth Vader. Seriously, I'm not making this up. Grisham turned to me and said, "Tai, if you ever use a dictionary definition as an opener to a piece of writing I will give you a noogie."

In response to this, I said, "I object to that!" Which I thought was funny because John Grisham is a lawyer and lawyers say, "I object to things!" all the time. Anyway that must just be in the movies or something because he sighed and walked away. At least he didn't give me a noogie.

A middle aged part-time lawyer slash writer walking away from you is the paradigm opposite to one of the definitions of 'Epiphany'. The dictionaty-dot-com secondarily defines Epiphany as: an appearance or manifestation, esp. of a deity.

If God suddenly manifested to me, I would probably be very startled. That is, if I recognized the thing in front of me as God. I suppose it would depend on what the all powerful was wearing. If he was wearing a nice suit I would probably assume he was a lawyer or a businessman, and those are people you only really want to deal with when you're in trouble (there is an irony here somewhere). Should God wear a Nickelback shirt I would ignore the piss out of him, however, if he were to wear a Metallica shirt, I would probably stop and say, "Hey, nice shirt." And then go on my way.

The point is that there is a certain amount of responsibility on the deity's part when it comes to epiphanic (HAHA! Adjective Apocrypha, fuck it) things. Wear a suit of armor or start something on fire or make a loud proclamation or something. If a deity just walks into my garden and I tell it to water my azaleas because I mistaken it for my gardener, Max, than the whole thing just becomes very embarrassing to me. I become the guy who told the son of God to water my Azaleas. You don't live that kind of stuff down. But allow me to regress. Epiphanies require a kind of awareness. That's the key: awareness. Maybe that goat-touting sign-prophet on the corner of 3rd and Williamsburg telling you that the world is ending is really telling the truth. Maybe the world is ending.

It's the apocalypse! Grab your shotgun, eat the kids! The sky is falling.

ah ha! Another thought!

This is another cliche: "An ending is just a beginning."

A woman in a knit scarf once told me this shortly before asking me to try rubbing gold bond on my genitals. She said it would feel great. She was right about the latter, so I figure the former must have some truth. That's what cliches are: little snippets of prudential wisdoms that have been repeated so many times that most people have internalized them such that the sentences themselves don't resonate on any Saussure-ish linguistic level.

A Cliche is something we have been told to avoid. However, just like Gold Bond, drugs, and alcohol, the most fun is to be had with things that they tell us are bad. If you have enough cliches in your head, you are called gregarious. Entire conversations have happened over a good cliche. In fact, the only people who hate cliches are writers.

A writer is someone who doesn't have any friends and hates spending time with others. They also are fond of giving noogies to people. I don't know why.

People who like cliches are known as 'Speed Daters'. All people fall into one of these two categories. Speed Daters and Writers. Your usual Speed Dater is good at being happy and is quick to mate and likes to drink chai tea. Most Speed Daters will do many good things and live long productive lives. Writers smoke cigarettes and kill themselves. There is not grey here, these are the only two types of people, this is just how it is.

Speed Daters Speed Date. Speed Date is the act of trading cliches until someone decides they want to snog the other or go on a second speed date with the other. The former leads to happiness because snogging is good. The second will probably lead to something called a 'relationship' and those always end in disappointment. Wow, let me pause here. That seems harsh.

I am speaking metaphorically here. A metaphor is a symbol or image that writers use to seem smart about things that no one has the right to understand. We use metaphors in cliches. Hell, language is a metaphor. Words symbolize things that exist without actually enacting the thing itself, however the signifier augments experience similarly to the actual witnessing of the thing. If this is not the case you are Harry Potter. And if you are Harry Potter you need to have rocks piled on you until you die because wizards would render English Majors obsolete and I need a Job, Goddammit.

In the erasure of words is the true nature of the thing. Metaphors, cliches, wisdoms; these are threads which make up the veil that covers our perceptions of the true essences of things. An Epiphany by another definition is the lifting of this veil. The Dictionary-dot-com defines Epiphany in the third as, "a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience." and in the fourth as, "a literary work or section of a work presenting, usually symbolically, such a moment of revelation and insight."

Insight.
Revelation.
Homely.

These things, just like the deity thing requires a certain awareness to understand. The funny thing is that this awareness is often built from the very tools that keep us from it. See? Tools, funny things, these are double metaphors. You're not supposed to do that. But Supposed is different than obligated than inclined. I think revelations require more inclination than supposition. It's the will that is never denied, even those fucking deconstruction types kind of agree here (or do they? Shrug) and I think we can all agree that Epiphany takes a kind of effort.

But let's not forget,

In the first, The good old Dick defines Epiphany as "a Christian festival, observed on January 6, commemorating the manifestation of Christ to the gentiles in the persons of the Magi; Twelfth-day." It's a party people. Have fun. The world is ending, let's get drunk. Metaphorically speaking.

SIDE NOTE: Never figured out how that lady knew how it felt to rub Gold Bond on balls. There's an epiphany here. Oh yeah! Almost forgot! A song by Roger Alan Wade called, "The Chicken Song" starts off with the lyric, "A chicken wakes up to a new day every day." I think this is how revelatory things work too. You wake up one way, have some daily epiphanies, and then go to sleep different and then it's a new day. And then a farmer cuts your head off.