Rabbits, Time, and Holes
A little Zen trip with Alice
One time a philosopher decided to become a rabbit. He had tried to go down so many holes with his mind, but none of them had made him happy.
When he got down an actual hole in the ground, Lewis Carroll fixed him a cup of tea, and they binge watched Narcos: Mexico on Netflix with Alice, who fortunately was fluent in Spanish, so they didn’t need the subtitles.
Her voice was crystal clear.
~***~
OK, I know you’re asking “Why can’t I talk to rabbits, too?”
Jeez, it is really hard to explain these things to normal people. If you have to ask why you can’t talk to rabbits, then you’ve never met my Uncle Mortie. One time his wife Frances caught him in deep deep conversation with a 6 foot tall rabbit Mortie introduced as Harvey.
“I’m so glad to meet you, Mrs. Tulchinsky!” the ultra white (and tall) rabbit confessed, “Mortie has told me so much about you!”
“Like what?” she demanded.
“Oh, just how good you are in bed and stuff like that.”
“Mortie!!!!”
“Yes, Love?” Mortie dejectedly found the courage to say.
“Why in god’s name are you sharing our private life with a goddamned rabbit?” Frances demanded.
“He asked nicely,” Mortie shyly attempted to explain.
“My mother (God rest her soul) asked nicely how big your dick was before we got married, too.”
“What??!! Did you tell her?”
“That would be admitting I already knew.”
“Well, you did … know, that is. But did you tell her?”
“I tried to get out of it, but then she started telling me the strangest story I ever heard! She claimed that Artie Shaw and Tommy Dorsey came to her in a dream and told her she had been CHOSEN to bring big band music back to Earth to solve the climate crisis!”
“But, Frances, she’s been dead for years! No one even knew the shit we were going to do to the weather back then!”
“Tommy and Artie told her. They already knew.”
“Back in the 1940s?”
“Of course!” Harvey chimed in. “Mortie, you idiot, why do you think I’ve come to visit you, anyway?”
“We need your help!” the rabbit and Frances both exclaimed.
~***~
Well, I don’t know about you…. Your life and the things that happen to you may seem to make sense, but whenever I start writing, odd things just immediately percolate to the surface of my coffee cup,
And I take a drink.
What do you think time is? Does it circle? Is it a straight line?
Can you go backwards
in it?
Who talks to 73 year old rabbits anyway?
You gotta begin the beguine if you want to get anywhere. That’s just how it works. If time was just a clock, a smart wristwatch even, would we be in the pickle we are now? NO!
Time is at fault here, ladies and gentlemen! I have to call upon my favorite Zen master, Dōgen, on this one. Back in the 1200s, he had the decency to say,
“Everyone thinks time is passing them by. They’re wrong. It stays right where it is.”
It does, you know. How can you possibly remember things unless they’re right there to look at?
And why do they still hurt?
Do you think Hitler or Stalin or Pol Pot and all the other evil assholes are gone? Just take a visit (if only in your mind) to Ukraine or Xinjiang or Uvalde. Evil is alive — and quite well — even if the people who have to put up with it are not so happy.
Did a 6 foot tall rabbit only Jimmy Stewart could see visit my Uncle Mortie to try and solve global warming?
“Of course he did!” Frances reminded me.
Are you going through the paces of your day pretending he didn’t?
We all do, I guess. But if you realize that time is staring back at you, not moving, not ephemeral, but actually a source of energy you can draw on to stare down all the Putins and Donald Trumps out to fuck up the world for no reason at all except for their own utter insanity then…
Artie Shaw has a solo for you.
_______________________
© “John” Lesly Levin 2023
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