Ali Baba and the Forty Minutes of Jibberish

Ali Baba once said "A man cannot consider himself to be learned until he has met with the Dark Side and overcome its pull." As all wise men do, I always do everything Ali Baba tells me. Sometimes he speaks Arabic, which I do not understand - so I have to watch his movements and gesticulations to figue out what he is trying to say. Sometimes we have to play an odd version of modified charades, in which he is not allowed to use his left foot, but he is allowed to draw pictures provided he only uses fresh squeezed carrot juice as ink.

Ali Baba makes delicious sandwiches.

So yes, I do consider myself to be learned. So yes, I did attempt to meet the Dark Side. So yes, this silly concoction is said attempt. So yes, the Dark Side has pulled me in. The dulcet vibrato? The Cafferty! The Cafferty! The Cafferty! Oh, the dulcet. Oh, the saxophone. Oh, the hand claps. Oh, Dark Side. It is very dark indeed.

And in I was pulled, like a capitol letter on a bank statemtent from your neighbor's mailbox. Did you steal? Did I steal? Is there even such a thing as stealing? On the Dark Side, all property is communal, and yet still I am empty and without. Was this what Ali Baba meant?

Could this be nothing but a ploy? Could Ali Baba have sent me here to the Dark Side, through the courtesy of my very own words, to prove to me that life is both emptiness and fulfilment simultaneously? Could the void I am feeling thanks to Ali Baba's advice in fact NOT be a void at all, but rather the void I am feeling is instead the closing of a void? The removal of a void? The voiding of a void?

What is life? How can it be anything less than everything..and yet how can it be anythng at all? There is so much yet to understand, although Ali Baba claims to know somewhere between 3.2% and 3.7% more than the average man. He still knows what he does not know, or does he? Can he? Can anyone? IS anyone? How can you know, if you are not? How can you be, if you do not know whether you are?

Ali Baba was right. I am not a learned man. I am not a scholar. I am the letter "R" - I contain a straight and upright line (time) I contain a straight but cockeyed line (space) and I touch time in two places and space in one with a curved line (the soul). Were I a learned man...should I one day breathe the true air of the Dark Side into the lungs of my being, I would be the letter S. Time, Space and Soul connected as one line, swaying with the winds of livliehood, following a path of righteousness dictated by the spirit, yet unlike the number 8, in that I would posess defined beginning and end. Ali Baba is the number 8. I cannot aspire to that. No, I have much yet to experience, much yet to taste.

Speaking of which, I could really go for one of those sandwiches.