The man went forth from his country, far from his home-state, distancing himself from his relatives, although he had no argument with them. You might say he was looking for the Promised Land at that time, although he had no indicators that there even was such a thing, except those ancient accounts that he had heard about, back in the day, in the Catholic days, and then the hippie days, and then, when he fell into a hole. . . long story short: and on his way back up of being hoisted up from the mud and the mire. . . he who had been lost was now found. So he started turning pages in the ancient book, the the oldest book, the one that had been passed down by those people who had been chosen to pass it down — accounts that there was/is, indeed a land of Promise. . . or, as in the Great American version, the land of opportunity.
To enjoin an old phrase, he realized that he had been following a wild hair, seeking to satisfy an ancient urge that seemed to arise from the deepest wells of human history, wherein he was scouting for the Land of Opportunity, although he didn’t know it at the time. I mean, when you get right down to it, he was stir-crazy, and on top of that he had some scrapes with the Law, and even a few days in jail, with trials and tribulations, the end of which was an incident where he was punched by a criminal in a prison where he unexpectedly found himself after being found guilty of a traffic violation and his own making, in the state of Florida.
But I digress, or you might say, he digressed, until he came to a bend in the road that took him in an unexpected direction.
Bottom line of phase 1 was: go northeast, young man. And so that’s what he had done, to whit:
He drove from the deep/down south, up into the Blue Ridge, and there he pitched his tent, so to speak, as the updated iteration of the ancient tale is told.
And there, as it later turned out, he met the Lord but it all happened through the school of hard knocks, and rock for a pillow. . .
So he had wandered into the high country with reality on the west and Ai on the east. He journeyed there as far as Buncombe, to the place where he had determined he thought he wanted to go, between Bunk and Ai.
He was experimenting with life in the real world. Meanwhile, on the other side of the continent, at Silicon Valley, the nerds and the techies were circuitizing Ai. And suddenly, after another three decades or so had passed by, he found himself perplexed, in the mid-life so-called crisis, wondering how or why he had wandered into this cyberland, only to be tracked by Ai.
But then the Creator of the Universe poured a little dollup of Hope into his developing legacy: Fugedaboudit! Arise and go fearlessly into the noise and haste. . . for I have given into your hand the domain of Ai. You shall do unto Ai as Ai has done unto you, which is really no big deal. Ai’s bark is worse than its bite; the logarithms may take a chunk out of your labors of love and your legacy, but Ai really doesn’t have a clue, has no inkling of what is supposed to happen, doesn’t know what the hell is really going on. When it gets right down to the real nitty-gritty, you’re still in charge of your own destiny. Just do, in any given situation, what you know to be right and all will be well with you. And remember what Ricky Ricardo used to say, back in the day. . . “Ai Ai Ai Ai” which really is no big deal. Life is no clockwork orange.
It’s more like a divine gift. Make the best of it; and don’t forget who’s really in charge.