Truly You Are The Corn

Um Hapi Qa’Öniwti^[1]

Truly You Are The Corn

Everybody gets them from time to time. Mayan Priests got them in the distant past, and Oprah Winfrey gets them today. From the most paltry of peasants to the most bombastic of kings, they all had them in the past and continue to get them today. Throughout the centuries of recorded history, we have realized the uniqueness of each individual human being. Seemingly contradictory, there has also been much philosophizing over the past few millenniums as to what all human beings might have in common despite “uniqueness.” Many answers have been proposed. Unfortunately, over the course of civilization after civilization, trying to define what human beings “have in common,” i.e. that which makes us humanity, has usually been a set of principals proposed and imposed by a tyrannical few thereby subordinating the minority to the majority, or vice versa. And we are now in the “respect my culture” era whereby bridges between each island of ethnicity are hard to find, if at all.

Yes cultures change, yes cultural values fluctuate and that which makes us human today will make us animals one million tomorrows from now. But, since I won’t physically be around one million tomorrows from now, where can we find some common ground today? Compounding this dilemma is the way my current generation thinks, or should I say, isn’t allowed to think: there is nothing much to believe in anymore. Points of view are argued, daily, from oxymoronic perspectives to solve the same problems. Should we trust the news report on channel 87, or the conflicting report on the radio? The fact is that with no agreed upon standards of any kind, our minds cope by wandering like bobbers in the wake of a battleship. We cannot grasp fundamental tools (such as philosophy) to come to our own conclusions of what truth is. Day after day, I hear and read armchair pundits espousing philosophies that mimic the mass media: No one listens to each other, and everyone waits for their turn to talk without processing what the other person just said. Their minds are mazes that never lead to anything resembling a center. So, in this one small example let me try to open a doorway directly to the off-center of our mazed-minds by presenting an example of commonality that humanity experiences today, that humanity experienced millions of yesterdays ago and will experience well into millions of future days.

I mentioned that Mayan Priests had them, and so does Oprah Winfrey--Kings and peasants had and do have them, or in our cultural vernacular, I should say, “took them.” Of course I am talking about the ubiquitous corn-shit.

While this observation of mine may have furrowed a few brows out there, it is a truth that cannot be denied. In no way am I trying to imply that this fact of human excremental existence can solve humanity’s problems (while the pun had occurred to me, by no means have I built a new foundation of philosophical thought called Excremantalism, nor have I become an Excrementalist). However, it would be ironic justice if society reached a Utopian state via the bond that the human species has in passing undigested kernels of corn along with their fecal matter. No matter, really, for I see this observation as it is: An unfortunate exercise in pedantry, fastidiousness, pomposity--take your pick. Regardless, furrowed brows or not, we have all taken a corn shit.

Actually, I remember the first corn-crapola of my life. I must have been six, maybe seven years old. I even remember what mother cooked for dinner the previous evening that brought on my wondrous toilet discovery. It was years ago, yet I remember the entire dinner, and the events surrounding it, which is not unlike how my mother remembers that she ate a plate of Mostaccioli right before she heard that president Kennedy was assassinated. But my meal remembrance before a major life event was more special than some old Mister “leader-of-the-free-world” being shot. It was the meal itself that enabled me to discover the event.

We had Roast beef, mashed potatoes and corn on the cob. Simple, average dinner conversation circulated: Did I behave in school that day; what did I learn; have I been saying “no” to the drug dealers. And it was during that simple meal with simple conversation where I consumed about four ears of plump, juicy, farm-stand fresh corn.

What followed brought new light to the inner workings of my body. The next day I sat down on the toilet. I did my thing. It felt different. Instead of just sliding out nice-n-easy in a sleek and aerodynamic fashion, it felt like a bumpy-calloused missile coming out of my buttocks. It just wasn’t right. So I stood up and investigated.

“Oh my god!” my six-year-old mind screamed. To a six year old boy, seeing last night’s dinner emerge from a place that something brown and unidentifiable in use usually hails, felt like an invasion. What were these interlopers doing in my bum?!? The underdeveloped and underutilized logic cells started to burn into use. The electrochemical chaos whizzing through my brain began to become more focused, like sunlight through a dirty, cracked magnifying glass. You see, this was my first experience in discovering what digestion is. Up until this specific point, food was food, and shit was shit. They were two separate entities existing in separate vacuums. I ate, and I shit, but now my realm of understanding expanded. A major paradigm shift was upon me; I shat because I ate! Newton and his apple, Columbus and America, and now, the corn in my shit. This was an amazing discovery, so I took the next logical step by imparting this knowledge unto a higher authority.

After my mother was able to stop laughing, she explained to me the more technical aspects of the human digestive system, and that this milestone was not limited to my experience. She was very good at explaining it all to me; my mother was a registered nurse, and because she has an excellent bedside manner I never once thought about suing her for breaking the nurse/patient code of confidentiality when she told all of her friends and coworkers about my discovery.

So what does this signify aside from some childhood mental scars that I’ve never quite gotten over? Besides learning about how the human body works, I discovered something that all human beings have in common. Whether your corn is served with black eyed peas or as a buffalo dinner side-dish, you are going to pass undigested corn!

Again, I have no illusions that full societal realization of this can bring the entire human race together, so now it is time to ask the question, why in the hell am I going on about it? Well, the more we think we are different, we can take a look at ourselves on a biological level. Our biological functions do not cause great schisms between different sects of people. You’ve never seen a bloody holy war between two groups of people due to the fact group one thinks they are superior because they breathe out of their eyeballs, and group two, the “inferior” ones, breathe out of their left big toe when it’s sunny.^[2] That would be silly. No, instead our races, cultures and religious groups fight over much more serious issues such as skin color, food preferences and which compass direction to face when to god. I myself tend to annoy many because in the tradition of the best Americans, I am a rugged individualist; However, if your life views differ from mine I really do not care as long as you do not put any obligations on me (i.e. steal my car, violate my body, enact a law that allows you to steal from me legally). If our bodies can agree, why cannot our minds to an end such as this?

If I knew the answer, I suspect I would not be writing this. Heck, I suspect if I knew the answer, then I would also have been smart enough to construct a wondrous spacecraft to whisk me away from this mostly irresolute planet a long time ago. Then is this composition in vain? Well, I know that the corn has ears, and so do people. At one time it was socially acceptable to stone someone to death for uttering the word Jehovah in public.^[3] But at some point some rather smart people began saying: “you know, that stoning bit just doesn’t seem right,” and the stoning stopped. Granted it took a couple thousand years, but societies are changed with ideas. Consequently, I suppose my presupposition to this essay is that I’ve used a very unnatural analogy between corn infested feces and the coming together of the human race to add a sliver of my point of view to the monolithic web of “truth” out there.

So, corn eaters of the world, let us not fight, especially on the topic of how to achieve peace. Let us just live our lives for ourselves, whatever may “tickle our pickles,” without obligating others to our demands, and all that is “good” and “right” will emerge.

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^[1] An ancient Hopi corn metaphor.

^[2] In the interests of always thinking ahead and always trying to see the “big picture,” I publicly state that this argument will most likely be refuted on, near and/or during the time that we (the human race) discover with undeniable proof that there is other, biologically dissimilar , intelligent life in the universe (the human race not necessarily being the best model of intelligence).

^[3] See movie: “Monty Python and the Life of Brian” for wonderful pop-culture illustration of this concept.