Death in Cairo
A love story.
Knowing the truth about yourself may be the hardest insight to discover. Human beings have a natural ability to deceive themselves about the most important and sometimes the most critical aspects of their mental machinations. Being deceitful is commonplace. What isn’t commonplace is truthfulness. There is a global business of selling insights and truth. The path has been monetized. This plethora of guides to your personal truth has existed forever, gurus, spiritual masters, yogis, priests, and priestess, rabis, pastors, fathers, friars, monks, shamans, psychologists, doctors, prophets, gods, and writers. Writers are the most dangerous. Their commitment is to the deceit, not to truth. Truth is a McGuffin. The best writers are magicians casting a spell that seems real but vaporizes under scrutiny. Skilled writers can spin a story in which all the evidence of the existence of truth appears irrefutable. The guides to personal truth point the way down the path to salvation, the writer repels down the path laughing at the darkness as his line uncoils until the line snaps stiff, drawing the writer back to the surface of comfortable deceit. He is a writer. It is a game of sorts. Follow him and you won’t have a line to snap you back. You will fall into the rabbit hole of disillusion and depression.
I am a writer and a sailor. My psychological machinations are akin to stepping from one boat to another or stepping from the dock to the boat. Never straddle between land and boat: that is how you fall into the water. I have been wet many times. I have fallen in the drink so many times that I learned how to swim. I don’t panic at all while falling. I have deceived myself with so much conviction I smile when I land in the dark waters of life and sink to the quiet, darkest bottom.
The problem with this daredevil behavior is its dangerous and alluring to the innocents.
