“Truth as a Possibly Illegal and Addictive Substance” | Van der Leun in The Saturday Evening Post

by Vanderleun on August 3, 2017

[My mother will be so proud. This is a magazine she actually subscribes to. Hard copy. In the mail.]

To tell the truth about those years, you’d have to begin with the observation that truth was, like all precious commodities, in very short supply. Like LSD from Sandoz or pharmaceutical cocaine, truth was rumored to be everywhere but became scarce when you attempted to score.

If your ambition was to make a market in Truth Futures, you were in business. No problem and plenty of willing buyers and sellers. But if you just wanted some truth of your own, to get you through the night, your head was straightened on that score in no time. After a few attempts to lay your hands on some actual truth, you came to understand that such a quest was against the secret rules. Scoring pure, uncut truth was not even a part of the game. It wasn’t what was “happening, man.”

What was happening wasn’t, to be sure, the only game in the big BeHereNow Casino out on Sunset Strip, but it was the most fun and everyone, well, almost everyone, wanted to play at its table hoping that their new and improved revolutionary system for revolution would beat the dealer. After all, not to be part of what was happening in those years was, in a sense, not to be.

So you learned that as long as you confined yourself to speculation of what the Revolution might be like and what the world after the Revolution would be like, there was no end to truth. But if this made you nervous and you asked any of the fellow players for a little hard truth, a little coin of the realm to cover your margin and theirs, they were quite content to drop a brick of Acapulco Gold on your head and call it The Philosopher’s Stone. And because stone was a state of mind, you were left with a headache, a heartache, and overdrawn at the First National Bank of Angst.

Man, you weren’t happening….

Continue to read the whole thing at Truth as a Possibly Illegal and Addictive Substance | The Saturday Evening Post

Comments on this entry are closed.

Julie August 3, 2017, 9:11 AM

Congratulations! Your mother will be proud, indeed 😀

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Jim in Alaska August 3, 2017, 10:20 AM

Ah yes, I was there, back in the day, I found truth when I bought a nickel bag in NYC’s Chinatown and

found it was oregano. 😉

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ghostsniper August 3, 2017, 7:57 PM

After reading and digesting that, don’t forget to go visit your ol’ buddy Norman, you’ll be glad you did:
http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/artists-gallery/saturday-evening-post-cover-artists/norman-rockwell-gallery

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