The Note

What people are talking about.

My friend Henry has achromatic color blindness.  More than a confusion of blues and greens: He has never seen color.  At all.  Henry said,  “I try to imagine sometimes what color is.  I see shades and textures and so I imagine that color is something like those.  I don't grieve what I've never known.  But, I’d like to see color for one day, just so I could know what people are talking about.”

O

I remember watching one of Charlie Manson's parole hearings. His interview with the parole board was televised on some high-numbered cable channel.  Not A&E, but another one.

It was made futile, of course, by Charlie having ordered crazed followers to mercilessly carve up people, including a pregnant actress married to a famous movie director. The pale blue swastika on Charlie's forehead, which must have been a bit of focal point for the interviewers, couldn't have helped either.

“People are always asking me do I feel remorse,” Charlie said while his attorney looked helpless. “To tell you the truth, I don’t even know what people are talking about.”

O

I once visited a friend in a psychiatric hospital.  He would not have likely regarded me, or anyone else, as his friend at that point.  He was fully paranoid.  

We sat in the dayroom and watched the President of the United States give a press conference. When the President made a remark about interest rates, my friend chuckled, but with a frightened look on his face. 

“See,” he said, “that was meant for me. He’s telling me that he reads my thoughts, that he knows what I’m interested in. You see you gotta know the codes in people’s words.  That’s the only way to know what people are talking about.”

O

On an entirely different note, I'm suing this company for totally ripping off the RHP design mojo.