Atheistic Philosopher

Atheistic Philosopher

When a guy tells you, as-a-matter of-factly and with a barely suppressed twinkle in his eyes, that he is an an atheistic philosopher you should know you are in for a turbulent ride unless you are such a staid person that nonconformity and idiosyncrasy are foreign concepts to you. In addition, if he further discloses that he loves Nietzsche and has a messiah complex five minutes into the conversation, you should know that the guy is half crazy. You should get up and run for the next exit unless quirkiness and abnormality turn you on. Essentially he is telling you in a short-hand fashion that he is independent, disdainful of authority, and a talker besides being a thinker, and he is looking for converts!

Such a person is ---you guessed it! Bring the gentleman a beer, sweetie---me. So, I assume you want to sit around and let me regale you tales of my life, most of which I make them up as I go along. This is my blog. This is my domain. This is my kingdom. Words are my subjects. They don't pay taxes. They stand at my command as long as my dementia praecox is held at bay.

This morning I wrote something about Nietzsche. I forgot to mention when I first came across the title of one of his books--Twilight of the Idols, How To Philosophize with a Hammer, I grinned from ear to ear and held the book close to my heart and experienced a blissful state of being for a few seconds but they seemed like eternity to me. The translator, Walter Kaufmann, disclosed that Peter Gast (from my recollection, not sure of the name. Alzheimer is advancing. Now you know why I am writing like a man possessed. I am racing against time, before the lights are out), one --and perhaps the only--of his admirers and worshippers wrote back after reading the manuscript that the book deserved a title that shook the world out of its slumber. Nietzsche didn't need much encouragement. He promptly changed the title from something I no longer remember to Twilight of the Idols, How To Philosophize with a Hammer.

The reason why I am mentioning the book because recently I was branded, labeled, accused, designated as a hypocrite simply on the basis of my writings. Hypocrite! Wow, that's something brand new, an epithet that I never had the honor to receive until a few days ago. I was called immature, crazy, wacko, emotional, erratic, stupid, bright, brilliant, original, beautiful, gorgeous, but never "hypocrite" in my entire existence of sixty plus years. That just showed me life is full of the unexpected and the bizarre. I was also accused of being in the labeling business, an accusation I am fully and completely guilty of. No defense here. I label people. I label events. I label everyone and everything because that is the only way I know how to make sense of the world. Of course, my labeling is not fixed. It undergoes constant revision as new facts emerge and come into light. I am not that stupid. I don't have fixed ideas.

Upon hearing the accusation, I was seized with a temptation to hit the accuser with Nietzsche's book as there is a word "hammer" in the subtitle, but I controlled myself. I just wrote back nicely, cordially that he went too far in his accusation and his assessment of me was way off mark. Anyway, since he could be right, if any of you reading my words in this beautiful blog of mine discerns any thread or filament of hypocrisy in me, please let me know as I would like to enshrine it in the edifice of descriptions of me. I thank you in advance.

Let me tell you a secret. Like Nietzsche, I have an admirer, too. He looks, talks, and writes just like me. Sometimes, I think he is my twin brother. He is my admirer and my adviser. In times of troubles, I turn to him for comfort and guidance. He speaks beautiful Italian and his name is Silvio. You already know my name, Roberto Wacko, aka Wissai, originally from Bologna---not Baloney, silly you---, currently residing in the States, but a Vietnamese to the core. My mother was Vietnamese. She met my father, professor of Romance Languages from University of Bologna, on a cruise. I was the outcome of that fateful and beautiful encounter.