Smiles, Pure Thoughts, etc. 2

what is the pure american smile? the smile of Tom Cruise in Top Gun? it's a smile of complete victory over a handicap. his father was a great Top Gun, one of the best fighter pilots in the world, but his father failed when they most needed him. is Tom Cruise going to do the same? no. he will succeed and smile. so much of america has to do with being the best. the best at football. the best a baseball. the best in academia. the best in innovation. we take the best natural resources from other countries and make them compete with americans. the winner smiles, but i really don't know who to compete and fight against. the jews... might as well just join them. the irish have the gift of gab. james joyce and yeats were great writers, geniuses. who can compete with them? i find it rather consoling that joyce was an alcoholic and had a schizophrenic daughter. that makes me smile. other people's misfortunes make me smile. but pure, unadulterated happiness, kind of a Nabokovian word-joy is something almost unattainable for me. how much happiness can you derive from the changing of the color of the leaves or the leaves scattering over the highway. it is beautiful but it also seems superfluous and too dreamy, unreal, ephemeral. you can go to New York and see all the variation and variety of people... it's literally overwheming, and our commonness lies in the fact that most of us curse, constantly complain about things beyond our control, want so much to be appreciated for our true selves, our simple, wanting to smile selves. and we are quite willing to help out people in order to go beyond our smallmindedness which keeps us prisoners of our own thoughts. but to smile endlessly from year to year is a mere impossibility. to smile is to be completely in the joy of the moment, the timeless joy of creation. As Blake once said, "Eternity takes joy in the productions of time." but then, while you are in that joy, happiness, something terrible can happen. your child is run over by a car or you receive news that shatters your reality. to smile also conceals pain. an athlete may smile to conceal pain. a soldier may smile too, and the pain is temporarily lost in the moment, lost in time, floating on memories of former joys. or like in dangerous liaisons, you may stab yourself with a fork to keep from breaking down. society can often ridicule those whom they find threatening and for you to break down in front of them is to admit defeat. but what is the price of all this competition and battles and war between minorities wanting to climb up the pecking order or proving themselves to be better than others? drinking or overdrinking is one consequence, drug use and an inability to deal with our emotions but through cigarettes, alcohol or drugs. lashing out at others, becoming almost sadistic in private while outside, Outside we may be able to assume a faultless etiquette. jealousy, envy, and a desire to be good at all things so that we do not need to compete anymore. cheating, vengefulness and the whole list of human vices at play underneath the cloak of political correctness. as Hamlet says, "you may smile and smile and still be a villain."