Gentle readers.
I can think back to being a preschooler, wide eyes, and a touch of fear attentively listening to explanations of this mysterious holiday called April Fool's Day. Somewhere in the depths of my thinking and experience still resides a belief that this really is not "for real"' None the less I have endured and perpetrated many April fool's pranks in the years hence.
So, for your reading pleasure is a piece from my favorite observer of
humanity. Please enjoy
Inspiration for Personal & Planetary Transformation 4.1.2021 |
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People
everywhere seem to have regarded themselves as sufficiently ridiculous
as to require some serious comeuppance, judging by the universality of
Festivals of Fools. The special Fool Days are dedicated to a ritualized
recognition of our all-too-human folly. On Days of the Fool there are no
intermediary clowns. Everybody gets to play the fool. Within this
ceremonial context, we can act out an upside-down idiot reality with
absolute impunity. We are free to tease and taunt, safely flaunt our
fatuous fate. This comic relief, this unrestrained retreat from
seriousness, serves as a safety valve for society. It allows for the
cathartic release of emotion, tension, anxiety, and the diffusion of
disappointments and dangerous resentments.
Archaic
definitions for fool include "imbecile, idiot, mentally defective,
silly, stupid, devoid of wisdom." "Fool" is from the Latin, follis,
which means, "bellows, ball filled with air." As in, wind bag. Airhead.
Buffoon is related to the Italian, buffare, "to puff." There is an airy
quality implied in the language, which describes a fool - an incredible
lightness of movement, of the moment, of being. A new way of seeing,
which dissolves the solidity of the so-called real world. There is a
Yiddish proverb that says, "The complete fool is half prophet."
In Scotland,
November 8 is kept as Dunce Day. This Fool's Day was named after Duns
Scotus, a ninth century scholar who created a cone-shaped hat to
energize the brain of his foolish students.
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The
first Tuesday in May is the Fool's Fair in Wales. Awa Odori, A Fool
Dance is staged annually in Japan, while the Russians celebrate the Day
of St. Basil the Fool of Moscow. Fashing, or Fastnacht, is a raucous
two-day Feast of Fools that precedes the pre-Lenten carnival in Austria.
Purim, the Jewish Feast of Esther, is celebrated with an atmosphere of
exuberance, a joyous, boisterous mocking of tradition and decorum, when
it is customary, on this one day only, to drink to giddy excess.
The
Hindu holiday of spring fools is Holi, celebrated as a high-spirited
fire festival, which proclaims the death of Winter and the onset of
Spring fever. For five days there is utter relaxation of the accepted
rules of behavior. Lewdness prevails. People spray each other in the
streets with powdered color pigments. There is a ribald shift in the
normal relations among the castes and between the sexes, which often
degenerates into mudslinging and public beatings of men by women.
Most
of Europe and North America celebrate the Fool on April 1st. So why
April Fools' Day? Because April weather is so capricious? Because in
April we are like a kindergarten class of hyperactive puppies exploding
out of winter into recess? Or, as they say in Indiana, "April is the
cruelest month?" Holi and Purim are celebrated near the Spring Equinox
as were the Roman holiday Hilaria and the vernal festival for the Celtic
God of Mirth.
Perhaps
these spring high jinx were the true precedents, but the official story
goes: Until the Middle Ages, New Year was celebrated in Europe for
eight days beginning March 25, the approximate Vernal Equinox and
lasting eight days until April 1 when festivities culminated in a day of
visiting and gift exchange. Then in 1582 the new Gregorian calendar was
adopted and New Year's Day was suddenly changed and officially
established as January 1. Those folks who forgot the change or who
insisted on maintaining the old traditions were called April Fools. They
were gifted with joke presents and sent on fool's errands.
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In
Scotland, April 1 is known as Huntigowok. In Fife, a peninsula north of
Edinburgh, the foolishness continues on April, 2, Taily Day, when the
fun is limited to the immediate area of the backside. An entire day
dedicated to buttocks jokes and "kick me" signs. In France, the Fools
Festival is Poisson d'Avril, or April Fish. Is this a reference to the
sun's leaving the constellation Pisces? Because April fish are easy to
catch? Or, perhaps, a symbol of the meatless Lenten month? Here, too,
people concentrate on each other's ass ends. The idea of the day is to
surreptitiously pin paper fish on the backsides of the unsuspecting.
Unsigned joke cards decorated with fish are also exchanged.
Today,
we silly so and so's who putter with nature, who foolishly toy with the
elements, fool with the future could stand a strict Trickster
talking-to. A little comical self-critique is most certainly called for
about now. A good swift kick in the perspective is what we need. The
stakes are enormous. The joker is wild. We can no longer afford to play
the fool.
Sometimes
I feel like I am lost in Chelm, the mythical Yiddish village populated
with "wise men" fools. Only in New York, what we have are wise guys.
Like the one standing in front of me in the bank line one of those
brutally dense swamp days we suffered last August, for instance. Fanning
himself furiously he turns around and asks me, "So, who moved the
equator?" Surely you jest!
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We did.
Get it? As carelessly as we poked a hole in the sky and turned our big
yellow sun toxic. As blithely as we poisoned, pillaged and polluted
every part of the planet we could get our pesky little fingers on. And
we keep on truckin'; out-of-control cavalier clowns that we are, taking
as many species as possible prisoner on our kamikaze belly flop into a
fool's paradise pool.
I
can almost hear you now. "That isn't funny," you say. You're right. But
it's true. This is not a joke. This is a test! A trial. A tribunal. A
critical time to recognize ourselves for the foolhardy clowns we can be.
We need to look ourselves in the eye in the mirror and laugh at
ourselves. To appreciate the absurdity of our silly self-absorption in
the face of the scope of the universe. To admit the pettiness of our
vanity and to confirm the tenuousness of our control. To commit the
truth of our consequenc
To know that you are ignorant is best;
To know what you do not is a disease;
But if you recognize the malady
Of mind for what it is, then that is health.
- Lao Tzu
With blessings of the fool savant,
