I am reminded of the wonderfully moving scene in the film "The Emperor's New Clothes":
The drop-your-popcorn moment in Ian Holm's new film occurs when the Emperor Napoleon stumbles, dethroned and demoralised, into the grounds of a lunatic asylum on the outskirts of Paris. This modest green space is dotted with fruit trees and rose bushes - and between them, a dozen men in cockaded hats, each groping inside his jacket as though he were wishing he'd not had the crevettes. Although Holm's Napoleon is the genuine article - escaped from St Helena, living incognito in France and nursing an ambition to regain the Emperorship - he will never be able to resume his old identity. The world believes that he is dead. The moment he announces himself, he'll be just another five-foot-nothing madman with delusions of grandeur.
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Anyway, we digress.![]()
"If there is a sin against life, it consists not so much in despairing as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this one."
Albert Camus "Noces"
Which begs for more digressing. Into a real story though.
Diego Maradona went to a Cuban clinic for addicts/mentally ill. At first, he locked himself in his room, for days on end. Too ashamed to get out. The other patients were wondering about him, getting ever more inquisitive. Then one particularly hot day, Diego ventured outside, to the garden. He stumbled upon some other patients, and meekly said, his eyes cast downwards: 'Good afternoon. I am Maradona and...', and was interrupted by another patient: 'Yes, we were wondering about that indeed. Would this one be Maradona or Napoleon?'
Someone find Pindar.... or dredge up one of the old threads where he discussed the existence and nature of god.
"Don't believe everything you read online."
-Abraham Lincoln
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