Monday, May 28, 2007

What does it Mean?

After years of thinking like an Anthropologist, training and reading about different cultures across the globe, I have come to realize that I have a favorite anthropological anecdote.

Generically redacted: When the anthropologist asks the African villager why he accused his neighbor of sorcery against him, since it was not atypical for elephants to run through the town and stomp on gardens? The villager responded that while elephants may run through and trample all the time, sorcery is involved, not because they destroyed town gardens, but because they destroyed his garden.

I get the textual, sub-textual, and post-textual (or, the significance ascribe to the tale after it was reported) meanings. But thinking about this anecdote leaves me sad and maudlin – a feeling that is augmented by my late night listening of the Magnetic Fields, as if the world were a Busby Berkeley routine that may have been scripted by Vonnegut and colored by the famous Armenian artist Rabo Karabekian.

None of this make any sense… Fuggit!