Episodic 'Flu

When I came down with the 'flu last Winter, it was just awful.

Just couldn't seem to shake it, for months this carried on.

How was I meant to know I had been put onto the installments plan before I got given a dose this year...?

When contracting a virus, always insist they accept only Cash on Delivery.

 Episodic 'flu is apparently a real diagnosis in use today in Russia and elsewhere by the more reasonably priced private physicians to explain cases of intermittent chronic symptoms very high temperature, fever, white blood cell production and T4 cell count, broken up by often quite lengthy periods (anywhere from a few minutes, to up to several months or years in some cases), when the sufferer suddenly becomes completely asymptomatic, having appeared to make a complete recovery until one day you just drop dead inside your own locked bathroom right before elevenses, 3 months later without any warning - or, they instead switch over to being a highly contagious carrier of the deadliest  new strain of influenza, but no longer present any outward symptoms of chronic infection.

None of which is true, of course.

Episodic 'flu  basically just like is like having normal 'flu, with all of the usual  chronic symptoms of infection, only in installments. Like paying for a new carpet, or watching the final season Box Set of The Sopranos.

None of which is true, of course.

So that's what the doctor hired to be one of the Fox News Commentators hired to supply medical expertise says may well have happened to Prince.

None of which is true, of course.

Because they say he had had the 'flu for around 3 weeks before being found dead.

None of which is true, of course.

To support this potential diagnosis, he points out that Prince's plane had to make an emergency landing on April 14, requesting an ambulance and paramedics to rush him straight to hospital. The pilot reported that they had a non-responsive male patient on board, and that was the emergency - when Prince arrived at the hospital, he was seen being carried into the Emergency Room.

None of which.... Oh, you get the idea.

Then he discharged himself 3 hrs later and flew back home the same night.

He appeared to be completely fine the following morning.

And then he performed a two hour set, playing and signing live on-stage in the Atrium at Paisley Park (which is also his house) in a free party the following night.

And finally, a whole week later after that, night before he died, he performed ANOTHER two hour set at ANOTHER free party for a small group of fans, and anyone that wanted to come along, in the Atrium of Paisley Park (which is his studio, and his practice room, and his house - these were fans he would invite into his home to hear him play to them, and often.)

And right toward the very end of his performance, right at the very end of playing his set, before leaving the stage, he spoke to the audience, addressing his fans and all of the people that love him and said something really strange, that didn't appear to make much sense, but which he clearly wanted everyone who was there to remember him saying to them, and tell the rest of us, especially because it was so weird and cryptic;

He said :  "Wait a few days before you waste any prayers."

And he doesn't explain it. (Of course)

But apparently nobody there said anything to him or tried to get him to explain it, either (obviously). Because it's Prince.

And naturally no-one else really ever would have in that kind of situation - especially when the man has invited you into his home to hear him play for you like that, the way he ALWAYS would for people - when a man welcomes you with that sort of kindness, you don't stand on his rug, in his house, and in front of his family interrupt the regular get-together and question everything in sight, and it would be foolish to expect any kind of meaningful answers to the questions you put to him. And not just because it's Prince, because it's completely self-deluded and ego-maniacal to even ask : "I don't understand  the way you've decorated this room - please clarify for me the your intent behind your choice of those curtains, how you came to conclude they would work in relation to the ambient lighting during that day and what made you decide to pick that specific lamp to pick up any slack?"

What kind of an answer would you really expect to get that would help you along, or even mean anything more than exactly what he had originally said...?  We know Prince is often cryptic, but always plain-spoken. To him, God is Truth.

The Truth is only to be found by the proper understand of words, even if there is only one of them you are able to make out clearly until you figure out that there is  only one. 

The Word. 

Logos

He always says exactly what he means, he means exactly what he says, and he never tries to say anything more simply than he already has by making the way in which he says it longer and more complicated, using more and bigger words.

If you have to explain a joke, it's not a joke - it's a formula for trying to create humour, which does not work, like bad alchemy. A failed experiment, that gets abandoned after it's clearly heading nowhere.

And had I been in that room, it probably never would have occurred to me to give it another moment's thought, it certainly never have troubled my mind afterwards to question it and try to figure out what exactly he meant by that - "Wasted Prayers", as a concept, is verging on being a total oxymoron. 

Except to an atheist, in which case, they're all wasted prayers. 

Or a fundamentalist monotheist, who sees people offering prayers to gods he considers to be false.

But to the fundamentalist those people would not be wasting prayers by directing them and worshipping any false or lesser gods - from his perspective, by offering worship to a false god, you are not doing something that is wasteful, you are doing something that is wrong; either due to them being a bad person who has malicious intentions, which causes them to do something they know is wrong, in which case they would be Evil Prayers, or anti-prayers, sometimes called curses,or hex, or the Left-Hand Path; 

Or,

they are in error. (As the Catholics say). 

Somehow, they ended up believing something which that is incorrect, either because a mistake was made at some point, or a misunderstanding occurred, but the person doesn't know any better,  through no fault of their own, resulting in a sincere and well-intentioned belief in things not based in Truth.

And though the person means well, the prayers that originate out of sincere compassion and genuine love their minds are able to generate are the result of a mistake, because the person believes something which isn't true. Prayers not the product of Truth, not nourished from its good soil will go to waste, because they are unnecessary to redeem the untruth which prompted such such a reaction of compassion and love.

Those are the only wasted prayers.

Like seeds fallen on stoney ground.

And so that's an almost, although not actually exactly a self-nullifying idea of a prayer being wasted or futile.

So sure, slightly strange as it may have seemed at the time, especially with such a peculiar wording in what he said, but if anyone present in the room and felt it would qualify for a spot anywhere in the run down of the All-Time Top 250 Rundown of Peculiar, Baffling or Crypitically Worded Statements Made by Prince, I would have been very, very surprised - Prince has said or sung way more strange and peculiar things than that over the past 57 years, he's never felt the need to further explain what he meant by any of them, and nobody would have expect to suddenly start now.

For those of us still trying completely understand what he means by "There's a lion in my pocket, and Baby, he's ready 2 roar !!" over three whole decades since hearing him say it and thinking "That's.... rather peculiar.... What does that even mean?!", and still  not feeling entire confident that we are able to fully comprehend what it is exactly he's really getting at when he said that (I personally think I probably have, at best, understood about 80% of the meaning of that statement, and I still find it completely baffling whenever I hear it), "Wait a few days, don't waste your prayers" just sailed right past us like a schooner in full sail without causing a ripple in the Zeitgeist.

And again : it never would have even occurred to anyone present in the room at Paisley that night to  think to ask him, even if a few of them heard it and wondered "What is that supposed to mean, exactly?"

But they didn't say anything, because it's Prince.

So he turns to this group of strangers he invited into his home that night to perform for them, to his audience, to the fans, to us; 

He speaks to us and he says "You will shortly be told something which you may believe to be true when you hear it, and if you believe it, you will want to offer prayer to set it right and heal the hurt it causes in you, praying for what you have been told to be redeemed and return to The Truth.

But it's just a story you will be told.

Your prayers will be wasted, but only if you accept the untruth and pray to have it redeemed and restored to Truth by the soothing of our grief and healing of the hurt it caused in us.

It's not necessary to offer prayers to redeem that which is untrue.

And you don't need to pray that we all be restored to and reunited in The Truth, because The Truth was never gone from us.

We just told ourselves a story to try and frighten ourselves so much, we ended up forgetting it was untrue.

But it's just a story."

And then he walked away. 

And just after the dawn of the very next day, (or so they say), his lifeless body was discovered, having apparently collapsed alone inside DeElevator by an assistant at Paisley, who sent for paramedics, and was pronounced dead at precisely 10:07 a.m. 4/21/16. 

So they say.

And so if you're the same as me, you love and live and abide in Truth and know that Truth can set you free, but know enough to recognise and appreciate the skill involved storytelling, and what a well-golf and clever story tells us about ourselves, and how there is an unbroken line of evolution that leads from stories to myth to legends to heroes to gods and ultimately to God - whenever you come across a well-told story, or recognise one of the storytellers, hiding in plain sight, as they spin their yarn;

Let them know you too know and love the Truth and shout-out to them "Go #TeamPurple ! " to show respect for their story-telling, and we also know what Time it is.

Ain't nuttn' but a muffin.