FIVE-O-CLOCK RAMBLING
A THREE PIPE PROBLEM
I have been
a Sherlock Holmes devotee since my earliest teen years. I have
read and reread the stories many times, and am still today fascinated anew.
I woke up
this morning about four a.m. with an annoying headache. I tossed and turned and tried to get back to
sleep. I coughed and sniffled and lay
awake for about an hour; all the time my monkey mind running random thoughts
through my conscious/subconscious.
I recently
read an article about the life of Arthur Conan Doyle. I find it strange that the man who penned
the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, the epitome of logic, would spend the last thirteen
years of his life proclaiming the existence of fairies, ghost, an afterlife and
communication with the dead.
As Sherlock
Holmes said in The Read-Headed League; this is a three pipe problem.
I see this
as an example of the so called atheist in the fox hole – where some people approaching
the end of life, and unable to accept the reality of death, cast about for any
assurance that their life will not end.
This was
totally illogical from an otherwise logical mind – a ‘want’ to confer the existence of magic over logic. Immortality: the same thing that religions
have been peddling to the punters from the earliest times.
When the
hour is early, the house is quiet, my wife and the cats are asleep; to stop the
cacophony of the idiot monkeys I find it easier to take a single thought to a
conclusion – in writing.
the Ol’Buzzard
