Miss A. Laneous
Miss
A. Laneous
by Richard Kendall
Seth once said: “In your terms now and using your terms, an imaginative event is as real as a physically materialized one.”
With that quote in mind, please indulge me as I recount an imaginative encounter between myself and a lady named “Miss A. Laneous.”
A few summers ago I went to a resort off the coast of Spain near the town of Valencia. It was a truly beautiful spot and the city was filled with fantastic architecture and a vibrant nightlife. It was at one of the open-air cafes that I first met Miss A. Laneous. I was sitting outside nursing a drink made with rum and fruit juices which blended perfectly with the cool night air. A woman sat down at a table right across from me with long black flowing hair upon which rested what looked like a tiara. It was actually a band of small multicolored combs, each one perfectly spaced upon her head. I’m not great with guessing people’s ages but I’d say she was probably in her early sixties. There was something about her that attracted my attention and I kept staring at her though I knew doing so was a bit rude. After a few minutes she motioned for me to join her.
I introduced myself and asked what her name was. She answered “Miss A. Laneous,” pausing briefly between each word. She told me she had changed her name to Miss A. Laneous because the word had great significance for her. She asked me if I knew the origin of the word, which I didn’t, and went on to inform me that it was from the Latin miscellus, meaning mixed. Did I know how to define miscellaneous was her next question. I started to feel like I was back in school taking some kind of spot quiz. In a way I was in school, but thankfully not the traditional kind which I never liked very much.
Miscellaneous she explained meant diversity; consisting of diverse things or having various traits; like human beings she said. None of us are exactly alike and we should all be very grateful that such is the case. Imagine a world she went on, where all human beings were exactly alike. How utterly boring that would be. How would we learn anything if wherever we looked we’d only be seeing ourselves. And whenever anyone spoke we’d only be hearing our own words. We would lose all sense of inquisitiveness because there would never be anything new to inquire about. She paused for a few moments, not because she was at a loss for words, but I had the distinct feeling that she wanted to give me some time to let what she was saying sink in.
She then continued: You must never close your ears when you hear words that are different than the words you might normally speak; and you must never close your eyes because others may see things in a different light; and above all, you must never close off your mind to ideas because they may be different from the ideas you usually like to entertain. So rejoice in the differences that surround you, and realize that they add to the overall richness of everyone’s reality. Be proud of your own unique nature and do not feel compelled as you do at times to “fit in.”
I thanked her for her words and promised I’d name a tab after her on my website. As she got up to leave I asked her if there was any possibility she could transform from being an imaginative figure to a real person. She just smiled and walked away ever so gracefully. But as promised I did name a tab for her on my website.
So when you visit Miss A. Laneous expect a variety of creative fruit that cannot be squeezed into standardized jars upon which we then slap a ready made label. It shall also be a place where imaginative events proudly take their place alongside the official “facts” of physical existence. “Facts are just official fiction,” Jane Roberts once said. I can’t recall exactly when she said that, but it may have been during a vacation she once took off the coast of Spain, or was that just in my imagination…
