Credo

I can accept notoriety lightly now.  But there was a time I couldn't.  Happiness, I thought then, was being accepted by the crowd.  Desperately I hid my differences, but somehow the bliss I sought continued to elude me.  Then Fate, my sometimes opponent, led me to a theater where Mondo Cane was playing.

The last scene of that film is set on a South Pacific island.  It shows a group of starving, ragged natives silhouetted against the sky.  They are standing on a mountain top, waiting patiently.  They are waiting for a cargo plane, and they are waiting with a faith that defies death.

During World War II these natives had seen cargo planes land on the hastily constructed runways of the fighting forces.  From the holds poured untold treasures‑-food, clothing, blankets.  Such blessings, the natives concluded, could only come from heaven, where their ancestors dwelt.  Such blessings, clearly, were not meant for the greedy strangers that had come to their land but for themselves.  Somehow they must persuade their ancestors that they were of sufficient faith to deserve these cargo planes now misdirected into, or seized by, alien hands.

The end of the war didn't destroy the cult of the cargo planes.  These aircraft could still be seen, flying always to other than their "rightful owners."   Painstakingly, and with untold effort, the natives constructed bamboo towers and runways‑-the symbols of their faith.  Then they climbed to the mountain top.  They'd demonstrated their belief‑-they'd followed the prescribed ritual.  Their ancestors would know.  The cargo planes would come if only they waited patiently, unmoved by their cold and their hunger.  At the top of the barren mountain they stand....

Yes, crowd, I am different.

I too have stood at lonely heights, needing warmth and sustenance, having only faith.  But the cold and the hunger proved greater than my resolve, and I fled my lonely post.  I ran, and stumbled, and fell down that mountain, screaming my rage at the meaninglessness of what I had believed in, weeping that life was no less cruel than death.  I came down from the mountain. 

Because I was hungry, I tried to till the soil.  Because I was cold, I tried to raise sheep, and cotton.  And yes, I was waiting still.  I knew that my lambs might die before they were sheared.  I saw that my crops might not reach fruition, for I was unschooled in their care.  But if cold and hunger were my destiny, then I'd meet them on a site made hallow by a faith greater than that of the mountain tops.  I'd meet them where I had tried, and demonstrated, my faith in myself.