Everyone knows that life is shit. Life is just enduring suffering, managing despair, and grimly soldiering through day after bleak day. We are born stupid and foolish, and eventually we die feeble and terrified. The existence of even the luckiest among us is a parade of indignities through a hellscape of pain and misery. But folks, I am happy to tell you that I have identified a way to experience a brief and fleeting glimmer of joy and happiness.
Go to central Vietnam, near the town of Phong Nha. Think of it like Frodo’s quest to destroy the One Ring, but through the Mordor that is Actual Reality. Procure a scooter, and scooter 2 kms. up the Dong Hai river valley.
There you’ll find a place called “The Duck Stop”. Go into that place. You’ll find a wise and kind young man named Quinn. He will ask you for a modest amount of money. He will give you a traditional Vietnamese hat and take you and your family to a small enclosure, and in that enclosure there will be 100 or so identical white ducks. Just ordinary ducks – but a many of them. It’s critical to get the cumulative effective of scores of ducks. I’d say anything below about 45 ducks will do zero to fight off the terror that quickly rushes in to fill the vacuum between heartbeats. And a single duck, good lord, that’s the very symbol of existential despair – the thought alone makes me shudder. Quinn will fill your cupped hand with duck food, and you’ll hold it down at duck level, and the ducks will go bananas eating the food out of your hand with their smooth, round bills, and for a moment, you will experience joy.
Perhaps your daughter will throw duck food at your son’s feet, hoping to terrify him, but the result will be not terror, but pure glee.
Then Quinn will instruct your kids to run around the enclosure with a tub of duck food, and 100 ducks will chase them, waddling and quacking furiously, and you will watch this scene unfold and briefly feel the absence of the crushing burden of being alive.
Finally, Quinn will instruct you to sit down on short ledge and remove your shoes, put the soles of your feet together.
Into the space between the arches of your feet he will pour duck food.
The ducks will climb over each other to stick their stupid funny faces in there and tickle your feet – a sensation you’ve never before experienced, could not imagine, and can not describe – and irrepressible laughter will erupt from a warm, liquid place deep within your cold, dead heart.
Accordingly, I am starting a duck-based religion. It will be called Quackitarianism. Join us, or be forever doomed to live in the hell that is zero to a moderate amount of ducks.
Earth to Ben 