The Quisp & Quake Dialogues

I remember a time as a younger man riding in a car with 3 other friends one weekend evening, a long time ago now, just riding around and around in circles as we were looking for things to do (i.e., trying to find girls), when after miles and miles of riding around, our inter-car discussions began to take a somewhat more philosophical turn. We were at that age when young people are exploring what they believe in, and why they believe in what they believe, an age which is both a wonderful as well as fascinating time of life. Someone from amongst our group, I'll call him the "Pseudo-Atheist" (because he really believed in God deep down, while denying it outright) began to challenge the existence of God, and I in turn took up that challenge with own my responses and "proofs" that God does indeed exist (I have since then taken my own more "philosophical" view upon this, perhaps to be explained in more detail in another posting), with the debate at times becoming quite heated. What I remember as being so interesting about this particular evening was that our heated, frenetic dialogues (or quadralogues?) would bounce on over into other topics quite easily, with only the slightest, most tenuous link existing between one topic and the next. Somehow, (don't ask me how) our discussions over the existence of God, the nature of God, and whose father was responsible for whose nonsensical views, turned seamlessly over into discussions about breakfast cereals (we were not drinking), and especially a cereal that I believe was called Quisp (here is some info on Quisp: Wikipedia:Quisp and Quisp Site). Quisp had a nemesis by the name of Quake, and if I remember right, they both looked essentially the same, little cartoon alien characters with propellers on top of their heads. We soon began to debate the merits of Quisp and Quake (Quisp was good and Quake was like a dark, nefarious version of Quisp, in the cartoon world). This debate also eventually turned quite heated, in terms of whose cereal was better, Quisp's or Quake's. Was Quisp really good and Quake evil? Where was Quisp from, what did Quake want from Quisp, and why did he seem to cause so much trouble? And, why the little mini saucer-shaped corn and sugar cereal? Was there a hidden mystery behind it all? Was there something being conveyed or revealed, but only to those "initiated" into the mysteries, as we obviously were?

It now seems all so ridiculous, but in a way, also not, in that our discussions over religion and God, signs and symbols, and crazy breakfast characters, all had merged and morphed into something that seemed on that night almost truly illuminated, in some both revelatory and yet also inexplicable way. It was a night that I have always remembered to myself as the Quisp and Quake dialogues, a strange and wonderful evening that touched upon both the sacred as well as the profane; the most high as well as the everyday of common experience, which in reality is nothing more than simply the totality of human life itself. I know that my friends too would remember this wild and charged evening if I were to see them again and were to bring it up with them, and I also believe that they would remember this night with the same sense of "intensity" that I have of it.

Needless to say, we never found any girls on that particular evening, and now that I think of it, we rarely (but sometimes occasionally) ever did, heightened metaphysical conversations or not!