Assorted Thoughts, No Narrative Frame

A man in Jamaica once climbed a tree and brought me a fresh coconut. Later in a casual conversation I told him the Devil does not exist and he was upset by the thought. He needed that Devil. I was just an academic with a coconut.

Moral: Don’t dismiss other people’s Devils.

Secondary Moral: Get away from such people as quickly as you can.

 

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Like the cab driver in New York City who thought I was the victim of voodoo because of my blindness. I didn’t pay him. I explained that he probably didn’t want my money since I’m a victim of voodoo.

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I know a blind fellow who once bit a cab driver in New York. The driver was refusing to take him because of his guide dog. The driver said the dog might bite. “I bite,” said my friend. “The dog is perfectly benign.”

 

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I played chess with a Frenchman once. This was in Helsinki. He was smug. He thought he was infinitely better than I was. I beat him and accordingly he knocked the chess board on the floor.  Then I really pissed him off. I said: “How cliche!”

 

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The beginning of religion isn’t about the ineffable search for meaning. It’s about hating the neighbors. As the religion evolves it’s about getting dressed up to hate your neighbors.

 

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Yeats wrote: “Neither Christ, nor Buddha, nor Socrates wrote a book, for to do that is to exchange life for a logical process.”

 

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Theory

 

The world is blind, dear Heidegger,

The world “worlds” with outstretched hands.

 

Let’s say a man is nothing but sack cloth and ash,

Say the sun is a knife grinder, the moon a nurse maid…

The world is blind. We walk like ants

On this turning mineral blank…

 

**

In the early dusk

In the unforeseen and shy happiness

Of walking and seeing houses

I am circuited

By algebra and myth,

A man of the Enlightenment,

A figure slightly bent

Who loves a dusty bottle

And Johnson’s dictionary

And the odd words of his children.

Don’t confuse me with the formalists,

I once returned

A tear gas canister

To the arms of an unsuspecting policeman.

It was in Washington, DC,

When Nixon was sleepless

Beside the “hi-fi”…

 

S.K.