lady k went with the belgium lady to a supermarket for europeans. when she returned, i asked “how was the store?” “o, it was america. with french food.” we see some words are the same in every land – like pizza, taxi, internet
me to lady k: “what a strange reality i got myself into when i hooked up with you. i’m a person who wouldn’t go out and eat with everybody else after the poetry readings. if you wanted to see me, you had to stop by and visit – and then i’d spend most of my time and effort trying to get you back out the door. my doormat said GO AWAY. so what am i doing in marrakech with forty foot of couch?”
i took a toke. it started raining. i stood on the balcony looking through the rain to the sun’s rays streaming through a far break in the grey… the sunlight lit the rain from within, so i had a falling water-sparkle dance before my eyes. wind arrived, pushed the falling droplets back up into round water balls which bounced about in the competing air currents – each ball filled with setting sun light. then came thunder bluster harder water, so i came in. even rainy days have their ways.
slowly reading ‘the rebel’ by albert camus. philosophers seem to have 2 problems: if god exists, all this is god’s fault… but if god is dead, where do we get a moral system. i think they’re beating a dead hearse. you don’t need god in the equation. morality is simple: what you do to others may be done to you. if you don’t want to be stolen from, don’t steal. if you want kindness, be kind. if you don’t want to be hurt, don’t hurt others. it’s simple self interest – do as you would be done is the whole of the law. sure i’m strong and smart now and could take from others by force or conniving, but eventually the strongest age and weaken, the smartest dim, the fastest slow. we begin life weak, we end it helpless. what you do now makes a difference later. life is one huge used karma lot.
some day dick cheney and george bush will lose their stolen power – they’ll age, weaken, dim, and folk can start doing to them what they’ve done to others. i would never kick someone who was down, but for those two i’d be tempted to make an exception – repeatedly… though i won’t, because as richard m nixon said, “it would be wrong.” the moral path’s a slippery devil when you’re human.
the “do as you would be done” law does has a fatal flaw – sado-masochists doing as they would be done is going to upset an awful lot of folks. as will the psycho-sociopaths and social-psychopaths – their paths are not ones most of us wish to walk. that’s the trouble with laws, rules, theories – there’s always the grey areas that don’t fit. i still like “brighten the corner where you are” from my friend mister rogers. and “do no damage” holds up well.
when i said i was looking for purpose, poet jack said the purpose of life is to live it. told him i meant to say porpoise, and he replied the porpoise of life is to swim through it. guess that would be the porpoise purpose principle.
the donkeys are braying in the streets below. they bray day and night. sound like badly adjusted air brakes. at night the dogs start barking. i think they wait for humans to go inside at night and then run the streets. during the day, it’s all imperial cats lounging around waiting to see if you brought food.
