Library People

At the downtown Spokane library, a group of ten or so homeless people fifty-something years old are sitting next to me.   One holds up a joint and asks, "Does anyone want to join me?"  No one answers.  "Well, hell with this," he says, pockets the joint, and walks off.

Quote

The thing about Zen is that it pushes contradictions to their ultimate limit where one has to choose between madness and innocence. And Zen suggests that we may be driving toward one or the other on a cosmic scale. Driving toward them because, one way or the other, we are already there.

It might be good to open our eyes and see.  --Thomas Merton

Haiku

When the snow
turned to rain
I slowly melted.

Quote

If you want my opinion on the mystery of life and all that, I can give it to you in a nutshell: the universe is like a safe to which there is a key. But the key is locked up in the safe.  --Peter De Vries

Quote

It is not only the most difficult thing to know oneself, but the most inconvenient one, too. --Henry W. Shaw

Quote

It is only when we realize that life is taking us nowhere that is begins to have meaning. --P. D. Ouspensky

Overheard Conversation

At the jukebox: 

"So what are you going to do?"

"A little bit of Slayer, a little bit of Hay Reed, a little bit of country."

Picture

I pull apart like bits of cotton candy.

Deer

I passed a deer driving last night. It crossed the road in front of me at a walk, head down.  I noticed her ribs and unsteady gait.  I stopped the car, and she also stopped and looked at me.  I could tell it was not going to make it through winter.  I wanted to grieve for its death, but I realized that this deer's death may be what keeps my friends the coyotes alive through this hard winter.  It is difficult, but I am learning not to place value judgments on what I consider to be of worth.  Seeing that deer would have been great news for a coyote, and sad news for the doe's fawn. The perspective with which we view things influences how we judge the situation.  Objectivity in such situations, as in most instances, is difficult, if not impossible.  We skew everything we see.

Spot the Logical Fallacy

Emma recently asked me what Krabby Patties tasted like. 
--Do they exist? I asked her.
--No, she replied
--Then they taste like nothing. I continued, What does nothing taste like? Imagine yourself in a vaccuum chamber with no air in it.  Take a big bite.  That is what a Krabby Patty tastes like.
--Dad! Emma was getting frustrated. So I continued.
--Also, whenever I ask you what you are thinking about, and you say nothing, you must be thinking of Krabby Patties, right?
--What?
--Krabby Patties don't exist, and therefore are nothing.  So when you have nothing on your mind, you are thinking of Krabby Patties.

Value Village

I was at Value Village with Sean and an old man was trying on shoes and asked Sean to help him get a boot off.  Sean immediately asked, "Are you bleeding?", which I thought was odd.  Then, when he pulled off the boot, I could see his legs, which were swollen and hard.  There was a ulcerous wound on his shin, and he was not wearing any socks.  I'll never try shoes on there again.

Haiku

Parked cars.
Iced footprints
on the sidewalk.

Overheard Conversation

A man talking to his buddie at a bar:  "I was passed out on the couch and my wife came in and said, 'What the hell are you watching?' I was on Cinemax, and while I was asleep it had turned into Skinemax. It was a guy and chick doing the soft porn dry hump."