090518 It’s so satisfying to have the lawn mowed before the rain comes, and then the rain comes when you weren’t even expecting it, because you haven’t had a chance to check the weather lately, because you’ve been doing other things. Important other things? Some of them, yes, like pouring attention and electrical brain energy into the collection of notions and assumptions that your pattern-recognition system conceives of as your “job.” And also mowing the lawn. And now it’s raining, and I’m sitting here doing this, and I’m not at a cafe, and I’m not spending any money at this exact instant, and I am sitting in a cool quiet domicile that I don’t own but can pretty much act as if I do up to a certain point, and I’m sitting on an afghan that my great grandmother made, and it’s draped over a futon and it’s quiet in here except for the hum of the ventilation system and the applause of the fresh rain sweeping over the house. It’s angling down out of the north. It’s so beautiful it becomes impossible to explain; superlatives cheapen it; it’s so ordinary, so fundamental, so common and yet so perfectly, exquisitely, ephemerally specific. Each blast crater made by each new rain drop bombing the pooling patio instantly disappears, and in that disappearing act are great multitudes of goofy grinning clumsy painful swearing sweating passionate human lives. There (as my favorite old boys sang) but for the grace of you go I. And who are you? Certainly not the motherfucker who has been driving through my front yard because they’re too fucking lazy to turn around in the driveway. I am like 99.9999999900221293848488392923201001293488900012 percent sure it’s the fucking Asian boys next door. That’s right I said it. They seem to be operating under an unspoken set of rules that doesn’t correspond to the assumed unspoken set of rules that most of the rest of us around here are operating under. Is that because they’re quote not from here unquote? I have no idea. Or is it because they’re just fucking lazy assholes and don’t know how to teach their children some respect? I have no idea. All I know is, when we get to a place where we can’t even talk about cultural differences, we’re fucked. I’m not just going to automatically hit subscribe every time a liberal pundit says something careful and thoughtful sounding. I’m not going to support that unhinged predator who calls himself our President. But I’m just saying. You CAN be too careful, I’ll give the so-called conservative gun toting muscle headed tractor boys that much. It’s like, look at kids. One goes up to the other and says, Why are you a different color than me? and gets a high minded civilly conscious TALKING TO. So what? Child learns that the different, the other, IS associated with danger and calumny and getting in trouble. Learns that what you’re supposed to do, under the unspoken—at least as un- as possible—rule set, is pretend you don’t see the difference. Emperor has no skin color. That’s just dumb. We should all be able to be as frank as possible, but at the same time we should all be trained to be ready to be shown that we’re an asshole, that we were not seeing the whole picture, that changing your mind doesn’t make you weak, etc. We should all stay like kids a lot longer, basically. Problem with that is that inevitably someone comes along who learns how to put on a big shirt and act like they’ve discovered some secret of being an adult, and then starts bossing all the enlightened natural scientist kids around, and killing some of them, and locking them up, and making it hard for them to say the truth if the truth interferes with the big-shirt’s ambition. Then other kids have to put on big shirts to fight back, to not be left out, not to be-- you know because did you ever notice the urge to warfare can sneak up on you? Like it comes out of NOWHERE! You read all these doctor seuss books and stuff and you nod sagaciously in recognition and you close the book with a satisfying dusty *poompf* and put it back on the shelf, confident that you read it to your kids because you all are among the wise and the knowing, and all you have to do to get your doggy treat is sadly shake your head at how crazy those sneeches can be and stuff, how sad that “people”--not ME, mind you, but, you know “people” always fall into these pointless, how sad and stupid and ignorant and POINTLESS escalatations, battles, and arms races-- and then the next thing you know, you’re not a kid anymore, but you’re an adult, and not only that but you’re an adult who is arguably, no make that undeniably past your physical prime, but you’re still out there mowing that lawn, because somebody’s got to do it, right? and it’s kind of your thing anyway, and you see these giant ruts in the front ditch where those stupid fucking ASIAN BOYS (no you don’t have proof, but come on, who else would have done it) drove through your fucking yard, your yard that, sorry, i don’t care how much everyone ELSE in this goddamn trashy neighborhood wants to act like transient trashy slobby good for nothing parasites, YOU actually care about what your yard looks like, YOU actually want to feel like you live here and not treat it like a fucking trash dump, YOU are the one who has been mowing it, consistently, and taking care of it for like a decade and a half or more now, and the first thing you do? Talk to them, I suppose, right? Ha no. The first thing you do is put giant boulders in that part of the yard, close enough to the edge that it should be obvious you’re not supposed to drive there. No, you don’t feel stupid lugging giant boulders from the plant beds by the garages over to the front ditch and plopping them down. Not at all. And if that doesn’t work? What will you do? Your mind is already racing... Hmm... I could throw down screws and nails and stuff... Yeah, yeah! Of course your mind already races too to the part where you’re the one that ends up getting a flat. Or you could put a bunch of like c------s or whatever those pyramid shaped razor wire thingies that your more demented military surplus junior high friend told you about that one time, and then your mind is not unaware of the fact the more hazardous traps and mines you put in the front yard, you’d be like, oh by the way kids *don’t walk there* and so then what’s the point of protecting a front yard that *your own people* can’t even enjoy anymore, but yeah... Let’s keep thinking of what we could do to *SHOW THOSE MOTHERFUCKERS,* because they’re just such assholes, just so oblivious, just so obviously not following the same set of rules that everybody else around here is. Mostly. And yeah, those unspoken rules? Yeah, that’s something I’m ready to *fight* about. But I’m not a star bellied sneech. Not me. No sir. I’m a good doctor seussian, I am. I went to school I read my good books. *Poompf.*