Surrounded by Knaves & Fools...

Folk #1: St. Patrick's Day 2026. It doesn't have much meaning beyond an excuse to drink to excess, & then puke on your shoes. Beer & vomit. And for a certain class of Humans, that is just typical behavior. Some of us left all that behind in our mis-spent youth. Now it's about observing your fellow humans acting badly and thinking "glad it's not me." Unleash yourself from the drinking class, and, suddenly you are a bit of an outsider. Choose to be a vegetarian too, and, well, you find yourself on the far shore of existence. Oh yeah, admit you like to read poetry, and poetic novels?  Ok. You are an outlier, no doubt. Yes.  Being on the outside looking in gets to be quite comfortable & comforing. Dave Davies of the Kinks once put it well: "I'm not like everybody else." And that's ok. It kind of inverts the old idea of being a "rebel," no cigarettes, no booze, no BBQ, no junk food, early to bed, early to rise, leaning to the Light,  you know, just for kicks? "Straight Edge," vs."Broken Arrow." I was once told by a "psychic," that my mission in this life was to "heal my male ancestral line."  Seems a bit of a heady, mad, impossible quest & task, the kind of mission & theme you can take into the core of your being and guard with your life. I look back at my own line, a  long string of "working stiffs," folks just trying to get through, and, yes, well, there is continuity in the line. I find myself trying my best to do what I can with what I have, which isn't all that much, but just enough. I can choose to be happy, as an act of flinty discipline. Surely, I am arbitrary, temporary, making it all up as I go along. Often I have no clue what it's all about. I look around at the world and I see difficult dire, deadly, times, bounded by tragedy, and cruelty; surrounded by a world overstuffed with knaves & fools. I am in it, but not of it. That's my code. I tell myself: "It must be enough."