(Eventually i will stop posting things like this. Hell, maybe this’ll be the last one, after all 3’s a charm. Anyway, do what you can with it -unless you want to rip it apart, i need the Karma- sorry all. -Upham)
Tao. I’m a Taoist. I’m not a Taoist. To be a Taoist is to not be. Or rather it is to be with out being. What fun, my whole life philosophy is a Catch-22*…
A friend of mine has a Physics teacher who says he’s a Taoist, but i don’t believe him. You can’t be a Taoist. I’ve only ever met one person who’s even heard of it here in New Brunswick (as my uncle says: “it’s not the asshole of the earth, but you can see it from here”). The guy wasn’t even from here. Dave was the mans name, he was my boss last summer.
Dave was one hell of a man, i thought he was just some guy till he started talking one day. The only places on earth this man hadn’t been were Antartica and Greenland (not sure why he’d never been to Greenland, i guess he just didn’t want to go).
One time some of us were talking, something about being alone on a highway. Dave stops in for a second and says “Alone? You think you know what alone is? Try standing in the middle of the Sahara desert with no one and nothing around you. That’s alone.”
No one asked why he’d been there, no one asked how he got out. No one said anything, in fact. What the hell are you supposed to say to that? “Well, gee Dave, last time i was there i didn’t think it was that bad”… nah, we’re talking about the man who recorded Jefferson Airplane (“Not the best band i ever worked with! I can’t stand Grace Slick”). The man who spends his summers in a tiny shed inback of his restaurant reading The Art of War and meditating. The man who told me “it’s a Zen thing James, you’re gonna be happy, you just don’t know it yet” and “you cant clean a floor with a dirty mop” (ok, so he said the second one when i was mopping the floor with a dirty mop, but the first one’s pretty good). This is Dave, man, Dave.
Dave, as we speak, is either someplace in Europe, or some other place in Asia. The last time i talked to him he wasn’t sure where he was going. For all i know Dave’s reading this right now (HEY DAVE! IT’S THE BINGO CALLER FROM LAST SUMMER! HOW YOU?!)
Can you imagine meeting a guy like this at 18 while you’re living in a van on a farm, practicing meditation and partying like a son of a bitch every night? The man makes me wish i hadn’t missed the '60’s. He’s just some guy, from Summerside PEI who’s had one of the crazyest lives i’ve ever heard of.
I’ll probably never see Dave again.
I’ll probably never see a lot of people again. It’s strange to think that at some point in the future i’ll have lost touch with more people then i know. It’s even stranger to think that i’m probably talking to a lot of those people every day.
My baby brother, up stairs in the bath tub, will try a cigarette (and if he’s anythig like 3 of his older brothers and sister, will smoke for a while).He’ll try pot, he’ll get drunk and puke his guts out. He’ll get crushes and think crazy thoughts, he’ll even act on some of them. Maybe he’ll meet Dave some place too. Maybe he’ll be Dave in 50 years. Hell, maybe by some weird cosmic burp he is Dave. I dunno, little thoughts like those always keep me on my toes, you never really know who’s watching you. I’m convinced my boat is George Orwell reincarnate, there’s just something about it. Just as long as it doesn’t talk the pets into running me out of the house i’m happy.
If i was the Prince of Whales, i’d have one hell of a boat.
If i was a Pirate i’d have one hell of a boat.
Man i wish i was a Pirate. One of my really distant relitives was, i bet he had a blast. He could write too, so he would have been a well respected pirate. Either that or they all would have made fun of him for being a geek. Hard to tell who was cool 200 years ago. Still man, i never heard of a Pirate who was a loser, except Capt. Kidd (read about him some time, man the poor goof!)
Danial Boon didn’t even notice when his wife was pregnant.
Anyway, i think i’m going to stop writing before i start talking about the Dreadnought revolution Jacky Fisher started at the end of the 19th Centuary, you’ll all thank me for this, i’m sure.
(with a little luck it’ll just fall off the board)
