Keep Your Eye On The Grindstone

Turns out the universe is as simple or as intricate as you think it is. It's all just stuff. Trees are falling in the forest with no-one around all the time. The secret, if you can call it a secret, is to enjoy it. 

If the rules are made by bad guys, do you disregard them? Sorta' makes you an outlaw, doesn't it? 

We all know that we shouldn't judge. We all judge.

If you can make someone happy while enjoying life, yourself, you're successful, in my book. 

Spread some joy, give some love. Give some more. Don't worry much about what they think. They don't know any more about it than you do.

Give us peace on earth and end this dreadful, dreadful war.

 

Open Barn Door

Do you have to taste bitter to appreciate sweet? The further along the road I get, the more obvious it seems that there is no divine plan. Some of us only touch the hot stove once. There has to be a beginning, of course, and there's always that darn end. Neither money nor luck can change that.

If there's a purpose, it surely must be pleasure. Yours and everybody else's, too. 

Adopt a dog. Fall in love. Sing with the birds.

Give us peace on earth and end this dreadful, dreadful war.

 

Why, You! Why, I Ought'a...

You have to be something of an optimist, I suppose, to be much of an anarchist. Now, I'm one who believes that there are a lot more good folks on the planet than rascals. The truly rotten ones, however, aren't often satisfied with taking more than their share. They tend to devote effort and energy towards depriving the riffraff, that's us, of the basic necessities to sustain dignity, sometimes life, itself.

If Mr. Bezos would pay his employees a living wage, he might save a few bucks on bodyguards. Where's the fun in that, though. 

Seems to me that a part of the problem, if we can agree that it's a problem, is that those scumbags are only interested in impressing those other scumbags. Now that intelligence, education and honesty are ridiculed, we're working on putting the word "empathy" in that part of the dictionary where we've managed to put "liberal" and "socialist" and "woke." Words merely mean what those guys say they mean, never mind what you learned in school. Turns out alternative definitions are like alternative facts.

If the good guys have a bomb and the bad guys have a bomb, how do you suppose that's ever gonna work out?

Oh, I'm still betting on the decent folks, just not in the short run.

Give us peace on earth and end this dreadful, dreadful war.

 

The Eyes Have It

All that time that I wasted worrying about the demise of rock'n'roll could have been better spent worrying about something else. Now, a few remember and fewer care. It's impossible to imagine what my life would have been like without those three chords and that incessant 4/4 beat.

Now, I'm not about to claim that I made the most of those years. I can tell you, though, that without history through the lens of Chuck Berry and Elvis and The Beatles, my self-identity would be something entirely different than what it is.

My story can be written as the luckiest or the least lucky tale ever, depending on who's doing the writing. Since I seem to be the only one interested, I suppose it depends on the day that I'm writing. On the one hand, I've wasted all of my time. On the other, everything else would have been a bigger waste.

Now those guys ask, "What did you do?," and I answer, " It doesn't matter now, but it did then."

Give us peace on earth and end this dreadful, dreadful war.

 

Shelf Life

How old is too old to be naughty? Why does everybody else's religion seem so ridiculous? Who decides right and wrong? Why them?

If you're going to spend or waste your time pondering the insoluble, choose subjects that don't lead to despair. There is absolutely no reason to wallow in painful affairs.

No event was ever prevented by worry. When I was a kid, they taught me to worry about the bomb. The time that I wasted fretting about it never prevented nuclear annihilation. Now, in a weird twist of nostalgia, America wants to make that perturbation fashionable once more. I, for one, do not plan to fall for that one again.

Sin? Bring it on. I was never gonna "go blind" from any form of self-pleasure. Most of what titillates me is legal somewhere.

Give us peace on earth and end this dreadful, dreadful war.  

 

All Who Pass Here

When good kids grow up to be good human beings, we refer to them as "naive" when they don't understand chicanery. The others, the ones who stole your lunch money, look on the empathetic as "suckers." They're pretty sure that you would have stolen their lunch money if you were as cunning and smart as they were.

Those are the ones who look for opportunity wherever they may find it. Religion has always been good for it. Politics, sales... you know the ones that seem to have been around forever.

Take something pure and add the term "business" to it, and Voila!- cue the vultures. You know, the music business, the art business, show business.

You don't have to remind me that the are good civil servants, sincere clergymen and so on, but you're gonna have to surprise me to show me a decent guy running a cryptocurrency company, a hedge fund or a health insurance company. Let's don't even talk about politicians.

Yeah, the world, as always, is populated with good guys, who sometimes do bad things, and bad guys, on whom you can depend on doing bad things.

Stick with love. It's your best bet and our last hope.

 

Poor People of Easton

If I ever use up all this good luck, I hope that I'm gracious enough to keep from complaining. The only dreams of mine that have not been fulfilled have to do with world peace and an end to suffering. At this point none of that would surprise me.

Why do some of us get more than our share?

Give us peace on earth and end this dreadful, dreadful war.