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Pastimes : Don't Ask Rambi -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Gauguin who wrote (8875)	3/24/1998 8:09:00 PM
From: Jacques Chitte	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 71178

Cosmic protection. Yes. Back then, if you wanted to be bad, you looked to - whom? Bob Dylan. Malcolm X, maybe. Now whaddya got? Snoop Doggy Dung. Tupac. An entire pantheon of proponents of Armed Violence as performance art. A dose of clap (requring a furtive tushful of penicillin) has given way to Aids. Now "cosmic protection" comes in a foil square. Pitfalls of a golden age. Certainly there were the drugs. For the careless or neurologically unfortunate, they ended up saddled with a smack habit. Wrong way on a No Thru Street. Perhaps the hate has softened. Wallace is gone, and Farrakhan didn't really take. I think. But the hate has gotten so much more starchy and entrenched. The current contortions over affirmative action law, Boy Scout membership, and free needle programs show me that America has not come to terms with the (politely) Diversity Issue. The hate is less sharp-edged, but there seems to be so much more of it, and it has acquired this genteel veneer. But that could be more a product of my slow awareness of society, my taking the Cynic Route to a more informed viewpoint, than a real change in the populace. It seems to show up when we drive. Crowd problem? "Road rage" is a topic that just didn't really matter until recently. I mean, we all brain-fart when we drive. Useta be, you pulled an oopsie at an offramp, you'd get maybe some horn action. Now, in the Digital Age, you can count on a finger or two, and sometimes an actual move to block by your fellow driver. The mission for those who have the courage is clear: In the chaos, make a place where beauty and honor still converge. This Internet, this new medium in the twilight between phone and boob tube: it provides an opportunity. The House of Rambi (now that the poultry and beer stains are a faint olfactory memory) provides our canvas. An ancient wisdom comes back like a cat who doesn't care that he's been gone, MIA, for a three years and unhesitatingly finds his wonted precise spot next to the Barcalounger: Think good thoughts. I useta chuckle at that aphorism, first spied as one of a dozen bumper stickers on one of the Last Technicolor Microbuses. As I grow old and mellow, I like to believe that there is real spiritual power in at the very least not increasing the burden of noise and fear pumped out by five billion souls. And maybe even making a difference for the good, don't know where, when or how. This is a place where I like to come and think good thoughts, where none of us is under any obligation to do so, and yet the tenor of this thread unfailingly comes back to the good things. Some of them startlingly beautiful, others as prosaically life-affirming as a good yawn.