I reckon they’s a time for flowery talk and such, then they’s a time
for getting right down to business. Yes sir, I do believe they’s a time
for ever thang. Like this one time, it was a good one, real nice and all,
when there was this one old man come walking up to me, a stranger
no doubt, while I was just sitting in the cemetery watching the squirrels
go racing around the trees like they was some kind of race-car and the limbs
of the trees the tracks they riding on, this fella come walking right on past
me, got himself a drank of water from the spigot there a few feet away from
where I was a’sitting, turned to me and said, “Must be eighty degrees out.”
Why that just stopped me dead in my head. My thinking just went Boom!
Like this fella here just told me a secret of the world and I was obliged to hear.
See, I was pondering, contemplating all this mysticism junk I been reading,
wondering about how thangs outside ya are just a reflection of what’s in ya.
All symbolic and what not, thangs just be a mirror for ya in a way, a way for you
to tell what going on inside ya, for good or bad. And this here fella saying,
“It’s eighty degrees out”, at that moment— now I know me some math, I got
me some skills with angles and such, so what caught me was the words
‘eighty’, and ‘degrees’, and ‘out’.
So you don’t go a hundred and eighty degrees to try to change everything at once,
everyone knows that don’t they? It’s too much at once, and a set-up for failure.
Better to take a nice hard turn about ninety and see that kind of change coming.
But this fella, he’s talking about eighty. Like, if you almost go the ninety yet
hold back just a hair, well, that’s where it is, one of them in-between spots.
‘Cause I was also thinking about how this old man could be me somehow, in some
way I didn’t understand. He sure was walking fast, strong, real good and not really
hurried but at a pace I don’t think I could keep up with. So to be him, to become him,
I gotta go only eighty degrees and he’s there. He’s me, or I’m him. In some kind of way.
Of course, all this kind of crazy thinking means I miss the real person, the real
individual there before me. I just project right over him and see what I want to
see. Miss alot that way, when you project your own stuff onto folks and don’t
see or hear what they about really. It’s a tough thing, to detach and separate,
to not work yourself onto others and instead try to see who they are. Yet it might
be better to try it that way. Don’t mean you give up doing the other, the projecting
out onto people ’cause they won’t care or know, won’t hurt them no how. Sure miss
alot, don’t get to know who they are, and you might never get to, if you come at it
like that. But it’s okay. Works either way. Or doesn’t, depending. It’s all about the way
you wanna go about being and living. Knowing people real good, or knowing yourself.
I reckon that the choice of the matter. I sure as far didn’t talk to the man none, so maybe
projecting was about the only way I was gonna have some idea of who that fella was. It’s
not like I could go into a trance and learn about him that a ways. Not anymore I mean. Used
to could try that kind of stuff, way back in the day, but not anymore, no sir no ma’am. Don’t
do that kind of thing anymore. Seems a bit too much like prying. Not polite at all. I reckon
they’s such a thang as mental etiquette. I sure hope so. I surely do. Last thang I want is for
somebody to go poking around in my own deal without my permission. Psychics be damned!
Get out of there and mind your own damn business. That’s what I would say. So fair is fair.
Yep, being polite is where it’s at. I certainly do believe so. Only the real special ones got the
green light to snoop around. And they’s not many of them at all. Very few indeed. And they
don’t need to snoop. They already know, more or less. So, anyone else, they can kiss it. Take
an eighty degree hard turn at my ass, pucker up and kiss it. You might like it. Yee Haw!
The Simple Way 