Notes from the Petting Zoo

There are some days, if I was a violent sort of person, where I would kill to be under the mists and streams of a cool crisp waterfall. Some days when the heat presses down and squeezes the very air against me, when breathing just reminds me that everything around me is hot.

These are the sorts of times when being under running water is good.

Running water does remarkable things. Running water cools you, soothes you, washes away physical, mental, and emotional dirt. Running water was a priest offering absolution before there ever was a Great Primate.

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It would be a most interesting place if for one day, whenever we encountered another human being — at work, at school, while playing, on the phone, while riving, etc. — we searched for the gift in that meeting. This is not to say that every meeting is good or that every meeting leaves us feeling happy, but that we acknowledge that in each meeting there is a lesson, at least. Some kind of gift.

And for that, we should consider gratitude.

Today, I will thank people for what they bring. It might not be the easiest thing, but I think it’ll be interesting. I think it’ll force me to see them, to acknowledge how they affect me and my life, even if a tiny way.

Gratitude doesn’t have to be simpering, either. It can be a simple statement, a calm appreciation, followed by a brisk moving on. In the same way that an apology doesn’t have to take the form of capitulation, gratitude doesn’t have to take the form of obligation.

They’ll probably think I’m weird, but that’s fine. It would not be the worst thing I have been called in my life.

Might I recommend you consider the same thing? At the very least, it would produce A Weird Day for lots of people.

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Tortilla chips must be superfood. When I eat them, I feel great. They keep forever in the bag. Each one is a fun experience to feel how it crunches differently than all the rest. They don’t kill me like eating lots of other different kinds of snack foods.

The only thing they don’t go with is coffee, but I blame coffee for that, trying to be a jealous god. Coffee’s just jealous.

But I love tortilla chips.

Not the same way I love people (’cause that would get the police involved), but still.

Superfood. I swear.

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Government should be kept starved and lean and on a chain in the basement, away from sharp objects, away from us as we sleep helplessly in our beds. Government can’t be trusted. You can’t kill it because you need it, but for goodness sake, don’t parade it out and about.

The strongest tool against an unleashed government is a free press.

A press that does not take a more-or-less universal, partisan-free anti-government stance ought not to be trusted. Any government official who claims unsympathetic press needs to be trusted about as much as the bully in third grade who traded you a big shiny nickel for your nasty tiny dime.

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