The Golden Rule

It's true, most everybody is in a rush. People did not used to be like they are now. People took their fucking time.

Aside from the demented, the drunk, and the dopes on the highway today, the world was slow. As the Hammer and I walked, hundreds of swallows chased after bugs but even their swooping and gobbling seemed restrained. Ducks lazed in the shade. Two herons were snoring at opposite ends of a long dead tree half submerged in the water.

I heard voices. I thought they came from hidden paddlers in the slow water beneath us. Turned out it was three blackberry pickers, all teenage girls, on the opposite bank. One picker explained the Golden Rule of blackberry picking, "If it squishes in your fingers you have to eat it."

I have a lot more respect for those three girls collecting berries for pies or winter muffins and pancakes than the rotten children on my tv talking about how they are spending hundreds or thousands of dollars in a corporation pleasing attempt to appear cool in school this fall.

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Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible. Thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions and comfortable habits. Thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless of the well-tried wisdom of the ages.

Bertrand Russell