Real, live people. I’m afraid I do. It makes me lonely to love people.
Not people as an abstraction. I’m talking about persons. When people start talking about their ideas for “the people,” I know some “persons” are going in the proverbial oven. Can you love your fellow man? Not the ones just like you. All sorts of other people. Everyone seems interested in fixing all the other people in the world. It’s not a new idea, but everyone thinks they’ve just invented the wheel or fire or something every time they try it. Persons always suffer when ideas about perfecting people get going. It’s an iron law, like gravity or the 1040 form.
People are raucous and noisy and they jostle and fight. They smell. Occasionally they smell good. They have ambition where you wish they’d lie still. They are somnolent when you’d prefer they push your cart. They are rotund and jolly and easygoing whether you think everyone should be a humorless ectomorph scold or not.
An ideal human’s behavior is being laid out with plumb bob and ruler right now, by people for whom I have no regard. The persons they are trying to make from the magnificent clay of humanity would be contemptible, if it was possible to produce them, which it isn’t. They wear the authenticity of real people like a cannibal wears the skin of his victim.
Above all, they hate the sight of children. They’re all still potential persons. Can’t have that, can we? Me? That’s why I love them.
7 Responses
I just wish they'd stay the hell outta my yard……
Andy
http://www.smokingtoaster.com
I'm afraid I do. It makes me lonely to love people.
I know that feeling; funny how that works, sometimes.
They wear the authenticity of real people like a cannibal wears the skin of his victim.
Whew.
Damn, I wish I'd written that. Gorgeous.
People are raucous and noisy and they jostle and fight. They smell. Occasionally they smell good.
Yes, the Almighty gave us just enough sense of smell to avoid major catastrophes such as forest fires and putrid waterholes. Any greater acuity and we wouldn't be able to stand each other. There are many things I'm glad I cannot smell.
I know the smell of fear. Even after smoking for over twenty years, I can still (usually) pick that up in time to recognize a scam coming down the pike.
No smokes for two years this past August. I'm kind of grateful for that. Like prostrated and kowtowing grateful.
I may have already met the greatest mind of the age… or possibly the most subtle and enthralling poet who ever lived… or the person who will cure cancer…
… because I meet people all the time, and any one of them has the potential to be the best of the best that ever was.
Being free, if being tied implicitly to being responsible, is the starting place for miracles.
I fear we must do some mighty heavy lifting in order to return to that 'responsible' state.
Of course we are all responsible, always… but the avoidance of acknowledging the fact has gotten us where we are today.
Cannibals. I may use that, with attribution of course, some time down the road.
ed in texas
Loving people doesn't necessarily equal liking people. And vice versa.
And just think, Vman, a woman's sense of smell is about 500 times greater than a man's. No wonder so many societal busy-bodies and misguided Marxists are women. Their sensibilities are constantly affronted by simple humanness. The busybodies literally can't see beyond the end of their nose.