El Gringoqueño

.. "fire" does not matter, "earth" and "air" and "water" do not matter. "I" do not matter. No word matters. But man forgets reality and remembers words. The more words he remembers, the cleverer do his fellows esteem him. He looks upon the great transformations of the world, but he does not see them as they were seen when man looked upon reality for the first time. Their names come to his lips and he smiles as he tastes them, thinking he knows them in the naming.
– Roger Zelazny, "Lord of Light"

Two kinds of people in this world: Those that use facts and figures as a refuge, and those that use them to take flight.

I’ve been dealing with some annoying distractions with regard to small minded people who would rather bog down in rules/specifications/legaleez than actually pretend to know the spirit, the higher method to the legal/bureaucratic nonsense that surrounds us.

It’s funny to note that some people are particularly good at mimicking the "letter of the law", but there are few who actually chew it or understand on a level that doesn’t just make it a talisman of protection from the unwashed masses.

I’m talking about empathy, passion, earnestness, idealism, facts as protectors and ideas as enablers. East egg West egg, new wealth, old wealth, the separation of classes from those that "get" it and those that only imitate it. I am fully convinced that the assumption of power or old money (however ugly it can otherwise be) represents a natural relationship with the things we "know" as versus the scandalous whip that learned facts and deludes and concludes that it is all there is.

Knowledge is NOT power, never was and never will be. Knowledge is the great liberator that lets one off that little ledge upon which we’ve holed up. Would you hurl stones from your nook and laugh at the ignorant or perhaps put yourself to flight and risk falling?

Before we put someone down for ignorance we should ask ourselves whom do I serve: Do I serve my place, my space, my territory, or am I an agent of the Truth, the essence of a thing and the spirit.

And it all comes full circle doesn’t it? Pick any idea from the New Testament, Leave your belongs and come with me, Believe in me and you shall have eternal life, let he who is without sin cast the first stone. We could quote all day, but if we only see them as stones, we end up with nothing, tucked into our nook, huddled clinging to our knees in the cold and out of the light.