3:12 am

I'm sort of mulling over the notion that every time I post here, the very act of posting demonstrates that I don't have a perfect grasp of what I'm talking about.

There are some things in this world that, although they seem quite important to a lot of people, don't interest me at all. And there are things, such as politics, that interest me but I see that there are dozens of people who can speak more knowledgeably than I.

If I were in a perfect state, I think, everything in the world would fall into one of those two categories and I wouldn't have anything to say at all.

I used to have an old Dilbert cartoon taped to my cubicle wall. In the first panel, Wally says, "I'm running out of things to say."

In the second panel, he adds, "I'm going to have to start repeating myself just to fill the air time."

In the third panel, Dilbert replies, "You could try letting other people talk." And Wally says, "So anyway, I'm running out of things to say."

That's how I feel about myself most of the time. I could quit communicating altogether and the resulting impact would be negligible. Some of the stuff I talk about –– not just in blogs, but in life in general –– is of no importance at all. And for the stuff that is important, other people have said it far better than I have. I'm just trying to fill the air time.

Sometimes I think I'd like to buy five hundred copies of 'The Taoist Classics' translated by Thos. Cleary, hand them out to everyone I know, and just tell them, "Anything of substance I have to say is already better said somewhere in this book."

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I mentioned previously that I'd like to have Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. for a neighbor when I die and go to heaven. I actually decided this several months ago after reading his final book, "A Man Without A Country."

I came up with the notion that when I die, I would like to live on a street of bungalows and foursquare houses with big wide porches, shaded by rows of sycamore trees up and down each side of the street. Vonnegut would live next door, with Alan Watts on the other side. The biggest, most stately house on the street would belong to Mark Twain, but I would be too intimidated to go near it. H.L. Mencken would live down on the far corner, a sarcastic old misanthrope, and nobody would pay much attention to him.

Seung Sahn would live across the street, and Hui Neng, the sixth Zen patriarch, would be next door to him. Wen Tzu would be on the street, too. And maybe Walt Kelly, who drew 'Pogo'. And Molly Ivins.

You'd think Cold Mountain would be on the list, too, but of course he wouldn't want to live in such a crowded place. He'd be out past the edge of town somewhere, just down the road from Henry David Thoreau, but they'd wander in every so often to visit.

The big question, then, would be: what is a guy who blogs about cat vomit doing on this block?

No... if there is a heaven, I'll find myself in a trailer park with my parents.