Japan, Long Ago: One of the younger monks climbed up the mountain for two days, and when he was admitted to the presence of the master, he asked, “O Master, please tell me, what is Fate?”

The master contemplated for a time, and then said, “It is that which gives meaning to the Beasts of Burden. It is that which Man must bear upon his back. It is that which drives the urgency of the cities and causes men to build roads and highways, and upon them inns and roadhouses.”

The young monk thought a minute and said, “Oh. So that is Fate.” The master looked up, startled.

“Fate? Fate did you say?” said the master. “I’m sorry. I thought you said Freight.”

“Oh?” said the young monk. “Well, I wanted to know what Freight was, too.”

Mount Shasta: A couple of days ago, Adrienne (recovering from her deadly Komodo Kitty infection) and I were sitting at our dining room table. This table overlooks a shallow bay window above our front yard, which lies above the streetcorner.

The house diagonally across the corner — what my mother called “Catty-Corner” — has a couple with two children and a springy young black lab who was galloping wildly up the street, prancing like a playful pony. In their window, we could still just see their eight-foot Christmas tree, harvested up on the mountain, and still lit up.

“You know,” Adrienne said. “I’ve been wondering what it would be like to be their kid.”

She saw my surprised expression, and went on.

“I know that sounds wierd,” she said, “to be my age, and wonder what it would be like to be their kid, when they’re younger than us. But I do.” She had a faraway, wistful look on her face. “I think it would be nice. To have a house like that, and that dog, and those parents, and live in this place.”

I said nothing. Sure enough, she went on.

“I guess I’ve been feeling lonely,” she said, “and I’ve been missing our life back in Marin.”

“What?” I said, because this place is lots nicer than where we lived before. She nodded.

“Well, I don’t miss the life we had,” she said. “I miss the life we didn’t have. The life like my millionaire clients who lived in mansions in Ross, with pool men and gardeners, and vacations in Italy.”

I gazed at her in stupification.

“Yep,” she said. “I miss that life, there in Marin, that life which we never had.”

The odd thing was, I knew exactly what she meant.

On the radio: For the last week, the radio talkshow hosts have been frothing at the mouth. Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, and a couple more that Adrienne listens to.

It seems that Presiden Bush made a speech in which he recommended that all the illegal immigrants now in the USA could be granted “guest worker” status, and therefore could legally work here.

I’m not sure what this is all about, but these talkshow hosts are furious. They say it portends terrible things …

They cite that 30% of our jailed prisoners are illegal alients, and that many criminals stalk the streets among the illegal aliens, heinous criminals. Well, probably they do.

They say that these “approved” aliens will bring their wives and children, and these will swell the welfare rolls. They cite statistics. Well, since they do already, probably they will.

They refer to the president as Jorge Bush. They say that these “approved” aliens will bring our culture down to the level of Mexico. Well, I’ve seen East L.A. so I suppose they will.

They say that an employer can open a new carwash down the street from the old carwash, and that the new employer can go to mexico and recruit 20 guys to come live in a barracks and work for minimum wage, and so drive the old carwash out of business. Well, I’ve seen the carwash in San Rafael, so I suppose they will.

I don’t think the illegal aliens here will go for it. I don’t think they’ll show up for a program that gives them three years, when, staying hidden, they can be here forever. They already think they can stay hidden, or they wouldn’t be here trying. And the fact that they have stayed hidden probably encourages them. I don’t think they’ll show up. Probably nothing will change.

But I wonder what it’s all about.

I’d guess the new legal-illegals are supposed to provide us with a new lower class, so that the old lower class can move up the ladder of prosperity, becoming the “Priviledged Poor.” You know, the folks collecting welfare and unemployment as a way of life.

I collected unemployment once. I lived on it while I started my first business. I’m very grateful. I can also see how you could, if you were frugal, live on it eternally.

It’s against human nature to stop collecting free money. It pays. People will continue to collect for the same reason that other people will continue to show up for work. It pays. Even a bear or a coyote will go back to where he’s found food before. A bear will do this for 30 years. So why wouldn’t we expect a guy to go back to the welfare office?

It’s human nature. It’s not going to change.

Someday the legal-illegals will move up the ladder, too.

Someday … I wonder who will pay?

Will the United States ever have a balanced budget?

Never happen. That’s now how we operate. Here’s how it works …

A politician wants to get elected, so he promises stuff. Over time this tends to make us somewhat socialist, because he’s got to promise the stuff to somebody, and in appealing to voters, most of them want free stuff, so over time politicians promise free stuff for people, making us more socialist.

The politician gets elected, and in order to stay around for the second show, he attempts to give some of the stuff he promised to the people he promised it to. Whenever he is successful at giving some stuff to these people, it’s got to be paid for.

Taxes pay for the stuff the politician has promised and in fact delivered. Since taxes aren’t fun, then it’s not long before some politician, needing to promise stuff, promises to lower the taxes.

If the politician gets elected, in order to stay around for the second show, he may attempt to give the lower taxes as he promised. If he’s successful, now the lower taxes don’t pay for all the free stuff that’s now being delivered.

And the cycle goes on and on. The free stuff being given to some people, and the lowered tax rates being given to some people are in endless conflict, and the budget will never be balanced. We will always be a debtor nation, as collectively stupid as the fellow who’s paying his rent on credit cards.

Why are we a nation of credit junkies? It’s a consequence of our system. Our system relies upon a promise against the future. We are always borrowing from the future to get free stuff now. Sounds like a credit card. Looks like a credit card. I say it’s a credit card!

Of course, the gubbament has another trick up its sleeve. It prints more money. Who gets the money it prints? I haven’t got any. Have you? No, I think the gubbament uses the money it prints to pay for free stuff for some people.

In a company issuing stock, if the company issues more stock, then the shares you’re holding have got to be worth less. So it is with the gubbament. When they print more money, which *they* use, then the money you’re holding is worth less.

In this way, the gubbament can tax *more* without appearing to do so. They don’t need to *take* your dollars; your dollars just became worth less. That’s called inflation. It’s probably like blowing up one of those girly dolls.

And on and on it goes. Kinda funny, innit?

Mount Tamalpais, Marin County, Yesterday Morning: Layla is a great athelete in my book. Adrienne’s younger daughter, Layla spent some time years ago deathly ill, but has recovered amazingly, and she hikes and bikes, and leaves strong men puttering along in her dust. In her gym, she excels as well.

On her radio as she got up she heard that, further down the coast, a young mountain lion killed a couple of bicyclists and a jogger. Quite possibly from the young cat’s view, it was just having fun. But we humans take it seriously when it an animal has power over us.

The cat is gone, put down by the law, but of course it worries Layla, because on Mount Tam, where she goes running up the mountain trail most mornings, there are lions and tigers and bears, oh my. At least, there are lions and bears.

Yesterday’s run began as usual …

That is to say, Layla drove to Mount Tam, and was stretching by the car, and chatting with Harry and Comet. Harry is an older guy who hikes the same trail most mornings. Often they’ll start off running together, then in a bit, Harry waves her on, and Layla, warmed up, sprints up the trail with a wave.

This morning, while stretching, Harry told Layla that yesterday, at the trailhead, he and Comet had seen a large black bear. Layla, muttered under her breath, “Oh that’s just great. Both mountain lions and bears.”

Comet, of course, is Harry’s dog, a big and bouncy yellow lab. Adrienne wishes Layla would get a dog to go with her. A big dog would love such exercise, and the dog would be some protection against lions and bears, and of course the human predators as well.

As some may recall, back in 1979, a serial murderer dubbed the Trailside Killer haunted Marin County trails. He was eventually identified, captured, and venue-changed to Santa Cruz. My then-wife Lori‘s college pal Michelle V., working in the Santa Cruz Public Defender’s Office, was assigned to the Trailside Killer’s defence. One day, Lori and I had stayed the night in Santa Cruz at Michelle’s house, and over coffee in the morning, I asked Michelle what it was like working to defend the guy. She paused for rather a long time, and then said, “He has very little to recommend him.”

Meanwhile, back on the early-morning trail, the rain had increased and Harry waved Layla onward, and she sped up, bursting ahead as the rain grew thicker.

The trails up and around Mount Tam wind and switch back, divide and come together, and the visibility in the rain lessened, as her trail twisted up the mountainside. She heard Comet the dog barking behind her, but it sounded OK.

What she didn’t know was that Comet, kicking up his heels, had sprinted up a side path. And as she ran, Comet the yellow lab was on the side path, racing ahead. And at a turning just ahead of her, he came back around the turn, now running toward her in the rain, on his way back to Harry, who trailed the girl and the dog.

Layla, feet and lungs pounding, and peering dimly ahead through the rain, through the trees suddenly saw the yellow shape bounding toward her. Certain that it was a mountain lion, she stopped and emitted a mighty scream worthy of Hitchcock!

Comet the dog froze in mid-bound, looking all around in fright, and put his tail between his legs. Harry came accellerating up the trail.

“What’s wrong? What! What’s wrong?” he shouted.

Layla, now embarassed, paused for breath. Harry craned his neck this way and that.

“What? What?” he yelled. Layla, breathing heavily, stared at poor Comet, slinking behind Harry.

“Oh,” she said, “… nothing.”

South of Market, San Francisco, 1975: Back in my Simple Simon days, I got a call from a fellow one day who said his name was Will Stone. His voice was precise and somber; I pictured him tall and thin, something perhaps like the House of Usher.

Thin he was, as it turned out, though no taller than myself. He’d started an art gallery in a warehouse cum arty-mall, and he needed a bookkeeper. Somehow he felt that Simple Simon was the guy.

He hired me. I grew to enjoy him tremendously as a friend, perhaps partly because he was as strange as the artwork.

He only sold art of the “Fantastic, Surreal, and Visionary” type.

It was wonderful stuff. To this day, I own an Arthur Bell painting called “Little Red House over Yonder.” (Bell’s work has been featured in Heavy Metal magazine, or as the French say, le magazine Metal Hurlant.)

I also have two Schroeder lithographs, one of a Lion with paw raised in greeting, and one called Tiger Ship featuring a tiger face in the sky with eyes of crescent moons above a ship sailing a black night sea, all with a border of oroboros clasping his tail.

I like these things. There is something both wonderous and somehow disturbing about them, and the fact is, in artwork that’s something I like a lot. Or rather, perhaps I should say I don’t know what I like, but I do know Art, having hung out so long together.

Alas! Will Stone, of the Will Stone Collection, was never satisfied with my bookkeeping work, and somehow it always led to my charging him less. After a while I began to see a pattern there. These days, I’ve come to believe this may be a pattern of guys from New York, because when I listen to Michael Savage on the evening radio, darned if he doesn’t sound like Will Stone!

So this one late afternoon Will and I were going to dinner. There was a humble place south of market called Communion. For $1.99 you could eat dinner there. It was always brown rice, indian vegetable dishes, and warm fresh pan (bread), served with lhassi (yogurt drink) and tea.

The only catch was that nobody was allowed to speak at Communion restaurant.

It was some sort of commune. These abounded at the time. Once, a commune that ran another restaurant off Mission Street wanted to hire Simple Simon to fix up their books, but they wanted to pay me with marijuana, because apparently their restaurant was really a front for a pot-growing business. I passed on that one.

I guess these things were not so rare at that time. My first bookkeeping client, Phil Groves (Raskin-Flakkers Ice Cream Store), had moved to a nice second-floor apartment out in the Richmond district, way out by Mamounia restaurant. One morning Phil came downstairs to find cop cars surrounding the place. The business downstairs, named “Grandad’s Original Sourdough”, turned out to be a cocaine-smuggling operation. They shipped the cocaine in plastic bags stuck down inside cans of sourdough starter. Hah! San Francisco sourdough!

But getting back to Communion restaurant. This was a really swell restaurant, except that you couldn’t talk. I enjoyed Will’s company, but as he talked incessantly, having a break over dinner wasn’t so bad, and since he said he liked the place, that’s where we went.

The first half of the dinner went fine.

The problem was when the lady came in with a child. They sat at a table across the room, and then the child began to fuss. Will glared. The child fussed. Will glared at the woman. The woman didn’t notice. Will glared at the child. The child fussed some more.

Therefore, there in the non-speaking restaurant, Will walked over to their table and said sternly, “Lady, this is a non-speaking restaurant. Please make your child be quiet.”

When he came back to our table, he clearly felt righteous, but I was embarassed as hell that he’d broken the Rule of Communion Restaurant! Even the virtuous fact that I was the only one who had not spoken failed to cheer me.

The pattern repeated. In North Beach, he was the only person I’ve ever known to send a dish back to the kitchen twice. Another time, when we went to brunch downtown, he wore a bathrobe, pretending it was a dinner jacket, and then gave the cook hell over a bagel. Slowly it became clear that he was always dissatisfied at restaurants just as he was always dissatisfied with my bookkeeping. It bugged me.

So finally, when I saw this clearly, that he would never be satisfied with any provider, I resigned as his bookkeeper, and just enjoyed being a friend.

But, somehow, we never went out to dinner any more.