All Things Must Pass
KrautHammer (left) and SauerPuss (right) celebrate the passage of Hammer’s genetics through the fallopian tube. One passage begets others and the two have never sat on one another’s lap since. (Dec. 2020)
All things must pass. True. And democracy dies in darkness. And yet when democracy dies, the darkness that follows must pass and die away too. Do you believe in miracles? LOL neither does the Old Puss here. I always say don’t go chasing water falls, please stick to the rivers and the lakes that you’re used to. How does one chase a lake? Seems just about as useful as swatting a dead fly. I like looking at waterfalls though, right at the crest before the big drop. It’s as if the water doesn’t know or care that it’s about to fall off a cliff, it goes on flowing just as if it were any normal bend in the curve – then WHOOSH, it’s dispersed, mist-i-fied, broken up and falling indeterminately. Chaos breaks the flow harshly, and yet more water just keeps on comin’ – if you stay focused on the point before the fall, it can be quite sad. Reminds me of time, incessant, uncaring of the “importance”, the “gravity” of any single moment. The moments come – and they pass. No matter who you are, no matter how good or how bad you have it. Time is the force of the river itself, we are the water, and this moment is the point at the crest. And the fall.… the fall is the fate we all share. Most don’t care to acknowledge that inevitable edge, let alone peer down into it. We all should though – look down – acknowledge our end. The ancient ones did, and they honored their elders as well as their dead. Today we want to throw a dam up on that river – to prolong the moments, to never at all costs, drop – but a river dammed produces an incredible energy, which must escape somewhere, it must EXPLODE. And so we might soon too. For now, we worship ourselves and our moment to the point of missing the beauty in our insignificance. On a short ride, we take it for granted that more smooth sun-drenched curves are up ahead; when truthfully, it’s still the drop, the chaotic darkness in front of us all. Our lives could be so much lighter contrasted against a bit of that dark. Take a peek, folks.
- ‘Puss
Judgement Day is coming and the end is nigh!
… meh.
When has anything ever ended? Certainly not in my lifetime. I went through a period of nihilism, sure. What’s the fucking point, man? All we are is dust in the wind. It’s the end of the world and we know it. So just show me the way to the next whiskey bar and I can drink my mental nausea away. I could endlessly quote classic rock songs to finish writing this krauogg (kraut + blog – t – b + g = krauogg), but I would rather give the reader some insight that I learned from eating a big bowl of sauerkraut. That is, that all things must pass.
Believe it or not Krauthounds, this is not my first attempt at residency in the European Union. The first time around, I did it on a hobo’s budget with a hobo’s dietary preferences -that is to say, whatever’s cheapest. In Ireland, I survived on a steady diet of potatoes and vodka. By caloric and alcoholic measures, the biggest bangs for your bucks. All that energy density left precious little room for the fiber needed to move my food from point B to point Colon. All things must pass and so my potato poops, with great effort, made their way through my potato shoot. Everything has a price my friends, and cheap potatoes and vodka are no exception. They sucked the life out of my soul and the juice out of my poops. I sinned against the great creator of gut bacteria. As if my belly harbored Sodom and Gomorrah, I smote it regularly with a plague of killer alcohol and a famine of fiberless means. I was a vengeful god. The result was a herd of goat poops with no shepherd. If you can’t corral your own shit, you’re stuck in the mud.
I learned the (very) hard way, that everything has a price. Had I spent a little bit more money on better food, the improvement in taste, in energy, in experience would likely have me remembering that time as a moment of fun rather than one of neck-vein-popping struggles. But maybe money wasn’t even the answer. Perhaps it was just the thoughtfulness and the time to ask the question, “why do I no longer need toilet paper?” and seek an alternative answer such as, “maybe a 50/50 mix of potatoes and sauerkraut could change things.” Yes, that moment came to an end but I still relive it in my mind and the experiences will never leave. So bring a bowl or a ramekin, actual or metaphorical, but bring some kraut to each and every passage of your life. If all things must pass, better they pass smooth.
- KrautHammer
