An Illumination Walking

I bought a pair of ethnic-looking watch caps for Annie. The Rasta-Islamic street vendor threw in two clumps of incense as a PWP. There's marketing even on the street. 

As I waited for change of a twenty (Rastaman had to go to his neighbor, the Hotdog Vendor, for it), I mentally inhaled the scene around me: piles of incense sticks, rows of woody elephant statuettes, triangles of brass jewel encrusted boxes; yellow, red, and green artifacts. A Third World Bazaar.

 Suddenly, I was a devotee of Che, had long wiggly dreds, and kept a dog-eared Quar-an stashed in my jean jacket. I longed for a pilgramage to The Ganges, Mecca, Medina, East Jerusalem, and Bangor Wat. I knew how to build and use a Molotov Cocktail, had two  chunks of the Berlin Wall as bookends surrounding such works as Mein Kampe, The Stranger, To The Lighthouse, The Seven Storey Mountain, and a German translation of the King James. I could've gone on a hunger strike right there and then.

 This transcultural illumination gave way to another more concrete one: being a man of all religions, of all causes, of all revolutions, of all peoples. Is there not good in all of us - perhaps even Stalin? Castro? Is there not some right in all causes? Is there not some truth in all religions? What happens when you extract all this good stuff and leave the rest behind? 

I'll tell you what happens...PEACE.