WHY WE LIVE

Motorcycling upmountain through the forest to visit Mr. H., I suddenly came upon a dense excursion of monkey mamas and their babies and kids crossing the road, looked like on the way to my place, the simians totally foregoing such frivolous forms of education as kindergarten and grade school, to say nothing of high school and university, what good are such time wastings when you have mountains of forests at your disposal, and no conscience?

They prefer to just get right on with teaching the facts of living to the kids directly - their version of home education - so they take the wee ones out the minute they're born and begin showing them all that they are heir to, in the present case the reaches of their forests and the sudden weird surprises of this other species, the delicious-food providers, moving noisily along only this narrow flat hard thing that runs through the middle of the world, the mostly hairless creature traveling not on legs and paws but on round things that... that... go around at each end and make this noise like an angry male, it's incomprehensible, really, but there it is--

How in the world do the mother-teachers describe to their ministudents an asphalt road traversed by a motorcycle with a vegetable and fruit provider on it? No wonder the little critters are so wide-eyed as I whiz by, those huge brown eyes-- I mean swinging on a vine is ok, sure, but this rapid noisy creature is bizarrely amazing--

As I blur by the mamas are probably saying something like: That's one of our providers. Soon we'll be getting to his garden, you must be sure remember the place, where you can get all sorts of delicious vegetables and fruits at this time of year. You have to be sure to remember what gardens look like, they're special places, where the most interesting things are planted for us by strange, wheeled creatures, like that one that just went by, its a symbiotic relationship we have. They grow these delicious summer and fall foods for us and we give them a reason to live; its all cosmically determined. Here it is. See those nice tomatoes? I had some delicious carrots and potatoes here, just last week, before you were born! You'll soon learn what those are!

As for me, the human in all this, I can't be everywhere. Which I guess is somehow the big operative idea.