I was reading through some of my old posts last night, before I went to bed, and then in bed I had this idea of a blog as a kind of front porch, or a stoop as some would say. It’s a place where I can sit down and just kick some old bullshit with whoever walks by.

And what more does a person need in life than a boiled potato, a sprinkle of salt, and somebody to kick some bullshit with? Maybe some music.

I started to think about what a person really needs in life to be happy and I think it’s really just some good food on an empty stomach with some music. You can be happy for at least five minutes with that, and if you’re happy five minutes a day, well you’re pretty lucky.

Thoreau, that old bastard, he got me thinking of this. Check this out:

I learned from my two years’ experience that it would cost incredibly little trouble to obtain one’s necessary food, even in this latitude; that a man may use as simple a diet as the animals, and yet retain health and strength. I have made a satisfactory dinner, satisfactory on several accounts, simply off a dish of purslane…which I gathered in my cornfield, boiled and salted… And pray what more can a reasonable man desire, in peaceful times, in ordinary noons, than a sufficient number of ears of green sweet corn boiled, with the addition of salt.

Yes, but even that old bastard wanted a bit of salt.

But seriously, that is real. I used to think, back when I had two or three jobs and was constantly working, that if I only had time for a shower at the end of the night, then I was living the high life. And God knows that’s true. Jesus Christ, that a mother fucker could stand under a spray of hot water, how fucked up is that? Mother fuckers can’t even drink water in this world and here I am just standing there. I’d work a whole week to take a hot shower. Ha, that’s funny to say, too, because poor bastards without hot water work their whole lives and never have a hot shower.

But anyway, back to the analogy of the stoop. I was getting pretty down as I always do about what the fuck am I doing with my life and so on, and on top of that having zero-view days, I don’t know. Shit was fucking me up. But then I thought last night, well, if it’s like a stoop, what does it matter if one good friend comes by or a thousand strangers walk by? One doesn’t go out on the front porch with an appointment. You don’t call a bunch of your friends up to go sit on the porch. If you call people up you go sit in the backyard. So you sit your ass on the porch to watch the world go by, and if someone happens to have the time, they might sit down, too. And maybe somebody will make some sun tea.