| Qin: Fingernails Lao-Tze was tinkering with his digital watch as I came out of the privy into bright sunshine. The early morning clouds had vanished completely. I sat beside him on the steps of the hovel and contemplated the vast scene below, which looked like a Chinese painting with all the missing parts filled in. Lao-Tze farted, but faintly. An aroma of sweet musk drifted past. He was muttering. "Fucking hourly alarm has started chiming. You help?" He handed me the watch. I started playing with the four buttons and found myself looking at the date. April 4. That seemed about right, though I had lost track of the days. The year was of greater interest. -616. "You want me to set the calendar while I’m at it?" He snickered. "Calendar’s fine." "Whaddaya mean? It’s only about 2,500 years off." He snickered again. "Joe, Joe." "Ralph. My name is Ralph." "Whatever. See that olive tree. Go touch it for a bit, then come back here." I went over and touched the small, dark tree, which looked about as wizened as my host. "Now tell me. How old do you think it is?" "Jeez. I have no idea." "Good answer." He fell silent, as if the entire conversation were properly resolved. I had got the hourly alarm turned off and gave his watched back. "Thanks." His eyes met mine and he saw the confusion and doubt I was feeling. "Oh my, Harry. You come here, eat my food, breathe my air, occupy my space. You actually begin to relax and give an occasional right answer. And you still want more." He sighed heavily and put his hand on my knee with motherly softness. "No mystery, Thomas, there’s no mystery. Men are such fuckers because they don’t get that there is no mystery. We are continuously seduced by this on-going miracle, seduced and fucked by the world. Women know this, for obvious reasons. They live it. We just watch it. We know we’re getting fucked, but we think it’s rape. We don’t know how much the world loves us. So we scream and hit and fight back and kill each other and women and children and hurt the world badly..." He was silent a long time. "Words. You hear them but until you live it, you won’t get it. My watch shows a date that you consider impossible. Look at this, look at this!" He grabbed my hand, spread my fingers, and touched a nail. "That, that thing growing, growing on YOU, that’s far more ‘impossible’ than my watch showing a date of minus 600." He was smiling now, happily swimming in paradox. "And that’s just one fingernail. Think about the ten thousand impossibilities put together to make YOU!" "I’m sorry." Lao-Tze said, "OK, you get one more chance, then I've got weeding to do. There were these two monks who'd been living in silence for years at their monastery. Finally, one day they were out walking among the fig trees and one of them whispered, 'I can't take it anymore, let's talk.' And the other said, 'O.K., what you want to talk about?' The first one said, 'Let's say dirty words.' 'O.K.,' said the other one, 'you go first.' The first monk thought a minute and said, 'Hair under your arms. Now it's your turn, you say one.' The other monk, who was looking a little pekid, said, 'I can't. I'm coming.'" Back to Qin
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