FIRE IN THE MONKEY HOUSE

The day started with counting fentanyl addicts on Van Ness while waiting for the Golden Gate Transit bus. And their dogs. It ended chasing elderly delinquents out of the back room where they had loudly been discussing bestiality, gay pornography, and midgets. Matters about which they may have considerable knowledge and expertise.
Possibly hands-on experience.

Which brought the wise advise of an orthodox rabbi from the pre-war period to mind. The Sfas Emes advises that you yourself choose what enters your ears and eyes, and it is therefore up to you to ignore certain things.

So I still know next-to-nothing about those subject matters.
And I count myself extremely lucky in that regard.

I am too young for any of this.


There are times when I have to shout back there "hey you dumb nasty-asses, keep it clean, dammit, there are sensitive people on the premises!" Leaving it entirely up to them to guess what that might mean. Women? Children? Parish priests?

Sometimes it's like a frat house there.

So anyhow I'm off work for the next few days, which will help me regain or rebuild my sanity. Good food (either my own cooking or something across the hill in Chinatown), strictly rational company (San Francisco residents whom I know), a modicum of caffeinated beverages, and pipes smoked in quiet places without the noise of rancid old farts screaming filth and provable nonsense at each other.

And also, lots of reading. Herr Doktor Hubert Goubert traveling through the interior of Wan State (皖國 'wun kwok'; Anhui), charting certain deciduous trees and eating surprisingly well, though assiduously avoiding stinky tofu. Pork dumplings, roast geese and ducks. There are some dishes there which while unique are less than universally appealing. Often he spends several hours repairing his mosquito nets, because he is fastidious and neurotic.
Mosquito-borne ailments, eruptive fevers, as well as wasting diseases.


It must be hard to spend several months away from modern pharmacies, tobaconists, and cafés near universities and research institutes in the civilized part of the world: Warsaw.



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