Cool and Uncool

Cool and Uncool

"Cosmic speculation is asphyxiated if existence came into being ex nihilo." (Norman Mailer)

There are so many reasons why I aspire to be like Omar Sabat, my best friend, because he's the embodiment of cool while I am just the opposite. I am the antithesis of cool. Opposites do attract or is it the case he's just being kind and tolerant? 

The man has bamboo for his sex, irony on his mind, and cynicism in his heart. He's impervious to suffering and has a nose to detect evil and fraud in seeming-looking angels, and angels in fools. He called me an "angelic fool" (sic!). He laughs at my preoccupation of suicide. He said to me more than once, "Roberto, you're uncool. You must find life beautiful and irresistible. Only fools and weaklings would think of killing themselves. Go kill some big dangerous animal, say, a thug or a bully in your neighborhood. Go after him with your bare hands and feet and teeth and nails. If you think you cannot do that, go after him with a club or a knife, but never with a gun. Guns are for professionals like me. If you succeed in killing him up close and personal, all by yourself, if you get his warm, dark red blood on your hands and clothes, if you see life draining out of him and his face turn pale and ashen gray, then perhaps you will value life, yours in particular, and you will get the stupid, splenetic idea of suicide out of your mind. Don't be a barbarian. Be a samurai poet. Live your life not as a fiction, but as a testament to toughness and endurance. You must behave as if you were indestructible and unbreakable. In short, be cool, man. Be cool. You must show both class and taste. You must show that class and taste are not beyond your grasp. You start by paying attention to how you dress, then how you speak. Clothes and speech reflect what and how you think. Then, finally, mind how you act. Act like a samurai, and not like a bumbling fool. Act with the silence and sincerity and dignity of saints, even when you are down and out, and nobody is taking you seriously and giving you any respect. You must learn to really respect yourself.

Good, I'm seeing you write down what I'm saying. Good for you! Spoken words fly away, but written words stay behind. Write my words down carefully. No mis-quotations. No twisting of what I have to say. A man is just as good as his words. Know what I mean? One more thing before I forget. You must travel light on the road of life, unencumbered by unnecessary material possessions and obnoxious, small, petty, ugly brutes. Didn't Buddha himself say something to the effect that if you cannot find a good companion, be prepared to walk by yourself? That would be better than having an asshole for a "fellow" traveller....

Anyway, I've talked too much already, as usual. I don't want to sound preachy. Bad for me. Bad for you. A man must know his place in the world and be honest with himself, besides leaning to open his mouth only absolutely necessary. Be self-sufficient. I am leaving you with a Buddhist song.

By ourselves is evil done.

By ourselves we pain endure.

By ourselves we cease from wrong.

By ourselves become we pure.

No one saves us but ourselves.

No one can and no one may.

We ourselves must walk the path.

Buddhas merely show the way.

(To be continued)