Good

Albert Hoffman, when he discovered LSD , remembered of his first experience with it his bike ride coming home from his laboratory in Switzerland. He remembered pedaling and pedaling, but seemingly getting nowhere. He didn't drop acid much more after that - his idea , as many chemists of his age commonly practiced - was simply to taste what he had created. It was a common test of acidity or baseness before the era of automation. When others asked why he did not continue to do acid, he said simply that what it brought out in him was what was already there.

My chemistry professor in high school was a prankster. We would coat thin layers of kerosene over sodium flash and write notes to the art teacher down the hall. The kerosene would be layered so that its vapor pressure would evaporate at the moment she would take the note or just before and the note would explode into flames and everyone would laugh. We enjoyed chemistry, some of us enjoyed learning - he was perceptive enough to keep driving us onward. It was a form of control over us, but it was a control we submitted to happily enough. Some of us, anyway.

Like Albert we all took away the little souvenir from those years that makes me smile inside.

We sometimes define good as the thing that fights evil. One of the most evil people I had ever met was a kid named Chris who was my brothers upstream supplier. Lets back up a minute. Ever seen the film "Blow" about George Jung? George struck me as an honorable sort of person - when you asked him a question, he was direct. And he delivered. God did he ever deliver. At one point in the later part of the twentieth century, George Jung was responsible for one in three lines of the cocaine you did.

George Jung went down to Colombia and met a Guy named Pablo Escobar. Pablo was a badass. If you crossed him, the guy shot you. That simple. Ever known anyone like that?

The common perception would be that Pablo Escobar was evil. Some say he was the devil. And so alot of times thats how people think of evil. Not so. Pablo was not evil. He employed hundreds of thousands of people. He was a reagent of cultural change. He took a place of poverty that only grew cocoa leaves in the high mountain air and what little he did, turned them into an economy. And guys like Jung were simple, direct and hardworking.

Each betrayal begins with trust. Every man returns to dust.

When the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test rolled into town, America didn't immediately lose her soul. The organization of any act you could call evil, isn't always necessarily evil. She held the acid heads in her country with the Vietnam freaks, the pot heads and all the other hippies that ran to her. Now we debate about whether or not we want to close our border - have you ever thought about who you would lock in? Lady Liberty rolls on.

Evil is partly that which whores us out. There are Good trips and bad. We have free will and even strength of that will even within the moments we lose our agency. This flesh and bone is just the way we're tied into this world.

In the end, everyone needs names for the games we play that we cannot possibly win. We need ideas to drive us on even in the face of looming death.

In the film "The Fifth Element" has another form of evil. A black planet that hurtles toward toward the earth, with no aim other than to extinguish all life. The film starts out with asteroids hurtling toward the blackness. The goal of it is to extinguish all life. The ultimate weapon that is fashioned against it happens to be a girl that wears soft-bdsm type clothing. You will I am sure, pardon me if I continue the blessed work to find her on this planet.. I ... I will be ordained soon.. >:)

Once you have evil tagged, you almost have Good defined. Leelu Dallas (multipass) in the "Fifth Element" was Good. Prince Wesley in the film "The Princess Bride" was good. Christ was good. "Working Man" by Rush, is Good. Neils Peart is Good. Thomas Jefferson. Bjork. Albert Einstein. Mother Teresa. The Happy Treehouse people.

There is a force in the world, atheists spend their time pretending its a negligible factor that precipitates from a compex social structure- or constructive interference, or other rational terms that in the end, still mean nothing. One of my ex girlfriends used to love to play a game with me. She would ask "Where are you?" and keep asking it, going all the way down the frames of reference from "The United States", to "Atlanta" until you get to "here, damnit! right here!!". They note from time to time that despite the fact that most people do whatever they want to do , beauty and truth arise occasionally from places they would not have imagined and small acts of kindness have disproportionately large effect upon them. Don't ask them to quantify things when those things are affecting them nicely. They are much better at enumerating the things that bother them.

There are other forms of faith on the world. But in the end, It is the wings of a butterfly that when unfolded will spin up a class five hurricane in the caribbean. Or the touch of a woman to her child's soft face. The moments of Good and our good deeds we do quietly, as if throwing a stone in the sea. Planting a small plant. Small things that reach out to eternity.

It is the turn of a friendly card. It is that expression of work within us that really has a focus to help express life. Kindness to small children. Care of the elderly. And above all. Getting the job done. Good is listening to the wisdom of people around you.

Rig Veda -
“He whose shadow and death become nectar shall, by his shadow and death, confer the spirit and strength"

Be Good.