oh holy not fucking good. it's six am! i didn't realise i've been sitting here this long! damn you, hooverphonic. damn you, tales of the dervishes. this book is amusing. it was written in 1984 [i can't help but check the copyright always first].
----paul asked me tonight as i sat down with my book if i was the type of person who devoured books. and i told him i used to be, but that i hadn't read anything in a long time, and that i was trying to start reading things again because i was tired of being stupid all the time. ,,well. i'm going back to the library friday. the only reason i'm not going tomorrow is because the damn thing isn't open.-----
The Dog and the Donkey
a man who had found out how to understand the significance of the sounds made by animals, was walking along a village street one day.
he saw a donkey which had just brayed, and beside him was a dog, yapping away for all he was worth.
as he drew near, the meaning of this exchange came to him.
'all this talk of grass and pastures, when i am waiting for you to say something about rabbits and bones: it bores me,' said the dog.
the man could not restrain himself. 'there is, however, a central fact-- the use of hay, which is like the function of meat,' he objected.
the two animals turned upon him in an instant. the dog barked fiercely to drown his words: and the donkey knocked him senseless with a well-aimed kick of his hind legs.
then they went back to their argument.
this story, which resembles one of rumi's is a fable from the famed collection of majnun qalandar, who wandered for forty years in the thirteenth century, reciting teaching-stories in market-places. some said that he was completely mad (which is what his name means); others that he was one of the 'Changed Ones'-- who have developed a sense of the relationship between things which the ordinary person thinks to be separate.