THE GOBLIN NEWSLETTER 02

Yesterday some Jehovah’s Witnesses came to my door. I could tell they were Jehovah’s Witnesses before they announced themselves because you never see such scrubbed, put-together, friendly-looking white folks in my neighborhood. I haven’t had the time or energy to interact with the Jehovah’s Witnesses for a long time, since we moved from Eugene to Portland, since the business grew multiple times, since I had the stroke. It has probably been a decade & a half. Yesterday I decided to interact. I’ve found that the way my brain works naturally just messes with the operating commands of true believers of any faith. I don’t go out of my way to question beliefs, I’ve just shed belief as an operating factor. They were a pair of older ladies, they exuded a positive confidence which I appreciated. Going door to door is hard to do & doing it sincerely is even harder. They were interested in the Mezuzah in the doorframe. They said they were going around trying to spread some good news. I said that I haven’t felt more positive in my life. I have just gotten more optimistic the older I’ve got. I talked about how most of the white folks around me thought we had ten years left, I think we’re just at the beginning. I recently had the realization that in their typical ego-driven thinking, it is the Boomers who are coming to an end, not the world. We’re at a scary part in the ride, but it’s just one of the scary parts, it doesn’t define the whole thing. It’s good to think about things 100, 1000, 10,000 years from now. The scale is humbling, but human time is very short compared to geologic time. It also helps to view history not as progression or regression, but as cyclical. A cyclical view of history is considerably more similar to the reality of physics. Causation & reaction happening trillions of times a day in trillions of ways. So. I shared my good news with the Jehovah’s Witnesses, we shook hands & bid each other a good day.