A. Blinken..... I used to be an angry young man, now I’ve replaced anger with the determination to make things better, which, Granny Wise tells me, will eventually give over to exhaustion and frustration, then to resignation, preparing me, Granny says, for Satori, or deep understanding through honestly not giving a whack anymore. Granny and I were talking this last Friday when the white wolf snowstorm hit. I’d seen it coming on the internet, and since Honey had her own chores, I put the plow on my pickup and headed up to Granny’s for awhile, as it is a lot easier to plow snow downhill than up. I’d already filled the wood box, shoveled the walk twice, pulled snow from the cabin roof with the snow rake and I came in to warm up. My stinking socks were off-gassing over the wood stove and Granny had covered my red and horny feet with a pair of support sox so, she said, the sight of them wouldn’t put her off her cabbage. Outside the screaming mad wind filled the canyon with dead heavy snow. On the table in front of me was Irish coffee in a mug too hot to drink, but the barley sting of pure pot still whiskey and rich roast coffee pulled my face down until the tip of my nose was covered in whipped cream. Granny said, "Dora called me and read your entire rant off the internet. One of these days you’re going to piss off somebody high up and there’ll be a knock on your door. I know what I’m talking about, don’t forget." Granny does know what she’s talking about, she lived in Belfast on 12 July, 1935. I shrugged, "I guess we’ll see." "A good beating by the local cops would be a growth experience. It could douse your desire to change your betters and help you reach a state of truly not giving a rat’s ass." "This is America, I don’t have betters, we’re all created equal." Granny laughed, "you have foam on your nose." I wiped my nose on my sleeve and blew on the coffee, pushing the fluffy island of whipped cream around and around. I said, "if we all stop caring, how will things get better?" Granny said "you think caring changes anything?" I knew Granny didn’t really mean I shouldn’t care about anything, she cares about everything, people, the planet, even God. She was getting at something, though, and I was too smart to be caught by her. Instead of answering I touched the cup to my lip and got an instant third degree burn. I jerked, spilling a little. Granny got up, got a cloth from the sink and tossed it to me. I wiped the spill and she pulled a pan of roasted apples from the oven and sprinkled them with nutmeg and centered them on the table. "Have some," she said, skidding a plate and fork. "I’ll wait until they cool," I said. She sat, chuckling, "see, already you’re learning patience." "So, patience is a step to not caring?" "So," Granny mocked me, "putting on one’s sandals means a trip to Heian-kyo?" I sighed; "oh, great, Zen Master Granny." She dished me a sweet, crusty apple, "you have to throw yourself against the boulders" she said, "until you are exhausted and bruised, then you can collapse and see the gravel and sand." What the hell did that mean? I blew on my coffee, then on my apple, then on my coffee, then I was a little hyperventilated. "Does this mean you think I should stop posting my work on the internet?" "No, no," she said wisely, "I really would find it impossible to care less than I do about that, and so I can see how important it is on your journey to realizing that you should care less about your work and the change you reckon you’ll bring to the world than the other people in the world who, mostly, don’t even know you’re a fartin’ sweatin’ world changing orator." She sipped her coffee, poured a little more whiskey into her cup. I shrugged, "I just want to talk to people about fairness, about liberty. You’re the one who filled my head with T.J. You led me to expect our leaders and our governments to be fair." "NEVER! I never led you to expect governments to be fair, I taught you to realize when they aren’t fair and bitch about it." "So, I’m bitching about it." "Yeah, but when I taught you that I was still seeking change. Since then I got tired and gave up and resigned myself to people doin’ their worst at doin’ their best, and now I realize that all attempts to change the world are really just our own struggle to give up caring about it." "So, now you don’t care? You don’t care about social injustice, about women, about children, about our country?" I looked at her across the cup, then blew the foamy island and took a tentative sip; it was fantastic, sweet, strong, warming. Granny said, "I may care, and I may not, I don’t care, and that’s the point. Once you have the wisdom that comes from not giving a flea’s fart, you can care again without caring. Boy, you think you can see things more clearly than others now, but can you see the foam on your nose again?" I wiped my nose and took the fork up and dashed the foam into the coffee and took an airy sip: aaaahhhh. Then I cut the apple with the edge of the fork and let a hunk hang on the tines to cool. "How will I know when I don’t care enough to understand more clearly?" Granny laughed a wise, Asian laugh, and took a sip of coffee and a fork of apple. I blew on my apple, and burned the roof of my mouth eating it. She said, "I’m reminded of the parable of the rock which could turn iron into pure gold. One need only grasp the rock, touch the knuckles of the hand to the iron, and will the iron to gold. However, for this to work, one must not think of the red-assed baboon." "Not think of the red-assed baboon? Why?" Granny shook the can and spritzed more whipped cream onto my coffee. "Why is the wrong question; the question is how?" I blew the little island of fresh foam across the cup, tilted the cup toward my lip and the island floated toward my nose like an iceberg in the gravitational pull of the Titanic. "OK," I said, "how?" Granny slowly nodded a gray head heavy with the wisdom of the ancients, "now you understand the problem, thinking of the red-assed baboon is part of not thinking of the red-assed baboon which is part of turning the iron you find around you into the gold you believe it could be." I nodded, dunked a fork-full of apple into the foam, then into my mouth. It was hot, but delicious. "So," I said, "you are saying I have to not think about not thinking about caring about the continued unfair exchange between rich and poor, and the continued efforts on the part of the poor to perpetuate the very system that exploits them?" Granny sighed a timeless and patient sigh, "you have far to go, but the boulder is large. You also have foam on your nose." I wiped my nose up and down my shirt sleeve, and Granny laughed, "not really!" I downed the apple and finally said, "so, should I continue to put stuff on the site, or shut up?" Granny shrugged, "I dunno, some people seem to like it, Dora sure did. You better finish your coffee and jump in your boots and skedaddle while your old truck will still push the snow. I’ll probably have to throw my support sox away, I guess." I drank my coffee, wiped my nose: "how do you drink the coffee without getting foam on your nose?" "That’s easy, I don’t have your GreatGrandad Aaron’s honker like you do."