Breakfast with Buddha

by Roland Merullo

I enjoy the variety of humanity. I am not one of these people who wants everyone to live the way I live. What causes more trouble on our troubled earth than people like that? The Homogenists, I call them. Look at me! they say. I’m happy! I’m right! I’m law-abiding, productive, and pleasing to God! All you have to do is live like I do and we’ll have world peace! And if you don’t live like them they’ll slaughter you.

When you are a crank, you put yourself on the top of the list of people you make miserable.

The man with the snake tattoo stood frozen in place. And then across his jagged features bloomed the smile he must have had as a young boy, before anything had been taken away from him by what he saw and heard, before the world had shown him its teeth and bitten him.