Peg Leg Pretension

I'm in Barcelona, sharing a small room with a one legged American with
literary pretensions.
My stilts lean on one wall and his fake leg leans on the other.
Still --even two legged people need crutches of one sort or another to hold themselves up to people .
I forgive him which is big of me I'll admit.
He confided that when traveling and overhearing an American accent, he
cringes,- afraid of the potential crassness of his countrymen.I mentioned an American two doors down, who was reading Hemingway- to try to reassure him,-- but he pooh poohed- both the writer and the reader by implication as lightweight.
I told him he was full of insecure, elitist bullshit and he's been face down
on his bed ever since.
Barcelona's a tough city, every day you can find tear- streaked tourists
numbly trying to comprehend that they've just been shown a knife and robbed of their wallets, or their bag stolen from beside them at the Railway station, or , less seriously , been sold hashish that is in fact---Junkie turd.There's this buxom princess that approaches unsuspecting marks and grabs their hands and pushes them onto her breasts and while her mark is in shock-- she pickpockets him and hands the goods to a guy who, passes behind her while she does it.
It's a beautiful move, with just the right amount of glib tragedy
To walk the streets with all the money in the world sitting in your back
pocket can be scary , but I , more than most have an occupation that is a sort of insurance.I'm a clown-you see- and when robbed-as I have been. I have only to go out onto the street, gather a crowd, entertain them briefly and have funds at the end of it to continue my haphazard existence.
Obviously harder some days than others.

To be more precise I am a clown on stilts, removed from the ordinary man by a meter...I Totter...I dance...I make mischief.
I am, in sort, professionally unhappy, which is maybe why I snapped at the one legged chaps dismissal of Hemingway as lightweight.
I ask you----Really... as if there is a point.
As if intelligence is related to happiness.
I don't want to sound cynical,
I admit life is pointless, but so is death--and while life may be temporarily pointless, I have a suspicion that death is permanent.
But life contains a range of experience for intelligent and dull alike that you cannot hope not to enjoy .

I aspire to be a fool eventually ...

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