PEELED ZERO
And
you got a lot of what you calls knowledge.
But,
Boy, that ain’t knowledge…that’s just book-learning,
Knowledge
is what your heart knows concerning
Folks and loving and living.
There’s
less talk of taking and more of giving.
You
may think you’s what you calls a ay-the-ist
Or a Egg-nos-tick. I
don’t know what a nog is,
But
I knows a egg when I sees one, and I knows a bad egg
when I smells it.
There’s
something in this room that ain’t perfume.
And
it ain’t emanating from me or that white gentleman.
It’s
the smell of them foul things you’s a-saying.
You
says that the Good Book is full of contradictions.
In
fact, that it begins with a contradiction
Because
it says, “In the beginning was the Word,”
And
that a Word can’t come out of nothing.
Boy,
I just been listening to a mighty lot of words coming
out
of nothing.
Because “Nothing” is you in your present frame of mind.
You’s nothing trying to be something.
But
you don’t want to do nothing about being something.
You
just goes around trying to make other folks nothinger
than you is.
And
the more nothinger that you is, the more something you
thinks you is.
You
know what you reminds me of?
In
arthmetic they’s got a little figure they calls a Zeero.
A
zeero is Nothing with a line around it.
Nothing with a line around it.
That’s your present frame
of
mind.
And
you know what’s happened to you?
You
was up on the corner Zeeroing at the top of your
voice.
You
was zeeroing at all the pretty girls passing by, and
I
don’t blame your for that.
But
that Ol’ Devil comes up behind you and sees this bunch
of
nothing with a line around it called a Zeero.
And
just like slipping the skin off of a grape, he skins
that line from around that Zeero.
And
what’s left?
…..A PEELED ZERO’ Yessir, a PEELED ZERO.
Just a big bunch of bare nothing without even its underwear on.
And
there ain’t nothing in the world so cold and dismal and
lonesome as a peeled Zeero. Nothing around it.
Nothing in front of it.
Nothing behind it. And giving off nothing in every direction.
I
tells you what you gotta do, Boy, cause you’s in a sad
way.
You
gotta get you some Faith.
How’s
you going to get what you ain’t got and don’t believe
in
anyhow? I’ll tell you, Boy. You’d done it before.
Remember
when you was a little shaver? You went out to the
Ole
Swimming Hole with the yuther boys. You
sits on the
bank, skeered stiff of that old cold deep-looking water,
because you knows that you cain’t swim.
But
the yuther boys is in there snorting and cavorting, and
you
wants to be in the swim, too. That’s
just human.
You
puts your toe in.
Then you gets knee-deep, then chin-deep
and
finally you DUNKS.
It
ain’t so bad. But still you knows that you don’t know
how
to swim.
You
goes in for several days, and nobody don’t know the
time between when you cain’t and when you can swim. But
the
next day you goes in, you takes a deep breath and you
submits yourself to the ELEMENT
and
you SWIMS.
whole puddle. Then you tries to get
the yuther little fellers
to
try, cause that’s getting Faith in a big way…you wants
to
share it….everywhere. Then you know what
happens? That
old
Peeled zero begins developing a skin around it
again.
And you begins
growing…up.
The old fat sides of that Zeero
begins slimming down…
as the hot air leaks
out of it…until there ain’t no space
between them two sides, and they lengthen right out into a
straight up-and-down line.
And
you know what that straight line is?
It’s the word “I”.
Remember how
Well,
now you’s got the first part of “I AM”. When you gets
the
“AM” part you’ll be a man grown. You’ll
be worth talking
with then. Come back and see
me. In the meantime, God bless
you
Boy. And now get them shoes shined…and
good.