Train Tracks (20 page)

FORTY-FOUR

Talking to a Bum About God

I
don't know how many houses of worship I've tried in my life that I've walked out of. I walked out of them sometimes because I was bored, sometimes because I thought their politics were too far to the Left. I've walked out of many houses of worship. In fact, I never found one that I liked. And yet, I'm a man who believes in God. Why? Who am I
not
to believe in God? Who am I to say, “I don't believe in God”? What do you think I am: bigger than God? “Do you think I created myself?” a man once said to me. “Follow your logic in your own head,” a homeless man said to me.

I was once into, more so than now, talking to strangers. I was the wandering man who would talk to weird people, figuring they held the truth, or some truth. Now I hold my own truths. I don't need to talk to strangers to form my opinions. I can come up with my own, but when I was younger, I talked to a lot of odd people. One of them was an itinerant man. You'd call him a bum, but he wasn't really because he wasn't really dirty. He wasn't disheveled; he didn't look like a homeless man, but he was. He had a backpack and long white hair. He wasn't particularly clean and he wasn't particularly dirty, and he wasn't an alcoholic or a druggie. So, I talked to him about this and that.

His name was Morris (or Moses). So, I said to him, “Do you believe in God?” I remember to this day—it was on Columbus Avenue in San Francisco. I looked at him and he had startling blue eyes. He looked at me and said, as though in astonishment, “Why? Who created you?” In that instant, I had a satori, like the Japanese talk about. I understood more completely than I ever had through any preacher or rabbi what it was all about.

Follow it back: “Do you believe in God?” I say to the itinerant man.

He says, stunned, “Why? Who created you?”

I got it in that flash—you know, that flash of understanding; the satori?

Follow it back. So you're an atheist and you say, “Well, how do you know there's a God?” So what is there, nothing? So nothing created you? So you believe in nothing? Therefore, you believe in something—but that's nothing. You believe in nothingness.

I believe in God. That's all. How can you believe in nothingness? How is it possible to believe in nothingness? How can something come from nothing? It's a violation of all the laws of physics! Something cannot come from nothing. It violates physical science, biological science, theological science. It violates all the laws of reason! It violates all the laws of nonreason. So, what I'm getting at is what I learned from that man.

So then I said, “Can I drop you off where you're going?” I drove him to a freeway overpass that no longer exists. The man got out and said good-bye. He disappeared, and I never saw him again. Who was he? A prophet? Was he a reincarnation of a religious figure? I don't know what he was. Maybe he was just a smart guy who was a bum. A lot of bums are smart, and a lot of corporate guys are not that smart. They play people for fools. They think that everybody is a fool because they control the money.

What they don't understand is that there are values beyond money. They've never learned that. Unfortunately, our government is exactly the same. It's MBA all the way, right up into the military hierarchy. They think that an MBA makes them a war hero or a sage, but many would take a pound of flesh or sell their country out for less than thirty pieces of silver. They would teach their children Chinese and move to Shanghai if they had a better offer!

FORTY-FIVE

No Assisted Living

S
ometimes I get e-mails that ask, “Is there something natural I could use because my wife and I are no longer doing the funny business together? I don't want to use that stuff that makes your vision turn blue with mild blindness.”

I told you one of the side affects of Viagra is temporary blindness in some men. I jokingly say that's part of the effect that's desired: That's why you can still do it with someone you've lived with for so many years. It makes you temporarily blind, and that's it. You put the blinders on instead of taking them off—not so funny.

The poor women, what they have to put up with! No wonder the men die first! After putting up with us for so long, they're supposed to get it all in the end. I don't know what they do with it, frankly; I don't know if they enjoy themselves. They seem to enjoy themselves, the older women, and here's why: (a) Their sex drives have left them, and they're not bothered with that, and (b) they could do without men. They find out that it was all a myth to begin with. They had the children already, the grandchildren. What do they need men for at a certain point? They've got some money; they can travel.

What do they do in the “old age” homes? I know I'm never going to wind up in assisted living or an old-age home. Never. I know I'm never going to be there! My mother wound up in assisted living. Towards her last years it was only about Italian or Chinese food for her. That's all that she would talk about.

I would say, “Mom, my latest book is a best seller for the fifteenth week on the
New York Times
Best Seller's list.”

She'd say, “That's nice. You know, I had Italian last night. It wasn't so good. It wasn't as good as in New York.” That's all! I'd get that repeatedly.

I have figured this out. No homes for me if I should live long—or longer. Tick, tock, tick, tock. I'm watching the sands of time fall into the hourglass. There's more sand down on the bottom now than there is on the top. You know what I'm saying? If you take the hourglass of your life when you're a certain age, there's more sand up above in that glass than there is down below. In my case, most of the sand has already gone down to the bottom glass. I'm starting to think about certain things I have ignored up until now.

People say to me, even today, “What do you want to do at the end?”

I say, “I'm never going to die.” They think I'm crazy. I won't make such plans. I will
not
make such plans. I'm never going to die. I'm never going to get sick! How do you like that? In other words, you say I'm foolish. All right. Call it what you want.

I knew kids when I lived in Hawaii, mainly Japanese-Americans, and at nineteen years old they knew whom they were going to marry. They knew where they were going to get married, how many children they were going to have. They knew where they were going to be buried. At nineteen they had it all worked out!

There are societies that do that to this day. I don't understand that kind of living. I can't do that! I'd rather live with the sensibilities of a man who's going to live a thousand years! I remember that character out of
Zorba the Greek
—do you remember Kazantzakis's great character Zorba? I love that character. Of course, it was a distortion. It was played by Anthony Quinn. Do you remember this scene? He's leaning against a window and says to a woman, “Men like me ought to live for a thousand years.” What a great line that is! That's the way to go through life every day, by the way.

I don't like men who, at fifty, say, “Well, at my age,” or “I'm fifty and I think I've already got one foot in the grave.” Why think that way? Why start taking that attitude? You're just going to speed up your own aging and die young if you think that way! Even if, let's say, I should become enfeebled by accident or disease, I'm never going to go into assisted living. I want to stay in the house, and I want to have care—that's all! I don't want to be around a hospital: The other people smell like piss and mothballs in those joints. There's no reason to be there. You get around-the-clock care if you can. I'll make sure that I put money away for that. But remember this little secret: “Never let an old person live in your body.”

Credits

Chapters 18–45 previously appeared in the
self-published volume
Psychological Nudity
(2008).

Thanks to Thomas Nelson Publishers for
permission to reprint the following stories:

From
The Enemy Within
by Michael
Savage (Nelson Current, 2003):
“Dead Man's Pants,” and
“Fat Pat & Tippy the Dog.”

From
Liberalism Is a Mental Disorder
by Michael Savage (Nelson Current, 2005):
“Sam the Butcher.”

Disclaimer: All articles retain the
original copyrights of their original owners.

Acknowledgments

For various family photographs, I would like to thank Sheila Weiner and Sam Furgang.

About the Author

Millions admire DR. MICHAEL SAVAGE for his clear-eyed view of American politics and culture. But regular listeners of his wildly popular radio show also know him as a riveting storyteller—a side he reveals to readers in
Train Tracks.

The Michael Savage Show
is the third most listened-to radio talk program in America, with more than ten million weekly listeners. Dr. Savage is the author of twenty-eight books, including seven
New York Times
bestsellers. He was awarded the coveted Freedom of Speech Award by
Talkers Magazine
in 2007. He holds master's degrees in medical botany and medical anthropology, and a Ph.D. in epidemiology and nutrition sciences from the University of California at Berkeley. He is an ardent conservationist, a dedicated family man, and an animal protector.

www.MichaelSavage.wnd.com

Visit
www.AuthorTracker.com
for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

Also by Michael Savage

Nonfiction

Trickle Down Tyranny

Trickle Up Poverty

Banned in Britain

Psychological Nudity

The Political Zoo

Liberalism Is a Mental Disorder

The Enemy Within

The Savage Nation

Fiction

Abuse of Power

Cover Credits

Cover design by Mary Schuck

Cover photograph © by Kerrick James/Corbis

Copyright

The “Credits” page constitutes an
extension of this copyright page.

TRAIN TRACKS
.
Copyright © 2012 by Utopia Productions, Inc. All rights reserved under
International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required
fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access
and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be
reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored
in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form
or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter
invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

FIRST
EDITION

ISBN 978-0-06-221084-5

EPub Edition NOVEMBER 2012 ISBN:
9780062210876

12 13 14 15 16
OV/RRD
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

About the Publisher

Australia

HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.

Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street

Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia

http://www.harpercollins.com.au

Canada

HarperCollins Canada

2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor

Toronto, ON, M4W, 1A8, Canada

http://www.harpercollins.ca

New Zealand

HarperCollins Publishers (New Zealand) Limited

P.O. Box 1

Auckland, New Zealand

http://www.harpercollins.co.nz

United Kingdom

HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

77-85 Fulham Palace Road

London, W6 8JB, UK

http://www.harpercollins.co.uk

United States

HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

10 East 53rd Street

New York, NY 10022

http://www.harpercollins.com

*
See photo insert.

 

*
The nitrates and nitrites are also carcinogenic
and associated with Alzheimer's disease.

 

*
This story is not about a classic financial
wipe-out of assets such as occurred in the crash of 1929. It is typical of the
losses common to average American speculators between 1969 and the early 1970s.
Brought about by an expensive war with no returns, the value of the U.S.
currency continued to fall, leading average people into markets for which they
were ill-prepared. In this sense, this story is about our times.

 

*
“Monkeys Rampage in Indian Capital,”
AFP
, November 12, 2007.

 

*
“U.S. Couples Seek Separate
Bedrooms,”
BBC News
, March 12, 2007.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6441131.stm.

 

*
Martinfield, Sean. “Nan
Kempner—American Chic.”
The San Francisco Sentinel,
June 28, 2007.

 

*
Buddha.
Teaching of Buddha.
Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai (BDK).