Found Wisdom: Martin Booth's "Real Talk" on Being a Badman

I occasionally share found wisdom and bits of goodness when I come across them. My last post on the realpolitik of race and economic self-interest was necessarily a bit long. Allow me to balance that with something short and sweet.

I have read Martin Booth's book A Very Private Gentlemen (what was a movie called The American in the States and starred Mr. George Clooney) several times. His prose is beautiful; the tale of an American assassin and gunsmith in Italy even more so. And Clara, oh how she reminds me of my own Iberian fantasies and hedonistic joys. Dreams. Memories.

Sometimes you read a book and a particular passage sneaks by you, to jump out later, when your mind is properly aligned with the themes and energy offered therein.

Who knows? Maybe it was the good beer.

Perhaps, it was more likely the result of eating a late night dinner when a random high stakes poker player wandered into the local Fridays (yes, I do slum...oh the pleasures) with 50 grand in his pocket after winning a tournament out at the boats--and he spread that money around via drinks and yummies for his fellow denizens--as last night I was inspired to think a dream of being a badman in a life I had not lived.

Confident. A trained killer who avoided conflict whenever possible. A man of quiet accomplishment, loved by women, and deadly with a gun. Self-aware and wise.

And what follows below is just masterful writing.

What wisdom, thoughts, random musings, or found prose do you have to share? What badman or badwoman flights of fantasy or dreaming keep you sane as you deal with the drudgery of the day-to-day?

And the brutalities of law: people accept violence if it is legitimised by authority, accept it as a way of doling out justice. Certain people, certain classes of people, the niggers and the wops and the kafirs and the chinks and the trash, may be dealt violence rightfully, no matter who governs it, who dispenses it. It has always been like this. It always will be.  

I am one of that class, one of those who may be gunned down in the name of peace. I am the bounty. I am the visitor whom I am to meet again in a few days. 

Violence is the monopoly of the state, like the post office and the revenue department. We buy violence with our taxes, live under its protection.

Or most due. I do not. I pay no taxes. No-one knows me. I have no long, sleek yachts moored in the best marinas.   

I live by the rule of Malcolm X: I am peaceful, I am courteous, I obey the law, I respect the world. Yet if someone put his hand on me, I send him to the cemetery.  

I shall expand this a little for you will otherwise call me a liar. The law I obey is that of natural justice. The peace to which I adhere is that of quietude.