- How've you been?
- Walking around in a rage again all this morning. You remember the three different people at Starbucks in Beverly Hills writing screenplays about Indian mysticism and terrorism? One of them found out I had some roughly spiritual ideas, and last night after the cafe closed we talked for four hours.
- About religion and philosophy?
- Supposedly. Really it was about, as he said, how he was going to get the screenplay done so he could get his career back on the right track. He hadn't done anything since the short he made in film school.
- Have you seen it? Is it good?
- It's about a crazy man who eats out of garbage cans in Central Park in NYC and believes he is a saint because he is helping people share. The screenwriter explained that he intended his viewers to understand that the people they see dying on the streets are exercising a life style choice and are admirable in their own way.
- That's great.
- I thought so too. You never know what stupidity will come up with next.
- What did you say?
- Most of the people dying on the streets were exercizing a life style choice between sleeping on the street or in some sort of institution, and they were left with only these choices by the choices made by heartless people like himself who have decided to believe people dying on the street are leading beautiful lives.
- And?
- He said I was wrong. He was a good guy who wanted to help people understand those unlike themselves, and his film performed that service.
- Doesn't seem like something to get angry about.
- No. What got to me was, after arguing with him for hours, attacking his materialism and relativism, I realized that I was deluding myself. With his ideas of we're all beautiful spiritual people himself included I was speaking to a guy who already considered himself an achieved master in the field of achieving mastery over oneself.
- What did he want from you then?
- Words and ideas to include in his script so he could get on with his career.
- A spiritualist eating garbage isn't his life style choice.
