the muddy throne

I was reading Nietzsche while waiting outside Chief Ike's Mambo Room on Columbia Road for the 42 bus. It was a gray day.

"State I call it where all drink poison, the good and the wicked; state, where all lose themselves, the good and the wicked; state, where the slow suicide of all is called 'life.'"

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

"Behold the superfluous! They gather riches and become poorer with them. They want power and first the lever of power, much money - the impotent paupers!

Watch them clamber, these swift monkeys! They clamber over one another and thus drag one another into the mud and the depth. They all want to get to the throne: that is their madness - as if happiness sat on the throne...

My brothers, do you want to suffocate in the fumes of their snouts and appetites? Rather break the windows and leap to freedom.

Escape from the bad smell! Escape from the idolatry of the superfluous!"

Thus spoke Zarathustra while two middle-aged Hispanic men sitting next to me were working through a stack of $5 scratch tickets with, alas, no riches to be won.