He arrived wearing an ill-fitting suit, sweating profusely. He forced himself to smile and the handshake was just short of being firm.
I led him into the conference room and asked him to take a seat. He managed to squeeze his considerable bulk in the chair I indicated and smiled as he mopped his brow. I asked if I could get him a glass of water but he said he was fine.
I had an HTML version of his resume in front of me and asked if he had a clean MS Word formatted version of the same. But he couldn't have given it to me if he tried, he had arrived empty handed. And my request for it made him even more ill at ease.
I tried to allay his fears and gave him my business card asking that he send me one as soon as he got home. Then I asked him to talk to me about his work experience. He started his story from the time he was a desk clerk at a major national newspaper, seventeen years ago, and ended with the senior manager position from which he was downsized seven months ago. He was extremely proud of his accomplishments and even grew misty-eyed as he spoke with pride of the increasing levels of responsibilities with which he was entrusted over the years. Several awards, rewards and certificates later he had been told that the company no longer required his services.
Nothing in his experience was commensurate with the kind of job I expected my ideal candidate to be able to do. I searched long and hard for similarities but was hard-pressed to find any, especially since he had already stated that he wasn't a "numbers" person and the person I needed had to be able to write MS Excel macros in his or her sleep.
So I decided to tell him about the company, the job, the prerequisites and then asked him if it sounded like something he could do. This sympathetic question, however, served as a trigger for a catharsis of sorts. He told me,
"Look, I'll do anything! I am a quick learner. I haven't done any of what you described but I am confident I can do it. I have been job-hunting for seven months now, there is nothing out there for me. This newspaper was the only employer I had ever known. I never thought they would discard me in this manner. But I am certain I can do this job. I'll need training, but please, I can do it!" Desperate promises, heart-rending in their intensity.
My heart went out to him. I wanted to say, "Here, the job is yours! I'll train you. You'll do well, I am sure!"
I had been in a similar situation myself, my unemployment had lasted six weeks and I was hired back by my former employer. But those six weeks had made me feel like I had entered the bowels off hell. I had lost my sense of purpose, my self-esteem and my sense of self-worth. I must have appeared like desperation and anxiety personified, it surely must have overshadowed every other personable trait I had. Sweating, yes. I remembered sweating, the fine beads forming on my skin inside the formal interview jacket I wore, could they smell it? No I couldn't smell it on him it was masked by an overpowering cologne.
But I couldn't as an employer, do what my heart told me to do. I couldn't hire someone who didn't know the job, who would be "grateful" for the opportunity. I don't know how long gratefulness lasts and try as I may, I couldn't ignore the fact that he was downsized by his former employer, why him?
I asked him if he had any questions for me and instead of asking about the job, the company, the structure, he asked me about the salary, the benefits and the vacation schedule! Exactly the things one cannot ask at a first interview. Clearly, he had no experience interviewing. His former employer had rendered him unemployed and unemployable.
I bade him farewell with a promise to call after we had interviewed other candidates. I returned to my desk, feeling awful, breathing in the traces of desperation and hopelessness, intermingled with that cologne, that his handshake had left on my fingertips.
Holidays? Well this is the holiday season and I met him again at a publishing industry get together. He was nursing his beer in a corner of the room, many of us had skirted around him after a quick nod of greeting. I couldn't even bring myself to do that.
Pragya
Sunday, November 20, 2005
Acorn-stomping Anyone?
Yesterday I read an article by Ian Frazier in the Nov. 7, 2005 issue of The New Yorker. The article is called: Pensées D’Automne and appears in the Shouts & Murmurs section of the magazine. I’ve read it several times since. I am fascinated by the way his words flow at a pace that’s as easy as the leisurely autumnal morning walk that he is describing. The closest analogy would be a train ride where each passing scene is framed by the window for an instant and then it passes as your eyes focus on something else. I was happy to board his train of thoughts for sometime.
Fall or autumn in America is always a memorable event, especially in the north east where some people are even described as leaf-peepers, they take to the roads in mid-September and head for New England just to stick their heads out of the window and absorb the fall colors at their peak, spotting hues they didn’t know existed in deciduous trees, interlaced with the greens in the evergreen gymnosperms; an innocuous yet magical activity that has the power to overwhelm, the power to soothe the soul.
Ian’s article, as the title suggests, is about his thoughts during a crisp fall morning walk. He talks about the special heavy, shin-high boots he’s wearing, a “Danner Foothill model with Vibram soles”, that he declares are perfect for, take a guess….”acorn-stomping”!! It was this talk of acorn-stomping that grabbed my attention in the first paragraph and I was hooked, I had to read on and discover for myself what acorn-stomping was all about.
Ian managed to convey the exhilaration that he felt at this favorite childhood activity. His Danner Foothill boots apparently have a “sweet spot” in the heels and as he walks along the oak-tree lined sidewalks of his New Jersey neighborhood he devotes considerable thought to a strategy that would maximize his satisfaction from this activity. He says, “Hit a single acorn just so and you get a satisfying, shivery tingle between the shoulder blades. Hit a series of acorns, first right, then left, then right, and so on as long as the random distribution of acorns on the sidewalk permits, each acorn struck square on the sweet spot, crunch, crunch, crunch, never breaking stride – well, that’s what you’re looking for.”
Now this article is really not all about acorn-stomping, it is about present day America, about the deep satisfaction derived from an effectively stomped acorn, the sound of its gunshot-like report and how disheartening and jarring it is to stomp on it the wrong way, in a way where one fails to make it pop and it just whooshes out its contents in a mess.
While walking and stomping he wonders about his reasons for doing so. Perhaps it is a way of working out his frustrations, his deep dissatisfaction with the rising healthcare costs in the country. But then again it can’t be because the more he thinks about the issues that are plaguing this country the more inaccurate his stomping becomes and the more unpleasant the activity. For an inaccurately stomped acorn, leaves one with a “jangling, teeth-grinding wrongness”. He compares this “wrongness” to the way certain theologians have described sin, as an “apartness from God”. This gets him thinking about the state of his own health which is why he’s walking in the first place. He talks about the obesity of this nation, a country where even the raccoons and squirrels are getting morbidly obese by rifling through suburban garbage cans, scurrying away with toaster waffles in their mouths. He talks about innocuous events that could shape the future. He thinks about these vast spaces, this land of plenty where deer are found dead on the road while we build homes in their natural habitats and the gourmet smells that rise up from our manicured, never-grazed lawns as we mow down the wild onions that are a part of many a lawn.
He talks about Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez’s visit to America and his comment about 99% of the cars, rather SUV’s, on the road being driven by a single occupant and how unsustainable a mode of life this really is. Hugo decides to sell Venezuelan oil to the poor in South Bronx, at half price, and an evangelist is prompt enough to issue a death threat on Hugo’s life.
As an American I can appreciate Ian’s concerns, I have felt the jarring, discordant note in many an aspect of my own life. A sense that things are essentially wrong and that this way of life cannot possibly be sustainable. However, thinking about comparing this to an acorn-stomping autumnal activity as a metaphor for contentment or discontent is what makes me feel like a stranger in this rather strange land. I could never write an article such as this one because this wasn’t my childhood. I have lived in America for seventeen years and this is the first time I’ve heard about this favorite childhood pastime. It is a detail I could never absorb, a metaphor I could never use.
This makes me realize how right Maugham really was when he said:
"It is very difficult to know people and I don't think one can ever really know any but one's own countrymen. For men and women are not only themselves; they are also the region in which they were born, the city apartment or the farm in which they learnt to walk, the games they played as children, the old wives' tales they overheard, the food they ate, the schools they attended, the sports they followed, the poets they read, and the God they believed in. It is all these things that have made them what they are, and these are the things that you can't come to know by hearsay, you can only know them if you have lived them. You can only know them if you are them. And because you cannot know persons of a nation foreign to you except from observation, it is difficult to give them credibility in the pages of a book. Even so subtle and careful an observer as Henry James, though he lived in England for forty years, never managed to create an Englishman who was through and through English."
But does this passage assume that one could feel at home, living and breathing the inherent, generational culture and memories in one’s so-called “homeland” as opposed to one’s adopted home? What if no place feels like home? Perhaps I should try some acorn-stomping along my own sidewalks and see if I can get to experience the sweet satisfaction of the shivery tingle that could start at the heel and travel up to a spot between the shoulder blades, perhaps practice could make me perfect at this exercise and then finally I’ll feel at home, enhancing the American dream by “living” the American "fall".
Fall or autumn in America is always a memorable event, especially in the north east where some people are even described as leaf-peepers, they take to the roads in mid-September and head for New England just to stick their heads out of the window and absorb the fall colors at their peak, spotting hues they didn’t know existed in deciduous trees, interlaced with the greens in the evergreen gymnosperms; an innocuous yet magical activity that has the power to overwhelm, the power to soothe the soul.
Ian’s article, as the title suggests, is about his thoughts during a crisp fall morning walk. He talks about the special heavy, shin-high boots he’s wearing, a “Danner Foothill model with Vibram soles”, that he declares are perfect for, take a guess….”acorn-stomping”!! It was this talk of acorn-stomping that grabbed my attention in the first paragraph and I was hooked, I had to read on and discover for myself what acorn-stomping was all about.
Ian managed to convey the exhilaration that he felt at this favorite childhood activity. His Danner Foothill boots apparently have a “sweet spot” in the heels and as he walks along the oak-tree lined sidewalks of his New Jersey neighborhood he devotes considerable thought to a strategy that would maximize his satisfaction from this activity. He says, “Hit a single acorn just so and you get a satisfying, shivery tingle between the shoulder blades. Hit a series of acorns, first right, then left, then right, and so on as long as the random distribution of acorns on the sidewalk permits, each acorn struck square on the sweet spot, crunch, crunch, crunch, never breaking stride – well, that’s what you’re looking for.”
Now this article is really not all about acorn-stomping, it is about present day America, about the deep satisfaction derived from an effectively stomped acorn, the sound of its gunshot-like report and how disheartening and jarring it is to stomp on it the wrong way, in a way where one fails to make it pop and it just whooshes out its contents in a mess.
While walking and stomping he wonders about his reasons for doing so. Perhaps it is a way of working out his frustrations, his deep dissatisfaction with the rising healthcare costs in the country. But then again it can’t be because the more he thinks about the issues that are plaguing this country the more inaccurate his stomping becomes and the more unpleasant the activity. For an inaccurately stomped acorn, leaves one with a “jangling, teeth-grinding wrongness”. He compares this “wrongness” to the way certain theologians have described sin, as an “apartness from God”. This gets him thinking about the state of his own health which is why he’s walking in the first place. He talks about the obesity of this nation, a country where even the raccoons and squirrels are getting morbidly obese by rifling through suburban garbage cans, scurrying away with toaster waffles in their mouths. He talks about innocuous events that could shape the future. He thinks about these vast spaces, this land of plenty where deer are found dead on the road while we build homes in their natural habitats and the gourmet smells that rise up from our manicured, never-grazed lawns as we mow down the wild onions that are a part of many a lawn.
He talks about Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez’s visit to America and his comment about 99% of the cars, rather SUV’s, on the road being driven by a single occupant and how unsustainable a mode of life this really is. Hugo decides to sell Venezuelan oil to the poor in South Bronx, at half price, and an evangelist is prompt enough to issue a death threat on Hugo’s life.
As an American I can appreciate Ian’s concerns, I have felt the jarring, discordant note in many an aspect of my own life. A sense that things are essentially wrong and that this way of life cannot possibly be sustainable. However, thinking about comparing this to an acorn-stomping autumnal activity as a metaphor for contentment or discontent is what makes me feel like a stranger in this rather strange land. I could never write an article such as this one because this wasn’t my childhood. I have lived in America for seventeen years and this is the first time I’ve heard about this favorite childhood pastime. It is a detail I could never absorb, a metaphor I could never use.
This makes me realize how right Maugham really was when he said:
"It is very difficult to know people and I don't think one can ever really know any but one's own countrymen. For men and women are not only themselves; they are also the region in which they were born, the city apartment or the farm in which they learnt to walk, the games they played as children, the old wives' tales they overheard, the food they ate, the schools they attended, the sports they followed, the poets they read, and the God they believed in. It is all these things that have made them what they are, and these are the things that you can't come to know by hearsay, you can only know them if you have lived them. You can only know them if you are them. And because you cannot know persons of a nation foreign to you except from observation, it is difficult to give them credibility in the pages of a book. Even so subtle and careful an observer as Henry James, though he lived in England for forty years, never managed to create an Englishman who was through and through English."
But does this passage assume that one could feel at home, living and breathing the inherent, generational culture and memories in one’s so-called “homeland” as opposed to one’s adopted home? What if no place feels like home? Perhaps I should try some acorn-stomping along my own sidewalks and see if I can get to experience the sweet satisfaction of the shivery tingle that could start at the heel and travel up to a spot between the shoulder blades, perhaps practice could make me perfect at this exercise and then finally I’ll feel at home, enhancing the American dream by “living” the American "fall".
Table for Two
Table for Two
------------------------
It isn’t the cardamom or cumin,
nor the rosemary, sage or thyme,
there’s a hint of oregano but the taste
is mostly undefined.
You spent several hours over it,
Stirring it to a smoothness divine,
Then offered me a taste from a ladle,
And laid out my favorite wine.
Now we sit across from each other,
Candlelight shining in our eyes,
I ask you for your secret recipe,
And the “je ne sais quoi” it hides.
But some questions are rhetorical
Asking them a pleasant routine,
We both know the answer’s love
it's richness felt but never seen.
------------------------
It isn’t the cardamom or cumin,
nor the rosemary, sage or thyme,
there’s a hint of oregano but the taste
is mostly undefined.
You spent several hours over it,
Stirring it to a smoothness divine,
Then offered me a taste from a ladle,
And laid out my favorite wine.
Now we sit across from each other,
Candlelight shining in our eyes,
I ask you for your secret recipe,
And the “je ne sais quoi” it hides.
But some questions are rhetorical
Asking them a pleasant routine,
We both know the answer’s love
it's richness felt but never seen.
Monday, October 10, 2005
Minesweeper
It is like the game at which you excelled,
Broke all records, found all those mines
In 30 seconds flat. Ready to go again.
All set to win every game, ready to outshine,
Our counter-strategies always in vain,
As cold logic got you there, your luck held.
But life my dear, is not a computer game,
Just like relationships don’t run in binary.
Something you never could fathom.
As you went on believing her in a hurry
Discarding their complaints as random,
Scoring points and passing around blame.
Now there’s no turning back, no amends
possible. Each loved one is on the brink,
teetering at the point of no return.
While you watch, incredulous, and think
of numerical equations to soothe the burn
of seared souls and blazing fences you can’t mend.
Now the logic of ifs and thens leads to walls
of stony silences or acrimony. Tread light
my dear, to find your way out of this minefield,
there’s much to lose to the darkest of nights.
Where no one is prepared to give or yield
Or help you gauge whence duty calls.
Broke all records, found all those mines
In 30 seconds flat. Ready to go again.
All set to win every game, ready to outshine,
Our counter-strategies always in vain,
As cold logic got you there, your luck held.
But life my dear, is not a computer game,
Just like relationships don’t run in binary.
Something you never could fathom.
As you went on believing her in a hurry
Discarding their complaints as random,
Scoring points and passing around blame.
Now there’s no turning back, no amends
possible. Each loved one is on the brink,
teetering at the point of no return.
While you watch, incredulous, and think
of numerical equations to soothe the burn
of seared souls and blazing fences you can’t mend.
Now the logic of ifs and thens leads to walls
of stony silences or acrimony. Tread light
my dear, to find your way out of this minefield,
there’s much to lose to the darkest of nights.
Where no one is prepared to give or yield
Or help you gauge whence duty calls.
Saturday, October 8, 2005
Generalization
When it comes to generalizations I suppose someone will tell me soon enough not to knock it until I try it.
I have observed the writings of two people who have recently left their homeland for higher studies abroad. They are bloggers and aspiring writers and have been recording unusual events in their blogs. Reading them makes me think how important this generalization function really is to the brain. It seems to be the very first response, the first defense. It is like the strange and funny though entirely lovable robot - Johnny V - in the movie Short Circuit. In the big city or any new environs, he actively scans his surroundings saying, "Input, Input!" My two friends are doing it too. Observing, recording and processing so many new events, new sights, new linguistic nuances, culture, behavior that has the potential of creating utter chaos in the brain. In comes generalization. Now they can consolidate reams of new data in fewer categories and attribute certain traits and patterns of behavior to each category. Voila! They've built sorting bins in their brains. Now they have some rudimentary means of coping with the deluge of sensory perception.
So far so good, it is just a coping mechanism. So you think Americans are not good at Math or Sciences, you think they are rude, you think they are shallow and superficial, helps you tailor your own behavior toward them. You think the country is all form and no substance...a dangerous one. Maybe it works for you now to think that. Things are fine at this initial sorting bin stage but when these bins morph into really tall and fortified walls as time goes by we have ourselves people with unshakeably dogmatic views on how a certain group of people will behave. They start extending the analysis to how an entire country or race or people with a certain ethnology will behave. That is when the real danger kicks in.
My resistance to the idea of generalization stems from a realization of this danger. When I encountered a new culture for the first time I wasn't generalizing at all, I must have been born with a gene that was averse to such a defense mechanism. But I was coming across many people who were trying to force me down one particular hatch or the other. There were people who really believed that Indians loved to burn new brides whose parents had failed to arrange for dowry, they believed that infanticide of the girl child was a widespread phenomenon. The odd uneducated American also questioned me about snake charmers on the street and felt that all Indians, male or female wore turbans on their head. My hackles were always raised in defense of all things Indian. "Ah you're from India, to which tribe do you belong?" or "When you go to pick up your Mom on the airport will she have a humongous turban on her head?" or "What do Indians have against beef?" or "Why are they so clannish?" or "My doctor is Indian. How come all Indians are doctors?" or "Mr Patel runs the local Dunkin Donuts or 7-11, told me he's from Delhi, do you know him?"
This could have led me to generalize that all Americans are adept at asking the dumbest questions possible but I chose to believe that this wasn't the case. There are enough Americans out there who know better and have educated and informed opinions about India and Indians. In fact, your Indianness doesn't trigger any automatic value judgments about you.
So if I could, I would love to caution these two people to keep this instinct in check. America isn't all form and no substance just as India isn't a country where dowryless brides are regularly burnt. Just reading the inscribed words of Thomas Jefferson at Jefferson Memorial, Washington DC could have sent home just the opposite message of how substantial a country America really is.
I have observed the writings of two people who have recently left their homeland for higher studies abroad. They are bloggers and aspiring writers and have been recording unusual events in their blogs. Reading them makes me think how important this generalization function really is to the brain. It seems to be the very first response, the first defense. It is like the strange and funny though entirely lovable robot - Johnny V - in the movie Short Circuit. In the big city or any new environs, he actively scans his surroundings saying, "Input, Input!" My two friends are doing it too. Observing, recording and processing so many new events, new sights, new linguistic nuances, culture, behavior that has the potential of creating utter chaos in the brain. In comes generalization. Now they can consolidate reams of new data in fewer categories and attribute certain traits and patterns of behavior to each category. Voila! They've built sorting bins in their brains. Now they have some rudimentary means of coping with the deluge of sensory perception.
So far so good, it is just a coping mechanism. So you think Americans are not good at Math or Sciences, you think they are rude, you think they are shallow and superficial, helps you tailor your own behavior toward them. You think the country is all form and no substance...a dangerous one. Maybe it works for you now to think that. Things are fine at this initial sorting bin stage but when these bins morph into really tall and fortified walls as time goes by we have ourselves people with unshakeably dogmatic views on how a certain group of people will behave. They start extending the analysis to how an entire country or race or people with a certain ethnology will behave. That is when the real danger kicks in.
My resistance to the idea of generalization stems from a realization of this danger. When I encountered a new culture for the first time I wasn't generalizing at all, I must have been born with a gene that was averse to such a defense mechanism. But I was coming across many people who were trying to force me down one particular hatch or the other. There were people who really believed that Indians loved to burn new brides whose parents had failed to arrange for dowry, they believed that infanticide of the girl child was a widespread phenomenon. The odd uneducated American also questioned me about snake charmers on the street and felt that all Indians, male or female wore turbans on their head. My hackles were always raised in defense of all things Indian. "Ah you're from India, to which tribe do you belong?" or "When you go to pick up your Mom on the airport will she have a humongous turban on her head?" or "What do Indians have against beef?" or "Why are they so clannish?" or "My doctor is Indian. How come all Indians are doctors?" or "Mr Patel runs the local Dunkin Donuts or 7-11, told me he's from Delhi, do you know him?"
This could have led me to generalize that all Americans are adept at asking the dumbest questions possible but I chose to believe that this wasn't the case. There are enough Americans out there who know better and have educated and informed opinions about India and Indians. In fact, your Indianness doesn't trigger any automatic value judgments about you.
So if I could, I would love to caution these two people to keep this instinct in check. America isn't all form and no substance just as India isn't a country where dowryless brides are regularly burnt. Just reading the inscribed words of Thomas Jefferson at Jefferson Memorial, Washington DC could have sent home just the opposite message of how substantial a country America really is.
Friday, October 7, 2005
Vanilla Days
I have been reading what people like to write, for a little over a year now. It was exciting in the beginning. I have always loved snooping, always loved to bury myself in someone's old diary, reading their deepest, darkest secrets, reading about what made them tick, their quirks and their motivations. But juicy diaries were hard to come by. And then I discovered blogging. I felt like I died and went to heaven when I discovered the "Next Blog" button. So many juicy tidbits and delicious morsels of humanity all around me. Every perspective seemed new.
That was then and this is now. I have now discovered that not only are most blogs most uninteresting, filled with bad poetry and worse prose but that the "Next Blog" button can easily bring some exotic computer viruses your way.
There really are no unique perspectives anywhere, somehow each human aspect merges and fuses into one common consciousness. It is almost as if we were cyborgs. We are one.
The only things people write about is being in love, being out of love, how love hurts, how lack of love hurts, how one-sided it is, how full of longing we are, how obsessed we are, how surprised we are that someone else is so obsessed with another, who did what to whom, how one is never understood. It all runs into the same theme. It is like the color black - the color that absorbs all the other colors of the spectrum or perhaps it is like the color white, the color that reflects all the other colors in the spectrum, a matter of perspective...yes, which is never unique. Uniqueness lasts only as long as one hasn't previously been exposed to something. It is like the sandy/beige color of my Dad's Fiat in India. When we bought it we all thought, "Wow! What a unique color! We've never seen that color before!" Then as we drove on the streets of Delhi, we realized that every other car on the road was of the same color.
I read several blogs today. P's blog was the same as always full of what he considered a witty, pithy turn of phrase. Another P's blog was full of heartache again - a personal relationship causing such angst, such tears and such predictability in her significant other's reaction to her words and her tears. Then I read D's blog, again more of the same "I-am-up-here-and-the-rest-of-you-are-jerks". A's blog was full of bad poetry and J's blog was full of affirmations and lines that could have come from a Chicken Soup for the Soul book. Most of these blogs were very popular. Each post generating 50 or so comments and each comment was as inane as the post itself. They would start with "Ah.." and say something like *sigh* or *shudder* based on how the post moved them. *Sigh*
So where do I find the next mystery? What is the next thing that will make me say, "Wow!" I keep waiting for the next such thing with bated breath. Hope springs eternal in the promise of each new day, each sunrise. But it is quelled again with the setting sun. There is very little variation in the routine of each day. It's a flatline with not the tiniest blip in sight.
Well, there really isn't anything better to keep me entertained, the palate tickled. So I'll keep savoring the vanilla, if only to reassure myself that I can still taste.
That was then and this is now. I have now discovered that not only are most blogs most uninteresting, filled with bad poetry and worse prose but that the "Next Blog" button can easily bring some exotic computer viruses your way.
There really are no unique perspectives anywhere, somehow each human aspect merges and fuses into one common consciousness. It is almost as if we were cyborgs. We are one.
The only things people write about is being in love, being out of love, how love hurts, how lack of love hurts, how one-sided it is, how full of longing we are, how obsessed we are, how surprised we are that someone else is so obsessed with another, who did what to whom, how one is never understood. It all runs into the same theme. It is like the color black - the color that absorbs all the other colors of the spectrum or perhaps it is like the color white, the color that reflects all the other colors in the spectrum, a matter of perspective...yes, which is never unique. Uniqueness lasts only as long as one hasn't previously been exposed to something. It is like the sandy/beige color of my Dad's Fiat in India. When we bought it we all thought, "Wow! What a unique color! We've never seen that color before!" Then as we drove on the streets of Delhi, we realized that every other car on the road was of the same color.
I read several blogs today. P's blog was the same as always full of what he considered a witty, pithy turn of phrase. Another P's blog was full of heartache again - a personal relationship causing such angst, such tears and such predictability in her significant other's reaction to her words and her tears. Then I read D's blog, again more of the same "I-am-up-here-and-the-rest-of-you-are-jerks". A's blog was full of bad poetry and J's blog was full of affirmations and lines that could have come from a Chicken Soup for the Soul book. Most of these blogs were very popular. Each post generating 50 or so comments and each comment was as inane as the post itself. They would start with "Ah.." and say something like *sigh* or *shudder* based on how the post moved them. *Sigh*
So where do I find the next mystery? What is the next thing that will make me say, "Wow!" I keep waiting for the next such thing with bated breath. Hope springs eternal in the promise of each new day, each sunrise. But it is quelled again with the setting sun. There is very little variation in the routine of each day. It's a flatline with not the tiniest blip in sight.
Well, there really isn't anything better to keep me entertained, the palate tickled. So I'll keep savoring the vanilla, if only to reassure myself that I can still taste.
Tuesday, October 4, 2005
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)