Slice
So Kate brings me back a wicked machete of a knife from the Arctic Circle, the kind of sharp instrument you use to carve unyielding whale blubber or an ice-clogged rope, and the next thing you know I’m walking around the apartment looking for something to cut; realizing that, thanks to the steady progress of civilization as it applies to the packaging and processing of food, there really isn’t anything in my abode that would need cutting with the Mother of All Chopping Tools. Unfortunate.
It’s been the week of Family Events, thanks to a confluence of cousins graduating high school, grandparents in town, and other cousins about to leave for Africa. Which has left yours truly desperately seeking any sort of Me Time, big blocks of which are increasingly going towards the 35k-words-and-counting Book…
Plus Family Events are always filled with queries from relatives that I feel the need to respond to with either taciturn monosyllables or else extended philosophical treatises that don’t do much other than make me come off as more pretentious than usual. It’s like,
Grandma: “Do you think this hunger in Africa is part of God’s divine plan?”
Response Option A (taciturn): “No.” *grunt*
Response Option B (pretentious): “During the Axial Age, the simultaneous developments of Buddhism, Confucianism, monotheism in what is now the modern-day Middle East and philosophical inquiry in ancient Greece all arrived at the common conclusion that the ultimate path of man’s salvation lay in forsaking the ego. Therefore the evolution of the singularity commonly known as ‘God’ from destroyer to…blah, blah, ba-blah…”
I’m always a hit at those things, let me tell you. Not helping my mood on Sunday was the three hours of sleep I’d gotten, courtesy of the singing Rastas planting an extensive garden in my back alley, until another neighbor started yelling at them; prompting one of said Rastas, at 6:45am, to cause me to leap nearly five vertical feet from bed by booming right underneath my window: “ENJOY YOUR DAY, MON. ENJOY IT OR I WILL DESTROY IT. THAT IS MY JOB, TO DESTROY WHAT IS NOT ENJOYED.”
The neighbor, whose pleadings for silence I’d previously slept through, mumbled something largely unheard through glass.
Rasta: “RELAX, WHITE BOY. EVERY DAY ABOVE GROUND IS A GOOD DAY.”
Right-O; truer words never spoken. We landed the Big Project at work, but I’m waiting to see what the nature of my role could be. Battling through the press office of the mayor of Los Angeles for another article.
It’s been the week of Family Events, thanks to a confluence of cousins graduating high school, grandparents in town, and other cousins about to leave for Africa. Which has left yours truly desperately seeking any sort of Me Time, big blocks of which are increasingly going towards the 35k-words-and-counting Book…
Plus Family Events are always filled with queries from relatives that I feel the need to respond to with either taciturn monosyllables or else extended philosophical treatises that don’t do much other than make me come off as more pretentious than usual. It’s like,
Grandma: “Do you think this hunger in Africa is part of God’s divine plan?”
Response Option A (taciturn): “No.” *grunt*
Response Option B (pretentious): “During the Axial Age, the simultaneous developments of Buddhism, Confucianism, monotheism in what is now the modern-day Middle East and philosophical inquiry in ancient Greece all arrived at the common conclusion that the ultimate path of man’s salvation lay in forsaking the ego. Therefore the evolution of the singularity commonly known as ‘God’ from destroyer to…blah, blah, ba-blah…”
I’m always a hit at those things, let me tell you. Not helping my mood on Sunday was the three hours of sleep I’d gotten, courtesy of the singing Rastas planting an extensive garden in my back alley, until another neighbor started yelling at them; prompting one of said Rastas, at 6:45am, to cause me to leap nearly five vertical feet from bed by booming right underneath my window: “ENJOY YOUR DAY, MON. ENJOY IT OR I WILL DESTROY IT. THAT IS MY JOB, TO DESTROY WHAT IS NOT ENJOYED.”
The neighbor, whose pleadings for silence I’d previously slept through, mumbled something largely unheard through glass.
Rasta: “RELAX, WHITE BOY. EVERY DAY ABOVE GROUND IS A GOOD DAY.”
Right-O; truer words never spoken. We landed the Big Project at work, but I’m waiting to see what the nature of my role could be. Battling through the press office of the mayor of Los Angeles for another article.
posted by NiK @ 4:31 PM
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