[b]David Sedaris
The Korean man nodded, the way you do when you’re a foreigner and understand that someone has finished a sentence.[/b]
Or [of course] the American man in Korea.
When forced to leave my house for an extended period of time, I take my typewriter with me, and together we endure the wretchedness of passing through the X-ray scanner. The laptops roll merrily down the belt, while I’m instructed to stand aside and open my bag. To me it seems like a normal enough thing to be carrying, but the typewriter’s declining popularity arouses suspicion and I wind up eliciting the sort of reaction one might expect when traveling with a cannon.
It’s a typewriter, I say. You use it to write angry letters to airport security.
Imagine then their reaction to an 8 track player.
It was my friend Frank, a writer in San Francisco, who finally set me straight. When asked about my new look he put down his fork and stared at me for a few moments. “A bow tie announces to the world you can no longer get an erection.”
Any exceptions here?
He looked as though his life had not only passed him by but paused along the way to spit in his face.
If not kick the shit out of him.
Being locked up is one thing, but to have no concept of confinement, to be ignorant of its terms and never understand that struggle is useless — that’s what hell must be like.
On the other hand, what about “ignorance is bliss”?
Often I’d take out my magnifying glass and stare into the chaos that was her face.
At least for her, you need one.