Pirates at the Gate

I am not sure which is worse: the Somali Pirates holding world commerce up for random or the grey flannelled political class in Washington ripping down the paneled doors of the Treasury to pillage for profit. Perhaps one of our friends at Disney can produce a sequel to their wildly successful series which they might call "The Pirates of the Potomac."

The Green Eyed Monster

Jealousy is the stepchild of anger. They are related through the passion of hatred, but whereas anger often has a specific object as the focal point, jealousy is built on doubt, suspicion and fear. The fury generated by jealousy is often the product of inference, suggestion or doubt, such as the suspicion of betrayal by a loved one. With jealousy, the hurt often begins not with a specific action but within the mind of a person plagued by an imagined offense.

When the seed of doubt is planted, then it is watered and nurtured by an overheated imagination and soon what was merely the appearance of a wrong becomes a whole cause for war. Many marriages have shattered because of jealousy; much suffering has resulted from imagined slights and betrayals fed not by knowledge, but rather by the mere suspicion of a wrong.

Apparitions

I spent last weekend in Denver at an independent publisher conference. Though I was a speaker, I had an opportunity to sit in on a two hour writing seminar lead by Anne Randolph, an excellent writing coach. Anne led us through three exercises and the first was to write for five minutes starting with the word “unfamiliar.” Here is what I came up with:

Unfamiliar faces crowd the confined space of the stalled car. No one speaks. We are strangers, riding toward our individual destinations. We have unexpectedly paused and the sudden silence causes unease. The faces are impenetrable masks, revealing nothing of the complicated stories lying below the surface. Eyes avoid eyes and some peer out the darkened windows toward grey, soot packed walls that encase us here. Then relief: The train jolts into action and moves forward, slowly resuming speed and carrying each one of us on our singular journey toward an assignation that will add yet another chapter to each of our fragmentary books.

Ezra Pound is the father of this short piece of writing. In college I had memorized a two line poem he had written early in the 20th Century. It goes like this: “The apparition of these faces in a crowd/pedals on a wet black bough.”