I was chatting earlier today with an old friend I hadn’t spoken to since mid-summer. I had been worrying about him because
the last time we tried to communicate, he left a voicemail with what sounded like terrible and disturbing news about one of his children, describing events that couldn’t have made any
father happy. That message arrived over a crackling, distorted cellular connection replete with drop-outs,
latencies and echoes. I wasn’t sure I understood
exactly what he was saying.
Today, though, he
sounded great. Newly NYC-repatriated following another long European business jaunt (his business activities are
never entirely clear to me), he seemed to be taking his parental travails in stride, much more so than I ever
could.
My friend thinks “big,” some would say excessively so. His nouvelles and spun-sugar descriptions of things always sound fairy tale
grand fantastical and he is forever in mid-quest toward a definite goal, but with no
set itinerary or arrival time. It’s the sort of thing that drives me
crazy because although what he’s shooting for sounds semi-plausible sometimes, it is
far-fetched in terms of its show business success probability, which virtually guarantees the
certainty of a micro-return on time and effort spent.
I think smaller and squarer,
but am not doing much better. I rarely project anything like my friend’s gaiety or enthusiasm.
We fish in different
parts of the ocean with similarly mediocre results.
I believe the “recovery”
is still five years off. What do you
think?
