Monday, August 19, 2013

Who are the people in your neighborhood



You cannot see these people just anywhere. They are not in the movies, nor on TV, not in magazines or written into the pages of any books, fiction or non fiction. They don't appear on the internet, in newspapers, or even in the imagination of anyone. They can even be hard to see when they mill about on their peculiar missions right in front of you. And yet I do see them, if I dare to open my eyes wide enough, any workday I want to. These are the people that come to my library.

This is not a just folks, salt of the earth post about the wondrous diversity of humanity as it really is, and neither is it a cynical take-down of the same. All I am saying here is that if I in anyway tried to show you these people on my own, even were I given vastly greater skills, equipment and assistance than I possess, through film, sound, prose, patience and respect, humor and vision, my, or really anyone's project in this regard, would fall hopelessly flat. Any attempt to convey the however many hundreds of people I see in a day would be unbelievably bizarre. Unbelievably. It would also be too boring to watch, and it would be cynical, treacly, fantastical,  mundane, uninspired, desperate in its hopefulness, plodding, pointlessly weird, and needlessly depressing. It would be unfair, inaccurate in its representation, confusing, glamorizing, too good to be true, evil, unintelligible and inappropriately whimsical.

Just like life.

1 comment:

  1. So then, mon ami, you have reached for Art?
    Could this post be a syndoche for the greater blog as perhaps this blog is for life?

    ReplyDelete

If you were wondering, yes, you should comment. Not only does it remind me that I must write in intelligible English because someone is actually reading what I write, but it is also a pleasure for me since I am interested in anything you have to say.

I respond to pretty much every comment. It's like a free personalized blog post!

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