The fragility of life in the vacuum is not to be taken lightly. If a seabound freighter or transport truck overshoots its mooring, you may get a bent plate or strut. If an interplanetary trade vessel does this, thousands die.
There are certain questions that are important to ask: whenever information is incomplete, or absent from presentation, it’s critical that the recipient clear any fog that obscures total understanding. Likewise, where there is ambiguity that could lead to misinformation, questions that solidify the intended meaning are essential.
The trouble begins when people ask questions simply for the sake of asking them, to reinforce the appearance of paying attention, somehow raise their social standing, or feign an interest that devolves into a detour. A question of “how do I do this?” when all the tools have been adequately provided is one example. People employ this diversionary strategy because they are too afraid to try something for themselves. It is not unusual for such people to never make use of any reinforcement that may be granted by such odious time-wasting. Yet this destructive behavior occurs ad infinitum in classrooms throughout history.
Fault also lies with instructors and lecturers, for rather than direct the students to experiment for themselves, they answer the queries at great ego-stroking lengths to fill their salaried time or to otherwise provide content where none was needed but now exists and imparts the illusion of meaning.
I’m sitting in a Starbuck’s trying to remember the appeal of a place like this. I’m listening to the obnoxious laughter of strangers. A man is showing a woman something on his mobile phone, and it’s louder than the background noise of the place. The floor is atrociously dirty, and the grime becomes more and more apparent the longer I sit here. The coffee isn’t good at all and came served in double-cupped paper even though I explicitly said it was “for here”. Again, I wonder what I’m even doing sitting here. I had the idea of what coming here would mean, some fragment of a forgotten comfort that this place once provided, or still did, somewhere on the other side of the planet.
In a cleaner culture, with quieter people, this was an oasis. Here, it’s a rutting place for pigs.
I can’t help but wonder if this is a reflection, but nothing I’ve been doing lately has led me to this place. My being here is complete happenstance—the product of boredom and stir-craziness—and the discovery of a handful of cash in a battered wallet. And now that’s all added up to produce an hour of regret spent in a public space for a public I’ve come to despise.
2015.09.24 – 2015.09.27