"play it by ear" is THIS close to being included on my list of catch-phrases I despise. Others are:
-I'm a visual person
-Partners in crime
Recent addition:
-The nature of the beast
Now someone tell me why, if the rest of my life is such a source of joy, work has to be a slippery slope of frustration. Does that make any sense?
Wednesday, August 10, 2005
Catch this phrase
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Hi Isabel, Time, no? Liked the blog and new concept. In the end, all came down to a: why not? then silence, then action. (sorry I can't be more clear today, lack of coffee I guess). Anyway, regarding your question, I quote something I read lately that may have to do may not, but that I liked. Dave Foster Wallance comencemnt speach at a college graduation this year. Not the best scenario, but green can grow anywhere. Send you the link if the whole thing is of any interest. Bye.
"……and I submit that this is what the real, no bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: how to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out. That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense. Let's get concrete. The plain fact is that you graduating seniors do not yet have any clue what "day in day out" really means. There happen to be whole, large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine, and petty frustration. The parents and older folks here will know all too well what I'm talking about…By way of example, let's say it's an average adult day, and you get up in the morning, go to your challenging, white-collar, college-graduate job, and you work hard for eight or ten hours…
…it hasn't yet been part of you graduates' actual life routine, day after week after month after year. But it will be. And many more dreary, annoying, seemingly meaningless routines besides. But that is not the point. The point is that petty, frustrating crap like this is exactly where the work of choosing is gonna come in.
Because the traffic jams and crowded aisles and long checkout lines give me time to think, and if I don't make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to, I'm gonna be pissed and miserable every time I have to shop. Because my natural default setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me... and it's going to seem for all the world like everybody else is just in my way. And who are all these people in my way? And look at how repulsive most of them are, and how stupid and cow-like and dead-eyed and nonhuman they seem in the checkout line, or at how annoying and rude it is that people are talking loudly on cell phones... And look at how deeply and personally unfair this is… the thing is that, of course, there are totally different ways to think about these kinds of situations..."
http://www.marginalia.org/dfw_kenyon_commencement.html
Post a Comment