Mad Hits Like I Was Rod Carew
M-L-E gonna rock the sure shot.
So Derrek came in again today, plopped himself down in the chair across from my desk, ignoring the pile of work that I was so doggedly trying to appear busy with. Conversations with Derrek... perhaps the name of an SNL skit, but not a funny one, one of those painfully awkward and flat ones from the early 90s. He speaks with much gesticulation and verve, and his subject matter is as abruptly and randomly shifted as any manual transmission motorcar behind whose steering wheel I am poised and determined. Yes, yes, and but. Today our conversation was actually really interesting. He was talking about living in places "other" than Oberlin. The "other" is in quotations because often it feels as though there are only two places in the world; those that are Oberlin, and those that are not. But I digress.
So interesting, we were talking about suffering, and the exponentially growing chasm between the "haves" and the "have nots." He's on fire when he talks, and it's hard to get a word in, and it's hard to make the point that you wanted to make two minutes ago when he was talking about homelessness, because now he is somehow talking about Soviet Russia. (But perhaps those two subjects are not quite so opposite as I had first intended?) At any rate, during one of his gesticulations I caught glimpse of some ink under his sleeve, so when he stopped to take a breath I asked him if it was a tattoo. And indeed it was. Getting a tattoo is an initiation into a secret society; I would talk about it, but there may someday be people without ink on their bodies reading this purposeless drivel! Why am I even writing this? Ah yes, I was going to make a point about about Eugene Debs and how his spirit is still alive and kicking in even the most unlikely of places, but somehow I became sidetracked with all of this nonsense, and I've gone too far to change it now! I'll leave this entry as it is, out of spite. Eugene Debs was from Cleveland, you know.
So Derrek came in again today, plopped himself down in the chair across from my desk, ignoring the pile of work that I was so doggedly trying to appear busy with. Conversations with Derrek... perhaps the name of an SNL skit, but not a funny one, one of those painfully awkward and flat ones from the early 90s. He speaks with much gesticulation and verve, and his subject matter is as abruptly and randomly shifted as any manual transmission motorcar behind whose steering wheel I am poised and determined. Yes, yes, and but. Today our conversation was actually really interesting. He was talking about living in places "other" than Oberlin. The "other" is in quotations because often it feels as though there are only two places in the world; those that are Oberlin, and those that are not. But I digress.
So interesting, we were talking about suffering, and the exponentially growing chasm between the "haves" and the "have nots." He's on fire when he talks, and it's hard to get a word in, and it's hard to make the point that you wanted to make two minutes ago when he was talking about homelessness, because now he is somehow talking about Soviet Russia. (But perhaps those two subjects are not quite so opposite as I had first intended?) At any rate, during one of his gesticulations I caught glimpse of some ink under his sleeve, so when he stopped to take a breath I asked him if it was a tattoo. And indeed it was. Getting a tattoo is an initiation into a secret society; I would talk about it, but there may someday be people without ink on their bodies reading this purposeless drivel! Why am I even writing this? Ah yes, I was going to make a point about about Eugene Debs and how his spirit is still alive and kicking in even the most unlikely of places, but somehow I became sidetracked with all of this nonsense, and I've gone too far to change it now! I'll leave this entry as it is, out of spite. Eugene Debs was from Cleveland, you know.
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