Odd

Odd is like writing a poem while commuting on the bus; can be fun; can be just the thing. My herd instinct is weak. I don’t keep up on what’s happening in the movies or on the streets. I don’t watch television, or hang out at the bar scene. Odd is like kneeling on the floor to drill holes in pistachio shells for your daughter to color and string around her neck; can be fun; can be just the thing. I must be coming down with the flu if I don’t enjoy an article in Scientific American on the cuticles of arthropods. I’m not interested whether Prince Charles will speak at Harvard. I don’t want to know whether Frank Sinatra took a youth serum containing blood cells of unborn sheep. But tell me why such things appeal to people; tell me why, in our proud Democracy, politics is a dirty word; discussions like these can be fun; can be just the thing. I think that football and baseball are addictions; disabilities like epilepsy and multiple sclerosis. I don’t believe that nuclear weapons make us safer, or that offshore oil drilling makes us stronger. I don’t believe that only Russians make propaganda. What fast food chain has the biggest beef patty doesn’t worry me; I don’t even think it’s funny. Odd is like eating dinner in the park and talking about the simple things of the day as the full moon comes up over the pines, America, idealizing its former innocence, proud in its ignorance, complains like a child; can be fun; can be just the thing.

21 September 1986