Difficult Music

I know it’s not good for me, but at work I like to sit by myself at lunch. I like to read The Sun, or read the writin’ under the pitchers in The Province, or read another chapter in whatever book I’ve got going. Sometimes I’ll sit at a table with people I’ve talked to before. More often than not it goes okay. I get in a couple audible comments and people acknowledge them. Yippee. As someone whose job it is to pry information out of people, I need to talk to them more. But I’d rather do it for the job, not socially. Anyway, today I sat down with a couple folks who, I realized too late, were already deep into a conversation about spirituality and living and doing and being and loving and all that jazz. One of them is drawing up tables and diagrams on a piece of paper. “Look at this straight line. What does that mean to you?” “Let’s divide life into positives and negatives.” They’re talking about human beings as meaning-making machines, and Landmark Education (which Neal Morse of Spock’s Beard was into, the God-fearing freak) and The Four Agreements. I just sat there gnawing on my giant oatmeal-raisin cookie and listened, hoping they would not acknowledge my presence and not ask me what I thought that straight line meant. I made it back to my desk unscathed.