Tag: introvert

Sunday Morning

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Except for Aunt Maria. Unlike her father, my grandfather, she belonged not among the Enlightenment’s disciples, but with the deeply religious, the deeply silent. I know she read serious works on theology, I would guess that she knew how to pray (an ability far rarer than it seems), but she was a quiet person, like all in my family…Aunt Maria’s silence, it seems to me, grew from her religion—I sensed her conviction that things linked to faith must be left unexpressed, that they’re lost when spoken, they become banalities. I admired her for being different, for the deep devotion that she wouldn’t, couldn’t share with us—she was the opposite of those pious hypocrites who place their religious fervor on public display…Maria kept silent for different reasons. Perhaps those who pray truly and deeply inevitably watch their words around others.

~ Adam Zagajewski, Slight Exaggeration: An Essay (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, April 4, 2017)

Notes: Image – Farm Hands, via Mennyfox55

Everyone knows this. Everyone knows what it looks like.

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Everyone knows this. Everyone knows what it looks like. I can’t count how many pieces I’ve read about how alienated we’ve become, tethered to our devices, leery of real contact; how we are heading for a crisis of intimacy, as our ability to socialise withers and atrophies. But this is like looking through the wrong end of a telescope. We haven’t just become alienated because we’ve subcontracted so many elements of our social and emotional lives to machines. It’s no doubt a self-perpetuating cycle, but part of the impetus for inventing as well as buying these things is that contact is difficult, frightening, sometimes intolerably dangerous Your favourite part of having a smartphone is never having to call anyone again, the source of the gadget’s pernicious appeal is not that it will absolve its owner of the need for people but that it will provide connection to them –connection, furthermore, of a risk-free kind, in which the communicator need never be rejected, misunderstood or overwhelmed, asked to supply more attention, closeness or time than they are willing to offer up.

~ Olivia Laing, The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone

Photo: Luca Pietrobono with smartphone

Flying Over I-95 N. With Radar O’Reilly.

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sky-clouds,aerial

I’m 39,800 feet up and heading home. I receive a text message from my Assistant.

“7:30 am tomorrow. Meeting just hit your calendar.”

“OK”

It was 3 years ago. I had slogged through a conga line of candidate interviews – job hoppers, unexplainable gaps on resumes, typos, gum snappers…and…poor chemistry.

She stepped into my office.  I scanned her resume. Professional presentation. No typos. Higher education. Limited job hopping.  OK, so what’s the catch?

It was late afternoon. We walked through her work experience, why she was looking to leave her current role, how she’d found me.  Her responses were polite and brief, no extra words. Two introverts suffocating the silence. Do I bring this out in all candidates? Is it me?

I pivot to my concerns. Continue reading “Flying Over I-95 N. With Radar O’Reilly.” →

It’s been a long day

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I am not a person to say the words out loud

I think them strongly, or let them hunger from the page:

know it from there, from my silence, from somewhere other

than my tongue

the quiet love

the silent rage

—  Keri Hulme, from “Against the Small Evil Voices,” in Strands.

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Walking Cross-Town. With Marrow.

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It’s 6:38 pm and I’m rushing across town to catch the 7:12 at Grand Central.

It’s 6:38 pm. I note the coincidence – I boarded the 6:38 am morning train, must be some significance in that. Or absolutely none at all and you are delirious.

The thought evaporates like mist and the mind shifts to The Feet.  Still 75 minutes from home. The skin has been scraped raw off both heels from new shoes – I wince with each step. How about a few shots of Novocain Doc, hit me. Inject a few blasts in the forehead and let it slow drip, down the bloodstream, relieve the weight from the shoulders and back, and let it settle in my feet, just camp out right there.

The day ended with a semi-social event. Whatever marrow is left, is being sucked out of this introvert’s bones.  A career development event for twenty high potentials. I step in the restroom a few minutes before the session, splash cold water on my face, and look. There’s me in the mirror.  Thinning hair, and this is kind. Gray. Bags under the eyes, a raccoon  Shoulders slumped. Suit rumbled. And they’re looking for some secret sauce from you?  Try, please, try, not to repeat yourself. Try not to curse. Try not to be too authentic.   Continue reading “Walking Cross-Town. With Marrow.” →