emphasis is mine

We rolled through the downtown Cleveland night, lounging sideways across the trolley seats, laughing and talking loudly over its engine.

The friends/acquaintances I was with received a call from their college-days friend, and passed the phone amongst themselves, taking turns inquiring into his latest designs. When they closed the window to his universe and rejoined that of the trolley, I tried to get a better idea of who this was that they were obviously impressed with.

A citizen of the world, as they put it; he didn't live in any one place. And a brilliant one -- though their praise was twinged with a bit of contempt. I've forgotten his specific successes they bulletted, but my eyebrows might've scraped the trolley ceiling if we hit a bump.

"He's a megalomaniac though," she said, tempting me with scent of fault, so gratifying to find in those you envy. "He's got his own web site, and all this... Who wants to read a list of every book he's ever read?"

I defended him quietly and vaguely, then turned toward the window to follow the streetlights pass by.

I thumbed his web address into my phone's notepad, but blanched from revealing myself as one interested in what he's read, where he's been, or what he might want to say. I wanted to explain that it's not megalomania, just a point of contact, but I'm not yet confident enough in that to defend it.

The alphabet (and its extension into typography) made possible the spread of the power that is knowledge and shattered the bonds of tribal man, thus exploiding him into an agglomeration of individuals. Electric writing and speed pour upon him instantaneously and continuously the concerns of all other men. He becomes tribal once more. The human family becomes one tribe again.

-- Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, 1964

Jeff, you sure are able to tune into the inside humming in others' heads. What is it about people in general, that makes them automatically switch to default, when there should only be joyful appreciation, celebration? A citizen of the world, yet -- a megalomaniac. Fault-finding.

We citizens of the world seem to have an automatic antenna that rises to sniff out the negative with contempt, it's built right in, seemingly included in the original packaging. And often not only do we not see this fault in ourselves, but we see no need to be on guard against letting it shadow our perceptions of others who may be totally innocent of our projections.

Perhaps it is a knee-jerk defense mechanism: we fight so hard to attain our own personal levels of perfection that we can't stand to see anyone else getting farther ahead of us, even though those perceptions are obviously erroneous. Nobody really ever feels perfect.

It is the posts you write like this one that I appreciate so much. Thank you for articulating and sharing the experience. I will be thinking about it for a while, I'm sure, as the trolley ride comes back to haunt my thoughts. A sure sign of good writing.

-- Kate S. (October 28, 2004 12:28 PM)