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HOW THE MENSCH STOLE PEACE AND QUIET
My friend the mensch walks calmly to the nearby diner for his lunch break, newspaper under his arm, deep breaths beginning to relax him after a morning of doing business at a rapid pace.
The sounds of street and pedestrians and traffic and aircraft and construction workers swirl about him as he strolls. He is ready for twenty minutes of quiet dining and reading. As he munches his meal and scans the paper for news, he becomes conscious of something that has become a habit: He skips past stories of pandering politicians and dueling world leaders, averts his eyes when photographs of war crimes in progress appear, folds out of sight tales of corruption, rumors of pestilence, predictions of graft and injustices.
He is aware that nowadays he probes the news for evidence of hope. He tends to read articles about the wonder of spaceflight and the intrigues of new archaeological finds and the curious behavior of beetles and ants. And he searches for things that make him chuckle, pieces about ridiculous uses of language, wisecracks that crop up to lighten the load of gloomy news, features on the beauty of art and music, stories about insignificant people who do significant things, tales of other mensches who just live their lives without seeking credit or fame or attention or reward.
He finds that these little stories do still exist, but he has to look for them much as a detective searches for important clues.
The mensch knows that he cannot survive without all the noise of the ether to which society has become accustomed—dissonant music, snarky tweets, foxy TV exaggerations, over-the-top violent films and shows, gossipy factless interchanges within earshot.
He knows that this is his world and welcome to it.
But he is beginning to rebel in small ways that others do not notice. He carries earplugs in case he wants to drown out the loud unreconstructed disco beat at the diner. He is learning to disregard much of the hopelessly neurotic interchanges about him. He is turning off the car radio more and more as meaningless or repetitive messages are aimed at him. He no longer rushes to answer phone calls he can’t identify. When he does answer, he hangs up quickly should a brief silence occur before a salesvoice proceeds or when a pre-recorded announcement commences.
The mensch is also beginning to examine his own personal habits. He doesn’t always turn on the computer or television or cellphone when he arrives home after work. He is aware that the screens of these electronic objects are themselves a kind of hypnotic programming under the spell of which he has fallen.
So, thinking on these things, he completes his meal, places his paper under his arm, walks back to work, finishes the workday and heads for home.
Tonight will be different, he decides.
He walks into the house, finds a blank DVD disc, pops it into the player and sits watching the static play of meaningless electrons. He tosses the phone. Later, he plays a blank CD and blissfully listens to the quiet. Tomorrow he will lose the unopened morning newspaper. When he goes to lunch, he will carry a blank legal pad and write himself stories while munching.
Whatever he writes will make him far happier than anything else he does that day
© Jim Reed 2014 A.D.