Writing truthiness?
Coming home on a plane, I sit next to a man wearing shorts, sneakers but no socks, and a clean, white t-shirt. He has rolled the sleeves several times, the left one neatly holding his sunglasses.
He carries nothing. No Wired, no Blackberry, no Stephen King, no headset playing heavy metal. Nothing to occupy his mind during the four-hour flight. His lack of mental diversion fascinates me. For a while, as I read, I sneak glances at his countenance, expecting boredom or intelligence or something. Nothing is there.
Eventually I lose interest. As I take out my notebook to jot some ideas, my seatmate perks up and commences to talk. You a writer?” Well, yes, although even surgeons and street-sweepers sometimes write and could conceivably carry notebooks. “My girlfriend’s a school teacher. She writes sometimes. What do you write?”
“Non-fiction, mostly for businesses.”
“I forget. Is that the true or the not-true? My girlfriend would know, but I always forget.”
The hairy, bare-legged man fascinates me again, not for his silence but for his contribution.
Keywords: Writing life
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