Cecelia

In the tradition of fully disclosing the lowness of my brow, can I just say that I can't f*ing stand the way Salmon Rushdie writes? I've just never been able to appreciated it. The New Yorker a couple of weeks ago featured a piece of his fiction, and even though it gets better, I almost gave up after the first paragraph, because it was so painfully overwritten. Which is too bad, because it's quite good.

***
In an e-mail to Martha this morning, I was remarking that RM is exceptionally obtuse. My attempts to discourage any notion of friendship have grown increasingly less subtle. Take this conversation yesterday:

RM: Thanks for spending some time with me today.
A.: Did I spend time with you?
RM: Yeah, out in the yard.
A.: I was spending time with my crossword, and you were also there.
RM: Still.
A.: Shrug.

This got me thinking about how one gets through to the obtuse if one really wants to-- and I'm not sure I do. I mean, it's not worth it, because his absences and my workarounds--mostly, keeping and using my laptop in my office rather than downstairs, which I'd always meant to do anyway, are working. But obtuse people fascinate and amuse me (hence this blog), and thinking about how to get through to them reminded me of the now-unavailable Charts episode from "How I Met Your Mother."

So, when people aren't getting it, visual aids can be of help. Perhaps I could put together some charts. Any ideas? Something more advanced than a ven diagram where one circle is "People I want to talk to in my free time" and the other is "RM," and there's no overlap between the two. Help me out here.