Talking To Strangers

I went into DC today, and it was pretty fun. I'd intended to go to St. Matthew's for Mass, but while I was sitting there I got the impulse to leave, so I did. I spent awhile wandering around looking for an Indian restaurant, because I was craving Indian food...I finally got to a street that had one, and stopped a few restaurants down from it to check out this Italian place that looked really good. While I was standing there deliberating, some random guy came up behind me and mentioned that the Indian place a few doors down was really good. After I got over the nearly-shitting-myself impulse response, I headed over for the Indian lunch buffet. I ended up sitting with the guy who'd spoken to me on the street, and we had a pretty pleasant conversation. It turns out that he's a fairly well established criminal defense attorney for the DC/Maryland area, and he spent awhile telling me about some of his cases and the general stresses that go along with the job. It seemed like he just needed someone to listen for awhile, so that's what I did.

Funny how things work out like that sometimes. If I hadn't left the Cathedral before Mass, and if I hadn't been craving Indian food, then the guy would have wolfed down a meal while reading his copy of the New York Post (heh) and then headed back to his office. I felt for him and his family - he was telling me how much he's struggled recently with making time for the family and keeping up with his work. I told him a bit about how my parents had managed to work out the balancing act really well, and what a difference it made for me and my brother. It seemed like my saying that had some sort of impact on him; maybe it did, and maybe not...

I thought up a telling of that story which was much more poetic and dramatic, but kind of lost the flavor over the past few hours.

I've gotten a lot more neutral recently. It's been WAY good for my mental health, but it's bad for creativity - there's something to be said for fostering enough piss and vengeance to pour out some amusingly sarcastic and concise prose. It seems like most great creative minds were deeply mentally disturbed in some way or another, and there's almost certainly a quantifiable tradeoff here.