Hope is a Weed

Hope is a kind of mischief, a sort of all-purpose promiscuity. I have a couple of friends who are optimists - that rarest of breeds - and they work tirelessly to prop up this holey umbrella and ignore the drops, and this tireless work is intermittently rewarded. And so they remain slightly wet and optimistic. It is the most beautiful of things.

I, on the other hand, am a realist, committed to the scientific dissection of things both general and specific. I love science, economics [the bitter science?], and the vivisecting of art and commerce. Most personal talk bores me because most behaviors are so transparent and endlessly repeated.

A woman at work was talking about her granddaughter. The fat daughter was criticizing her six-year old daughter for being fat, etc. etc. It just got worse and worse. I was thinking that some people insist on visiting their unhappiness on the people around them that they love and despise, that some people are incapable of love, that the noises that buzz and hum that create such anxiety will never be drowned out, that some people, to mis-paraphrase Bruce Springsteen, are born to ruin.

It's true. The one thing that I think informs most human behavior is perversity. I want love, so I am going to punch you hard.