Ordinary Human Language

by Brian Crane

Thoughts by People I Read

A few links for later…

This post from Jason Adams at My New Plaid Pants hits me hard. We’ve never met but I stumbled over his blog in the first year or so after he started it and I’ve read it ever since. Over that time I’ve realized that various arcs in our lives echo, and my enjoyment of his blog has grown into a sympathy for the person writing it. I care about Jason even though he is, I suppose, objectively, a stranger. I also empathize when he links part of his day-after horrors to not knowing “what to do with strangers looking at me and seeing the problem.”

In a very different way, when I read this post by James Fallows, I hear the voice in my head speaking the words in the oddly unemotional tone I’ve felt constraining my dismay at Tuesday’s result. It’s as if the analytic corners of my mind have stepped in front of the emotional possibilities, saying, “Hold on. Wait a minute. I completely misunderstood … recalculating…recalculating.”

Posted November 7, 2024