On the way out of the house yesterday I left my Geist in the mail slot because I had too much to do and I thought that Geist would distract me from my high-impact to-do list. Big mistake. I spent the day keeping up with the list, and at the end of it found myself wandering the streets, just not ready to go home. Block after block I walked, looked and asked myself, “Looking for what?”
I just wanted to find some people. Not any people—it was dusk and downtown so of course there were people around. I was looking for people with something to say. Something to say about what mattered to them, a kind of pulse. Most of the people in my life have a pulse, sure. But is that it, I wondered. There must be more than the gang of loonies in my life. Just last week I had found myself defending them, those loonies, to someone who said they were pretentious. I couldn’t believe it. Pretentious? I said that they were pretending nothing, that they were doing what was important to them, and there is a difference. I defended them again this week during a conversation about publishing, when I was told that I needed to ask myself the important questions, the questions that change the world. I said, “What determines the difference between a more important question and a less important question?” I didn’t get an answer.
So there I was, wandering the street. Looking for people who maintain a practice of thinking about, talking about and doing what is important to them. Didn’t find any. Went home. The next morning on the way out, I took my Geist with me. Ended up laughing on the bus, and it occurred to me that here were the people. I don’t care what anyone says about the gang of loonies in my life, or publishing, or questions less important than the theoretical ones, but if what happens inside Geist and Geist readers isn’t important, I don’t know what is.
