January 27-B, 2023

The older I get,
the more sensitive to,
aware of, 
impatient with,
I become regarding 
intrusions,
encroachments,
incursions into
my life 
and my preferred ways
of doing things.

For instance,
commercial advertisements.
And non-stop talkers.

Non-stop talkers
are at least accessible
and I can break into their monologue
with clarifying questions
that give them pause
and shift things into areas
they evidently have never considered
and brings our mutual humanity to life,
if only momentarily.

I don't do social without breaking the mold
and making inquiries about what matters most
and how they know,
and how anyone else would know
by the way they honor it in their life.

Time is precious to me
because there is not as much left
as there once was,
and everyone lives as though money 
is important
when it is what we do with money
that is important,
and everyone seems bent on
doing the same things with it
with nothing to indicate that 
any of it is important on any level,
except that it generates more money
to be spent on nothing much at all.

And, if I don't call attention to that,
who will?

Calling attention to discrepancies 
and dichotomies is one of my specialties,
and I use social occasions 
to explore them
the way some people use social occasions
to say the same things they say
at every social occasion.

And if that works to provide me 
with little in the way of a social calendar,
what's the harm in that?

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