The full hand of friendship

I love when Bob comes into my office. He�s the guy who maintains the alarm system, and he comes by about once a month to borrow the key for the equipment room.

People are always coming by to borrow keys from me, a transaction that can take anywhere from ten to thirty seconds, but Bob�s visits routinely last fifteen minutes, depending on his level of outrage. Today, he went on a tear about the corrupt history of robber barons, which I enjoyed not only because it�s fun to hate rich people, but because Bob�s narrative style is so engaging. He speaks in a low voice because he�s in an office, but I imagine he would have made a great fire and brimstone preacher, were he not so filled with rage at the hypocrisy of the Church. Bob likes to quote Nietzsche, a philosopher I normally associate with art students and pompous musical acts like the Doors, but Bob manages to make Nietzsche sound almost whimsical, as if he were quoting from a Monty Python script.

After a whirlwind analysis of Andrew Carnegie�s steel empire, Bob departed, promising to bring in a book which shows a painting of elegant swells waltzing atop a dance floor supported on the shoulders of working class men. He left me with this quote, which he attributed to Sitting Bull: �When shaking hands with a white man, give him only three fingers, for he does not deserve the full hand of friendship.� Bob gestures a lot when he talks, holding up an index finger to mark important points, and he acted out the Full Hand of Friendship for my benefit.

I enjoy Bob's visits because while he despairs at the state of things, he also revels in the absurd. He thinks that the world is a wasteland, but he really enjoys talking about it. Enjoyment in the middle of despair seems to be a good balance to strike. As Nietzsche himself said, �we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once.�



Star of the day. . .Cole Porter
posted @ 3:21 p.m. on September 16, 2004 before | after

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She lay awake all night,

zzzzzzzzzzz......