Noise and What We Make of It

When we are gathered in the company of well-meaning friends, well, let us say, kindred spirits, we expect some company, or what passes for one.

This is one gathering you have put your heart into, invested your precious afternoon, and made it sure that you get the drift why you gathered at all.

You thought it is for a cause grander.

Or greater.

Which in OPI parlance is called abstraction--or the abstract level of competence that demands some ability to discourse and to discern.

But even among academics, this can be an assumption.

And more if these are academics prone to listening only to their own voice.

Which means that they can only listen to their own warped sing-song of a cicada's in the afternoon after the rain, when the cold gets the better of them.

When it was the turn of one man to read from the voyage of some courageous and daring man, Das, no one was listening.

We heard the din of staccato of pride and prejudice of egos so swollen they did not care what this man was talking about.

You sat in front, ashamed of yourself why there is an audience such as this one.

Never mind that these are supposed to academics.

Never mind that some of the shakers and movers of the university are here elbowing with the rest of the mortal men and women of academia, them who wait for the crumbs after all the absurd expenses have been paid.

Hon, HI/
Oct 29, 2013