overheard walking into work this
July 25th, 2000
overheard
walking into work this morning: “this is a strange world we’re born into.” i resisted the urge to turn around to see who was making proclamations at 7:06am (according to the bank clock) on the other side of the circle — i preferred to leave the voice disembodied, letting it take on a more prophetic quality, more mysterious, more intriguing. perhaps it was one of the stone figures clad only in the modesty of history, bearing the weight of the sea in the middle of the dupont fountain who whispered this admonition to me…
you see, this is how fiction is born — while i did in fact resist the urge to see who uttered such odd morning words, they were actually overheard north of the circle as i was crossing r. the dupont circle fountain is a little more dramatic setting — easy enough to move the occurrence south a couple hundred feet or so, easy enough to make the speaker mysterious instead of the awkward teenager he sounded like. easy enough to make reference to the clock i couldn’t actually see until i was south of the circle…
i love this. i love the creative process. i love seeing how my mind picks and chooses from the environment, how it filters the senses, how it repackages them all in little groups of words — i’m glad i don’t depend on this for a living; i’m afraid it would lose its sense of wonder.