Someone else's happiness

I snared these women in a moment of happiness. It was not mine, but I took it as a souvenir. You don't see other people really showing much emotion in the skyways and on the promenades, not at lunch time, not here. So when you do, memorize it. But don't use it as a measure of other demeanors you will see, or you will reach the false conclusion that skyway people are not, on the whole, a happy lot. Their happiness is disguised as purpose. They are threads in a tapestry that depicts happiness, but you must step back and squint to see the larger picture made up of thousands of little pixel-people moving through the skyways.

The ethics of public hospitality

I was looking for a place to drink my latte outside of the Caribou in USBank, and this table was available. It came with the relics of an earlier lunch. I thought about many things as I sat, but I mainly thought about the people who would walk off and leave their dirty trays for someone else to bus for them. Some passers-by would stare at me and my two big dirty trays, as though I was a Falstaff and here was the evidence of my wanton excess and indifference. At one point I considered busing the trays myself, just to fix the nick in the veneer of social order. Naw, maybe another day. Today, I feel superior to the jerks who made me look like I was the jerk, finally, leaving my dirty trays when I finally got up and left.

Oh, the ethics of public hospitality.

UrbanMan

He blends into the urban setting, dressed casual upstyle, disguised in digital artifacts, ready to evangelize an analog world.