Tuesday, March 2, 2010

An Unexpected Start

Today did NOT read Les Misérables at work because I had no time to do so. (Unusual; and potentially disastrous if this is a "sign of things to come." But I doubt it.) The wasted hours that came before--they're the kicker--all the things I spent time reading at work instead, before now. Haunting me.

The countless hours I've spent reading the readers' comments appended, page after page, to click-bait New York Times articles about extreme parenting styles in Brooklyn, for instance. Babies in bars, mommies blogging from barstools, block after block shaken by crazes and swept by alarms--finger-severing strollers, placement test tutoring for pre-schoolers: I've read them all, every comment, savoring most the ones that asked Why these people have children? Why so entitled? Hours, literally, reading, following these threads into the lives of awful young parents in Brooklyn. I hunt a kind of satisfaction there.

Other hours at work I'm happy to read political take-downs. Or I'll read all day long about scandals in churches, embezzlements, money pits, schemes--false disability claims and preordained foreclosures, big, blatant misappropriations of aid, funds, grant money--I love to read about thieves and fakers and then I love to read the public outrage. Sometimes I've even gone over to the Post to read the comments there: a lower depth. I need structure.

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