An Idle Afternoon.
I could title all of these the same, couldn’t I?
No Wall Street Journal today. It was delivered to my doorstep but I neglected to bring it with me today. Everything that happens is an opportunity to make a day more interesting, either for me or for someone else. Mischief is its own reward.
I do not know if I have mentioned this before but I am reading a book called Walt Whitman’s New Orleans. It is a collection of his writings while he worked as a newspaperman in New Orleans sometime in the 1840s. The introduction describes the book’s contents as “flaneur prose.” As one might predict, I am devouring the contents.
The last thing I need to do is read more Walt Whitman. I misspent my youth filling reams of notebooks with lists of impressionistic observations. Song of myself, indeed. I think I am old enough to have my own style now. My voice, like the Good Gray Poet’s, may be imitable but is wholly my own——for better or for worse. I trust I am inoculated against the master’s influence.
This would be the perfect place to put the paywall, considering the bombshell I am about to drop next: