Ruminations

My feelings for them can be compared to the feelings you experience when you see a hardened, whored-out woman walking towards you on the street. I don’t mean faux-trashy BU undergrads with their black stockings torn by French-manicured nails, I mean the woman whose hair could be dyed or dirty, anybody’s guess. She’s tattooed, pierced in nineteen places, her eye makeup smeared, stumbling down the street. Half of you recoils in disgust and wants to sterilize the ground she's walking on, and the other half wants to reach out to her, give her a damp towel, and hug her, asking, "How did absolutely everything go wrong for you?"

But at the end of the experience, you realize that this is a fleeting moment of horrified pity, five seconds in your life, the life of a person that can afford five second breaks to think about things like that. On second six, your mind returns to whether Kenmore Square will be mobbed, if the gas gauge is accurate, what you’re going to teach tomorrow, what leftovers wait in the fridge. You can't stop for more than five seconds. You can’t let either half win, because you have to live your life and not get sucked in.