{"id":18538,"date":"2006-09-28T20:22:32","date_gmt":"2006-09-29T00:22:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/?p=7"},"modified":"2006-09-28T20:22:32","modified_gmt":"2006-09-29T00:22:32","slug":"obliviation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/2006\/09\/28\/obliviation.html","title":{"rendered":"Obliviation"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\tObliviation<\/em>. I define it as the act or process (obliviating<\/em>) of becoming oblivious to the world around you. It can be an active process, but is mostly passive. I think it is not relevant how you reach that state. Many circumstances and behaviours can lead to the state of obliviation.<\/p>\n

It is not in my dictionaries, but the word has been similarly coined by others.<\/p>\n

I came face to face with obliviation last week.<\/p>\n

Walking in midtown, I spotted a penny on the sidewalk. I knelt down and picked it up. I stood up and found a woman looking me square in the face, smiling and wide-eyed, her eyeballs quivering like JACKPOT!<\/b><\/p>\n

Looking right at me she said “LUCKY YOU! CONGRATULATIONS! THAT SHOULD BE ALL YOU NEED!<\/strong><\/em>”<\/p>\n

I looked at the penny, then back at her. I started to say “Whaaaa?”<\/p>\n

Then I recognized that look in her eyes: Vacant, nearly psychotic. She did not even know I stood two feet in front of her. Her eyes moved away from mine and I saw that she was talking into a cell phone headset.<\/p>\n

I have been blankly yelled at like this by others whose use of their cell phone headset effectively eliminates the reality around them. In certain circumstances I consider it borderline psychotic behavior.<\/p>\n

That was the first time someone like that address me in a seemingly meaningful way, commenting on the one cent I had found by congratulating me and thereby initiating a fascinating conversation.<\/p>\n

For a few seconds I thought there was some attempt at communication. I was genuinely intrigued. Was it brazen sarcasm she blasted at me, or something more profound? I actually wanted to explore her point of view, to see if she had some world view where happiness and prosperity were attainable through nothing more than a penny found on a sidewalk.<\/p>\n

Did she want the penny? Did she place it there as bait of some sort? Was this a set-up for a radio or television show?<\/p>\n

No. There was no communication here. None at all. Just a vacant, bug-eyed stare directed at someone far away.<\/p>\n

I remembered the first person of this ilk that I encountered in New York. It would have been 1990 or 1991, at a McDonald’s on the Upper West Side. Crowded and noisy, a woman sitting next to me sat talking in full voice. I caught something about “Goddam problems? I get up at 4am every day, I’m a fuckin’ whore, lemme tell you about my problems…”<\/p>\n

For a moment she looked me square in the face and delivered her seemingly coherent diatribe. Thinking she was addressing me I said “What?” She did not stop talking. She gesticulated around her words, crushing a coffee cup to punctuate her anger, and as her eyes drifted past me and back at the table I realized she was babbling. The talk about getting up at 4am turned into “Goddam cocksuckers at the post office walk like pigs” and then something about Woody Allen.<\/p>\n

Now that I think of it the “walk like pigs” line puzzles me. I am no connoisseur of racist spew, but I don’t think I’ve heard anyone accuse their enemy of walking<\/em> like a pig. I remember her saying it, though, and how my mind rambled with strange images of postal workers waddling about like sow.<\/p>\n

Somehow I never questioned that phrase until now.<\/p>\n

She was obliviating. At first I felt ill at ease, but she simply did not know I was there. The discomfort partly disappeared because of that. Our eyes met for a full 2 or 3 seconds, though. When I said “What?” I swear I detected a glimmer of recognition. Recognition of the circumstance, and even an ounce of pity for me and the confusion in my eyes. I imagined the incoherence existed on one level and a guiding sanity (which gave her her freedom) sat on some other level, supervising.<\/p>\n

I may have fully invented this.<\/p>\n

I wanted to sit and listen.<\/p>\n

I obliviate all the time. Unlike the woman at the McDonald’s I am not disturbed, at least not demonstratively so. And unlike the woman last week in midtown my path to obliviation does not require a cell phone or any technological intervention. I simply let my brain clatter with the noise of anxiety, and I suspect that bewilderment follows me more often than I know.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\tI looked at the penny, then I looked back at her and started to say “Whaaaa?”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-181-2","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paumAn-4P0","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18538\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}