{"id":32787,"date":"2022-10-12T18:28:21","date_gmt":"2022-10-12T18:28:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/?p=32787"},"modified":"2022-10-12T14:59:31","modified_gmt":"2022-10-12T18:59:31","slug":"what-am-i-doing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/2022\/10\/12\/what-am-i-doing.html","title":{"rendered":"What am I doing?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"postie-post\">\n<p>I don&#8217;t think or see how a day could go by without an increment of accumulation in my mind. The ever increasingness of everything. I see a license plate. Its first letter is K. K is, with the exception of vanity, commercial and other specialty plates, the highest first letter of a New York state license plate. We have not reached L but boy, when we do there will be balloons and fireworks and speeches on the triumphant entry of the letter L into our drive-time observations. The letter&#8217;s iLLustrious history will be discussed, with a panel discussion of linguists and language lovers who shall delve into the special place the letter L now holds in our hearts for being the highest first letter of a standard New York State license plate.<\/p>\n<p>A similar feeling of accumulation occurs at work. I have to connect with people throughout the day who identify themselves by their 6-digit employee ID. Typically these are in the range of something like 367587 but once in a while I get someone whose # is something like 256789. The gap is significant (to me) because it indicates this individual has been doing this job for a very long time. It&#8217;s a very high turnover job and I feel the numbers increase every time I connect. When we cross the 4##### threshold there will be consequences we cannot yet fathom.<\/p>\n<p>Accumulation is everywhere. A reasonable metaphor for its release is human waste, either bowel, urinary, nasal, or vomitous. And ear.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Sitting at a coffee shop where, months ago, I left a couple of my Payphone Radio cards on the public business card shelf rack thingy. Mostly it&#8217;s real estate brokers and such but mine stands out, at least I think it does. I actually left 5 or 6 cards, of which today only two remained.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Someone wearing the second Grateful Dead t-shirt I&#8217;ve seen today just walked past. I saw one earlier and question how the dead could be grateful. I guess that&#8217;s what you call a joke, right? The dead, though, that&#8217;s something else that will never stop accumulating. I once imagined a mausoleum but modularly, so it could just go higher and higher until it reached the firmament. It would like spread horizontally first, spreading wide enough that a mountain of the dead slowly obscures the horizon, and darkens a nation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I don&#8217;t think or see how a day could go by without an increment of accumulation in my mind. The ever increasingness of everything. I see a license plate. Its first letter is K. K is, with the exception of vanity, commercial and other specialty plates, the highest first letter of a New York state [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","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":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-text","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-8wP","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32787","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=32787"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32787\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32788,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32787\/revisions\/32788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}