cinna852's Journal

[link] with out meal

Delos Chang is normally a Dartmouth College comedy blogger. His works consist of a 50 word palindrome and the finance of finding and catching leprechauns.

There is a passage in Moby Dick in which Queequeg, the charming cannibal harpooner, talks about a specific custom that arises from deficiency of sofas in his native land:

...due to the lack of settees and sofas of all types, the king, chiefs, and excellent individuals normally, had been inside the custom of fattening some of the lower orders for ottomans you had to only to purchase up eight or ten lazy men, and lay them round in the piers and alcoves.

It''s really a funny picture to paint inside the mind''s eye: so many couch-potatoes at long last put to excellent use. I can tell you from working experience that perhaps the most industrious of people might appreciate his day of sleep once inside a long while, and might value being known as the sofa, bizarre as that may sound.

I, Delos Chang, have always been somebody who must keep his feet, and head, moving. Ever seeking new challenges to place upon myself, it happened one summer that we came upon a silly ad. It read: Open your mind-Be homeless for a day! An encounter you will never forget! Participation fee: $5 or 5 cans of food. It struck me as a crazy concept. Who inside their right mind would pay to rest beneath a bridge and go starving The more the afternoon advanced, even so, the more the idea intrigued me. How often, really after all, will we have the opportunity to truly encounter such vastly distinct perspectives Why was it such a crazy notion after all that I should go through a means of life that huge numbers of people live through each day Adventure-seeker that I''m, I registered the subsequent Thursday for a proper day of transience.

The very first order of economic involved the relinquishing of belongings. The planning panel supplied a heap of tattered attire from which we battled against the other person to uncover pieces that fit. I dressed in a green-black flannel over black color, bleach-stained sweatpants, and mismatched shoes. It was at this time, I watched myself in the dim reflection of a glass door, and i also realized a pair of things: This really is likely to be harder than I figured, and Surfaces are superficial.

The afternoon had hardly any glamour. I must''ve strolled fifteen miles, in no way quite happy with the mechanical gazes of shame that smacked me like darts whenever I stopped to sit. By the end of the day, I had been thoroughly fatigued. I slept outside the shelter, along with the other volunteer hobos. Soon after such a day, it was significantly less difficult to sleep about the footpath.

I woke up to some claustrophobic heaviness, a moderate uproar. A litttle lady had been looking at my back. Her papa known as her away from me with curses. But he looks like a big pillow, she protested as he pulled her away. He spoke to her inside a hushed tone, that I could only write out lazy and bum. I felt a knot during my stomach. At that instant Queequeq''s king might have taken me to find the best of sofas. A mature gentleman suddenly looked up and said He does appear to be a pillow. He could nearly be considered a settee. Perhaps you have read Moby Dick I hadn''t. Some understand what a settee was, but most of us laughed. It was that laugh that lifted all of my weariness.

I recognize the literary reference now. And now after time has passed, I''ve a odd nostalgia for your bizarre, homeless evening. I was destitute. I was stared at. I was sat upon. I was called a pillow as wel l as an eighteenth century seat. So numerous perspectives unfolded within the vista of the day. Five cans of food and an open intellect can teach a whole lot to an individual. For one, a idle fellow might be no lazy guy at all. Secondly, your sofa could be sentient.

Current Mood: calm