Otto

Otto Malik came to me the other day, as I was sitting at my desk by the window pretending to be working but actually looking out at the windows across the street, or the trees across the field, depending on whether I was at the apartment in the city or the home in the countryside, and said, you know it doesn't really matter where you are, what matters is that I'm here telling you, telling you that it looks as if it's about to rain. Annoyed that he was interrupting me as I was working just to tell me it was about to rain, and not feeling that I had enough patience just then to find out why that would be important, to either him or me, I didn't even look up. I paid him no attention. I paid him too much attention, but I didn't show him that I was paying any attention at all. Of course he knew, though, that I had heard, and even listened, and probably that I was in wonder. Oh to do all that with the most trivialist of statements. But I persisted, and so did he. Finally, I said, are you going anywhere, and he left. That's not what I had meant, but maybe it's not what he had meant either.