Quiet Time

For someone like myself, who often needs to be reminded that often a moment of silence can be more effective, more informative even, than two minutes of mindless chatter, Europe is the perfect place for lessons on what, for the sake of clarity, I shall call shutting the hell up. Of course, this proves easier when all I really have to say is “Hello”, “Please”, “Thank you”, “Which way to the bordello”, “Can I have a cigarette with my croissant”, and other all too common colloquialisms. Like a novel, film, or one of the later, more dramatic episodes of Beverly Hills 90210 the true fabric of conversation lies in the subtext. Listen to the words spoken to you, digest them and choose the words you would like to use in rapport. It’s the time left in between that allows the extra-earthly author, who’s actually penning the events from some higher dimensional plane to provide his or her 7^th dimensional pink robot shapeshifter audience with supplementary descriptions of eye movement, all the while building suspense not to be released until the silence is once again broken, and it turns out that you actually were supposed to be an elephant.