I am going to spend the rest of the week in a seminar in Washington, DC. The program will include lots of meetings with lots of intelligent individuals, a lunch with people from the State Department, a dinner cruise on the Potomac, top quality lectures, good food, and generally the opportunity to converse with human beings who might well leave their mark on the world of tomorrow.

I don't really want to go.

Of course, afterwards it will feel like a uniquely enlightening experience. I hope. Perhaps it's the prospect of four consecutive days of polite and high-spirited small talk that I dread. Or the general feeling, possibly fallacious, that the other participants are better aware of their rightful position in the world. It may be ridiculous for me to think of myself as a figure of the periphery at any level, but I am often uncomfortable among men who look like they've been wearing ties since they were born, or women who ooze that same centripetal (western) cultural force in some less definable way. Whenever I find myself surrounded by those people, there is a slight sense of friction, a feeling that someone is subtly tampering with someone else's perceived universe. An invisible swordfight over cognitive maps of society.

I'm not going to wear a tie.

Ei se sauna vieläkään satuttais. Jos ottais vaikka nokoset korvikkeeksi. 18:45