In the Era of Twitter

 

In the era of twitter people “twit” and that’s as it should be. You can’t stop it; can’t legislate that everyone read Thucydides, refresh themselves on Pericles. People twit.

Victor Mature sends a twit to Lana Turner:

 

“I’m soaking my toupee in Woolite, give me a call.”

 

Let’s tend to the flowers of philosophy in our own quiet and urgent ways.

 

Here is my twit for the day:

 

“Evensong”

 

I am always in the “old city” regardless of where I go.

 

My father gave me an abacus when I was a little boy: he thought it would be a good toy for a blind child.

 

Now I walk through unfamiliar cities and move tiny beads with the fingers of imagination.

 

I was on Kaiser Wilhelm Strasse in Berlin and pushing ten to twenty and taking my time when an organ grinder’s monkey tugged at my pants.

 

When I was a kid I had a toy monkey named “Nickels”.

 

Berlin is a city of numbers recalled from countless childhoods.

 

 

 

S.K.