Out for a Walk

This may be an essay. My categories limp a little.

I don’t want these tales. I don’t want them. They say nothing to me. And I say nothing to them. I don’t listen to them and I don’t talk to them. So let us show mutual tolerance and leave each other in peace.

I’m going for a walk, and they’re staying here. When I get back I’d like them gone. If possible… Yes. Let them clear off.

Why don’t I tell them so directly? They don’t listen. They’re so busy telling themselves that they have no time to hear anything else.

There, I’m already strolling across some meadow, and with relish I feel their words fading away behind my heels… Step, step, step, thud, thud, thud… Now they can’t be heard at all. Now they’ll try to find me, because they prefer to have listeners. Arrogant egoists. They couldn’t care less that they bore me, that I don’t need them, that they’re a nuisance. All they care about is having someone to listen to them. And they insist it’s ill-mannered not to listen to them. I couldn’t give a damn, I’ll say. They’ve wasted so much of my time while I listened that I’m downright sick of myself. But no more. Thank you, I’ll say to that culture and to such manners… Self-infatuated, flat and shallow tales. Blah-blah, yadda-yadda… Goodbye, and if I hear them again from round some corner, singing along like a broken barrel organ, I’ll crop them short, smear their make-up and the rest of their paints, their sentences and exclamations, which strain to hide that they tell of nothing, that they have no story…, only words.