It’s 7:20 am in Munich with heavyish rain outside, and I’m having breakfast in the bar/restaurant of the moderately priced Acanthus hotel (93 euros per night). And writing stuff at the same time, of course. And wrestling with a feeling of disapproval about a group of seven Americans who are sitting two or three tables away and yappity-yap-yapping. I’m not very proud of being a grouch and a killjoy, but it just comes out of me sometimes. I’m thinking of funny stuff all the time inside.
On one level I can roll with groups of people chit-chatting over breakfast (it’s a vacation, enjoy it), but whatever happened to wake-up meditation and the joys of a quiet coffee and croissant as you silently mull over the previous day and contemplate the one to come? When I say “yappity-yap-yap” I mean that these people aren’t talking to each other in a probing, thoughtful way — they’re anecdoting and entertaining each other to death, grinning as if their lives depend on it, “laughing” at each other’s bon mots. I’m guessing they’re here as a tour group, probably arrived on a bus.
It would be one thing if these guys were talking about Mohamed Morsi, but discussing anything substantive is a violation of the rules. They’re about “It’s breakfast! Nice clean hotel! Fresh croissants! Yappity-yap-yap! Just took a shower!” And especially, “It feels so good to be part of a large group and therefore protected to some extent from the exotic and the unknown…why, except for the German-language menus and that exciting but strange city outside we could be at a Marina del Rey Hyatt!”
And here I am on the other side of the room…the internally grouchy but externally polite and more or less fair-minded Macbook Pro guy in the T-shirt and jeans with tousled hair…Rodin’s Thinker, the Rilke-ish meditator, God’s Lonely Man…slowly shaking my head and remembering a line from Charles Bukowski: “Beware of those who seek constant crowds — they are nothing alone.”
8:04 am update: They all just left and are now walking past my window or vantage point, each one carrying an umbrella and walking almost in pairs. Not one umbrella is brightly or vividly or weirdly colored. They’re all black or gray or olive green.
Yeah, yeah, I know…
IRA PARKS SAYS…
JEFFREY WELLS SAYS…
“In this corner — Jeffrey Wells, Auguste Rodin, Rainer Maria Wilke, Steve Jobs and Charles Bukowski. In the other corner — bus tourists. No contest!”
