Hugh Trenchard

IF a self-proclaimed studious man of exacting diligence finds himself frequenting the local Starbucks on the somewhat delusional premise that he intends to study the rigours of supply and demand of currency, exchange markets, current account deficits and surpluses, J-curves and the nuances of the Marshall-Lerner condition; and if this man deludes himself as the background strains of Bing Crosby are, for once, insufficiently loud to drown the nasal resonances of another young man’s nearby Quebecois Francais that seems in strange way and barely tolerable fashion to vibrate arrythmically and dissonantly his ears tympanic tissues, then certainly this man would be true to foundations of integrity to question why he is in this particular location, that is, the local Starbucks, when his time is undoubtedly better spent in the quieter confines of home. Also would he wisely exalt the virtues of honest discourse to question why the temptation is now irresistable to dribble out blog blather, when the time taken to do so means correspondingly equal durations of time not taken to engage in his studies of exacting diligence.

Does this man soothe his present lack of patience to work through the rigours of the task at hand? Is he fatigued from his dose of treadmill intervals in which he proclaimed with egregious self-satisfaction that “his legs were on fire”? Does he feel the sluggish relaxation of cognitive clarity that results from three consecutive days of some quantity of liquor consumed, albeit not excessively, but to the concommitant detriment of sleep?

And why is this man suddenly aware of the sloping table at which he sits, the loose top of the adjacent table on which his elbow rests, and why so suddenly noticeable is the slight discomfort of his lower back that results from back lifts at the gym? All such inconsequential events in past similar contexts would go unnoticed, and so why the uncharacteristic sensitivity? Indeed, if one were to distill present blog profusions to their one essential point, one might be forgiven for observing that our man seems, er…shall we say…pissed off.

And if our man could self-proclaim some capacity to engage insight into the present state of his consciousness, what would he find? Could he reach into the well of foul and soupy water and the sharp pebbles of his thoughts, and stir his hand long enough to bring the water to equilibrium and begin, grain by grain, to smooth the rough edges of every stone there?

He concedes that he cannot until the water is flushed and the stones smoothed by the pure clear spring of another, who by her absence, even for a day or two, cuts and grinds every stone together in a dull grating roar that fills up and displaces every cell in his body and leaves him unmoving like a statue of one billion fossilized roughcut stones.

In his moment of paralysis he is glancing up; he has ceased to type, and his distractions at once hone to a point and disappear. He strains, and there is international finance. It grabs and rattles him. He has written. Yes, he has written of his fleeting insight, false or true, his delusions, of water and pebbles and statues and rattles. He can move again.

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