The Cynic Express(ed) 2.14: Dialoging with the Text

     In a chord of epiphanic horns, not unlike the devil's chord of a Geo Storm, a Dodge Dakota, and any Kia blaring at once, I discovered that my action was not merely barking like an offended shih tzu at the inside of my windows. Nor was I lashing out in verbal response to the threats I perceive in the other drivers around me, which is generally my best rationalization. No, suddenly all of my English degree education burst like Athena from Zeus, and I realized that what I was doing was dialoging with the traffic.

     You see, modern English department denizens from the freshman year on urge impressionable rebellious minds to bend the backs over on cheap paperback editions of classics, whip out the ball point pen and the highlighter, and write little zingers of young adult wit into the margins to, ahem, "dialog with the text." This way, reading a book becomes an active experience, not a passive one like listening to Rick Astley tapes in one's adolescent bedroom. By scrawling one's immediate and later unfathomable thoughts into cheap paperbacks at expensive universities, one suddenly grants one's thoughts the same relative permanence as Proust or Alcott. Of course, one gets to express oneself to the important audience of one's own self, and self-expression builds something or other and increases ball point pen sales.

     I felt immediately gratified that I was doing something important as I railed to the marble eared audience of Shania Twain and her latest innocuous built-for-weddings pop song. I was dialoging with traffic. Expressing myself within the warm womb of my vehicle. Reacting to what happened around me and not merely absorbing it like a salt winter sponge. And since I was only part of the way home, I thought about how much further this concept carried into my life.

     At movies, I am the guy fervently whispering to his fiancee or his friends. With my pointed whisper, I make some aside that shows that I am hipper than the director and all of the actors except Will Smith. And although you may think I am annoying, as many of you (especially my friends who like to enjoy a movie in peace) think, I am no ordinary member of the audience-I am a reflective aficionado with the gift of synthetic thought and conceptual awareness of how exactly this individual work fits into the traditional talent and my sense of humor. I am dialoging with the text.

     At ball games, I am the man in the top row who scrawls verbally in the margins between the pitches, offering my encouragement for the players and my criticism of the personal habits of the structure of the work, namely the umpires. Dialoging with the text again, at least until four or five fans of the home team express dissenting criticism with alcohol-laden breath.

     Of course, dialoging with the text gratifies me and stratifies me above those who would watch their entertainment in silence, or normal conversational tones, and above the other drivers who would enjoy hours on the interstate southbound, reveling in the quiet desperation of drive-time radio glee. And dialoging with the text does not require as much work as actually honing and sharing coherent thoughts with others. I need only uncap the red marker of the heat-oppressed Brian, double underline the faults of others, and print, "Yeah, right!" on page two thirty two.