Sometimes I'm stupid. Often, in fact.  About a lot of things, but especially about what's good for me.  Maybe topping the long list of examples of self-ignorance is how I approach other people. Like if I feel out of sorts, let's say, my tendency is to avoid people like a plague. And to be fair, people, in general can be pretty horrible. The collective mind and the collective taste are on the whole a disaster. (The many examples supporting this hypothesis don't need to be listed here.) What I always forget though, when I think I want to be a rock, an island, etc. is that people in specific have a lot to offer. Chatting casually with someone in a bar, say, you both look for points in common to grab onto as a way to drift roughly along the same current. I think women tend to do this in a more natural way. Anyway, I was stumbling along like this when the woman behind the bar brought up our shared ethnicity and I mentioned the old Greek cookbook my Dad used to use in the kitchen. It was an ancient tome he had brought along the boat with him to Canada and it was worn and dog-eared and bookmarked like a preacher's favourite bible. In this photo she was showing me an image on her phone and pointing to the name of the chef who she told me popularized Greek cooking in the New World. It formed an intersection of ideas where we could meet for a few minutes before going our separate ways. A few moments like that with different strangers and it all adds up  to something like a good time.