Friday, 11 January 2002 | Semi-strangers

Strangers are good. Friends are good. It's the people in between. I only have a problem with them because of the small-talk that usually comes with them—I'm no good at it, and sometimes it seems so ceremoniously false and forced that it makes me want to laugh, rather than keep up the charade that we really are interested in hearing that the other person is most definitely "fine." Sometimes I want to sit on the steps outside of my office building and do nothing more than think and absorb the weather, maybe watch. But it's inevitable that one of the in-betweens passes by, and rather than being allowed to hang over everything like a cloud, I'm asked to comment, to respond to a comment, to smile and explain what I'm doing outside, and it's really true what they say about people talking about the weather. But then it would be rude for neither of us to acknowledge the other, even if the only exchange is an unanswered 'sup.

For the record: I'm not anti-social and I usually like meeting interesting people, and, sometimes, exchanging awe over the news or the weather with an unfamiliar peer is simply a nice thing to do. But only sometimes.