Panels! Panels!

Once more, I will attempt to resuscitate this blog. I have developed a bit of a pattern, I must say - one post about every two and a half months. But this time it's different, I swear. Baby, I'm a changed man. You can now expect posts to appear weekly - no, daily! Daily? No, hourly! Why not! Hourly posts from yours truly, about whatever whim strikes my fancy. So. Here's the whim:

Humm... No whim coming... Better improvise-

I know. Random subjects.

I keep a notebook. One of those little Moleskine dealies with the black cover and the built-in rubber band. (Why, you ask, do I keep a notebook? When I seldom if ever write or do anything as a result of those notes? A good question. Maybe one day, I'll write about that. In fact, I'll make a note to do so in my Moleskine right now.) I'll flip to a random page, and write about the note.

Here's the random note:

"I may be imagining this, but I always perceive a veiled hostility in the service in poor countries. Or maybe I'm just projecting my own guilt."

I have no recollection of the specific events that prompted this note.

But I do have a general recollection of... well, not of any specific events at all, but of an interaction which is likely a composite of many actual events I have experienced while traveling.

I am sitting in a restaurant. Its walls are dirty, bare concrete, and one features a poster of a Hindu god, or the King of Thailand, or perhaps a ripped shirtless Aztec cradling a voluptuous woman in his arms. There is a young waiter, and his demeanor (I talk about his demeanor because I can't remember the details. A good writer would describe his face or the position of his shoulders, but I describe his demeanor because I remember my impression of him, but not him actually.) - his demeanor was a strange admixture of obsequious and diffident...

Or it's a hotel. And there is a concierge. Or a bellhop. He wears a dingy uniform, or maybe just his own shirt - one of the two he owns. I know he resents me for parading my wealth in front of him - a backpack overflowing with shirts, ten, twenty, maybe fifty shirts. A shirt for every day of my life, to be used and discarded that evening. This is what he is thinking. I can sense it.