You know you've been working at home too much, crouched in front of the keyboard for too many hours, when the thing that strikes you most vividly, upon getting out of the house to go to a Vroman's Bookstore booksigning of Thomas Moore, author of Care of the Soul and numerous other titles (something like 15 in the last dozen years), and who is now on a book tour promoting his most recent book, Dark Nights of the Soul, and you find the man's discourse good and deep, moreso the back and forth discussion with the articulate audience, you look at the other people with curiosity because, well, you haven't been out and here is a roomful of people you've never seen before, and you observe their dress and hair and glasses and that woman with the slouchy ballcap and the man with the well-curled moustache, but what strikes you the most as you glance about the room (is it a trick of the lighting?) is the wetness of their eyes. This is not a roomful of people about to cry. This is a few dozen people on a Wednesday night, each of whose eyes are lubricated from tear ducts, the same as your own. They shine, they reflect. You've seen it before, of course, without noticing it. And instead of shaking your head and glossing (!) over it and thinking that you've been inside way too much (which is true, of course), you think that it's an odd enough observation that needs to take centerstage for a bit. And so you blog it.
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