5 1/2th entry for 30th Oct.

Then come the Sages. It's not yet discovered why are they giving a questioning call upon water shortage, since they are most aware of every happening in their vicinity. You can give them any explanation, they'll make you sure what you said is simply impossible. The issue you refer to can not exist, and even if it could (but again, it can't) that would have nothing to do with their problem. They're fond of offering to dispatch a TV channel to expose the Stone Age service we provide, or to send letters to the company HQ. I usually express my sincere sympathy for doing such funny things, but oddly, it ends up in some resigned frustration.

And at last, this aristocracy has its decadent part, too, but local gentry are not as entertaining as one would suppose them to be. They're not spending their fortunes on goose liver, playing cards, stockpiling walking sticks, but on phone abuse. They are after this passion of theirs only when a malfunction occurs, just to avoid getting suspicious. Then, they almost convince you about their desperate dissatisfaction about Water, The Universe, and Everything, they blame you so authentically that you would love to believe them, but you certainly won’t.
The performance gets quite drowsy after a little while, so you should remain jolly anyway, as if you have never noticed they are trying to be angry. Then, realizing they failed to be the funnier guy, they get embarrassed and quit talking very quickly.
They forget the first lesson of phone abusers: never with a dispatcher or a receptionist!

5th entry for 16th Oct.

Today it's not going to be about The Scarlet Letter, since all I've read of it lately were 2-3 pages. It was interesting however, Mr. Hawthorne was discoursing about an inspector of absolutely perfect mood and health even after sixty years and horrific family life, getting to the conclusion that our man in question is simply an animal, having really nice instincts but no real mind or soul. (I'm afraid the introduction of the novel is still far from its end.)

But again, I can't append much to that. I'll rather talk about people, who don't certainly possess more than one of the three virtues mentioned above.

Those who are exposed to direct communication with all kinds of common people at work, will have mostly changed their judgements about folks. At the county's waterworks, one of my barren duties is handling or forwarding all incoming calls when I'm not engaged in other matters.

So who are the crème de la crème in Borsod county?
I'm glad to tell, in our splendid countryside, about third of people fall into this refined party.

Most common are the Hermits. These representatives of local aristocracy seem so independent that they simply don't need any speaking skills. There is not a simple issue they can express in sentences. It's still not clear it's a dialect preferring to restart sentences after every 1-3 words, or it's a revolutionary one fully rejecting any kind of grammar structures.
However, they're most kind providing me keywords like "billing", "last week...bill", "cheque.... problem", so we get on very well, as long I'm to redirect the call.

The other two are way too exclusive, so I’d better explain them next week, not mixing them here.

4th entry for 9th Oct.

There is a classic attribute of these ‘old books’, most particularly the ones written in the romantic era. Their authors don’t seem to care about the passing of time, and they seem to expect the same from the reader.

They don’t separate relevant and irrelevant, they don’t even seem to be aware of those concepts. Those books appear like experiments: will there be a reader who finds something essential in my garbage?

Don’t take me wrong, it’s not that these novels are imperfect by any respects, that garbage is nice and fascinating. It’s just the astonishment of mine from the twenty-first century. And it makes me wonder if I should be astonished about my era instead.

After getting comfortable with the style of romanticism (I almost always prefer old books for several reasons) you find today’s ‘accelerated world’ a mere illusion in everyday life. The acceleration itself really exists, however, it generates an unreality with an unhealthy urge telling people they haven’t got a minute to waste. Then, they force themselves in a causeless hurry about everything they can’t avoid doing.

It sounds reasonable, you certainly don’t want to waste your precious time on your daily routine. But then, actually there is no preciousness for many people.

In this strange world (well, in its cities in particular), being in an insane hurry, then wasting all the saved time on relaxing, but meaningless activities are accepted as normal. You need to relax because you are exhausted. But you’ve exhausted yourself only in order to have time to relax. What’s more, people spend much money both on accelerating their daily routine, and on making their relaxation more effective. Perhaps modern industry really overdone itself.

Again, the acceleration does exist. Now anything can happen in moments in contrast with these old times, when you just couldn’t help slow things. That makes people feel they’re missing opportunities constantly, which is true, anyway. But they usually aren’t preparing for them, they rather save up time instinctively, then loose it.

3rd entry for 2nd Oct.

I’ve read some more of the introduction, and I must admit the author’s enthusiasm about pleasing me with his impossible vocabulary already started to amaze me. I’m still not sure if I’ll be ’allowed’ to read a sigle sentence without a dictionary. He’ll run out of new words once, won’t he?
And all he was writing about were some simple things around a wharf and its custom house!

Well, after finishing his funny-words-about-custom-houses collection, it seems telling about his "unhealthy connexion" with Salem, (his, and all his ancestors' natal spot) draws a much more reasonable amount of such linguistic treasure.

He has got an interesting point here, however. His very first ancestors, about 300 years earlier, have played an important role in founding the town and organizing its life, and thence, his family got more and more rooted in Salem.

That's not that fascinating, there might be a dozen of reasons to feel connected with your hometown. It could be the parents' effect, it could be that you had spent all your wonderful childhood there, it even could be said that the ghost of that first progenitor „who came so early, with his Bible and his sword” is having a spell on you.
They all could make you affected to an otherwise worthless place. But then, there's some resemblance with a theory from some other writer from the twentieth century, who was assuming some kind of genetical memory, adding up generation by generation. (As far as I know, it wouldn't fit today's genetical science, however, Darwin's original theory about the selection of random mutations is invalid already.)

Mr. Hawthorne told us that it wasn't any kind of appreciation, since the town in his time had the most faults you could imagine. Neither any kind of love, and it was joyless anyway. No, he called it instinct.

And I'm wondering if it could be else than geniune instinct.