The Word Virus. That’s what the Commissioner said. Words are infectious. Ideas are disease. Today I heard “verboten” in the morning. An utterance by a fragrant photographer in a funny black hat. He showed me images of Nawlins’, and the Iraq War. He chastised me for not shooting chinese chefs on break from the hot kitchen, eating with chopsticks from white bowls, lined up seated along the sidewalk. I didn’t want to intrude on their personal space. Now I don’t believe they had personal space. Culture, no mind. Out on the street, we’re all fair game.
And then it came again, at about 6:30 p.m. “Verboten,” in a lecture about covering immigrants. And I thought, how is it, that in such disparate places, this same, odd word would make its appearance again.
I come back to the Commissioner because he is so often right. Words are like disease. They spread from place to place, constrained by no metabolic proclivity, no metaphysical reasoning. They transmit ideas like fire raging through actions of miniscule sparks flying across a highway on a hot California night. And I am a repository for the sickness. And I will spread it too.
