There are these louts, who cavil and complain, who endlessly paraphrase and periphrase to show their mastery of, for example, the number of minutes in a bloody hour; these who are inexplicably fascinated with every operational detail of Crowd Management; these who cannot tolerate the slight vicissitudes of people-being-people (they do bump our elbows—there is frottage after all), these yuppies who are easily more comfortable than 99.9% of our fellow creatures—we travel together, over the desert of central WA state, which is like lichen under a glass, whose plains give onto walls in afternoon light, past the desert civilization which festoons its barns with delicious signage (ESPRESSO PEACHES 1.37), past all of which my companions yammer as if they saw nothing. And traveling with them, I notice my own particular sense of cool, and remember how it was formed.

It was a dear friend who said, about our mutual friends, "It's because they made each other, you see? They love each other because they made each other." We were a grand set of gents and gals who came of age together, mutually defining each others' cool. It's true: I was one of them, or I grew in their shadow, and my own petrous sense of self couldn't help but be quaked open by their ways: their cosmopolitan engagement, their sarcastic detachment, their giddy sense of humor, their joie de vivre.

This sense of cool, which we learned from one another as we weaved it, is a dignified one. It allows me to persevere against the inconsideration of these arena-rock crowds, it buoys me from the shallows of despair, and it sweetens my ponderment, dulling its geekier edges. We couldn't help but love each other, not because we were perfect, but because we were perfect to each other; we were made in each others' image.

And these other yap-hounds, they just couldn't stop complaining about the traffic.