Tired of Obama already?

Na-ah! As far as my friends and I go (and even my Mama!), we continue to be fascinated with the President-elect of the United States. We still can't get enough of the news about him and his family. I personally am still hooked to CNN and BBC and surf there often to find more video news about Barack Obama, and read every scrap of news bit about him among the newspapers/wire services online. Obama fanatic? Fer shur. (But not for that pretend Obama.)

Here's another one from my favorite essayist, Pico Iyer:

My Chance Encounter with Obama in Hawaii

It was three days before the New Year in late 2006, and I was eating a burger with the traveler and writer Paul Theroux on Oahu's North Shore. Beside us in the rickety little shack was a quintessentially Hawaiian group of Chinese Americans, African Americans, semi–Southeast Asians and kids who could have been any or all of the above, waiting for the dad in the group to bring over their avocado burgers from the counter. It took Paul and me a few seconds to realize that the dad in question — who looked like a skinny teenager — was, in fact, the freshman Senator from Illinois, who was expected to enter the presidential race in the next week or two. (Click TIME for the rest.)

Musings on a Pico Iyer essay

I dunno what made me think of Pico Iyer tonight but I had always found his essays for TIME magazine a delightful and fascinating read. One particular essay struck me back in 1988; it was about the comma. There was pure romance in the way he wrote that essay. And so I think I fell in love with him after reading it.

It starts off like this:

The gods, they say, give breath, and they take it away. But the same could be said -- could it not? -- of the humble comma. Add it to the present clause, and, of a sudden, the mind is, quite literally, given pause to think; take it out if you wish or forget it and the mind is deprived of a resting place. Yet still the comma gets no respect. It seems just a slip of a thing, a pedant's tick, a blip on the edge of our consciousness, a kind of printer's smudge almost. Small, we claim, is beautiful (especially in the age of the microchip). Yet what is so often used, and so rarely recalled, as the comma -- unless it be breath itself? (From In praise of the humble comma, TIME, June 13, 1988)

The essay may have struck a nerve with me, because if I recall correctly, I was at a crossroads in my budding career as a journalist then. I don't recall what I was doing tonight that make me think of Mr. Iyer and that essay again. I just know I had to google it and read it again. Maybe tonight, as it was then, my subconscious is telling me that at this point in my life, I need to pause and take a deep breath.