Daily Irritation

Hardly a day goes by without something irritating happening. The so-called big issues such as politics, ecology, economics and the like are not the focus here, though they keep resonating subliminally. Rather, it is about the little things, the insignificant, the trivial: a persistent itch on the knee, for example, a tiny blemish on the coffee cup, perhaps a word in the wrong place. Occasionally, cause and effect may not be in adequate proportion. Depending on the mood, such nothingness can take on a destabilizing scale, becoming a genuine annoyance.

Such a shift in meaning builds on a fundamental insecurity and thus buttresses it. The emerging construct takes on forms that completely obscure or erase the core, the original trigger. It develops an idiosyncratic dynamic that absorbs attention at least until the next irritation occurs. And if it does not occur, its absence is irritating.

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