Neighbors

I am so involved in my own life and my own passions that I am sometimes astounded by the pettiness and nosiness of other people. My neighbor—who must know the zoning laws by heart (they probably rest on his bedside table next to his bible)—called the police on another neighbor for a trivial zoning infraction, and all parties stood on the sidewalk discussing the situation. The person who made the complaint was animated and emotional. The police officer wore an expression of stoic boredom. The neighbor who had the complaint made against them was a mixture of amused, dumbfounded, and diplomatic. It was something to see. There are surely many shortcomings to my own orientation, but the orientation of someone with so few inner resources and so much personal boredom that they feel obligated to monitor the totally benign social transgressions of others always reminds me of the denizens that occupy he’ll in C.S. Lewis’s ‘The Great Divorce’.