Karassmate Search

There are people you can talk to, aren't there? People who get what you're saying, with whom you have an implicit understanding. You can relax, be your absolute self, and it's all right with them—they actually like you as you are. The relief of it! There ought to be a word for such people. In Bokononism, the religion Kurt Vonnegut invented for the novel Cat's Cradle, the term "karass" signifies "a group of people who, often unknowingly, are working together to do God's will." They're linked, in other words, brothers and sisters under the skin. That's really not what I'm talking about, but it made a cute headline and I felt I had no choice.

Anyway, I was thinking this morning about how everyone has met people they feel that way about, but they haven't met many of them. I hate to say this, but most people, if you're injudicious enough to say anything halfway original or interesting or insightful or true, they stare at you with a sort of stolid bovine incomprehension. Why aren't you talking about movies and sports and what a jerk the boss is? It's just sad. I thought of the predicament of a person who lives in a town with a universal smoking ban, a person whose one great talent, alas, is blowing smoke rings.