paid to imagine life
more than customarily
manages to be
Adapted from the book, A Week at the Airport: A Heathrow Diary (2009, Vintage Books) by Alain de Botton, and the passage:
Like thriller writers, the security staff were paid to imagine life as a little more eventful than it customarily manages to be. I felt sympathy for them in their need to remain alert at every moment of their careers, perpetually poised to react to the most remote of possibilities, of the sort that occurred globally in their line of work perhaps only once in a decade, and even then probably in Larnaca or Baku.
Part of the series of Haiku inspired by from A Week at the Airport: A Heathrow Diary (2009, Vintage Books) by Alain de Botton. I discovered this book entirely by accident. When searching for books online, I will use the term ‘collections’ and see what turns up. I figure that someone who has taken the time to gather together the etexts of any one author to create a collected works folder is enough for me to see what this author might be all about.
In this case I came across the writing of Alain de Botton. I enjoyed his use of language very much. Much of the words he strings together lend themselves to what I do.
As for his book, I recommend it very much though written in 2009, it misses the added layer of travel under covid but still the picture of the modern airport is worth the read.
No Haiku For You 