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Met my friend GV at a beautiful college campus yesterday afternoon. The shady trees, despite the lack of breeze, provided a great ambiance for matters of the mind. Crows cawed incessantly flying about near the water trough as the hot afternoon wore on. GV showed me a token of appreciation he had received for a session. I felt compelled to shake my head as he unwrapped the gift paper. A wooden desk clock with a logo.
There was a time when I enjoyed the office supply gifts, the pen holders and the tape dispensers and the paperweights. And used them too. SR, to my great envy, once got a diary with his name embossed on golden letters against a majestic brown leather binding. The Parker pen on the holder only added to the smoke coming out of my ears.
Sadly I have no use for any of that anymore. Mobile phones have pretty much made most of the utilitarian items in a typical, impersonal gift list irrelevant.
Forget the dancing girls made of china, flower vases, crafty things like that woody-twiggy stuff against black chart paper invariably depicting a tree, a boat and a house on a moonlit night. Forget the catchall photo frames. Thanks to the eco-warriors and the minimalists, I am now reduced to thinking even of beautiful notebooks as guilty pleasures.
The jute bag has successfully replaced the wall clocks.
