A Ghost at the Feast
The stem of the wine glass felt cool and impossibly fragile against my palm. Around the table, the conversation had shifted. It always does. It’s a current that pulls you from the gentle shoreline of weekend plans and Netflix recommendations into the deep, choppy water of The Economy. Inflation rates. The Fed’s next move. Someone mentioned a 47% swing in some obscure tech stock, and the others nodded with the grim, knowing acceptance of farmers discussing the weather.
And there I was, nodding too. A ghost at the feast. My opinions on film, on literature, on the ethics of artificial intelligence-all suddenly worthless currency. In this conversation, I was mute. I had no vocabulary, no framework, no entry point. My contribution was to keep my expression neutral and hope the topic would change before someone asked me a direct question. It was a familiar flavor of intellectual invisibility, a quiet panic that tightens in your chest when you realize you’re not just outside the conversation; you’re irrelevant to it.
The Soil Conservationist Who Spoke Finance
For years, I told myself this was a virtuous position. I wasn’t interested in the crass machinations of the market. I was focused on more human things: art, philosophy, the perfect way