Breakthroughs in Technical Analysis

Moment in a subway car: not far, across from me,
a nattily attired forty-something salt-and-pepper-
brush-cut man in black beret, plum-colored
cashmere scarf, and tailored spotless charcoal
overcoat – sharp-creased pants, square-toe shoes –

gives me what my current angle of the prism
takes as news: peering through his sparkling
spectacles – gold wire rim – he reads a freshly
published shiny-covered hardback: “Breakthroughs”
claims the eye – followed by “in Technical Analysis” –

intuition tells me it’s an early Christmas present,
which not only somehow neatly fits him, sitting
there like some grand incognito duke oblivious to
roiling New York City rush hour traffic – but in
a graphic way reveals to me exactly what I haven’t

got today: no breakthrough in analysis of any
kind – some manner in which I might learn
to switch a channel and regard the whole of
something for a change. Wouldn’t that be strange!
It’s almost Christmas, I suppose, and I have not

one speck of interest in it; more a slight paralysis
than any breakthrough in analysis, technical or
otherwise. My capacity for baby-like surprise seeks
other avenues, I must surmise: or maybe this is
just the fifth thing that my rhinovirus has devised.

.