There's a word for "little daily revelations"
In Japanese there are two terms - satori and kensho. I'm perennially awaiting the satori, but today's kensho goes as follows:
I staggered in from the furnace outside. "Someone called while you were out," my Indonesian maid said earnestly. "Said it was important. I wrote his name and number."
I looked at the lined memo pad. Scrawled next to a phone number was a name: Essiotiti.
Strange, I thought, I don't recall having friends from African tribes.
I called the number. In that wedge of space between beats, in the time it takes to lift the phone to the ear, I wanted to hear a tribal greeting. "Wagga wagga biggum chief", my white-imperialist-mind supplied, gratuitously, hanging on the nanoseconds. Disappointingly, instead: I heard, "Hello?"
Here be kensho: It was Scott. "S-C-O-T-T," I could just hear him spelling laboriously into the phone. Ess-See-Oh-Tee-Tee. Essiotiti.
Exhale: ahh. Mini-satori.
So, in the spirit of kensho, I shall now compose a meditative haiku on it.
essiotiti
on the lines. on the line,
S-C-O-T-T.