I first read Herman Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-street several years ago. Said character has a stock reply to every suggestion, entreaty, or order he receives: “I prefer not to.” In time, after “preferring not to” do the work assigned to him, Bartleby moves on to “preferring not to” eat, until such time as nature takes its course and he dies. Melville ends the tale with a rumor concerning Bartleby’s depressing job in the Dead Letters Department i.e. disposing of letters that never reached their destination.

Assuming Melville the writer showed some leanings toward depression, Bartleby’s plight may be a metaphorical treatment of that well-known urge in the chronically depressed to lie down in the middle of a busy street and let the world flatten them out thinner than a pancake.

Or perhaps Bartleby never found the way out from the days of his terrible two’s. That strange childhood period when small children discover the power of “no” to such an extent they can’t even bring themselves to say “yes” when they want something. A trying time for parents and children alike. Perhaps Bartleby didn’t so much “prefer” not to join the parade as not know how to say, “yes, dammit, yes! Let’s do this!”

What inspires these thoughts today? Intrusions. As always, there’s no way of telling if they are random or purposeful. Either way, they’re disturbing, especially when you discover you may be the only person who needs a password to access your own material – and who may be denied access for want of the correct one. Intrusions induce a freeze reaction. Who’s intruding? Why? To what aim? Should you shut up about them, for fear of provoking more intrusions? Should you pretend intrusions are just – hey- how things go these days. After all, if wikileaks exist for big names, why not kindergarden grade intrusions on a nobody’s life and times?

I’d “prefer” more grown-up behavior on the part of readers? Maybe “prefer” isn’t a strong enough word.