caveat emptor

Need Wisdom? I’m 40. I Can Help.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my four decades of life, it’s completely escaping me right now. I’ve eaten some really good meals, though. I remember a few of them, like that buffalo rib roast on New Year’s Eve 2009. That was really good. I’ve never had to fight in a war. That’s good. I wouldn’t enjoy that. I have never, in fact, killed anyone, as far as I know. Forty years, no killing. I wonder if that’s a record for a white man? Here it is, my fortieth birthday, and I’m still alive. I might be alive for as many as sixty more years. That’s a long damn time. Of course, I might get crushed by a falling traffic helicopter this morning on the way to work. One never knows. Well, I guess one knows in that last instant, unless one doesn’t see it coming. Some people fret over getting older. The way I see it, there’s only one alternative. My new thing, now that I’m forty, is going to be wisdom. Need wisdom? I got your wisdom right here. Like here’s one: “Don’t walk a mile in a man’s shoes. They’re his shoes, not yours. Get your own damned shoes.” Pretty good, right? Wise and stuff? I know, right? Being forty is magical like that. So far, so good.

Hello, friends. I hope you’re well. Let me know if you need any wisdom.

Later. Love.

It Culminates in Mundane Awe

In the noise and tumult, out among the glory and violence, fire and smoke on the hallowed war plain where wages the epic battle that will, in blood and power, decide the doom or victory of all life, every soul and heart, evil and good, you have looked down and noticed that your shoe is untied. What you do at this point will define the pivotal moment in all history, turn the tide of fate. Somewhere high above, far away past the skies where winged warriors clash in fear, hope and rage, gods look down from their own holy struggles to see how it will go. Your shoe is untied at the crux of cosmic destiny. Your heart beats once in your ears like thunder. Time holds its breath at you. Your shoe is untied. Choose wisely.

Hello, friends. I like to believe you’re well. I hope it’s true, in the end.

Later. Love.

Blog Post

It is morning again and I’m sitting here in what has been my usual coffee shop for a few years. My usual coffee shop has changed from time to time for various reasons. Shops have closed. Jobs and schedules have changed. Shops have become less bearable or more so. This current usual coffee shop is just a fairly plain, utilitarian Starbucks that is an easy stop off the freeway and an easy exist back on. There are seven tables, 13 wooden chairs and two pods of two comfy chairs each. The wireless Internet is reliable and, for the past few months, free. The coffee is hot and passable. The oatmeal isn’t bad with dried fruit and nuts. They’ll give you a ceramic cup and a stainless steel spoon so you don’t have to waste paper. You can pay with an iPhone app. A couple of times a month they send me a postcard good for a free coffee. It’s not a bad setup. Nothing romantic about, no bohemian aesthetic to soothe to soul or tantalize the imagination. Just a commercial coffee shop. No nonsense. It’s fine. It works for me. I’d love to find a place with more soul, though all the cool people therein would probably wonder why the programmer dude always comes there. Seems like he should go to Starbucks. Little judgmental hippie fuckers. I’m a cool guy, I’m just paid well to look like this. I don’t need your approval, though it would be nice. Anyway, here I sit, coffee and oatmeal and reliable Internet. It’s morning and I’m here. Typical.

I think a lot every day, and I open word processors and diagramming tools and programming tools and process definition tools and I try to capture as many of the various ideas and designs that are firing off in my brain. So often I feel an overwhelming frustration that the tool to capture what I’m trying to say in a way that people will be able to understand has not yet been invented, and that maybe I’ll have to create it myself. Sometimes I’ll even start at it, silly as that is, and then, after a few hours, I’ll think, “What the hell are you doing? You don’t have time to do this. Just use the tools you have. They’re fine. Everyone seems to use them without any problem. You overthink everything.” So then I close the project I was working on and open the word processors and diagramming tools and programming tools and process definition tools and pick up some abandoned false start or start some new false start and try to express the grand unified theory of everything. Then it’s time to go home and I’ve not expressed even the smallest part of my ambition, though what I have accomplished is pretty good. It will usually suffice. Can’t my ideas just serialize themselves to PDF or something? Please? My fingers are baffled and unable to keep up. I don’t know. These are my petty frustrations. I cannot express my ideas efficiently or effectively enough. Is this anyone else? I don’t know. It’s fine. It’s like this coffee shop. It will get the job done.

Hello, friends. I trust you’re well.

Later. Love.

Blog Post

Another snow day and I’m working from the drafty coffee shop to avoid five or six hours spent driving in slow traffic on icy back roads, freeways and overpasses surrounded by Texans in giants pickups and SUVs too many of whom are either terrified or overconfident in these weather conditions. Every time someone opens one door in this coffee shop the other door blows open with the sudden inrush of air and the wind whips through the place like an explosion of icy fire. It’s fairly awful, within a certain range of bearable awfulness that bounds the typical first world life, awfulness that is orders of magnitude less awful than the actual awfulness of truly awful things. Nevertheless, the temporary inconvenience of stabbing cold is unpleasant, but I’ve learned, as a veteran of many coffee shop expeditions, to dress for days like this: cotton workout pants under my jeans, white socks under my black socks, undershirt and long-sleeved T-shirt under my camp shirt. I’m fairly comfortable here in my retail arctic wilderness, and coffee refills are just a few steps away. Outside the wind pushes snow snakes across the parking lot and out onto the freeway, where they are obliterated by tractor trailers and commuters. Winter is embittered because the sun refuses to look her in the eye. And I sit building edifices out of words for other people to enter with their eyes and inhabit with their minds. Life continues for another day, and I am telling this story so people might know that it happened.

Hello, friends. I trust you’re well.

Later. Love.

Blog Post

There continues to be weather here every day. Last week was cold and icy. Today is sunny and cool, fading briefly to warm and then back again, falling into cold tonight. Snow tomorrow, they say. After last week, we wince a bit at the thought. Nevertheless, weather continues. It’s always there, so far.

As for me, I work. I hardly write this last month or so, which bothers me when I think about it. Coffee shop, car, office, car, coffee shop, car, bed, repeat. It won’t go on forever, this pace and pattern, and I’m glad for that.

I stare at the screen a lot these days, too many thoughts swirling in my tempest brain for me to grasp one do anything with it. I’ve made some progress on some things, but death still comes to us all. Nothing I work on is so serious as to change that. I’m sorry if this disappoints you. For me, it is a relief.

I’m so sick of the sound of my voice I hear in your ears, but I find not writing and not posting and not talking more unbearable that doing so. And so, even though I write always under this pall of déjà vu, I still write. I’m not amused by my own in and out, start and stop, but I cannot think about that. I am comforted by the knowledge that it doesn’t matter and no one really notices one way or another.

Meanwhile, serious events happen in the larger world. Revolution and counterrevolution, round and round and round. I am encouraged and discouraged every day. I try to be as uninformed as I can be, lest I engage with something real and become lost in something larger than myself, lest I get outside myself and cannot get back in. It comforts me that many of you are better in this than I am. I really appreciate it.

I’m turning forty in eight days. My hope is that I learn to enjoy a mid-crisis life of some sort. Toward that end, I’m doing all the same things I’ve always done. What have I learned in these forty years? Something, I think. I’ve learned a few things. When I sigh now, I feel like I know what it means. It’s best done softly, so as not to stir up the dust of your youthful confidence. I pause now in speaking, trying to convince myself that the next word is worth the effort, that communication is still the only way to really communicate, that it still works sometimes but only if you do it.

A month after I turn forty will be my twentieth wedding anniversary. A month after that I will have been married for more than half my life. Twenty years sounds like a long time, but it doesn’t feel like it. Twenty years we’ve been together, raised kids, sought medical treatment, paid bills, replaced broken things with new things, slept together, built equity, aged, grown more beautiful, and less so. Being together now is like our species. We are together. It’s who we are. There’s no such thing as us not together. The very idea is nonsensical.

I’m going to stop talking about myself now and bring this to a close. I’m not going to proof or check it, so pardon any omitted words or misspellings. If I go over it again, I won’t post it.

Hello, friends. I hope you’re well.

Later. Love.