caveat emptor

What I Want

If someone asked you the question, "What do you want?" could you answer it? Do you know what you want?

Because I don't. Well, I might. I asked myself, and I didn't know. I really didn't. For the past twenty-one years, you see, I was along for the ride with a competent, intelligent (and beautiful) woman who had a plan for what we wanted out of life and I didn't know all the details but I was happy to just go with it because she was smarter and she had ideas and I really hadn't thought about it. But then she got cancer and then she died. And now I feel like all the momentum she built up is dissipating and I'm coasting to a stop, which isn’t good. I'm only 41 years old, after all. I plan to live to be 200 (at least), so 94% of my life is still in front of me. (I think. I'm no math expert.) So now I have to decide what I want in life. And I don't know. But I've been thinking about it and I'm starting to get some ideas.

1. I want my children to grow and develop independent, autonomous lives, so that their potential to thrive is not bounded by mine, so that they can continue to thrive after my inevitable death, and so that I can enjoy, once they're grown, an independent, autonomous life that I have never known.
2. Regarding material possessions I want a life that is small and simple enough that I can fully inhabit it, that I can fully understand it, that I can afford it without extravagances of money, that I can use and care for it properly, consisting of things characterized by efficacy, sustainability, reliability and beauty.
3. I want to continue learning all my life, focusing on knowledge, skill and wisdom that increases the happiness and well-being of everyone in my life, including me.
4. I want to pass my days in a healthy balance of working, spending time alone in self-improvement and relaxation and spending time with other people in love, service, fun and peace.

That’s what I’ve got so far. And I know I need more, and I need specifics, but it’s a start. I’m okay with it.

Hello, friends. I hope you’re well.

Later. Love.

Happy Susie Day

After she finished her accounting degree in 2008 my Susan got a position as an auditor with Rylander, Clay and Opitz (RCO), a local accounting firm in Fort Worth, Texas, where we live. Dennis Opitz, a partner in the firm, is a member at the Colonial Country Club in Fort Worth, and so they occasionally hold company functions there. While there for some occasion, Susan had a burger. She loved it. It was, as far as she was concerned, the best burger she had ever eaten, and she told everyone she knew how great it was.

Susan worked for RCO about a year before she was diagnosed with cancer. Shortly after she began treatment she started having trouble eating. During that time she was talking on the phone with our good friend, Wendy, as she often did. Wendy asked Susan what she would want to eat if she could eat anything. Susan told her about the hamburger, and Wendy had the idea to contact Dennis and try to get Susan invited back to the Colonial for lunch. Susan was embarrassed about imposing, however, and asked Wendy not to call Dennis, so she didn't.

Almost three years later, after Susan passed away, Wendy decided to follow through on her previous plan. Unbeknownst to me, she contacted Dennis and asked him if our family could be invited to eat at the Colonial for Susan's birthday today. Dennis was happy to make the arrangement and, although Wendy had intended to treat our family to lunch, he insisted on picking up the bill.

And so, this morning Billie Faye (Susan's mother), Katie (Susan's twin sister), River, Robyn, Rayn and I stopped by Susan's grave to leave flowers and wish her happy birthday. Then we went to the Cork Room restaurant at the Colonial Country Club and had a wonderful lunch looking out over the beautiful golf course. Several of us had Susan's favorite hamburger, which was delicious.

Thank you, Wendy, for your proactive generosity and love in arranging this great lunch for our family. Thank you, Dennis, for inviting us and for treating us to lunch, and for all the other help you've given us during this difficult time. This lunch was a very special time for Susan's mother, her sister, her children and for me. I will make a point of passing this kindness on to someone else in the future.

Happy Birthday, Susan (and Katie).

No Chess, So a Dream Recounted Instead

I came downtown to observe the Friday night chess games at the coffee shop, but no chess players showed up, so, instead, I will regale you, the anonymous reader, with last night’s dream, about which I cannot stop thinking. I’m skeptical and scoff at most dream interpretations (please do not take this as a personal affront if you value them), so I’m not looking for meaning in it. I just want to recount it for you because it’s a story and telling stories is what I used to enjoy very much. I hope to rediscover that joy soon.

The setting was my home, but not my home. It was some fitful amalgamation of disjoint places to which I’ve never been and never hope to go. The mood was full of stress and dread, angry and worried. The house was bustling with my children and too many other people I didn’t know – ostensibly their friends – but no one specific. I was feeling generally invaded and deprived of my rightful privacy, as though I were trying to change underwear or examine some blemish in a delicate location while people kept opening the door and barging in for no good reason.

The first scene of the dream (or at least the earliest I recall) had River late for work. In the dream I felt as though he was being flippant about it and needed to display greater urgency, and I got bizarrely furious over it, to a point that I was roughly manhandling him (something I’ve never done) in an attempt to convey the gravity of his lackadaisical work ethic. It was strange and not at all pleasant.

I don’t remember the segue, but the next and last scene had everyone gone and me in my bedroom, alone and in a foul mood. I was getting dressed for bed when I noticed an odd motion under a towel strewn over a stuffed chair there in my room. Walking over, I removed the towel, and there, lying in the chair, was a strange baby girl. She was tiny, like an infant, but thinner and with long hair and an almost adult face, like some bizarre, baby grown up. I remember that she could talk, but I don’t remember what she said in her oddly grown voice. I remember feeling empathy for her – here where no one knew her and she obviously did not belong – but I also remember this sense that there was something darkly unnatural and even sinister – though not willfully so – about her. For some reason I picked her up and carried her to the hallway, where I turned to look in the mirror. I was immediately struck by something unusual in her reflection. I turned a bit, to change the perspective, but the peculiarity was still there, and the nature of it was specifically this: Her reflection was not in the correct place. It was five or six inches to the left of where it should have been. From my perspective in the dream I could look down in front of me and see her in my arms and I could also see the reflection, and it was shifted. They didn’t match. I remember being overcome with a sense of wrongness about it, and then I awoke.

That’s it. Not my favorite dream, but I cannot stop thinking about it. Odd, don’t you think?

Hello, friends. I hope you’re well.

Later. Love.

My Susan's Interment

Today we interred Susan's ashes, which is to say we buried them. It was a small gathering, just the kids and me, Susan's mother, Susan's sisters Katie and Patty, Patty's husband Michael and daughter Heather, Katie's son Josh, my mother and my mother's long-time boyfriend Jerry. When we arrived there was a small tent with chairs and a small pedestal where we placed Susan's ashes and the red roses we brought for her.

I was feeling pretty emotional about the whole thing, so I wrote down everything I was going to say. Here is the text:

Thank you for coming to honor Susan this morning. This is going to be brief. I’ve prepared a little something to say, and I’m going to read it so I don’t get too emotional. After that, I’m going to sing one of the songs Susan wanted me to sing at the funeral if I thought I’d be up to it. I wasn’t then, and I’m not sure I am now, but I will try. After I sing, I was thinking I would say something brief directly to Susan, as if she were here. Then any of you who would like to can say something to her as well, or something to the rest of us if you prefer, share a memory, say goodbye, anything at all. I know a lot of people aren’t comfortable talking in front of a group, and emotions might make it difficult, so I don’t want anyone to feel pressured about it. Again, thank you for coming.

What happens to us after we die? What we believe about that question shapes what we do for our loved ones who have passed away. The subject has been one of the primary preoccupations of humanity for as far back as we have written record. We have wondered about it, feared it, imagined answers, received revelations, formulated doctrines, doubted and believed too many different things to enumerate. For my part, I do not claim to know what happens to us after we die. At this point in my life I do not believe anything in particular about it. I don’t know if we go on in some form or if we end with our last breath. I know some of you may believe certain things about it, and I respect that. Susan believed in an afterlife, in a better place where you meet everyone who has gone before you and wait for everyone coming after. If there is such a place, Susan is there. No matter how good you might have to be to get in, if it exists, some part of her, her spirit or her soul, is there. Her body is gone. She was quite finished with it and she didn’t leave it in very good shape. And she didn’t want to lay that spent body forever in a pretty dress in a wooden box inside of a concrete vault. She wanted to be done with it, to be cremated. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust. But, even so, Susan is also not in this box of ashes. And if we bury this box here, as she wished, she will still not be here. If some part of her is still anywhere, she will not be here, in this ground. I think it is fitting, nevertheless, that we set aside this spot for her. For one thing, it was her wish. Although she chose cremation, she was very deliberate in wanting place where we could come visit and remember her. And why would we come to this place if, as I have said, she is not here? It is for the same reason many people who believe in a god who is everywhere go to a church. A church is a place dedicated to thinking about and meditating on god, even if god is everywhere. There is a word for it: sacred. Sacred means “set apart,” “dedicated for a purpose,” “inviolable and venerated.” And so, although we could remember Susan anywhere at any time, this place will be sacred for us. This place will be dedicated to her memory. And, even though I do not know what happens to us after we die, I will come here and I will visit and remember Susan. I will come here and talk to her as though she can hear me. Here, where her ashes are buried, I will bring her flowers and I will honor years of love and joy and pain and comfort and growth we spent together. I’ve already wished for a place like this. I look forward to them placing her marker – which shall take a couple of months to complete and install. I tried to design it to honor exactly who she was for all of us. It will say, “Susan Faye White, July 12, 1970 to April 15, 2012. Beloved Daughter, Sister, Wife, Mother, Friend.” And then, in the corner, it will say, “I love you, my Susan.” That’s a message from me, but it can be from you too if you’d like. I’m glad you’re all here to see where Susan’s sacred place is. I hope you will remember and visit her here if you can, on the side of this little hill, under this tree that is little today but will grow over the years. The vase installed here is permanent. It fits into a base but you can twist it and turn it over and put flowers here for Susan. The caretakers will replace it in the base after the flowers have withered. If she is still out there somewhere, I cannot help but believe that any love we show to her memory will reach her somehow. Again, thank you for coming.

After reading that and managing to mostly control my emotions, I sang Rock of Ages. Then I said a few personal words to Susan during which I completely failed to control my emotions, but it was okay. Then Katie read a beautiful letter she had written to Susan. Then Patty shared a story about two baby birds outside her house this week and how they reminded her of Susan and Katie. And then, one at a time, almost everyone there shared something. There were tears and laughter. It was a beautiful time. We went back later and they had closed the grave and placed the roses into her vase. I'll post a picture of her marker when it is etched and installed.

For those of you who are local, know Susan personally and might want to visit her grave at some point, she is at Greenwood Memorial Park at University Drive and White Settlement Road. The map below will help you find her grave. (Click to enlarge.)

Hello, friends. I hope you're well.

Later. Love.

Something. Something. I Don't Know.

Maybe I should go back to school, something to fill my time. I could study math. Math has always been a weakness of mine. I wonder if knowing math would change my personality in some way. Maybe I'm not meant to know math. Maybe knowing math would drive me insane. I don't want to play games. I know that. I cannot stand the wasted potential and energy that games represent to me. I want to produce something or to learn something. I don't want to get into television shows or play games or take up some crafty hobby that produces things no one needs. Maybe I could get really into fitness, with abs and whatnot. I could spend all my time jogging or biking or climbing to the top of things the hard way. I'm done with romance and intimacy of the sexual sort. It's just so complicated and fraught with stress, insecurity and compromise. I've had the love of my life and it was enough, I think. Also I don't want religion or empty socializing. I'm not interested in traveling, all that time and money just to see things and places that are so far away from your life and your people and then you come home and here you are again. I want to write, but I have no inspiration right now. Maybe I could throw myself into art or Do-It-Yourself home improvement. If I take up cooking I'll get fatter and my diabetes will kill me, unless I took up really healthy cooking, which doesn't sound like fun. Maybe I could secrete thin strands of silk from glands around my mouth and wrap myself into a tight, giant cocoon and wait patiently to see what comes out after all the metamorphosis and whatnot. It might be a monster, though, like something from a bad Gojira movie. I don't know. Something. Something else. Something. Maybe I'll study math. Maybe I'll grow wings and learn to fly. That would be fun. For a while.

Hello, friends. I hope you're well.

Later. Love.

For My Susan on Our 21st Anniversary

Today our marriage is old enough to have a drink. It's getting so mature, growing into such a responsible, adult marriage. I'm very proud of it. People want to define marriage narrowly these days. It's a widely held position, narrowness. People want to act as though marriage is something that never changes. But marriage changes, and not just the institution. Each marriage changes as it grows up with the participants. I remember our young marriage, so much energy but so unsure and immature. It was the marriage of two kids alone together in the world. Then came the children and work and school, a busy marriage of people learning to be responsible by being buried in responsibilities. Then the kids got older and things got a little easier. Then came your school, your career. Then your cancer, when marriage became caring for you, a different physical intimacy, less sexy but no less intimate or passionate. And here we find ourselves today, children growing up, money more plentiful, everything more familiar and more comfortable as we arrive here at our twenty-first year of marriage. They tell us it will probably be our last, though they've been wrong before. I don't want it to be our last. I want our marriage to grow old with us. Even so, what we've had and what we have are enough for me. I'm eternally satisfied with my life and any more joy I know is just a bonus. Let's celebrate. Let's take our marriage out for a drink, now that it's old enough. I love you, my Susan. Happy anniversary.

Another Day is Done

Day is drawing to a sleepy close here at the coffee shop where I sit at this computer and work for hours every day, morning till night. My top and bottom eyelids are trying to snuggle and spoon, but I’m resisting them because they block my looky holes when they do that, and my other senses aren’t sharp enough to see the screen. I’m punctuating sentences and making a few last minute edits on a software specification document, the same one I’ve been working on for weeks. It’s a beast. I’m saving files and shutting windows. I’m packing up this morning’s goals carefully because, as it turns out, they’re still going to be tomorrow’s goals, so I cannot be too rough with them. I still need them. I’ve been using them for many days and they’re getting a little ragged around the edges, a little torn at the creases, a little soiled with coffee stains, grease and barbecue sauce. In a minute I’ll start disconnecting cords, shutting down peripherals and packing everything into the sixty pound bag of junk I carry around on my sore shoulder. One shoulder, my fingers, my eyes, my ears and my ass, these are the parts I use every day. Sometimes I use my talk hole, but I’ve been doing a lot of remote solitary work lately. When I go back to the office it’s going to take me a few days to remember how to look at people and listen to the word sounds they make. This is what I do lately. It’s work, you know. It pays the bills. (Actually, Susan pays the bills, but the job is where we get the money.) One day I’m going to change into a butterfly. People will come to my office and they’ll see a giant, empty cocoon and they’ll ask, “Where is Scott? I need him to sign this expense report,” but I’ll be gone. Not sure how I’ll get out of the building, though. I’ll have to wait for someone else to call the elevator and open the front door, I guess. Will anyone do it? I mean, a giant butterfly with a sixty pound laptop bag will probably scare them, right? I’ll just have to try and be cool and nonchalant. Most of them never look up from their smart phones anyway. That reminds me of how annoyed I was that SNL stole my idea about a car that sends you a text message when you’re about to crash into something. I wish those guys would leave me alone and quit stealing all my ideas. Have you noticed that they do that to me? I have. Aaaaaanypoop, I guess I’m going to pack up and go home. My iPod Shuffle, Señor Tinybop, is fully charged. I always charge him when I think about going back to the gym to get in shape. Who’s ever heard of a fat butterfly, after all?

Hello, friends. I hope you’re well.

Later. Love.

An Update on My Father

My father has been retired and living in a tiny house in his hometown, Hamilton, Texas, for the past few months. He's lived a rough life, including a stint in prison for drug-related crimes, and he's saved nothing toward retirement. He's living on a meager social security monthly payout and nothing more. But, he's a simple, solitary man, and he doesn't require much. He's been clean and sober since being released from prison a few years ago. He worked for the past few years cutting giant steel beams in a mill there in town, but his Diabetes-related ailments and failing eyesight have made it impossible for him to continue in that, so he's retired.

Retirement on social security alone was pretty financially challenging, even for a Spartan like him. His rent on that tiny house, food, and his medication were just a bit more than he could afford. So, he's decided to try something new.

His sister, my Aunt Bobbie, helped my Dad get a small trailer and, with her husband, my Uncle Buttons, helped him move it, along with his few belongings, to a small Army Corps of Engineers park in Waco, Texas. There he can live in his trailer, hooked up to all necessary utilities at no charge, in exchange for twenty hours each week of volunteer work in the park as a caretaker. Trimming trees, clearing trails, picking up litter, and such. The park is closed until mid-spring, so it's an easy, quiet job. I think this will suit him well. I imagine he'll fish, camp, hike, do all the things he's always loved. Hopefully the activity will keep him healthy.

In another stroke of fortune, he's discovered that his short stint in the military in 1969, even though it ended in a Dishonorable Discharge for going AWOL, qualifies him for VA medical benefits, enough to cover most of the cost of his medicine.

And so, he should be able to survive a little longer in spite of his life of bad choices and his lack of preparedness for the future. I'm glad for him. I hope he can find joy in his life.

Hello, friends. I trust you're well.

Later. Love.

How We Talk

Life and death have always seemed like epic issues to me, grand, sweeping themes to which only lofty literature can do justice. Life is not so lofty, however, when you live it day to day. Turns out, neither is death. My Susan and I talk about death all the time now, and sometimes it feels profane. These days it's just another subject, like the bills, visions for the back yard or plans for the kids' college. It's a logistical factor, and we don't know when it will happen but we general figure that things more than a few months away will be things I'll have to deal with. It worries all of us, the prospect that I'll have to deal with things. Susan and the kids worry about it, I can tell. I know I do. It will be like Lord of the Flies. There won't be any proper adults around to make sure the society of our household doesn't collapse into primitive chaos, like cave people or frat brothers. Why? For example: I've never paid a bill. That might be literally true. If not, it's close. I'm 40 years old and I've never paid a bill or looked at a bank statement. Susan is the grownup at our house. She always has been. The kids are getting close, so maybe they can teach me a thing or two.

You see? This might be morbid or maudlin, but it's how we think around our home these days. Talking about such practicalities is stark, and it was a little galling at first, but it's how we live together for the time we have. Susan needs to know that everything will be alright, that I can handle enough of the things she handles today. So, we talk about it. How do we pay the bills? How do we track the budget? What are the accounts we owe and where is our money? How do we help the kids through college? Don't get me wrong, though, we cannot talk about everything. We do not talk about the really sad things, like weddings and grandchildren and what it will be like in the morning when she's not…

Well, like I said, we don't talk about that. We discuss income tax and property tax. What will we do with her car? She'd like to pay off certain things with the life insurance. Here's what to do with her clothes. Make sure I update my will and the trusts. The caulk in the shower should be redone every few years. The carpet downstairs should be replaced. The important papers are here and here and here.

Hello, friends. I hope you're well.

Later. Love.

The Big Day Approaches

Ghosts are getting excited for the big day, only days away now. Witches and goblins are dieting and grooming, wanting to look their best. Bog creatures are updating their curricula vitae. Zombies are trying to pull themselves together. Vampires are flossing. Mummies are wrapping up a few loose ends. It won't be long now. The thing under your bed, the slavering thing that has been building up the courage for years now to grab your foot and eat it when it hits the ground in the middle of the night, thinks this Halloween might finally be the day. Are you excited? I am.

Hello, friends. I trust you're well.

Later. Love.

Nonsequitur Crabbiness

They're marketing autumn at us now, all orange, yellow and brown. I don't know what it is about me, but I hate people marketing at me. I cannot see it as some kind of cooperative endeavor we're in together to keep our society functioning. As beautiful as these leaves, pumpkins and cornucopias are, I only feel resentment for them. Don't wield Halloween against me. I love Halloween. Don't attack me with autumn, my favorite season. Try to summer to me all you want – I hate summer – but don't take what's mine and market it back at me. I know autumn, and your product has nothing to do with it.

I'm sorry to be so crabby. I'm not sure why I do it. Maybe I have a chemical imbalance, or maybe I'm channeling the spirit of some dead jerk. I'm actually – if I stop to think about it – feeling pretty satisfied right now. Life is good, all things considered. Sure, some things could be better, but there's little I can do about that. I'm in relatively good health, considering all my maladies and my less than ideal lifestyle. My wife, sick though she is, still putters around the house and goes with the girls to buy dresses and meets me for lunch. My job is too busy a lot of the time, but at least I have a job. The pay is pretty good. The people are nice. I'm living, as we all do, in the wake of the practice of my habits, good and bad. So far, so so. Could be better, I suppose, but it could be worse. I could be a guy with no face and only one arm and three legs but two of them are broken. I could be a sea cucumber. I could be an ant washed down a shower drain. (I wonder what happens to them.) All in all, I'm fine, just a little crabby about marketing.

It's nearing October. You know what that means. In about twenty minutes they break out the Christmas marketing crap. Ugh. Don't get me started on the Christmas marketing crap.

Hello, friends. I hope you're coping effectively.

Later. Love.

A Metaphor in Which Life is a Road and Uncertainty is a Fog

Uncertainty is a dense fog that has settled over the road that is a metaphor for my life. I cannot see what is coming, not very far ahead. This is a simple metaphor to understand, of course. I can see this evening, tickets to a show with my Susan. I can see vague outlines of employment surrounding me, this occupation in which I find myself. I know birthdays and holidays are up ahead, the rhythm of regular things unchanged in spite of it all. I cannot see where this road leads, however. I cannot see the horizon, what lies between here and there. How long will we walk it together? When does it fork up ahead? I want to send out a scout, but that's where the metaphor breaks down. It's not a road, it's life. It's not a fog, it's uncertainty. Of course, we're all drifting in uncertainty, but I'm not even sure what the goal is anymore. Get healthy. Be financially stable. Be the source of help and support. And what else? Write? I've lost the words for now. Maybe they'll come back. Teach? I always thought I might, but I wonder if I have the energy to do something so new, to start over, to succeed again from the bottom up. It doesn't matter, I suppose. I've been able to eek out contentment at least wherever I've found myself in this life. I'll still have that talent when the time comes. Maybe all I need to know are the next few steps, the now, the day's work, this evening's show, a little sleep tonight. Maybe that's enough for a guy like me on a road like this, metaphorically speaking.

I'll try, I will, to write posts that sound less like sighs. I really want to. Bear with me, if you will.

Hello, friends. I trust you're well.

Later. Love.

Changes are afoot. Give them a hand.

They've redecorated my coffee shop. New paint. New tables. New chairs. New art. Gone the odd contraption on the ceiling above where my table used to be. It's a different table now, facing a different direction. I'm sitting across the room. The comfy chairs are newer, cleaner, a little smaller. The tabletops are square, not round. Same floor. Same ceiling. Same swirly, Seussian vent hood over the espresso machine. Same hanging light fixtures that never hang perfectly still, always stirring slightly at the whim of some ghost, the ghost of some whim, a movement of air or earth, the subtlest of sways that you have to watch closely to see. And I have. I've seen it and now I cannot but see it. Moving the least a moving thing can. Never still. Moving still. The people have all been painted and rearranged, except me. I do not change. I am timeless. (This is a recent development.) Outside the summer is slowly relenting, though not gone yet. In here it's a different place, made up of a lot of the same things and a few new ones. I wonder if they found my imagination or my soul while they were redecorating. I've mislaid them somewhere. This place is a good candidate. I've spent a goodly amount of time here. Maybe I'll glance in the dumpster on the way to my car, just in case. Do they have a lost and found here? You'd think I'd know, but so many things have changed. I like the new chairs better. Don't tell the old chairs, though. They've supported me through so much.

Hello, friends. I hope you're... well, I'm not sure. Happy, I suppose. Or at least content.

Later. Love.

Endless Possibilities Mostly Eschewed on a Regular Basis

You could, in this society, eat just about anything you want at any given time. You could go right now, were you so inclined, and find a triple decker hamburger of Elk, Ostrich and Buffalo. It's out there. You could have an octopus salad with cinnamon and sugar encrusted roasted walnuts and endive. You could have a flounder stuffed with a smaller flounder stuffed with crab salad. You could have the whole thing battered and deep fried with a side of jicama and mango onion rings. It's true. You could find it and put it in your mouth and say, "Mmmm. Tasty." or "Icky. No good. Blergh." We live in a society where you can eat almost everything. As for me, I'm having a cup of coffee and a small bowl of oatmeal with dried fruit and a nut medley. I eat this for breakfast almost every day. It seems like a sensible thing to eat, and also I like it. I'm not a health nut or anything, though I do try to consider my mortality when I eat… sometimes. I was awakened to the slackness of my health and fitness routine last night when I showed up, all dressed up to work out, at my local gym. I walked like a fitness veteran up to the counter and held out my membership card. The young man looked at me like I had tried to hand him a "Vote for Truman" pamphlet. "We haven't used those for about five months," he said. He instructed me to enter my phone number on the provided pin pad and scan my fingerprint on the provided biometric scanner. I put my antique barcode-encoded membership card back into my wallet and submitted to his new powerful sorcery, a primitive old man scared in this strange, foreign world of youth and magic. I began to doubt all my technology after that. I felt as if the iPhone with which I had planned to listen to music were a victrola or, at best, a portable 8-track cassette player. I was certain that, had I the confidence to look around at the younger, more beautiful people, they would all have some new space-age, robotic music devices pumping better music directly into their larger, superior brains. You can go and buy all this technology in our society. There's no limit to what you can consume. You could get a cerebral-interfaced YouTube jack implanted directly into your shades. You could get it all with a side of android French fries. I thought about all of this while I was sweating on the exercise bike and the treadmill, stopping occasionally to flip over the wax-pressed records on my antique music-box. And now I'm sitting here typing this out to you, sipping my coffee to the heavy, metallic pounding of the keys, bars and sorts of my typewriter, my empty oatmeal bowl encrusting with dried starch and oat dregs as the sun burns over the horizon in the window on my left. I could be anywhere eating, drinking and doing anything, but here I am, like every day. I've been here for years. Why stop now?

Hello, friends. I trust you're well.

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.

On Falling Apart

You gotta help me, doc. All my teeth is backwards. My hair changes color every damn day. My fingers tingle if I drink cold coffee and the heater on the coffee pot is shot. My back complains about every damn thing. My eyes get all red and sore when I look at chicks. I can’t pronounce no hard words. Sometimes I hear voices askin’ me to pay the rent or stop starin’ or somethin’. My hands shake when I hold a crowbar. I can’t shoot straight with my eyes closed, and I can’t bear the guilt if I keep ‘em open. My throat gets wet when I drink and dry when I smoke. I can’t clap right with the song at the dance club. I think I might have dandruff, or maybe lupus. My uncle had shingles and all his shoes don’t fit. Maybe I got that. Maybe I got depression or I’m bi-Polish. I don’t know. You gotta help me, doc. I’m fallin’ apart over here.

As I get closer and closer to being infinity years old, my body is beginning to rebel against me. I don’t really blame it. I haven’t been very nice to my body for much of my life. My primary struggle now is with Type II Diabetes. My body produces insulin, but my cells have become resistant to it. When I eat and my blood glucose level rises, my pancreas generates insulin to trigger absorption of the glucose by my cells. My cells just ignore it, though, and the sugar floats around in my blood damaging things here and there. I can feel its effect in my eyes and in my numb, tingling hands. My kidneys fight to clean my blood, wearing themselves out. Because of the over-activity of my kidneys, I have to pee… hold on… I’ll be right back… pretty much all the time. This also means I’m always thirsty. Since I started measuring it in July, my blood sugar has been hanging out in the 300s. Sometimes it’s in the low 300s. Sometimes the high 300s. A couple of times it’s been in the 400s. A couple of times, the 200s. This is not good. I’ve changed my diet and started exercising again. (I’ve actually lost almost 50 pounds since July.) I started taking one diabetes medication. Then I started taking two. Nothing has budged the blood glucose level so far. I’m not sure what comes next. I see the doctor today. It sucks, but it’s okay. Hopefully we figure out some way to get this under control. Some have suggested that continued weight loss and exercise might bring it down, so I’m continuing along that path. We’ll see.

When I was a young man I could walk for years without tiring or missing appointments. I could climb mountains with bigger mountains strapped to my back. I could make women swoon with a smile or a wink. I could free dive to the depths of the ocean wrestle the giant squids or play chess with Poseidon. I could walk through the fire and sleep naked in the snow. These days I am not so powerful. I have trouble with basic daily tasks. I have trouble paying attention. I often remember things that never happened.

Hello, friends. I hope you’re well.

Later. Love.

This Body and a Tree

For no reason whatsoever, I’ve been neglecting my health lately. I just quit… trying? Paying attention? Something. A trip to the doctor last week showed me the damage done. Not pretty. I’m back on a medication I should never have stopped taking. (The prescription refills expired in January and I couldn’t even muster the resolve to stop by the doctor’s office and get a new prescription.) I’m going in for more scolding and mandates on Friday. I’m hopeful that getting some of these things back in line will help me escape this fog I’ve been in for a while now. In the back of my mind, I’ve known this problem was growing, but I just chose to ignore it. Why do we do things like this? Well, I guess I shouldn’t say, “we.” I’m sure it’s just me. You’re too smart to be this stupid.

I’ve taken to talking to the tree outside my office. He’s a large Taxodium distichum, a bald cypress. We’ve been discussing freedom and motion. He’s been explaining to me that my society, human society, does not afford me the freedom to stay in one place all the time. “You’d be run off by someone,” he says. “Why are you still here? Don’t you have somewhere else to be? Run along.” He has a point, I supposed. “Trees,” he suggests, “are free to remain right here, to put down roots, to truly inhabit a habitat.”

Yesterday he told me about the day he finally grew taller than our office building. “For years I wondered what was on the other side of this building,” he said. “I asked the birds almost everyday, but they never talk back to trees. I’m not sure they can hear us. They’re so weird." I’m learning to read the “facial expressions” of trees as I talk to them more and more. He was smiling as he remembered. “Then one day, finally, my top branch peeked over the edge of the building and saw the roof and the trees and buildings on the other side. It was like my world doubled in size. It was amazing.” Today he’s several yards taller than our office building and he can see the pond and the running trail and the little bridge. “When the wind blows just right I can see the ducks sleeping.”

This body is the one constant in my life, I suppose. Everywhere I go I lug it around with me. When I’m chased off from one place I take it to the next. I suppose I should take better care of it, put down roots in it, plan to stay here for a while.

Hello, friends. I hope you’re taking care of yourself.

Later. Love.

Bloggy Personal Post, With One Ridiculous Aside

Spent most of Saturday loading my new work computer, a monster notebook that they call a “Portable Workstation”: 12 GB RAM, 8 processor cores, 1 TB HDD, 17” 1920 X 1200 screen. It’s SO much faster than my old notebook. Me likey. Totally worth the back brace I have to wear to carry it around. The power supply is a brick too. Huge and heavy. Ugh. But, the performance is worth the pain.

Sunday we signed this contract for natural gas drilling on a section of land that includes our subdivision. Not much for our little lot, a few hundred dollars signing bonus and 25% royalties on our small percentage of the total acreage. Probably a few bucks a month. No big deal. I’m not quitting my job or anything. I can split a burger with my neighbor once a month or something.

My son, River, has a second job interview today. It will be his first job if he gets it. Retail. Best Buy. They’ll work with his college schedule. He’s got a line on another job if this one falls through. We’ll see.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the universe, the emperor of the Octopus People of Tentaclon IV sips seven glasses of Artellien whisky and taps his remaining limb on the table in front of him, trying to draw the waitress’s attention to his one empty glass. He’s been drinking a bit too much lately because elections are coming up soon and he’s not that popular with the masses. If he’s not elected emperor again then he’ll have to go back to work for his cousin, Larry, at the book-binders. Jerry—that’s the emperor’s name—really hates book binding. Being emperor is a much better gig. He gets into all the coolest bars, like this one, which is very trendy but it’s hard sometimes to get the waitress’s attention. “You’d think being emperor would be enough to get good service,” he thinks to himself. Usually it is, I suppose, but Emperor Jerry’s not very popular right now. People think he drinks too much.

Susan is going back to work today. It’s only part-time for now, but still she’s nervous. Wish her luck. I’m very proud of her.

Hello, friends. I trust you’re well. Are you?

Later. Love.