In Addendum

     Well wouldn't you know it my piece de resistance written just a few days ago needed to have something added and damn if I didn't get what that something was until I was on my way to work.

I shoulda threw it in there, it was the point I had been trying to make, but didn't. I guess it just escaped my mind. 

The point I had been so bent on illustrating was that when I was walking through that Food Lion bopping to the beat of Hey Nineteen, in that moment everything was fine. 

Life moves through time, which can be measured in moments. Moments of this, moments of that. We think, when we are facing the worst, that the worst will last forever but it doesn't. It usually doesn't last very long. What we agonize over is what we think we will experience exclusively but it doesn't work that way. 

Bad times can certainly seem like forever, but there is always a little good mixed in. In my case, after I exited that Food Lion I still had to deal with being broke, and I did, and though it sucked I got through it. I knew that I had already faced the worst of it, which was the crazy notion I'd had previous to being broke which was that being broke was The End. Could have been, but I didn't choose that. I chose to move past it and in doing so again saw the light. 
      I enjoyed the good moments, many of those, when they came, and those got me through. Little victories. A little extra cash, gifts of food, time outs watching cheap matinee movies. When bad moments arose they were only temporary. 

Equanimity!

Jed Adam- Unsplash.com

Everything, good and bad, is only temporary. Nothing lasts. The fleeting nature of experience is what I saw directly in that Food Lion and from then on I knew I could survive anything because everything has a beginning and an end. Bad times may last for a short while or they may annoyingly linger but eventually they will pass, as will any good times, change being the only constant in life. 

When you get some years under your belt, you'll have plenty of memories. The way you experience life is relative to age. To a five year old kid, life is measured in moments because A. A five year old's attention span is nanoseconds long and B. There isn't a lot of memory built up. 
     As that child ages, memories will accrue and time can start to weigh heavy on the mind. Heavier and heavier the weight of experience gets, so much so that by the time old age occurs there are enough memories to fixate an adult's attention span for days on end. Doesn't need to be that way, doesn't need to be that way at all. 

As the Buddhists say "No mind, no problem!" Thoughts and thinking create states of being and many of those states don't need to be experienced (or re-experienced). It's your choice. Stay responsible like an adult, by all means, while keeping the lightness of being a five year old enjoys.

Be aware that whatever you are experiencing is only a brief moment in the endless river of time. Nothing can be seen as being overly important when viewed in that way.

A Different Day At Work

I must admit, I wasn't ready for what transpired this Monday. It took me totally by surprise.

The first thing that occurred was that I was waved into a parking place right in the front by two smiling attendants who welcomed me and then said that they would be detailing my car while I was on the job. To this I was amazed, I must say, but there came more. Much more. 

Entering the gate that leads to the building that leads to the punch clock, I was ushered down a flower strewn path, past managers standing at full attention, sort of like an honor guard. What UP?
  No less than the head of the division- The Man- met me at the front door, where he shook my hand vigorously. He called me by my first name, as if he knew me. I had seen him from afar many times, where he had been sort of surrounded by a fawning entourage of managers so to be recognized by The Man was disquieting, let me assure you. He led me inside the building, away from the managers, who I could see immediately scattered to reman their positions, and asked me if my pay was enough. I mentioned that I had seen that Bryce Harper of the Philadelphia Phillies had signed a 13 year, 330 million dollar contract just yesterday. My division head said he couldn't pay me that much, but he would see to it that I was taken care of. 

Now what that meant I could only surmise, for my idea of 'being taken care of' has always seemed to clash with management's idea of fair compensation. I'm tellin' ya, I was waitin' for the Candid Camera guy to come out at any moment at this point but the division head right on the spot wrote me out a check that got my eyes to poppin'. He said it was for all the past due 'favors' that I had done for the company, where this or that Manager On Duty (MOD) had promised me they would ‘see to it’ that this favor or that wouldn’t be overlooked but they never did pay me back 'cuz they forgot about my beyond the call of duty contribution like a minute or two afterwards. 

Man, I'll tell you I was quite pleased and wished I wasn't at work right then 'cuz I wanted to hustle down to the bank and cash that check before it bounced or somethin' but I had to get on the job and mechanically searched for my time card in the rack. It was getting to be time when my coworkers were going off duty and the passengers were going to be waiting. They pile up quick, you know, but the division head gently put his hand on my shoulder and guided me away from that area while saying "Don't worry about that. It's been taken care of. Come with me"

Well, ok, I hope he's got things covered 'cuz ya know these upper level muckity-mucks don't have a clue about what's going on at street level and I was concerned that my coworkers coming on duty were going to be overwhelmed but next I know I'm sitting in a very comfortable office and The Man is sitting across from me.

“Hal-e-lu-jah!”

Nghia Le- Unsplash.com

"We've had our eye on you for some time" he began, and damn if I didn't get that drop-in-the-pit-of-my-stomach feeling that all employees get hearin' something like that. Was I gonna be fired?

The Man must've read my mind 'cuz he chuckled some before continuing. "No, no, it's nothing like that. You're not in trouble! Quite the contrary. We'd like to offer you a position higher up". 

Not bein' the kind to take a shine to takin' on responsibility, I hardened up some, as if to brace myself for what was coming. But it wasn't like that at all. Company car, nationwide travel on the company's dime, and a hefty per diem. Why, they were offerin' me- me- the kind of a job that, from the standpoint of what I'd been through, wasn't even work at all. I can't go into the details about it, it's not something that an outsider would understand, not bein' in the company and all, so I won't go there. Suffice it to say that I couldn't believe what I was hearin'. But there was really nothing to think about and so lest this opportunity go to another, I accepted the position on the spot. 

"We'll set you up nicely, you'll see" The Man said, while rising from his chair and shaking my hand in conclusion. "There's nothing to worry about. We're confident that you are the right man for the job"

"Thank you, sir" said I, exuding gratitude. 

"No, thank you” The Man insisted. "I was worried that our offer wasn't going to be generous enough. I'm highly relieved that you have accepted our terms"

I guess a uncomfortable moment or two then passed. Seemed our meeting was over. I didn't know what to do next, and my mind drifted back to the punch clock and the taking on of my duties. 

"Take the rest of the week off" The Man then said, addressing my unspoken concerns. He then reached into his suit pocket and pulled out a credit card, which he handed to me. "Here's the corporate card. Take your significant other out to dinner. See some shows. Whatever you want. The corporate jet will fly you to headquarters (“The corporate jet?!”) next Monday".

"Okay" I stammered, not knowing what else to say. My kness were shaking. Felt like I was gonna pass out.

The Man laughed. "It's a little much, I know. But you'll get used to it. All of those who have been elevated go through a period of acclimatization. I have to get on that jet myself so, um... ...see you Monday next?"

"I'll be there!"

"Good!”

The Man then left, and after he did, I caught many of my coworkers eyeing me as I strode out the door on the flower strewn path, back towards my freshly detailed car. I knew they were curious as hell as to what transpired but I also knew that speculation about the details of my meeting with The Man were already circulating 'round the departmental gossip network. My only hope was to get to my car and get the heck out of there STAT. A few of my coworkers hearts were gonna be broken by the news, many of them wouldn't even notice, and some were going to be gnashing their teeth in envy, wishing it woulda been them, but I had just been being me. There could be no fault in that, could there? Thus I was unperturbed about the ramifications that were going to transpire, well, as of now. As of my leaving. 

And most likely never to return. 

That is, unless my new gig within the company calls me to. But I doubt that's gonna happen. 

You know, maybe when I'm flyin' across the country some day, then landing in some big city, my freshly prepped company car at the ready there, and later find myself driving to a nice hotel I might think about the strange world I once inhabited where (chuckling here) I was like them, in the trenches. At the front. Down below. Yeah, I'll reminisce. Those were the days….

…..days best forgotten! 

But you never really can forget, can you? The only thing I know is this- my conscience is clear. I didn't step on any toes on my way to the top. I truly have been blessed and don't even know how it happened! 

Life, huh? It's weird like that.

Hey Nineteen

I was listening to the radio a lot yesterday at work and this song from Steely Dan came up amongst many others. This song is rather special to me and I know a lot of young 'uns think it's simply an oldie but a goodie but I was around when it first got airplay and this song changed my life. 

Now I know that that is a grandiose statement that might call for a little explanation so here goes:

At the time I was living on the East coast and not doing so well. That’s actually an understatement. I was doing poorly. Well, no, that's an understatement too. I wasn't on the verge of bankruptcy, I was bankrupt. I had less than $100 dollars to my name, and I think even that’s an understatement. I had far less than the kingly sum of a hundred bucks. Things were bad, man. Very bad. 

I had two months prior lost my job and was down to pocket change, living day to day and scrounging for food even. I had hit the bottom and hit it hard. Events had conspired to place me, despite my best efforts, into a wretched set of circumstances from which I fervently sought relief. This couldn't be happening to me, but it was. I was broke. Dead broke. 

I was directly facing one of my greatest fears. I was there, man. I was not yet homeless but I was damn close, close enough to smell homelessness’ awful B.O. and halitosis breath. And I was scared. "How can this be happening?" and a thousand other thoughts rumbled and tumbled constantly through my troubled mind. Seemed I was hallucinating, dissociating, and fantasizing simultaneously yet I was somehow still functioning. 

Since losing my job I had desperately searched and found a lifeline, another job, but this one was even spottier than the spotty one that had placed me in my predicament in the first place! Like my prior one, it was subject to weather and availability of work and though I was available to work the place was frustrating as hell because half the time it rained or there was no work or limited work and my paychecks were so tiny as to just barely cover expenses, which had been whittled to the bone. Gas for the car, food for me, and just enough to pay the rent. Should my car break down, I would be totally screwed. 

“…..Hey Nineteen, that’s ‘Retha Franklin…..”

Jon Ly- Unsplash.com

On this particular day, which was like many others I had faced, I had about five bucks to spend on food and not a penny more. Jeezus- five bucks worth of food was just enough to get me through a whole day! I had to tightly budget what little money I had because I had to get through the 'work' week calculating every expense in that manner. The other penalties for going over budget were much worse than the ones I would pay for going without food but I like food so it was hard. Hardest thing I've ever had to face. 

Anyway, my world was in shambles and my prospects were dim but I had to get something to eat so I walked into a store of the local grocery chain, which was called Food Lion, with this black cloud of worry hanging over me. I grabbed a basket and started stalking the aisles looking for cheap grub and this new song came on over the store's speakers. It was nice. Different. Kind of soothing and bouncy. I really liked it. It lifted my spirts out of the gutter and I found that I was actually kind of grooving down the aisles of the Food Lion and then this thought hit me-

“THE WORLD HASN’T ENDED!”

"Huh? Whut!?"

  I stopped dead in my tracks and looked around, as if to find evidence that verified that startling statement. People were casually pushing their shopping carts down the aisles, sashaying to the music. I could see that outside the store's windows the sky wasn't falling. I noticed I wasn't panicking, and that my breath was slow and measured. Nobody around me was agitated. The song had caused me to temporarily forget the pickle I was in. Outside of my thinking nothing upsetting was occurring.

This stopping of my thinking created an opening in my mind and into that opening rushed a cascade of refreshing, contrarian thoughts. I realized that I was still alive, that this was the worst it could get, and that 'losing everything' was really not that bad. Old concepts that I had been holding onto shattered and fell away from me like many heavy shards of glass. I felt reborn, renewed, and revitalized and left that Food Lion different than when I came in. I strode out of that store, giddy with happiness, ready to once again take on The World. I had nowhere to go but up!

My fear around being homeless vanished. I knew I'd find a way. I would rebuild! Life had thrown its worst at me and I had shrugged it off.

  I was invincible and I knew it.

TOTD Is One Year Old Today

   Happy Birthday, TOTD! You are one year old today. 

A year ago, when I began this project, I didn't know if I'd be able to write about different things every day for a year but I have nearly pulled off that feat. There were days that I missed posting something but I can honestly say that I gave it a go every day, I gave posting something a thought. Life intervened, however. 

Writing each day's piece at times is ridiculously easy and fun, most times it's a process of having a general idea and honing that over and over, sometimes it's extremely difficult for some reason, and there have been times where I wrote something and decided not to post it due to it being not to my liking, unclear, incendiary, or the energy is just not there. 

So where from here? Right now TOTD will continue as usual. I know that for a fact because during the last year I tried a few times to drop it and couldn't do it. Tried to set it aside and then wouldn't ya know it I had a thought that I thought I oughta write about. That's when TOTD is at its best. 

Ideas of things to write about come to me and I might not write about whatever that idea or topic is until days later but I'll think about it from time to time. At the time I actually write the piece I guess it couldn't really be considered TOTD because I've been thinking about it for many days but when it comes time to sit and write it never comes out like I think it will so that is TOTD right there. Fresh. Present. That day is just the right day to write about it, is my feeling. 

Technical-wise, at the beginning I thought I'd insert all kinds of cool videos and provide all these interesting links to this or that page but Facebook is full of that kind of attention grabbing content. That's not really satisfying, most of it, so I go for the real and valid and try not to stand too high on any soapboxes like I’m some carnival barker trying to get people into my tent. 

No. That's not how I roll around here. I hope to present thoughtfully written pieces that entertain and compel and build a following that is more than about flash. My content is substance-based.

There were times during the year when I struggled with putting pieces out. Ideas just didn't flow and I hate to use the word 'filler' or to move in that direction to simply post something- anything- on those days and maybe I did but the intent was that even that would be of interest to someone, frivolous as it was. 

Some pieces I wrote were whimsical and in other ones I figure people definitely sensed that I was possessed by some sort of mood and I probably was. 

Also I must say that I am old school, not of the social media generation, so it was a bit of a stretch to even put myself out there, not naturally being that way, but the tools were there to do so and I used them and now I can't retrieve from the internet all of what I have written, even if I tried. I imagine it will be circulating through a network of servers forever, like a space probe in the far reaches of the solar system that continues to travel, who knows where or why.

I tried during the year to make my prose relatable. Not florid or pretentious or overly casual or hillbilly or ALL CAPS or heavy in the use of italics and a slew of other writing tricks and styles but if I did I did so for a purpose, to illustrate a point. But sometimes doing that stuff is just plain fun.

Format's not going to change, I don't see that happening soon. The text and picture or two I put in each piece seems to work best. I have recently added more space between the paragraphs for easier reading. Place concepts too tightly together, in too dense a fashion, and they can swirl and get lost in a sea of related topics and lose their ability to be comprehended. Too many ideas clumped together, too many associations and things to ponder packed too tightly together does not a happy reader make. 

Yippie! Cupcake!

rawpixel- Unsplash.com

As you can see, I have a lot to write about even when I don't think I do because when I sat down to write this all of these 'items to mention' just flowed. But I think it's enough..... 

I'm pleased myself to have presented the public with this body of work, these vignettes of daily life. I look back and marvel at it sometimes and then I move on, not resting on any laurels. 

Some things I wrote and posted are probably crap, in some minds, while others are too woo-woo but unless you swing the bat you're not in the game, eh? I thought I'd be writing about more metaphysical stuff but that comes when it comes. I fully intend to stretch boundaries there, what we're about, where we're going, so expect more of that. That's the stuff I really enjoy. 
I like the fun stuff too. The humorous postings. Love writing those. They're totally spontaneous, most times I write them. 

Statistics-wise, I tried for 365 but actually posted 297 times. That's a lot of work. Did I get paid for it, monetize it? I didn't make a dime. Did I enjoy it? Thoroughly. Writing is, for me, one of the things I'm passionate about. 

Ideas? Where do I get them from?  Ol' Johnny Carson got plenty of material from just commenting on the news of the day. I do the same but also mix in longer term musings and things that come right outta the blue. Expect mo' of the same, and hopefully they'll be mo' betta. 

Oh, blow out the candle already and get back to ‘work’!

Soggy

     Usually, 'roun here, we get a little rain on a regular basis. A storm will come, it will rain, and then the storm will go and the sun will come out again. Not so in the last month. 

In the last month, storms came, strengthened, waned, and almost went. They then reformed nearby, swirled and brought high winds at one point along with on and off showers and deluges and downpours and skies so uniformly gray you couldn't make out any definition. 
Driving to work was hazardous due to poor visibility, large amounts of tree debris on the road, and over time, a great preponderance of potholes. The locals knew where the potholes were but the tourists didn't and because the potholes were filled with water those tourist drivers couldn't tell how deep they were until their car plunged into one and then the brake lights came on and slow rolling resulted for a time afterward until the shock of hitting one passed and the damage to the vehicle, if any, had been assessed. 

Ugh.

Brennan Martinez- Unsplash.com

My checking of the weather during this period always brought dismay followed by the bolstering up of enough courage and resolve to face another round. The power went out for awhile there and the road to my house was littered with downed trees. It was like being under seige. Will the roof hold out? Will the roads continue to be passable? When is this going to end?

The rainfall totals got into the ridiculous range and at one point the higher peaks got snow and if I heard the weatherman again say that a 'deep plume of tropical moisture is heading our way' while relaying the forecast I braced for the worst because I knew what those words meant- those words meant pouring rain.

   So what gives, Gaia? Why did we have to get so much water?

As usual, when I ask of her an exasperated weather question, Gaia does not respond. To do so would be like comforting a child and because she knows I am not a child, she will not humor me. Gaia's been around for millions of years and is beyond such questioning. I, the rational adult she knows me to be, must trust that our region of the planet being super wet serves a purpose, a purpose that ties in with other regions of the planet being very cold right now and heavy with snow while others are dry and uncomfortably hot.

Viewed from space, Earth looks kind of like a terrarium. There she sits, blue and white, a thin layer of atmosphere shielding her from meteors and her invisible-but-there magnetic field shielding those of us upon her from the solar wind. The ozone layer serves another purpose, the filtering out of ultraviolet radiation, which is very harmful to life, and the tilt of Earth's axis provides the Earth with seasons, which spur weather changes. Earth’s orbit is just far enough away from the sun to sustain life, abundant life, and the lone moon that circles her activates the motions of the tides.

Gaia doesn't have people, technology, and machinery regulating her health. She does it herself through the actions available to her, which are ice ages, volcanos, and earthquakes; fierce storms, raging fires, bitter cold, and searing dry heat. I have to assume that the island chain upon which I live needed to be rained upon to levels far exceeding what I thought were necessary. Where did all the water go and why was it needed are questions I'll never get the answers to so while Gaia ushers in a drying trend I'll assess the damage to the property here and get to work on a waterlogged fence that is seriously sagging, the result of the latest (and hopefully last) round of heavy rain for awhile.

Sweet Spot

     Got me an old Nissan Sentra 'n she's a runner. Ain't too pretty to look at but man is she the perfect work car.
     My partner purchased her used a couple of years ago. By then she was most likely an old second-hand rental car fleet car. There's tons of them (this make and model) on the road around here. The owner put her up for sale on Craigslist for $2000 but the first four 'buyers' didn't get to own her 'cuz the seller wanted cash, all of it, and they didn't have it. My partner and I did though, so the seller drove the car to us. I was at work at the time so my partner, with the help of a friend, looked her over a bit then made the call. Sold!

Under the hood she looked good but the tires were old and worn, and were from three different manufacturers. I guess the rental car company just put whatever tires on her that would fit. The fuel pump was weak, she wouldn't start on the first crank but (the seller assured us) she always did on the second. "Been that way for months!" the seller said, convincingly. It sounded exactly like something a long term owner would oh so casually say.

   Had to dump a little money into her to fix a few nagging problems but that came early on in our ownership. Now she don't call for any maintenance. Just gas and a little bit of oil every now and then.
She's the perfect work\errand runner car now. 

Like I said, she ain't purty to look at but if ever a car screamed "owned by a local" it's this one. She fits right in, her tan paint all faded from the sun.
Her suspension is shot, she needs new front struts, but that ain't gonna happen on my watch and 'cuz of those struts being bad, she rides low. I had to put a cushion on the driver's seat to raise myself up proper. Her saving grace is she’s great on gas. I drive her to work a couple days a week and leave my other, newer car, in the driveway.

Handling-wise, she drives like a go-cart. The stereo is good, an aftermarket one that puts out righteous sound. The wipers work well and have a plethora of intermittent settings, which are great to have where I live 'cuz you drive in showers a lot, showers that come and go.

Our mechanic insisted we get new tires 'cuz some of the old ones were cracked, and we did, after a while, so no worries there. A few months after we bought The Sentra my partner lost a hubcap after getting a flat with one of the old tires. That hubcap never has been (and never will be) replaced.
The stiff rubber tracks for the windows and softer rubber seals for the doors and such are weather-beaten but cost way too much to replace. A little silicone spray works wonders on the window tracks but the trunk lid has some seal issues and is on my to-do list.
There of the doors open- who needs four? The rear passenger one has a broken door handle interior thingy that will never get fixed. I'll see to that!

The heater/air conditioner fan only runs on setting ‘4’, 1,2, & 3 being inoperative. The windows fog up some in heavy weather so I got a work-around for that. I pop the windows open a crack and run the fan if the windows fog up too bad. That, and paper towels.
There's also a little rust spot that needs paint and the clear coat is peeling but nah...
…..fixing any of that is work. Which ain't the point of this car at all. This car's service life has entered the low or no maintenance whatsoever Sweet Spot.

I think she’s rated 118 horsepower.

Antor Roy- Unsplash.com

I love using this car for junk duty. Errand running. Stops at the bank. The grocery. The post office and hardware store. The mall. Fill-up-the-propane-bottle runs. Taking out the recycling and the trash. I park it anywhere I want to. Worries about door dings are worries that I have with my other car. 

The beauty of a car like this is in popping the hood once every two weeks and seeing that all of its vital signs are still stable. A wee bit of maintenance and years of experiencing this car’s blessed prime-of-life cycle could pass.

The biggest expenses we have with 'The Sentra' (we never gave it a nickname) are the yearly registration and semi-annual insurance payments.

Let her sit for too long and the battery will go dead. I got a battery charger because finding out the cause of the slow electrical leak stumped our mechanic and if he couldn't do it..... 

So, long as she runs I'll drive her. The check engine light comes on and stays on sometimes and she seems to have a hard time breathing for a while and then something happens, I don't know what, she starts running smooth again and the check engine light goes back off. I've tried to figure out why this happens but nothing has clicked so far.

A few other things I oughta mention are the model we've got has a timing chain so no worries there. 
Underneath, the muffler rattles sometimes after a strenuous day and the plastic splash guard on the passenger side of the engine is hanging down some.
The washer fluid reservoir's plastic mounting plate cracked so I tied the reservoir up with some zip ties. The tranny fluid and engine oil need to be replaced but not right away I wish I woulda saved the paperwork on those fixes....

I know car enthusiasts are thumbing their noses at a lot of this because your ride has to be sexy, new, and perform but I like The Sentra. I might even love it. It's practical and utilitarian and that’s golden to a frugal guy like me. But it's not that I need to be frugal, I’m not obsessive like that. I just love being around mechanical devices that last and last.

Now, should the day come when she tanks on me, or makes the kind of sound that has my mechanic giving me The Baleful Eye I think I'll find it in me to let her go. It wont be easy, though.

Cars have personalities, don'tcha know? Ending our relationship ain't gonna be something I look forward to but I've gone through final rites of passage with other cars before. The Sentra and my partner and I’s time together was actually supposed to be up months ago. I took The Sentra to our mechanic and he gave me something close to the dreaded Baleful Eye. "I'll check out that rough starting issue" he said with reluctance, that reluctance coming from the diagnostic headache that all old cars bring to mechanics. So much can go wrong. 

About that rough start issue....
Every now and again, she stumbles a bit upon being started up, runs rough for about two, three, sometimes five minutes, then smooths out. This has been going on for well over a year now. Some internet forums say it's the notorious head gasket issue, where coolant leaks into the cylinders and has to be burned off. Some say it's the EGV (exhaust gas recirculation) valve sticking closed. Some say it could be temperature related, or spark plug/electrical system related. My partner thinks it might be due to being driven in the rain, or from colder than normal temperatures. 
My mechanic says it's the head gasket. But, that was six months ago and I'm still driving The Sentra three days a week. It runs fine and is not losing any coolant. So??? 

Methinks it's 'cuz The Sentra and I had a little discussion. I told her I knew she might have a head gasket issue but that I wanted to keep her on the road and out of the junkyard for as long as possible. "We'll drive around" I said. "We'll see things and have fun". 
The Sentra seems to have agreed with that proposition because it's been business as usual ever since. 

You know, I got half a mind to think that all cars want to be in that Sweet Spot position. They wanna be kept around- like they're part of the family or something.

Foodies- Stop Torturing Me!

(I was just about to post this when a fierce winter storm arrived and knocked out the power at TOTD headquarters for two days. This gave me plenty of time to think about the strong wording I used in the title but, after two days of thinking about those words, they still stand appropriate).

Clicking the buttons on my remote any night of the week there they are- shows about food. Popular these days are contest shows, where a bunch of wannabe bakers, chefs ('creationists') are pitted against others in a bake or are tasked with making a dish out of random ingredients. To add a little more 'flavor', these contestants are put on a timer. 

The other shows are perhaps spinoffs of Anthony Bourdain's shtick (bless his soul) where experienced taste-aristas travel the country or the globe and encounter......
......well, here is where there really can be no more words because we’re referring to tastes, textures, ‘mouth feel’, aromas, nuances, hints of this or that, strong umani flavors, hits of acid, bursts of heat, surprises of caramelized sweet and the like. The hosts, as Anthony did, sample already prepared foods and wander around in the kitchen some, go behind the scenes. Anthony was always on the lookout for more tastes and so are these latest fellows, Guy Fieri from Food Network’s ‘Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives’ and Michael Symon from Cooking Channel’s ‘Burgers, Brew, & Que’. These two get access to the kitchen and while they might not be able to get the super secret spicing part of the equation, they get the rest. Equipment, ingredients, and technique.

I suppose this is to comfort those of us at home, so that we might try and put this stuff together ourselves but you know that's never gonna happen 'cuz spicing is key, the necessary ingredients might not be available, and the equipment and techniques they use in these restaurants might be beyond the capability of most people's humble kitchens. I know cooking at this level is beyond the capability of mine. I don't have a smoker, a well seasoned and understood-in-its-operation 'que pit, and many of the other things that these restaurants use. 

So what am I left with when I watch these shows? Over and over, this- a grinning host opening his maw and chomping on something that looks to be very delicious and this from a taste-arista, a guy that's been around! I can only imagine what whatever he is eating tastes like but I probably, most likely, will go to my grave not knowing what that taste sensation is for he is there and I'm here watching it on TV! 

And on the ‘Dish’ Network, no less.

Food is not something that can be experienced vicariously.

Sander Dalhuisen- Unsplash.com

What these shows ought to do for the millions of deprived viewers is put together a frickin' lottery or something where the lucky winners get to go to all these various cities and eat at these establishments otherwise what's the point? This type of programming, while insightful to determined copycat home cooks and inspiring to wannabe restauranteurs, serves mainly to torture the rest of us. 

I like good food, oh yes I do. I know where to get the best Mexican and Indian food. I know where to source regional specialties. I like a certain Thai place, and go to another for Korean 'Que. But my list is short and so I run the usual circuit and make do with what is available, which ain't much, let me tell you. Amazingly, where I live there is no good Chinese food, which is puzzling, because even in Nowheresville America there is a good (or good enough) Chinese restaurant somewhere in town. 

Back to the shows, I can watch SportsCenter and listen to how some basketball player is wanting to get traded to another team but is holding out for x millions more in 'salary' and not blink an eye. That doesn't affect me. I can read the news and be confronted with the most heinous, most scandalous things and simply shrug "Just another day". What I can’t do is watch these cooking shows because not being able to eat what these guys are eating is a crime, and should be viewed as such!

Would you do this to your dog? Would you hold in front of him a steaming hunk of delectable 'Que from some celebrated restaurant, then wolf it down while muttering "Yum yum yum! This tastes really, really good!”?

No! You wouldn’t do that to your dog. First of all, he would be dripping saliva all over the floor that you would have to clean up later and secondly he'd never ever forgive you for eating all of it and not giving him a little bit. Just look at his pleading-for-mercy eyes!

Last night I saw where this restaurant in Cleveland, which had started out making the usual ‘Que fare, had not long into its operation had a breakthrough menu moment. The clever chef didn't have an oven to bake with so he used a waffle iron to make what he named 'Macaroni and Cheese Waffles', which looked absolutely scrumptious, as was depicted by the host (Symon) making a heavenly smile upon gnawing on a corner of same, just released from the waffle iron. I, watching, was just numb. Not envious, not angry, not hurriedly booking a flight to Cleveland and frantically hailing a cab once I got there hustling to this restaurant passion driven crazed, because that would be just ridiculous. Only numb. 

I'll probably never know what a Macaroni and Cheese Waffle tastes like, unless I 'just happen' to be in Cleveland and all the other logistical factors that would place me at said restaurant line up- the restaurant is still in its same location, is open, the waffles are still on the menu, and the team that knows how to cook them is still on the job.

“Enough!” I cried. I did what any sane person would do when their torture tolerance limit was reached. I switched the channel.

On BBC America they were playing a show called 'Frozen Planet'. How appropriate. I placed myself in the icy north and forgot all about food.

As the camera scanned a barren windswept wasteland, and the narrator described the day to day activities of the creatures there, I placed myself within that setting with great relief. There wasn’t a Diner, Drive-In, or Dive anywhere in sight.

These Are The Good Old Days Of The Future

     "Grampa, what was 2019 like?" asked one of the young 'uns hanging around. There were many present. Some were even teenagers. The year was 2059.
Grampa sat back and puffed a great plume of vape. He loved being asked about the past, and what it was like. 
"Well, young people, it's hard to know where to start because there have been a lot of changes". 
"Woo hoo!" cried seven year old Tara. "I'll bet! I took a trip back through the Virtual Reality Portal and explored your world some...."
What a precocious young woman. Wiser than her years. But then again, all the kids nowadays were. Gramps decided to cut her off. 

   "Now wait just a minute, young Tara. There's a big difference between virtual and actual. You might think you were seeing things the way they was, but you weren't. Programmers built that world and put things in it that you don't even know about or how they worked and you just assumed that that was the way it was. It wasn't exactly like that. If I know human nature, ‘n I think I do, I'll bet they fudged on the details some. Anyhow, try as they will, they can't duplicate what it was like to be physically there 'cuz bein' physical you experience sensations. Cold. Heat. Wind in your hair. Things like that.  

Let me give you some examples. Back in the good old days, before self drivin' cars, we used to drive cars our own selves!"
"Wasn't that super dangerous?" piped up young Jennifer, wide-eyed and holding onto every word. 
"Yes it was! It was crazy dangerous! People drove cars past each other on two lane roads. There were things called traffic lights and road signs that told drivers what to do. But lots of people didn't follow the rules, bent 'em some, and sometimes there were horrible crashes. But still, 'sides that, drivin' was fun! Steering you own car around!

'n I'll tell you something else. We used to sit around at night and do something called 'watching TV'. We didn't join others on safari or ice climbin' or at rockin' house parties wearing virtual reality goggles, like kids nowadays use. TV was two dimensional. Anonymous. All we had, other ‘n that, was Alexa and Siri listening’ to us. It was a lot more relaxin'."
"Sounds boring" chimed surly teen Brad, from his seat in the way back. 
"You kids are too hyped up these days" Gramps drawled, again pulling on his old school vape pipe and releasing a huge cloud. "Why, none of you even know how to cook"

"I can make toast!" little Stacy crowed.
"That's good that you know how to do that" Gramps acknowledged Stacy before continuing. "But for the rest of you, how many of you know the joy of making your own food?"
The kids all fidgeted, looking around at each other, but none offered up anything to Gramps. 

"All that food drone delivery has spoiled ya! You call a number, the drone shows up and hovers right there at your door with Chinese or Mexican or Indian food, and you grab it like you're at a cafeteria or something"

"Grampa, what's a cafeteria?" sad-eyed Joey wanted to know. 
"That was a place we went to in the old days where the food was already prepared for us. We walked down past the food that was on display under things called heat lamps, or food that was sitting in ice baths, and took what we wanted. We'd place the food on our trays and pay for what we had chosen to the cashier at the end of the line"
"What's a cashier?" Tommy wanted to know. 

Lucre- lots of it but nowhere near a billion.

Jonny McKenna- Unsplash.com

"Cashier's handled cash. Money"
"Paper money, like they have in the museum?"
"Yep. That very same. I know you don't know what that felt like, to handle paper money, but it was a good feeling back in the day. Money wasn't all digital then. There were no blockchain currencies. You could hold money right in your hand. Feel it. Smell it, even, if it was freshly printed. I loved the smell of fresh greenbacks, which was what we used to call individual notes"

Gramps continued. "Why, back then they even had things called Billionaires. People that had so many greenbacks that they added up to a billion or more"
"Must have been before the Billionaire Ban of 2027" jibed studious Laurel, from her seat right in the very front. 
"Yes" Gramps sighed. "I guess you kids don't think that unbridled greed was a good thing"

"Yuk!" blurted Jimmie, at even the thought of it.
"But back then, everybody was greedy! Couldn't get enough of anything! It was okay to want and want and want, even if you had all that you could ever need"

"What was so 'good' about that?" Jason asked, puzzled.
"People weren't telepathic so much back then. Their thought fields were more contained. It's hard to describe. Greed was sort of like a secret thing. Manipulation and trickery were skills that people developed to get more, and then even more, once they figured out how to do it. Whole schools of thought were developed to influence people to get them to act in ways that benefited just you! There was great satisfaction to be had in outfoxing the others"
"Did you feel good about 'greed', Grampa?" Edwin asked, while searching Gramps' eyes, as only a kid can.

  "Oh yeah, I did! It felt good to be smarter than the average bear. But, I have to say, there was a downside. I experienced pangs of guilt after a while. But enough of that! We're talking about the Good Old Days here"

"What was 'work' like, Grampa?" Zach just had to ask. Gramps eyes narrowed for a bit, but then brightened. Those days, thankfully, were past.

"Well kids, let me tell ya. Back before robots took over, doin' every damn thing for ya, people used to have to hold things called 'jobs'. Most people, I certainly was one of 'em, didn't like to have to go to work, because of the greed thing I mentioned earlier. But that's just the way things were. We didn't know any different! 
The thing about jobs was it forced us to do tasks with other people, and probably the kind of people that we wouldn't have crossed paths with otherwise in a million years. Now I know that sounds like an exaggeration, but it's true. We were so different from each other. But people being naturally lazy, most of us found ways to get along, and that lightened our individual loads. We learned a lot along the way. You kids......" Gramps trailed off for a bit. Obviously, this is something he had given a lot of thought to. He seemed to be searching for the right words. 

"You kids...   .....are facing a four hour workweek, which ain't nothin! Society asks you to contribute just that little bit. The rest of your lives is gonna be play. I don't know if that's gonna be as good for ya, but I'd hate to see you have to spend your time doin' something you don't wanna be doing any more than that. You might think four hours a week is a lot, but the workweek used to be forty hours long. Can any of you imagine that?"
Blank stares all around.

"So much has changed, and will continue to change" Gramps was summing things up, 'cuz kids bein' kids, they were starting to get restless. "I know you want to get back to your gaming, and some of you got to catch drone taxis to soccer practice and whatnot, so even though I could talk all day you ain't got the attention spans for it. There'll be another time. Now go. Git! All o' ya!"

The kids got up and more or less quickly scattered, leaving Gramps alone in his easy chair. He stared out the window at the drone food and package delivery contraptions flying by, at the lawn mowing robot in the neighbor's yard, and thought about what he might do the rest of the day. There were entertainment options galore. Once the aliens had landed, here and there, around 2036, feeling it was safe to do so because the funding for wars had completely dried up, peace and abundance had ruled the land and that had took some getting used to. In fact, it was still unsettling to Gramps to not have any News to read, the 'news' being mostly good nowadays instead of the other way around. He was still wary, which the kids weren't, waiting for the other shoe to drop, as the saying used to go, but after a couple of decades the other shoe hadn't dropped and probably wouldn't anymore. 

"Maybe" mused Gramps, "the 'Good Old Days'...... 

......really hadn't been so good".

My Colonoscopy

I know this sounds weird but I'm an unconventional person and so I'm going to relate through this story sort of how I see things and maybe some of it will resonate with you because The World is moving in this direction.
This is going to be a combination of how mainstream consciousness views things and how spiritual people view things and 'spiritual' doesn't necessary mean those who lean in the direction called metaphysical. It can also mean those who are in mainstream religions but in the family there is one or more that 'knows', or has dreams or visions or hears a voice that gives them information that things are either needing to be looked into or are ok fine. 

It was that sort of voice or persistent idea that brought it home to me that I should volunteer for something that I never would have thought about doing otherwise. I guess I could say it just came to me, at first, as an idea. There is a lady around here that does a thing called 'Colon Hydrotherapy'. She runs an ad in a certain publication, published quarterly, that I see now and again, and over a year and a half's time I started to get a strange thought, that thought being "Maybe I ought to look into doing that". 
That is the kind of thought that I never, ever usually have so to have it over and over was noticable, but it wasn't so pressing a thought that I felt I needed to heed the call. 

So the notion of looking into cleansing the colon came to me in a different way. The local hospital sent out a kit where you could test your 'stool' (I am not going to mince words here) which I, not at all aligned with mainstream medicine, promptly disregarded, as a matter of course. But half a year later it came back, this kit in the mail, and this coincided with my partner's listening to a certain podcast where a person she respected said that undergoing a procedure called a Colonoscopy is the one thing that you should do and so I (and she) sent out the kit. 
Hers came back negative, mine positive, so I gulped hard and scheduled The Procedure some four months into the future and promptly forgot about it, but never could completely, the date always surfacing in my mind to remind me what I had signed up for. But it seemed like the right thing to do, momentum was going in that direction, and I follow those kinds of subtle indications to let me know if I'm in alignment with The Universe or not and I figured I was, for no contrary signals came to override the decision I had made. 
As the date drew nearer, it pressed on my mind more and more and there was fear there, fear about what they might find. I have always imagined myself quite physically healthy but this procedure I could not ignore. Well, I could, but that would have been the wrong thing to do, I felt. So I kept heading towards destiny. 

I found out roughly what a Colonoscopy was and how it is performed, but while my partner read all about it and watched the corresponding You Tube video, I didn't. I wasn't really concerned too much about all that. What concerned me more was the prospect of needles and injections, which is not something I look forward to, this coming from my being innoculated numerous times in grade school where I stood in a long line of other kids to get shots and it was very painful and there was no way to escape it. 

Undergoing a colonoscopy calls for prep beforehand, there are procedures you must follow starting about seven days in, these mainly having to do with people taking medication, which I don't, so I was able to forgo those. Two days in you stop eating fibrous foods and nuts. One day before, you stop eating solid food and this is where it gets interesting because along with the ceasing of eating solid food, and going to a clear liquid diet, you have to drink a substance called 'Gavilyte', which you pick up at the hospital's pharmacy. Gavilyte makes you go, you know. It's a powder that you mix with water in a four liter jug (slightly over a gallon). You drink half of the jug before five p.m. on the day before the procedure, and the other half of the jug the next morning, four hours before. I definitely added the optional ‘lemon flavor’ packet to my Gavilyte.

When I initially drank the stuff, I thought 'it' would take place immediately but the needing to go hits after about two hours. There's an initial release of solid then after that it's mainly liquid. A lot of liquid. My partner and I laughed a lot about this. You can't not laugh, it's rather embarrassing while at the same time funny. But we're adults. It's one of those things where you understand the seriousness and the why of something, but at the same time see the humor in it.

The morning of the day I was scheduled to have The Procedure, which was scheduled for mid-afternoon, I was nervous. I was pretty cleaned out by then but not feeling dehydrated or weak or much of anything else. I felt pretty normal. 

Drugs are administered before and during the Colonoscopy so you have to have a driver, and my partner was acting as that, so when the time came she drove me down to the clinic and walked in with me. I was nervous, she too, and we clutched hands tightly as we walked in. She used to work in a hospital, and is not one to get nervous ever, but she was and I could tell. 
We parted ways at the entrance to the Gastroenterology clincic, she being instructed by the nurse there to park in a different spot when it came time to pick me up in about an hour and a half, two hours. I was sad to see my partner go because that meant that I had reached the point where I was going to be undergoing The Procedure. Months of waiting beforehand were now gone and I was facing something I dreaded but felt I needed to do.

Never been hooked up to one of these before.

Jair Lazaro- Unsplash.com

The Procedure

After saying goodbye to my partner, I walked a short distance to the room in which The Procedure was to be held. It was smallish, containing only room enough for one bed and some cabinets along the walls. Various corners held equipment on wheels. 
  I was instructed to remove all of my clothing and place it in a basket, then put on a blue hosptial gown, climb into the bed, and pull the covers up. This I did, with some degree of trepedation, knowing that this was the easy part and what was to come next most likely wouldn't be, but didn't the nurse jokingly say that the worst was over (referring to the Gavilyte and elimination process I had endured beforehand)? I sure hoped she was right. 

Shortly after I had climbed into the bed, a knock came upon the door. The same nurse entered, along with another one who introduced herself, saying that she would be with me throughout The Procedure. Now it was 'hook up' time. The wheeled carts and stands were pushed over my way. Attached to my chest were three sticky pads containing wires, 'placed in the least hair-covered areas' according to one of the nurses. I had a blood pressure cuff attached to my upper left arm. My BP was high, according to the nurse, and she said that my heartrate was fluctuating. This was attributed partly to 'white lab coat' syndrome, something well known in medical environments, where the patient is nervous and afraid and the sounds and readouts of the equipment measuring devices only heighten the patient's reactions and prevent truly accurate readings, for in the resting state, away from white lab coats and hospitals, back to normal people go. Well, I wasn’t at home and so my scooby ears were up. All senses were on high alert and we weren't even started yet. 

A pulse monitor was placed upon my thumb, I can't remember which one, and then came "Sorry, a little poke" time, when the nurse on my right inserted an IV into the vein of my right arm near the elbow. It was just a little poke and so poof there went one of my biggest fears. 
As the nurses were prepping me the doctor came in. He introduced himself, explained The Procedure to me, and then asked if I had any questions about it. I didn't. He then left, to soon return. Meanwhile, the nurse on my left had me read a form saying that I was cognizant of the risks, minor though possible, that might result from undergoing The Procedure and on that form's short list I saw some dire consequences- perforation of the colon, infection, and bleeding. But I felt I was in good hands, signed the form, and carried on. No way was I turning back now. 

I was then told that before the administering of the sedative would commence I was to turn my body to the left and grab the left railing on the bed with my right hand. I would be laying on my side. The doctor had given me an idea of the tool he would be using, and how far within my body he would probe. I didn't think this would be painful, for some reason, and the nurses assured me it would not be for I would be under- though I might resurface- and if I did I would be seeing the inside of my colon on the monitor I was facing and not to be startled by that. I might also be feeling some pressure, heat, or bloating. 

The sedative they would be administering, said the nurse on my left, would be a combination of the drug Fentanyl and some other one that stared with an R. I wish I remembered the name of the second one but upon hearing 'Fentanyl', and having recently researched and then written about it, I was intensely curious and all my attention went on that. I was a little bit worried about what its effects would be. I knew how strong that stuff was, and how little of it it took to take people out and stop their breathing, which is how people overdosed on the stuff. It shuts down their respiratory systems. 

All preparations having then been made, I was instructed to turn onto my left side, the heartrate monitor slowly beeping away. Before I turned, I took one last look at the big analog clock on the wall. It read ten minutes to three. 

That's the last I remember. I woke again at around three twenty-fiveish and the doctor was just wrapping up. It did not yet dawn upon me that time had passed, it seemed I had just closed my eyes and reopened them. I felt no pain whatsoever and was quite relaxed. The doctor departed, he had more patients to see and procedures to do, while the nurses remained to bring me back into the here and now. The Procedure had went well, they said, as they unhooked me. I experienced a little bit of pain as they ripped away those sticky pads from my chest, pulling some hairs with them, but down below, if you know what I mean, all felt ok. 
Soon I was completely unhooked and sitting up. The nurses left me for a minute, I put my clothes on, then I was eased into a wheelchair and pushed out of the room. My partner was waiting for me there and looked relieved to see that I was alive and well, though she did report that I had a look in my eyes that told her that I was definitely still experiencing the effects of sedation. I thought differently. I felt that I could drive myself home but wiser minds than mine said "No, forget that thought, relax, take the rest of the day off". The nurse gave my partner some final instructions, which weren't much, basically they were to get me home safely and not let me think I could drive or operate equipment, keep me away from booze, those sorts of things. I was pushed out to the car, climbed inside, and we started driving away. I was conscious, but feeling kind of relaxed and dreamy, The Procedure had passed so uneventfully that I told my partner that I would suggest that others do it. It wasn't that big a deal. Drinking the Gavilyte and sitting on the pot beforehand had been the worst part. I can vouch for that. We made it home, and I got a little solid food in me. But it wasn't over yet. 

For now came the wait. Some polyps had been removed, two, and they had been sent to the lab for analysis. Four to seven days later I would get the results. (polyps are abnormal tissue growths. There are usually a few found in any colonoscopy).

Well, those were a nervous ‘four to seven days’, let me tell you that. My intuitive sense was that everything was okay, but my mind at times raced, not a lot, "What if?” playing like a broken record in an annoying, unpredictable, and unwanted loop pattern. I spent those days kind of quiet and treating other people in a very nice way. I was humble, enjoying the little things in life, of which there are a lot, things like breathing, listening to music, sharing a laugh, and simply being a part of this big crazy human family, whatever my contribution or others' might be. I was also thinking that yeah, I had lived a good long life. If it was my time to go I was cool with it. Wasn't my A-list choice to go now, there were still things I wanted to do, see get done, and experience, but if it was time for me to depart well then so be it and Godspeed and maybe I'll come back again in another body soon 'cuz I sure wouldn't want to miss anything but damn it was a shame that I got to be quite experienced in life and had to give up my body and come back and go through all the being a kid and growing up waste of time before I got to be an adult again which is something that takes a long time to write but flashes through your mind in seconds.

 
In the end it wasn't seven days it was four and I wanted to get the damn thing over with, for good or bad already, so when the lady from the clinic called and said that she had my test results and left that message on my voicemail I called her right back. "Put your seat belt on" they oughta tell you, because this truly is the hardest part. 
But I knew. I knew the answer already. I wasn't going to die. All was well. But still, I let out a big long satisfying sigh of relief. "All is well! All is well!" I wanted to shout from the rooftops but you know you can't do that. They'll lock you up! But I felt like doing that, and I did do it, but quietly enough not to cause trouble. 

And so there you have it. My colonoscopy. It wasn't that bad. Fentanyl, the amount I got,  just put me to sleep. I didn't feel any euphoria from it, didn't get no high. My pain was minimal, laughable even. The worst parts were all the worry beforehand and waiting on the test results afterward. So if you're scheduled for this, it's not gonna be as bad as you think. The nurses and doctors that do this (my partner worked in a hospital and clued me in to the vibe she felt in this one, reporting back that the staff’s capability level was high) do this sort of thing all the time. They know what you're going through. You'll be in good hands, most likely. I can't guarantee you anything, but I can say I've gone through it and would actually recommend it. It'll clean you out, that's for sure. They say every guy should do this about the time they get to be in their fifties. But that'll be up to you to decide. I wrote this so those of you thinking about getting a colonoscopy would have insight into what it's about and through that, hopefully it will lessen any fear.

Greatest Fear

  I was astounded but not surprised to hear that a mountain lion attack had occurred near a place I used to live. In the story, a man had been out jogging alone and heard a sound behind him. He turned to see a mountain lion. Yikes!

     I had the experience once of walking through a nature preserve where the animals were living in their natural habitats but were separated from humans by a fence. Coming across a mountain lion, I was surprised at how big it was and how it blended so well into the background. Had it not moved, I would not have seen it. It was less than thirty feet away.

So this guy, whose identity has not been revealed as of yet, somehow was able to overpower this year-old male mountain lion and take it out though in doing that he suffered some nasty bites and serious scratches from the lion's claws. An absolutely amazing story.
Should he capitalize on this, he will make a lot of dough. But, he is said to be serverely traumatized by the encounter and may not choose to ever go public. I'm sure he is wrestling with ambush and survival issues that only he can know of directly, issues that for the rest of us must remain in the realms of conjecture and theory. What goes through one's mind at that moment? When your life is in extreme danger? And even more compelling, how do you take a creature of that size down, without weapons, in desperate close quarters combat?

Mr. Puma, Cougar, Mountain Lion.

Ian Williams- Unsplash.com

Even more poignant to me is the fact that I know the area where the attack took place. Not down to the exact few yards where the battle occurred, but I have walked that very series of trails, which together are called ‘Horsetooth Open Space’. It sits just outside of Fort Collins, Colorado and the reason it is called 'Horsetooth' is that is the name of a prominent rock that looks like a horse's tooth. It's a landmark that you can easily see from town that lies in the foothills just west of Fort Collins.

Now even though Fort Collins, Boulder, Denver, Aurora, and Colorado Springs are highly urban cities, they lie snug up against the Front Range of the Rockies and animals that roam the Rockies occasionally wander into these cities or are seen on their outskirts. While you're unlikely to get into trouble as part of a noisy group, singles or couples quietly walking or running on soft, pine needle covered trails.....
.....you know what I mean. It's a bit nerve wracking. 

Fact is, mountain lions go where the deer go because they're hungry and bears get hungry too so you never know and even though you've been at a convenience store on busy Harmony Road a half hour ago a short drive from there will take you into the mountains for a little hike and bro, you're not in the city anymore. You're in shared territory. 

A hundred years ago it wasn't like this. The mountain lion, bear, and wolf populations had been pushed back into mountainous or forested recesses far away from populated areas but I've heard from the folks up in Wisconsin that all three are coming back. Same is true for Colorado, and most of the rest of the U.S., I imagine. I know California has issues. 

So, if you don't want to be in hand to claw combat with a creature that doesn't understand that you're just a guy out for a run and don't mean 'em no harm, you might want to jog with a group or stick to the jogging trails in town. 

Hope the jogger guy is all right. And if he's ever up to sharing, I'd love to hear his story.

Maybe I'm Amazed

Or maybe I’m just numb, I don't know. Both. 

I've been in the people business for nigh nine years now and I would say that easily 100,000 people have crossed my path. Many for only five minutes, some for over an hour. Some of these encounters were recurring, most were one time. 
Most people don't experience this degree of exposure to The Public. They live out perhaps the entirety of their lives and through their choice of careers or physical location or both they don't encounter that many different people. They might see them on TV or on the internet, in movies, or maybe watch them if they're on a trip through a bustling city, or in an arena or stadium, but as far as directly interacting with them, no. 
They don't go there. I do. I have to, I chose to. I have to answer people's questions, greet them, listen to their complaints sometimes, and a host of other things. 

  When you start in a people-intensive line of work, you think you can handle it. If you're a typical candidate, there is a degree of resistance that you know is there and probably a lot that you're unaware of. You have rough edges. Because of those, you do it all wrong sometimes and receive heaps of repercussions. A lot is also projected upon you because you are wearing a uniform and there are associations made. 
But over time, and through much practice, thought, and effort you get better at handling situations but even so you can't ever rest and say 'I've seen it all!" because you haven't and never will. Nor have you heard it all. Because customers can and will surprise you. Never Assume is another way of putting that. 

And so everybody that's been in the people business for awhile has stories. This encounter and that one, tales about events that were handled with aplomb, spiraled out of control, or were a comedy of errors. 
Because the customers just don't understand, sometimes, how things work. Even though you have gone through the process or procedure literally ten thousand times it's new to them and so you have to have the patience of a saint while they don't but that's beside the point. 

Never can you say that you know what's coming for you don't, when you encounter a person. They might look like trouble, be dressed in a way that sets associative alarms off, or be acting in a manner that looks benign (but is really not) so your outlook has to be neutral. Guarded, definitely, in obviously problematic situations, but neutral to a degree even in those. The jury must still be out. For the most menacing figures can turn out to be pussycats and the sweetest appearing people can turn out to be lions sometimes and unexpectedly claw you.

Over time, pros at customer service become blank slates when it comes to dealing with people. We look for all the 'tells' but we still don't know what we're dealing with, for you might have come upon us pre-loaded and broiling due to an unrelated issue that we know absolutely nothing about. In order to assess you we quickly read your body language, facial expression, tone of voice, and whether or not eye contact is being made. We look for the way you are dressed, how you approach us, and at what speed, any evidence we can pick up that might give us a clue on what we're dealing with, because we don't know you from Shinola and due to that have to act super fast. All sorts of calculations are going on in our minds. We have extensive databases of former encounters, believe you me. The way you talk and the vocal inflections that you purposely or unconsciously use might tell us a ton about you. We listen for any catch phrases that are commonly used. You might think we haven't heard them before and that you're the only one who uses them but Sir, Buddy, Miss, & Ma'am, we've heard them a thousand times or more but you don't know that. How could you? You would only know how glaringly obvious these phrases were if you were in The Business, which most people aren't. 

You're probably, very likely, not outsmarting us but we'll let you think you are, because that makes for a smoother customer service interaction. 

Our skill comes from practice. Civilians will never truly get what we have from reading about it in a book, or from watching a video. Those tools help but there's something about actually doing it that seats customer service understanding into psyches because in doing it you can't escape, into thought, into disassociation, into observer mode. You have to come up with solutions. Answers. Redirections. Something! (And if it comes out rambly and doesn't really help at least you tried. It's okay that you don't know everything). 

I know this is a lot, and it might be viewed as I have wandered off point, but sometimes you have to illustrate a point in its entirety to bring home the message. The message is, despite everything I have said about all this experience and my so-called ability to read people, that I (and every other CSR out there) still don't know who is in front of me when someone is in front of me. I am not distressed, bummed, or jaded by my lack of mastery and continuous frustration at trying to read you, I am merely, and continuously, surprised. 

Exhibit A- Left the accountant’s life for a go at being a guitar shredder in leather.

Andrew Spencer- Unsplash.com

For I sense an astounding amount of life experience in you, whoever you are. I know that most Americans speak English, and that they understand much of what goes on and has gone on in the culture, that they can operate computers and hold jobs and raise kids and have families that they interact with, ditto friends and coworkers, but there is so much more. I look at people now and prejudge them not, if I am able, because I have realized that I can't possibly know what is driving them. So much has happened in their lives before they got to me. Each and every time I encounter a person I know I am encountering a truly unique individual and that the story of their life is, well, probably incredible. 

(I didn’t say it was good, I said it was incredible).

Yeah, people also put off an energy vibe, a signature, I forgot to mention that earlier. I try and read that too, everybody does. There's a flavor there, you might say. An aroma. A fragrance? A sense of 'warm', 'cold', 'weird', 'yuk', 'yum' and of course that's all mixed together too, little of this, little of that. 

Maybe, with all this going on, is why most people don’t work in customer service. It can be very destabilizing to encounter all these different energies. You have to be solidly grounded, firmly able to maintain a sense of yourself in the face of all the other selves out there. 

This subject is deep, deeper than I imagined it would be when I first sat down to write it. People are much the same on the surface but below that they are very different from each other. The individual proclivities they have interact with the family dynamics they were born into and then it spreads out from there into friends and coworkers and partners into social networks that now span the globe and I know that sounds quite grand but it's true, it's happening. We’re influencing each other more than ever. 

I've noticed that in the social networking arena, young people are painfully (to an older generation) real with each other, and maybe that's driven by this need to understand each other, for nobody really knows who they're dealing with. 
So much is there! And if we can find it, share it, reveal it, express it a little bit more, that helps bring us closer together, because we then might finally be able to understand that there is more than a persona, a mask, that is standing in front of us. 

Discovering the real person? 

That is (almost always) an amazing thing.

Singin' The Blues

The Blues are pretty handy. 'One size fits all' sort of thing. I have been recording some music lately, and some of that music has been The Blues. Sometimes a blues song or melody gets into my head and I find myself singing it everywhere.

"Lord! I gots dem sittin' at the traffic light cornah o' Airport Road 'n Hana Highway waitin' on the green arrow blues"

"Have mercy! I reached in the coolah, looked dis way n' that, saw it was missin' ‘n moaned "Why I do dat?!" Lawdy! I got dem ol’ lef my peanut buttah cookie on da table at home blues"

You too can sing The Blues wherever you go. Just insert your words into the words of whatever blues song you're listening to. It's very cathartic. 

The Blues can happen through soooo many situations, every day. The opportunity for them to occur is prodigious. Most of those situations aren't the rock bottom soul scrapin' kind but they're blue just the same. Which gets me to thinking that life itself is rather sad. So many things don't come to pass the way you'd want them to but we're taught to buck up, tough it out, and shrug it off. Well, you can only do that for so long. Better way of handling things, I think, might be to belt out some blues. 

You can sing them in the shower. In the car. When nobody else is around. Why keep sadness in? That's stress! Just reading The News is cause for The Blues so why not lament and moan? It'll do you right.
Maybe it's a sign of the times that we don't grieve much anymore. Kids certainly do, at the drop of a hat, but adults, why, if you exhibit any sadness people run away if they can but that doesn’t change the fact that adults carry a lot of sadness inside. We've seen a lot of stuff that probably we shouldn't have and there's plenty that needs expressin', 'cept we don't. 

Get this man a saxophone!

Gabriel-Unsplash.com

We're expected to be happy all the time, up, positive, and no greater evidence of that is the preponderance of selfies plastered all over the internet where folks are super up and livin' bright but I know they're not always that way. 
They're taking time out, some parts of their days, and thinkin' or singin' The Blues about somethin', just like me. 
And there's nothing wrong with that, that's part of life. You need to experience shadow so that you can appreciate light. 
(Just don't do any shadow experiencing in public!) 

When I see those old bluesmen in music videos, the genuine ones (not the flashy over the top wannabe ones you see so much of today), those soulful, grizzled, hard life lived old guys playing the blues on some beat up old guitar, singing as if only to themselves, I can identify. 
That's roots, man, that's soul. That's pain and suffering and it's authentic as hell. Right now I got the "I'm losin' my job and everybody's askin' me what I'm gonna do next" blues and if you haven't been there you don't know what I'm singing about but if you have, you know. 'Cuz you've had 'em too. 

Maybe as a society we've gotten away from reality some, we don't want to hear about a lot of things, see them, or know that they're going on. We want high excitement almost exclusively or think that we do but while that tends to pull us together, at sports arenas, in concert settings, at street festivals and the like, we are also aware that that's temporary because when the show is over and the excitement dies down, the crowd drifts away and we're left with ourselves. 

We're left with day to day life. Reality. All that stuff that occurs outside of the sight of others where we wrestle with subjects like our worth, impact, longevity, relationships, weight, work, prospects, chances, responsibilities, and obligations. The heavy things in life that weigh us down. Ain't no gettin' around those. You might feel better singin' some blues just then about what's troublin' you.

Personally, I can only sing maybe one or two blues songs and that's it. I'm done. All it takes for me. I don't linger in Bluesland, and found out long ago that I actually can't. Like most adults nowadays I have a short attention span, am insatiably curious, and am always ready for the next experience. Couldn't sing The Blues for long if I tried.

But I know that The Blues are always there for me if I need 'em, even if most times I only sing 'em light.

The Next Picture

Haven't put pencil to paper in quite some time. It's either Thought Of The Day or art and I can't do both because art is something that you get into. It's not something you do for twenty minutes. 

More like three hours. 

So that's where I'm at. I have got the next picture in mind though. It's gonna portray action of some kind, and I want the character in it to be happy because I'm going to put this one up on the wall. It will be symbolic, something I can look at and not only go "I drew that" but every time I see it I will feel good that it's there. 

Don't know what the character is or what he or she is going to be doing but I'll know it when I see it. 

Gonna be a big picture, about 36 x 24, something like that. I have the paper for it. I can scale it. No bigger than that though. Whaddya think, I'm drawin' a Warhol? 

I want a lot of detail, but not too much. Shadows aplenty that bring out contrast. The clothing not too fancy, nor the background. I want a dramatic pose and/or setting. This picture is going to have energy.

Thinking this one is going to portray a full figure.

Not this one. Too much going on!

Sandra Ollier- Unsplash.com

I want it to catch the eye, my eye at first, because that will get me to want to draw it. 

Time budget for this one is six drawing sit down sessions. I took on a project awhile ago with a bunch of people and faces in it that was like drawing the damn Sistine Chapel. Never again! (Still isn't finished).

I want character. Attitude. Gumption. Moxie. Like it like that. Got a new drawing board and have been Jones'n to try it out. 
Looking for that picture now, that setting, that pose, that character. No superheros. Those have been done. 
Meanwhile and during, I will continue with TOTD, a concurrent project. And many other things. 

Seems art is a frivolous endeavor, not worth the time. Au contraire! 

"Ars Gratia Artis"
Art for art's sake!

Some things just must be done.

Not for money, or fame, or for approval from others. Things simply must be brought into the physical, the physical form. 
For everything exists in the ethers. It's just not here yet.

I bring a little piece of the All into physical represenation, best I can. 

No other reason. 

But then again, if you can find a point to life itself, I'd like to hear it. 

Beyond Work

Exists a land called culture, which many people either know not of or very little of, for they are not used to having it. 
In mankinds' quest for survival, culture is one of those luxuries most often done without. Private enterprise, hell-bent on growth and dominance, cares little about culture and government- our current political climate especially- only sees supporting culture as a financial drain at best or a necessary evil at worst. 'The Arts', as they are called, which is a blanket term encompassing many 'frivolous' things, seems to be best presented via digital platforms where people can view culture but not participate in same. 

Cooking shows, traveling epicurean adventures, travelers reporting from various points on the globe, orchestras on You Tube, operas, street festivals, concert footage, sporting events, tours of art galleries, hunting even (and this just in- virtual reality plays where people can put on goggles and experience being in the scene), all are portrayed via the screen so that people, homebound in Podnunk or whatever, can experience cultural things vicariously and don't feel so very left out. 

For in Podnunk they're not so good at arts and culture, though they try and compete with cities around the area for things that their citizens might be interested in but, money, you know, drives this luxurious thing called culture, something they'd very much like to have. However, the roads need fixing and the town is over budget on the new jail and the school district is clamoring for more money and that means raising taxes which nobody wants and damn it would be nice if we could draw more real jobs here but- yada yada yada. 

Ya get what ya get where you live so the moneyed have flocked to well established cultural founts New York and San Francisco, Disney-esque islands where they knew they could experience mondo loads of culture, but real-time demographic data is showing that gentrification sets in when the cost of living rises and the very thing the rich want to forever experience is getting slowly killed off, artists not known to be as financially astute as the wealthy, nor are the artists so willing and able to hold day jobs and then perform for audiences at night. Or on weekends. So what's a city, or a group of cities- a nation- to do?

(Gasp!) Support the arts? OMG! That would cost money, but if culture was supported in not just The Big Apple and The Bay Area but across the land maybe, just maybe people would take more of an interest in where they lived, and go out more. Turn off the box, shut down the screen, see it live, participate even and be happy where they were instead of barrelling down The Boulevard afta work, you know, the one that seems scary and vacant even in the daytime, is lined by fencing on either side, and leads into the 'neighborhood' that the developers promoted as a 'community' because it has a walking path threading through it and a tiny, scrubby park with a playground for the kids oh dear God take me already!

Business, business, business, the economy, the economy, the economy! Don't the wealthy have enough already? Yes they do but they didn't put any of that in when they built The Podnunk Addition. 

Not dressed for ergasia (work)

Xuan Nguyen- Unsplash.com

The Arts fill a need, and that is to fill the soul with something that resembles Home. We did not come from a sterile environment and we won't thrive within one either. We yearn for the richness that naturally rises from the wellspring of our beingness. Art and culture is who we at heart are, and that thing we call work is included in there too, though it would be better put as 'craft', 'mastery', or 'skill'. We're not one dimensional in our expression, we're multidimensional. We function best when we operate in balance. Too heavy the focus on work, too little our exposure to culture, and we wither. 

On the upside, progress has been made! Most of the planet seems to have this survival thing down. America has Costco, which is a very good survivability indicator, so perhaps it's time we took things to the next level. We're new at this luxury thing, frivolity is still frowned upon- especially by The Boss, The Board, The Shareholders, and other stern entities- so it ain't gonna be easy moving forward because we've been relentlessly conditioned to live mainly without, but if we introduce arts and culture into the mix imagine the growth potential there! It's really where we're going as a species. I can't imagine our dreams to be building mega-factories, 2.7% annual GDP, or blasting off to Mars or some other planet only to recreate the world we have already made. 

Arts and culture is what the world is sorely lacking because it's the least cost effective element in a world fixated on creating wealth (for the very, very few). Marginally feeding and sheltering humans isn't the 'cost of doing business'. Creating satisfying lives is the true cost of doing business, but business doesn't want to factor that into their miserly calculations, thus the world 'is as it is'. 

Evolved societies always contain loads of culture. Like it or not, businesses, governments, we're headed in that direction. The olde 'labor camp' model isn't going to work anymore. 'Military barracks' model. 'Shopping center surrounded by suburbia' model. People want more. 

How to get there? Art incubators worked in the past. Give creative people places to practice and hone their craft. Finance entire districts where culture can be presented in concentrated form. Enable entreprenuers to marry their need to make money with their drive to support culture. Tell the Zoning Board and the SWAT team to stand down some so a bunch of people can eat street food, make noise, and roam from venue to venue (safely) at night. Build parks- big ones- that have lots of things in them that people can do for in doing, the people's lament “There's nothing to do!”, will be quelled.

And throughout, make whatever is built beautiful. 

How did we ever get away from this? Where did we err, drop the ball, and miss the handoff because European cities are packed with this stuff and that's where a lot of us came from? (Not to slight other cultures, though, I'm sure if I looked into any one of those the people from there would probably feel like there was a little- or a lot- left behind). 

America is a nation of immigrants that was 'tasked' with the job of filling a vast land and those immigrants were in a rush. Gold rush, land rush, mad rush. We didn't build those arts and culture 'extras' into our cities, most of them, though some people tried. And now that our cities are all built up, politics and tremendous redevelopment costs are involved, the wheels turn slowly or not at all, and a lot of us are left with something like Podnunk. 
So that's where we're at. Again I say, though, that that is not where we're staying because the simple fact is that people want more than 'just enough'. If I don't say it someone else will, and then somebody after that, and so on. And maybe that's what it takes to get the ball rollin'.

Because, deep at heart, we're all culture vultures and will, given the chance, sup at the glorious banquet table of culture and heartily consume its many offerings.

You Hang In There, Dave

Around mid-shift, after a particularly obnoxious group had passed through, one passenger lingered because she had something to say. She waited until the others, hurrying, were out of earshot, then looked me right in the eye and gasped "I can't believe the lack of gratitude! Do people treat you like this every day?"
"Yes. I get this on a daily basis" I sighed, an authentic edge of weariness in my voice.
"People just don't appreciate blue collar workers! I could tell from watching you that you really don't like your job"
"I hate it! But it's only going to last a few more months"
She, older, wiry, and strong, reached for my hand and gave me a firm handshake. "I'm an ex UPS driver, and my partner over there worked at UPS too. We know what it's like. You hang in there, Dave!”
"I will. Thanks for acknowledging me" I said as they left, not knowing if they heard that last line. 

There's people in the world that know, and there's people in the world that don't. The ones that know, that have been there, might not ever let me know that they know. They might just observe and then leave the scene. But others that know might give me a telling look, a glance, met, that indicates that they have been there too. A pat on the shoulder. A genuine thank you. They might engage me in light conversation. But rare is it that I'll have a full on 'encounter' because acknowledging the fact that the public as a whole is generally a rude and insensitive mob isn't exactly something that those in the know want to bring up, probably for the same reasons that veterans don't want to talk about their time on the battlefield. 

If you see these guys coming, it’s time to run.

Adam Whitlock- Unsplash.com

Those of us that have worked with the public, we're different. I can read faces pretty good and I can just tell, when I watch workers dealing with the public, by the way they are talking or gesturing, if they've been at it for a while. I can almost tell what thoughts are running through their minds for I have been in the breakrooms and I've heard the stories. All of us in customer service have had highly individualistic encounters with the public and while the particulars vary, the encounters themselves run kinda the same. The gist of it is that members of the public wear on us with their attitudes and unrealistic demands and think nothing of it.

We weather their insensitivity because we have to get the job done, whatever our function is, which calls for focus and though it may seem like we aren't doing a lot sometimes we're still on the job. We have to be ever present. The public knows we're duty bound to be approachable so they think nothing of asking us a question, or hitting us up for a little one on one working through an issue that should have been handled beforehand, or a host of other things that are like 'favors' being asked of us, not realizing that the cumulative affect of this takes a toll.

Well, we think that the public does realize that it takes a toll on us but the public does what it does anyway, because we're there and because they can.

It's amazing to witness this from the inside, from the front lines, because only there do you realize the full extent of the sense of entitlement that customers imagine they are granted just because they're buying or paying for something. Instantly at the counter or over the span of a flight away from home people can go from nobodies to playing King or Queen For A Day (or a week). They think nothing of lording over others, which is something we in customer service find alarming. It's a good thing that these people aren't given any more power than just the little bit they are granted, because their tendency to abuse power seems to be unbounded. 

So- when that ex-UPS lady firmly shook my hand, she infused caring into the situation, something she knew I would absorb like a sponge because I had been walking in the dry and barren desert that the public offers up, a dusty, cruel, harsh land completely devoid of any nourishment. She brought me back to life and became my instant soul sistah. I didn't need to know what she had gone through to get the understanding, the fact that she understood to the degree she did told me everything I would ever need to know. Her suffering had been similar, yet different than mine. But I knew that she had come out of it on the other side.

  Through being on the front lines she had developed compassion, tolerance, and patience. She hadn't broken, she hadn't become one of the numberless rude members of the public, spewing forth her impatience, disdain, petulance, and all the rest. No, she had risen above it, like I have, and despite the actions of the public has become a better person. I know she's gonna do well wherever she goes, and I know she thinks the same of me because she saw in me that even though I didn't like my job, I still treated the people with kindness, though with kindness the people treated me not. 

That's big. That's huge. If you've learned that lesson, you have arrived. That lady knew the value that both of us could bring to the world through having the understanding.

  It takes one to know one.

Forces Of Containment

Like it or not, you exist for the benefit of others who you probably do not know. Your life makes their life possible, a grander life, perhaps, because you act as support for their enterprise or enterprises. This is called being part of The Economy. 
The Economy is by no means a static thing, it changes as we breathe and as I write this and because it changes, it has to be monitored. 

Various monitoring systems are ever in place and have been since centuries past, these monitoring systems evolving with the times. The goal of these monitoring systems is to see to it that things do not get out of hand and that control is kept in the hands of the ones interested in seeing to it that their enterprises continue to function and prosper. This is not news to anyone, of course any business would see to those ends being accomplished, but often is it the case that long after any benefit to the operators of the enterprises has been realized, and benefit to the masses has been gained, that the enterprises themselves continue in operation. They do this until a superior technology or process comes along to overpower them, usurp them, which has happened quite regularly over the last few decades with the arrival of computers and digital technology. 

All enterprises have a beginning and an end. Initially, the process or device they introduce acts as a breakthrough and is seen as useful. This process or technology is adopted, that which it can supplant is retired or done away with, the process 'takes' more and more, becoming dominant, and then it meets its demise. This cycle has happened rather slowly throughout history and has been painstakingly documented but what about now? What technologies are being developed that could act as more rapid game changers upon our existing systems?
There are many. Any one could play a significant role in labor reduction, improvements in efficiency, or the outright elimination of existing means of doing things; these process improvements also affecting any resource gathering, stockpiling, needing to protect resources, the abilities to relocate and build, and may act to spur even more change. 

Existing enterprises most likely won't embrace these changes and will seek to thwart them in various ways, try to outlaw them even, but that will only work for a time. How many holes in the dam can you plug before you run out of fingers? 

Not Reality… …just reality… ..not Reality.. ...just reality…

Rye Jessen- Unsplash.com

The times we are in raises the potential of a lot of changes happening at once, which could severely destabilize the existing reality bubble humanity exists in and this is something that is exciting while at the same time frightening, for in the introduction of any element into existing systems there are reactions. Some are benign, hardly noticed, while some can be explosive. 

Enter the Forces Of Containment to temper the introduction of elements of change, to slow them, delay them, to (try and) thwart them entirely. We live in a system of duality and nowhere is that more true than in the balance of power. At the present time power lies in the hands of a few, who use money and information to condition the masses. 'Just enough' is given, is allowed the many, to keep them occupied and content with their lot, which makes them easy to manage. It's all about management. 

But is a human a cow? One of the herd, mindlessly chewing cud amongst other cows in some grassy field called suburbia, content with its lot because, compared to all the other cows in the field, he or she appears to be keeping up? 
Nay, I think the truth is that most humans have no idea who they actually are or why they're here, that they don’t know that each and every one of them was born innately noble, deserves only the best, and that they've been severely conditioned to think otherwise. But, such conditioning has kept perhaps many egos in check, egos that would have battled amongst each other and squabbled like playground kids over trivialities, with utter disregard for other's needs or the needs of the planet. School for us was necessary, is what I'm trying to say. 

And now, after the passage of many ages, perhaps it's now time for the Forces Of Containment to fall away to a greater degree. Many of us have matured and are now able to treat each other with kindness and respect, responsibly steward the earth, know when to say yes to an action and when to say no. 
It's nigh time to leave our need for parenting aside, time to do away with stodgy, suffocating governance, restrictions, and rules, and chart our own courses as we learn, over time, who we really are. 

It'll take time to drop the conditioning, there has been a lot of that applied over millennia. Multi-generational, our conditioning goes way back. Finding out who we are will be a joyful process of rediscovery and I don't think we'll be able to rush it for we cannot fathom our nobility, worthiness, and value, or come to terms with the fact that a benevolent system has carefully and patiently guided us through a very long process from afar, for we have a place in The Universe to fill, us gallant human beings of earth. Eventually, we shall take our places among the heralded, and many will honor us in legend and song.

Coffee Shop Window

     There was a coffee shop in a city I usta live in that had big plate glass storefront windows. Now I know this doesn't sound like anything out of the ordinary because there are very few coffee shops that don’t offer views of passerby, but with this this particular coffee shop, it was different. 

     Maybe it was the light. Maybe it was the location. Maybe it was because it was close to the river. Maybe it had to do with the diversity of the populace in that part of town. Maybe all of the above. And maybe there was something more, undefined, that made the view from those windows so compelling for the view out of this coffee shop's windows approached art. 

     People of all races and ages walked by. Shuffled by. Staggered by. Limped by. Ran by. You name it. 

Some days it was incredibly hot, some days it was bone chillin' cold. Every person walking by was as unique as a snowflake. To some degree different. Most were ordinary, not so noteworthy, the difference between them and the person I saw ten minutes ago that looked kinda like them wasn't much. Life was, however, indelibly etched upon passerby faces and some particular faces I wanted to draw in black and white. I wanted to capture whatever was in those faces because they modeled universal human traits. They were striking in their features, in their expression. This was a persistent idea I had but never actually followed up on, probably due to my wanting to look at the next passing person's face!

Lots of data being taken in.

Antonio Dicaterina- Unsplash.com

It was mesmerizing to watch this parade of humanity pass by. Of course, after you spend time anywhere you start noticing local characters, but of those there were relatively few. The sheer number of different people that this tourist town constantly brought in from everywhere got me wondering over time if God was keeping track of all these people- and why?

 
Surely there was a lot of life experience there, for good and bad, but what did all that experiencing amount to? Anything? Were people born to simply experience being human- breathing, eating, excreting, procreating? To experience being a child, then a teen, then an adult? To experience the wearing of clothing, courting of one's mate, holding job(s), wending their way through school, getting on the wrong side of the law? Some looked to have been been lucky in their experiencing, while others looked beaten down. Some were missing limbs, or they were walking in what looked to be painful ways. Some were exuberant, some sullen. Jesus it was better than any reality show on TV because here it wasn't just pretty faces, voluptuous bodies, and workout builds. Not at all. Here it was all the people that you don’t see on TV, which is most of humanity. I wanted to know their stories. "What (the hell) happened?!”.

  
But finding that out was an impossibility. I had to turn away. It was too much. There were too many of them- and they kept coming. Numbers! What does a hundred mean to you, a thousand? A hundred thousand, a million? Those are the numbers demographers throw out when they reference people. Describing people in this manner is necessary but it turns people into abstract entities, almost unreal. 

Mind-boggling, this is. There are over three hundred million people in the United States. China and India each contain over a billion people. That's a lot of faces! 

So what does it all mean? Why did all these souls volunteer to be here? From what I have seen, the vast majority of them didn't come here to party. Why did they volunteer for endless suffering, boredom, and lackluster daily experiencing, which could be succinctly said to be 'just existing'? Is human life so precious that each and every one of them would pit themselves against a mass of other people in an arena, an arena from which very few rise to positions of wealth or prominence, in order to 'give it a go and see what happens', knowing full well that the odds were against them; that there might be one or many who would subdue them, cheat at the game, shatter their dreams, place them in cages political or financial; this along with the possibility that they themselves might fall ill or suffer accident, sidelining them temporarily or permanently, and so many, many other things?

    Really, why bother? What's the point? Were we born to watch Netflix and SportsCenter (hey- gettin' personal here!), watch other people on TV, read about them in the papers, or online, watch them on the silver screen again and again as they play out their careers while we read the Good Book and wait politely our arrival to The Promised Land (via Rapture, preferrably), while others await the arrival of benevolent aliens and still others enlightenment- or oblivion? 

Are not all of us dreamers? Wishful thinkers? Each one of us on a personal quest, each one of us on the Hero's Journey of the ego trying to make who we are and what we do matter? We must be! There is no other sane answer. We're all givin' life a go and buckin' serious odds but you know, while winnin' at the game is great, losin' at it ain't so bad. 

Just take a look through any coffee shop window. You'll see you got plenty of company.

"What'r You Gonna Do?"

My current employ is going to end this year and this is also true for the little gang I work with and so we're all being peppered with questions a lot about what we're going to do next. (But enough about them! We're fellow job seekers now, in competition with each other) 
Ideally, I should like to retire to a life where this kind of question troubles and vexes me not but the situation is such that this is not yet possible. Close, but no cigar, as they say. 
And it's not like I haven't done this sort of thing before, many, many times, this 're-inventing myself'. However, the older I get, the less career matters to me and the more job satisfaction does. Money is not so big an issue anymore, though money still is welcome, but more important to a seasoned worker like me is that my work environment be suited to my temperament. Like an old dog I am not one to suffer fools gladly, with puppy-esque forbearance, nay, I be snappy with the uncouth and uncultured and perhaps may even growl if I merely sense their approaching energetic signature(s) but are not yet 'blessed' with their physical presence(s). 
So, that being stated, here are a few of the answers I give to those presenting the posit "What'r you gonna do?"

"I hear the Chinese are hiring for their new Martian colony. Three year contract. The shifts in the palladium processing factory are long but the pay is fantastic. However, what truly ices the cake is that us workers will enjoy plenty of top end A.I. company, if you know what I mean. I'm thinkin' on that one. Haven't signed anything yet"

"McMurdo Station in Antartica is another possibility. I've been wanting to get away from it all for a long time but the aforementioned Chinese have taken away my A-list destination, a very ancient and remote cave high in the Tibetan Himalayas, which I had hoped to occupy in profound mediation. Antarctica offers me a similar opportunity, a paid one no less, but there I have to share my cave with others. I'm on the fence with that one"

"Moving away from hermitage offerings, I am considering a gig as a New York art dealer. I saw an article in The Times a few days ago where some of the upper crust dealers were partyin' it up as part of the job, you know, that sort of thing being expected. You must roll with the ridiculously moneyed so that you can correctly appraise works they might be inclined to purchase. I would also, in order to fit in, have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a month to adorn myself with the latest fashions. While I haven’t laid out that kind of dough before, I have shopped at Savers and clothed myself with high end name brands for years! Waiting on a call there"

"Several news outlets have approached me about being a guest on their shows. They like the fact that I'm highly opinionated and think that I could act as a galvanizing force with their audiences, possibly bringing ratings up into the stratosphere. I have the correct amount of repressed anger and can weave some pretty convincing spin. I've already gone through numerous screen tests and they're liking what they're seeing. The stopper here is that they're thoroughly vetting me beforehand. A couple of people have been assigned to research my past and comb through everything I've ever written in order to see if they can find anything that enemies- contrarians- might use to bring me down. I feel sorry for those researcher guys 'cuz I wrote a lot of stuff. Might take them a year or more"

Been working on this bridge forever.

Peter Usher- Unsplash.com

"Two highly placed people in Hollywood have proposed doing a reality show where I am exposed on a constant basis to five star luxury. They want to set me up in cribs and situations all over the world and film my reactions as I experience things beyond my wildest dreams. They think that this concept show would resonate with a vast blue collar base, I, in effect, becoming the patron saint of worker bees. They could live their lives vicariously through me! I told the Hollywood guys that I considered such a thing absolutely morally reprehensible and would have none of it! They took this as me playing hard to get- and my agent just loves that play! He's reporting back to me daily on how negotiations are progressing on a reconfigured contract"

"Can U believe it?! The Weather Channel wants me to be on their team! They're looking for a long term Storm Guy, you know, the guy that gets placed in the wildest weather situations. Lightning! Hail! Tornados! Cracks of thunder, right overhead! In the path of flying debris! Wading through floodwaters, taking that last breath of clear air before being overcome by a dust storm, slippin' and slidin' for the camera at ice storm ground zeros, and up to his neck in freshly fallen snow- with more coming- that's the job for me. I practiced this one a lot as a kid so I know the ropes"

Now I know all these sound good, and would fit me to a T, but the job I've always wanted still eludes me. The folks in charge of this one haven't responded to my resume yet but I'm gonna hold out for a bit longer and see if they reply. 
Warren Beatty said that the best part of being famous was that you got a thing called access, and that's what I want most of all. ACCESS! I want the ropes to part for me and the doors to open everywhere I go. How you qualify for this one I don't exactly know but I do know that when you're in, you're in. Somebody way up declares that you are access-worthy and then it just snowballs from there. I've lit my manifestation candles, am doing woo-woo ceremonies at my altar big time, and am chanting affirmations continuously over this one.

If it takes me a while to get there it'll be worth it 'cuz I want it all. In the meantime I'll most likely be found working at one of those other jobs I listed, or doing something similar. Ya gotta make a livin', right?

I'm okay with suffering until I get my access gig, you know, until I get my real job.

Cooking

Had I things my way, I would just show up at a different one of those 'Burgers, Brew, and 'Que' places every day of the year and order take-out but logistically that is impossible so I have had to learn how to cook. 
There are a lot of things you have to have in order to cook. You have to have the right equipment. You have to have the right ingredients, and the right quantities of those ingredients. You have to have time. 
Then you just 'follow the recipe', right? Sometimes that works, if you're making something super simple, but most times you cut corners on cooking time, run out of ingredients, substitute this for that because you couldn't source the exact ingredients, forget to measure something correctly, use too much heat/not enough, or.....
There are thousands of cookbooks and perhaps tens of thousands of recipes so you pick one out of the book or one from the listings online and off you go and when all is said and done most times it doesn't taste as good as you think it should. Why is this?
Spicing your dish is critical. Amateurs tend to put in too much, or not enough. Add too much heat or salt and you might as well throw what you made out. You can't cut that stuff enough! Make it too bland and you can add some spice later but it works better when it's introduced during the cooking process. Flavors meld. 
I never thought cooking would be as difficult as it is. You do a lot of winging it during the cooking process because things happen quickly sometimes and you have to make decisions.
  You learn over time to spice food as you go along. You build a spice arsenal to help you with that.
  Fresh vegetables taste better than ones that have been sitting around too long. Properly cooked vegetables call for precise cooking times. 
Meat calls for high temperatures sometimes 'cuz you gotta sear that stuff initially to lock the juices in.
  Stock is necessary if you want to achieve taste. Fat adds flavor, as does caramelization, zest, sprinkling cheese on top, adding cilantro, etc. 
Little touches complete the dish. Little touches are (usually) worth the effort. 
Bland ingredients aren't going to taste any better once they're cooked!
  Many recipes on the internet are touted as sure winners but a lot of them aren't. 
You can spend your whole life cooking and never come close to learning everything.
  Professional kitchens use spicing tricks that they won't reveal but if you're lucky somebody will have found out and will tell you what that special something is that they did or added. 
When you get something down, you can make it over and over and possibly sell it. People will flock to your table or food joint because you offer a taste found nowhere else. 
It helps to know the chemistry of food, why certain things happen, or what is happening when food is undergoing transformation in the pot. 

When you get the recipe down, you can scale it up. Chai tea factory?

Prijun Koirala- Unsplash.com

Prep work always takes longer than stated, and cleanup during and after the cooking process as well. This makes take-out attractive but one thing about home cooking is you know what is in the dish because you put it in there! 
Unlike stores, where everything is labeled, restaurants don’t have to tell you what is in the food. 
You never do a recipe the same way twice because you're always tweaking it this time around.
Over time you build up a huge repertoire of dishes that you have made and you think nothing of it.
I always balk at recipes that call for exotic ingredients. Can't source those where I live and where do you get that kind of stuff anyway?
'Serving size' is sometimes ridiculously small.
Lots of recipes call for more butter, sugar, or salt than I can stand.
  Having a freezer stocked with dishes that I have made is my forever goal.
Few people like to cook- but everybody likes to eat.
Soups call for a lot of salt.
Pork loins and chicken breasts call for a lot of seasoning.
Kitchen disasters are just part of the process of learning. Overspice it one time and you'll never do that again.
Try a new recipe out on a small scale before you commit to making large quantities. 
There are wildly different tastes to be found in common ingredients. Butter. Olive oil. Tomato sauce. Use the best ingredients if you can afford them.
Deep fryers aren't worth the trouble. Get take-out if you want fried food.
Cooking is best done with a partner. The process is more fun and goes much faster.
Restaurants use food prep short cuts. Read about those. Seek them out. They won't affect taste but they will save you time. 
Make too big a batch of food and you'll be eating leftovers forever.
Realistically, working people don't have the time or inclination to source fresh ingredients at the local farmer's market, they won't be found studying produce and buying just enough for ‘tonight's special dish’.
Multiple dishes can be cooked at once. It calls for skill at multitasking but it can be done.
Flavors must be balanced. Flavors are sweet, sour (acid), salt, heat, umami (savory).
Cooking shows are invaluable. Watch some and see how the pros do it. 
If an internet recipe sounds like an odd flavor combination, it probably is.
You can get award winning recipes on the internet. All the award winning chili competition cookoff recipes, for example, can be found. 
You will make it 'restaurant quality' and surprise yourself. Many times. 
Baking is messy. Flour gets everywhere. 
You need lots of countertop and island space in order to cook. 
Gas stoves rock. 

Erudite

     (In a video I see a diminutive man, against a background of gray. Not physically strong is he. But mentally, this man is a giant. After watching for an hour, I turn away and some time later post these words) 

What really drives us? Should we blindly take others' conclusions about what this world is about or should we question those conclusions, and by so doing, come to a further understanding?
Why, you'd think that this had been done already. By the many who have come before. You would think that we would have this (human life) down. 
From the looks of things, we have. We have 'figured life out and are expanding our horizons' but is this so? Perhaps 'expanding our horizons' is only us still searching, searching for something satisfying. 
  Looking around, everybody seems to be busy doing something, which is in a way searching for something, so what other action should a herd follower take but to join the pack and search too- for fulfillment, higher purpose, better sex, more money, endorphin highs, adrenaline rushes, enlightenment, bliss, inner peace, etc. Why not 'bundle it' all and call it 'Satisfaction'? 
But I, like many, can't get no satisfaction no matter what I do so I search and search but this little Indian man patiently and logically brings it home to me and anybody else that cares to listen that searching is unnecessary and is only a product of the mind. Searching comes through thought. We search because we have thought ourselves into searching! We have promomoted thinking over being and have created worlds upon worlds, concepts upon concepts. We have turned simple into complex. We have woven personal webs that must be cut through and torn apart in order to get back to simplicity. 
This man shows us the way but we must carefully follow his words, for he does not err in his reasoning, though we, in a rush, might choose to take a shortcut. We are in this rush, at first, for we think that what he is talking about is some sort of desirable state but we find that what we desire can only be in conflict with what is. 
And there is only what is. 
This gentle yet unwavering man brings us back to the state we were in before we started thinking about everything and anything and that was probably so long ago none of us can remember for we have been seemingly wrapped up forever in thought, in analyzing information, in trying to make sense of things in hopes that we will get to......
.....The Answer but if The Answer comes as a result of thought it cannot be The Answer for The Answer is beyond all thought and can't be expressed for in expressing it you have placed a limit on the limitless! 

The roots of the tree of knowledge run deep.

Jeremy Bishop- Unsplash.com

But still this urbane man tries, even though he is now not of this world. Recordings of him live on though, and his words continue to ring true in numerous books. 
Some would say that this man of wisdom didn't have it all figured out, that there were flaws in his reasoning and so they argue amongst themselves about that, about things that they don't get about what he said, even though he tried to articulate his understanding as clearly as possible. His understanding had to be articulated in a precise and painstaking manner so that it could be transferred and we could comprehend. 
Mental silence was what he was leading us towards, seeing things as they truly are in their pristine state, unsullied by thought.
Some listened, but many turned away, perhaps to return at another time or in another life when the pain got to be too great, when the 'world got to be too crazy' and their minds roiled, like the minds of many are probably roiling now, so great is our political dysfunction. Madness, our present state is, the result of thoughts running wild, logic and reason abandoned for magic, fantasy, and deluded states of being held only in the minds of those so taken by them, these states of being having nothing to do with what actually is. 
Presently, it is being asked of many to share in these states of madness but the man from India said that this has been commonplace throughout history. When minds are in conflict with reality only corruption can result. The power hungry seek to foster, and then capitalize, on widespread states of delusion.  
And thus it is that many are arguing now with what is and wanting to assert their worldviews to such an extent that they are willingly putting filters over their eyes and distorting the sounds coming into their ears to match the 'realities' that they, and only they, hold as being true. 
The cure for this is the cold logic of The Universe which filters not and this is what came into the mind of the refined man, he one out of a multitude, who defied worldwide madness. He asked not to be worshipped or followed but only that he be listened to, for he wanted to alleviate the confusion the masses were undergoing. He truly wanted to help, for there was no personal gain to be had for him, he being far beyond the needs of money or being liked.
Krishnamurti was his name. He's alive and well on You Tube and if you're so inclined, cue up one of his talks and listen. It won't be as exciting as watching any one of the eight "Fast And Furious" movies, but it also won't have you wanting more substance at the end. After watching any of the videos of his talks you'll feel nourished somehow, like your mind has permission for once to just be still. Maybe watching one of the videos of him will point out to you something you've got a hang up with, or through watching you can see how to approach the process of thinking in a different way. You'll see why it's highly important to not go unconscious, why it's important to always monitor your thoughts. You'll see many benefits and those benefits will accrue. 
For sure, you will see that there is an antidote for what passes for 'deep thinking' these days, and be comforted by seeing that before you came into this world, there were actually people that wrestled with and came to some pretty good conclusions about life and why we're here.