It's Been Awhile

The significance of the moth is change..... Caterpillar into chrysalis or pupa. From thence into beauty---Hannibal Lecter, "Silence of the Lambs"

So, it's been awhile, and I apologize. It's just that frankly things have changed. And as this opening reflected, it's the hope that this change is subsequently reflected as being something of beauty.

In the respite since my last post, I've decided to depart a company and a position that had given me tremendous opportunity, tremendous comfort and clout and tremendous security.

To rip literally away from it, to flee the suckling teat is probably a hallmark of mine. A habit. And frankly sometimes it scares the shit out of me. Why do I suddenly get all A-D-D after some quantity of time passes, and I am at my apogee. Do I truly fear the fall to earth? Do I truly fear the possibility of not meeting the previously gained expectations?

I don't rightfully know. It's a little like the male dog marking. I've marked, I'm moving on.

So now I'm in a new job, in a new technology space, and from what I see the only way up...is up.

And that's why it's been awhile. I've been in my cocoon. Waiting for the butterfly. For those that know me...I mean, really know me, know that that is perfectly like me.

So soon I will post some other meanderings, but I thought you should know. For those of you who read.

What Love Isn't

I remember somebody once told me that love isn't what you see when you're out in public, or when you're broadcasting yourself in some sort of forum. Love is what happens when nobody is looking.

Love takes out the trash. Love stays up late.

Love is what happens when somebody makes the other person better...when they fill the gap. And love is seen by those who watch, those who listen, and those who observe. And when a supposed love burns down the carefully placed combustibles that make up a person, that torch the tiny and spider-like connections to all the other people that happen to be connected, then it is not love. It is a toxin. It is an addiction that is compelling, and singular, and focused. And it tastes like love. And it acts like love.

But it is its opposite. It is pride. And it is love of self.

And sometimes, it is only when you lose something that you love, or have the impact of almost losing something that you love, that you realize the fragility of it. The happenstance of it. The mercurial thing we all seek.

I don't love a lot of things. But the things and people I do know that I do. (Or I hope they do) But I don't show it in an endless of array of sayings, or comments or elaborate schemes.

It's in the tiniest, tiniest portions, doled out with a silver ladle. A favorite meal. A favorite salsa. A favorite drink. An extra hour to sleep in. Coffee made fresh.

It ultimately is the action of love that reveals, not the words that are written or murmured. The actions. The constant refrain of unsolicited, unbiased, unrequited, unexpected actions. Some visible, but many invisible.

Those that are loved feel the tiny delicate drops of such actions. They stand in a rain, they stand in a storm. They know they are loved, and they never need doubt it. Love never asks, nor does it need reminders.

Love is where you can return to, always. Even after it has been stepped on, discarded and almost forgotten.

Because love isn't what you feel when you are with somebody...it's what you feel when you are without somebody.

Settling with Power

I was in a helicopter crash once. A claim not many people can make, let alone live to write about in retrospect.

We were returning from a border surveillance mission along the East German border in 1989, just months before the Wall fell. Our mission: to monitor and create presence along the Western border of Germany to ensure the Soviets didn't forget about us.

In a return to the airport, we experienced a compressor stall, essentially the aircraft consuming itself as it flew 100 mph and 100 feet over the ground. I was on the headset, with the pilots while a fellow intelligence observer was next to me. As soon as the reverberating bangs echoed through the aircraft, the pilots immediately decreased speed and went through a series of drills to attempt to continuing flying.

My friend next to me had grabbed my thigh and although he didn't have the headset on, he clearly discerned an issue.

"What the f*** is going on?" he screamed loud enough for me to hear.

"Shhh" I intoned back to him. "I'm trying to find out."

Needless to say, in that span of seconds, we plummeted in a controlled crash that left the helicopter bouncing along the grass and fortunately leaving us in an upright position. The talents of the crew and the luck of the day certainly were instrumental.

But needless to say, it reiterated the unforgiving nature of flight, particularly rotary-winged, and especially helicopters.

The very recent tragedy in Afghanistan is a highly visible indicator of the danger of our mission. I guess my only concern is that pilots die in numbers merely training for the very missions they are conducting overseas, and that I am saddened that it takes a war effort to highlight the peril of their profession.

My first weeks in my very first Army unit were fresh from an awards ceremony that honored a future friend of mine when two helicopters collided and he landed his nearby and with little consideration for his own safety pulled pilots out of aircraft. My first few weeks were trodding where a very fresh wound lay inside the unit.

Numerous small issues ensued...a tree strike here, a bird strike there. But the one unsettling incident came about during a very stormy night during a live-fire exercise when a helicopter "settled with power" after being fully loaded with fuel and armament.

The term is very sophisticated, and I had to look at the definition a few times to make it somewhat understandable but essentially what happens is this:

Vortex ring state describes an aerodynamic condition where a helicopter may be in a vertical descent with up to maximum power applied, and little or no cyclic authority. The term “settling with power” comes from the fact that helicopter keeps settling even though full engine power is applied

Translation: You're flooring it and you're still falling out of the sky.

Flashback: When my young wife and I arrived in Germany we had no friends, no familiarity and she would argue no money. Matt Heins was a pilot who was fresh from flight school and he and his young wife were in the same boat. He was from southern hick state, with an accent as thick as the German beer, and he was one of those personalities who shined in every dismal, god-forsaken German army exercise. He drove me up to get my car when it shipped and he invited us over for Christmas and 4-wheeling when it snowed. He was in every sense an outstanding officer and an excellent friend.

Matt "settled with power" that night in Germany and broke his back. They believed that he would never fly again, and that he would spend the rest of his days in pain and on the ground.

Matt ended up proving everybody wrong, and against tremendous odds he regained flight status. He flew again, and led soldiers as an officer in the army flying AH-1 Cobra attack helicopters.

Matt was killed in a helicopter crash that was merely the unforgiving nature of his chosen profession. He widowed a young lady less than 30 years old, and he left a huge hole to those that knew him.

My point is that in this post-news Afghanistan wreckage that reveals the horror of war, I cannot help but wonder at the lives that were lost even before these boys went overseas.

They are in a horrible profession, a job that requires high skills and high risks. Their deaths, while honorable, are in line with the nature of their calling. They are not unique. They are by no means the first, and by no means the last.

I grieve for Matt, and for the soldiers lost in the accidents that are part of the hardening that sharpens our spears. But I believe they died in an endeavor of love, doing what they were trained to do, and merely experiencing the ultimate sacrifice for something that is ultimately chosen by few.

Do not get into a helicopter. They are unforgiving.

Hushed Conversations

There are very few times on my commute to New York that I actually sit beside somebody. Usually I'm in an early train to arrive in the morning so that I can be the good corporate citizen and punch in for my full 8-hours.

It is a rarity, then, when somebody plunks down beside me.

And usually, I have either my laptop open and my Ipod or minimally my Ipod so that I can appear the least interested in my surroundings. In public transportation it's a necessary trait.

My last trip to the city was a little different, in a broad variety of reasons...I left mid-day, worked my way through a fairly large crowd of fellow travelers and also had somebody sit next to me prior to even departing.

She was young, probably my daughter's age, and if somebody asked me to describe her I think that the most effective word would be Persian. Dark hair, tee shirt and jeans, she sat next to me and immediately put her head in her hands and leaned forward, hunched.

She was clearly upset...not distraught, not at a loss of control, but rather she looked like she had received atrocious news.

As the train departed, she made some calls and despite my desire to merely look away and listen to the 80's music that dominates my Ipod, I did hear snippets:

"Just came from the doctor's office"

"I haven't told a lot of people"

"The treatment takes about three weeks and then it's over."

Now, as a former Army Intelligence officer, I didn't need to hear everything to come to some conclusions...and by her body language and hushed tones it was clear that this was something piercingly personal...and unprecedented.

I ventured a guess to myself that she had become pregnant, and that she was either doing something about it or was thinking about it.

"My mother was a wreck...my father was very quiet"

Spilling out upon the fabrics of the cloth seats, this poor girl's fabric was rapidly unraveling. I sat there fairly muted, not wanting to intrude. When she called one of her friends, she admitted that she was heading out to a date in New York City that very night.

"Do I even tell him anything?"

I listened a little bit now and then, not because of some voyeuristic quality but because she was so close in age to my daughter that I figured I could learn something. Figured I could hear how this girl's world might unveil slowly, over the course of 3 hours on a train. She grew stronger on the ride, likely comforted by the friends on the other side of the call, offering advice, and thoughts and in brief tiny moments a laugh.

I don't think I was judging her either. I don't think I was filled with "how dare she?" I actually think that I felt like she had discovered a problem and was very matter of fact in fixing it. Yes, it was debilitating, but she seemed very up front and resolute. I think I was impressed by the straightforwardness.

Almost to New Jersey, the calls started up again, and one included her mom. It was a quiet conversation, and the fact that she called her "mommy" made me smile...for it is a term that my wife continues to lobby for when our kids talk to her. My daughter I think sometimes tries...my son outright refuses.

"Mommy...how are you feeling?"

She went on for a bit and then made one last call. The call that actually became the big reveal, leaving me feeling extraordinarily stupid and naive. A call as we rolled almost into view of the city when she brought up the entirety of the circumstances.

"I went to the doctor today. With my mom."

"She has cancer...she's very upset...she needs to start right away and she's very scared."

In my brief recollection, I wanted to know if I should have come to this conclusion, always assuming the circumstances were hers. That the privacy of her conversations were of her private life, whispered in discreet volume so that only I, her seatmate, could hear.

I felt different as well...that her postures and exhortations were not about her, but for her mother. That she wasn't some "unlucky girl" who got unknowingly pregnant, but rather she was victimized in an all too familiar manner that unfortunately afflicts too many mothers.

I felt foolish in that regard. My stupid conclusions. And I felt like I was sitting too close, almost invading, as this young girl tried to make her mom feel better and support her at these early moments.

I asked her if she was getting out at New York since I needed to step over her to exit.
She was, and she got up and walked out the opposite door. I knew that I had something to write about, this trip, this quiet small conversation that was not between anybody that I knew but certainly got to know. I think I was trying to do the math in my head about how many passengers on the train were sharing such private discussions.

I was in the line to go out the door when two people in front of me were discussing a colleague who was featured in The New Yorker for behavioral psychology. A man still seated, a complete stranger, asked the two if they were psychologists.

"Yes, we are."

"Interesting. My son was diagnosed with autism yesterday. We're working with some experts."

The two, sort of stunned by the revelation, fumbled their response.

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"Oh, I wasn't looking for any sympathy. Just thought I would share that."

I shook my head as I walked past, exiting the train, following quiet individuals who I truly preferred would stay that way.

Cusp

And so we arrive at the time when the pinks of sunburn become the reds of maples. We atone for the summer of lazy days and hazy skies and find crystal blue mornings with our breath fogging aloft as we start our day.



It is a reminder for those of us who live where seasons start and end with abrupt delineations; not say, those in Florida who can only determine the season by the calendar.



I love the transition of Fall, I love the heightening beauty of an object as it begins to die, like trees consumed by flames as they reach their apogee of color and then sputter and crumple in bits and pieces strewn on the ground. Whole forests engulfed.



But then just empty and brittle husks, beneath skeletal remains.



That's later...for now we are just on the cusp of Fall.



For people born under the astrological signs that fall on seasonal cusps, they carry the energy of both signs...or so I'm told. But with a daughter with one foot squarely in summer and another in autumn, I believe I've seen the delicate balance as these two seasons collide in colors, temperatures and intensities...

She is a kid with a popsicle. Perpetual laughter that splinters the humidity of an afternoon. She is a hot-house plant, craving the covers and blankets when the house dips below 73-degrees.

She is exceptionally placid, a smooth plain of a lake in a day without breeze. She is effervescent, the clanging melodies of the ice-cream truck as she flits through her day.

She was named after a flower, which thrives in full sun...and as described provides a seemingly endless parade of blooms. But she is far from delicate, far from frail. Her personality shines as a thousand day summer, and while she has been handed some exceptionally tough cards in her all-too wonderful life, she remains bouyant, and shining. She beams. She radiates. She has created a sun from which many fall into its gravitational pull.

The transition to fall, and the intermingling of high pressure systems colliding with cool jet stream air creates the opportunities for thunderstorms, the chance of showers. But like lightning seen across a darkened sea, it smolders mostly on the horizon. Her intensity flares mostly on the playing field, at a time when her energies and focus are on performance and the desire to excel.

It is mostly in this fall sport where her autumn begins to show.

But it peaks in other times, like the smoldering embers of a late November fire. The direction of intellect and energy, a keen focus on achievement, a single-mindedness that is rare for somebody just shy of two decades old...

And like trying to predict the chaos of summer-swinging into fall weather, she provides her fair share of unpredictability. She has the confidence to swashbuckle, to hang by a thin-thread rope and dive violently into a challenge. She has the confidence to question, virtually everything, to reconcile in her sometimes-closed but many times open mind. She has the perspective of a humbled survivor, and she has had to pick herself up with the help of a couple of people and brush herself off. Again. And again.

She is no wide-eyed ingenue. She surprisingly defaults to cynicism, until she learns or experiences something to offer new value in a new perspective. She sometimes can be cool as an October morning...but her sun burns away the mist fairly quickly. Her sunrise returns.

She shares the same first initial with my wife, a choice made deliberately. If I ever got a tattoo, it would always be an "A". They share many of the same traits, many of the same elements, a clear apple from the tree. Although my wife is infinitely more patient, while my daughter has inherited my hair-triggered intolerance for stupidity...or perhaps those less capable of displaying their intellect.

But as she moves into her days, in some way we are watching her teenage summer come to an end, a fall that begins her transition into the fully blessed and legal definition of an adult.

It's how you feel when you leave the beach. When you lock the door on a summer home. It's time to return to the chores, the jobs, the responsibilities...in this case, it is how I used to feel when I saw her baby shoes on the stairs. The speed of change fractures the heart of a parent, but the burgeoning adult that emerges is a wonderful event to behold.

It is not a single day event, but rather a transition. It is watching the beauty of something turn bright with color and emerge even more beautiful than when it started.

It is a tree on the cusp of autumn color. It is an afternoon, transitioning to evening in pastels. It is a daughter, on the cusp of a 20th birthday, born on the cusp of the seasons of summer and fall.

Home and Away

As many of us can poignantly recall, I remember where I was eight years ago. It was not in New York City, but in Virginia, where my co-workers and I gathered to watch the colossal destruction in numbing silence. From our building's sky porch we could see the blackened trails in the distance where the Pentagon lay smoldering.

For the last two years I have been in New York on an almost weekly basis. It is a beautiful place, even more so at night, and it is filled with characters and colors that are likely not seen any other place on earth.

The scar of the city lays downtown, a place overrun with construction barrels and wooden fencing. The Ground Zero location still brings many visitors, but at its essence it is a site of re-birth vs. a site memorialized. The city is moving on, it is healing a tremendous wound.

In the same way that the French National paper announced on September 12 "Today we are all Americans", I believe that many of us are all New Yorkers. I rarely find anybody who hasn't visited the city, even if only as a small child, and cannot honestly say that the city did not stay with them in some manner.

New York stays with me at night. In the eerie quiet of a night in Virginia, I can almost hear the subtle street noises of New York...the cars, the sirens, the constant movement of people. In the ability to stand in my backyard and see the North Star, I remember the blinding strobes of Times Square and the haze of white lights that obscure the night sky. There is a scent as you walk through the city, the street vendors and the meats they spread over high heat. The city is not so much a combination of living things as it is a living thing. It breathes, it exhales.

One of the greatest ironies of September 11th is how beautiful the actual day started. A high pressure system dominated over the East Coast and it was a picturesque day. Clearest of blue skies and mild temperatures from Washington DC to New England. I can remember clearly the contrails of fighter jets screaming through the skies in Northern Virginia, the only blemish against the blue.

I was not in New York on September 11th, but most of my team was in their offices, and they describe a day of chaos and non-communication that I cannot even fathom. What people who aren't in the city sometimes forget is that once you get outside a building in New York, you generally can't see further than a block. The only views that are worthwhile are high up, in a building. And people were evacuating in droves, walking through the city, swarming the streets and public transportation that was still working. Tunnels were closed, people were taking the bridges. But they couldn't see downtown, they couldn't see the towers during those few hours that they were burning because the other buildings blocked their view.

But they did see the dust plumes when they collapsed, and what the plumes hid was the altering forever of the landscape of New York.

New Yorkers take their mark from the streets. They oriented off the Towers, at least downtown because they were like the sun to a sundial. People orient off of the main avenues...west side, east side. Near certain landmarks like the Chrysler building.

Without the towers, the compass of the city was lost. New York was unbalanced, its people both figuratively and literally lost.

I don't think that the city became disoriented for too long. They regained their footing, their direction. They persevered.

But some folks decided to leave. Some felt they were no longer safe. They felt that it was too risky, too much a target.

I never felt that way.

I work in one of the tallest buildings in Mid-Town, a rapidly growing area with increasingly higher and higher buildings being erected. I can look south and see all the way to the ocean.

I like to think the city is healing, that it has regained its strength and frankly that it defies any conventional wisdom that it has changed. Yes, the landscape has been altered and permanently etched in our minds.

But more buildings continue to go up. More continue to serve as monuments to the growth and resiliency. More continue to block lovely views unobstructed before and now provide shade to whole swaths of concrete and sidewalks.

At night, particularly at night, it is still beautiful. And I think when I'm at home, I sometimes miss it.

More Than Words

I could be dangerous. I could exploit the shallow depths of fragile egos, crystalline-like, reed-thin, the delicacy of the nuance of language, gestures...freaking emoticons.

Where was this technology shit when I was zooming girls in high school?

I have always had the writer's preferred stance of hiding behind the ink, usually, or at least particularly early in a relationship. I could be frank, charming. I could be descriptive, flowing, alliterative. I could align with Billy Shakespeare, Faulkner. I could even throw in random T.S. Eliot if I felt probing some uncharted depths.

Firing away in my clutches, my brain screaming "No wonder you got a D+ in handwriting in 3rd grade"...I first had to make sure my thoughts were even legible. Let alone grasped. But if I could craft the right phrases, capture the way a girl burst like an embolism inside my brain, then I at least got a thank you. A smile. Victory for me was in the smallest gesture of thanks because frankly the writings never got past the 10th or 11th grade athletes. Words are one thing in the quiet of an evening, but they don't drive cars or score touchdowns.

Many times they were scribbled extemporaneously, my favorite kind...the way somebody looked as they sat in front of me; a color of eyes, or something unique that was nearby and could frame a reference. Passed hastily, the 3x5 card looked like so many scratches from some ink-taloned bird, but every once in awhile they would get me a glance that indicated I had perforated the veneer.

Forget the phone.

God, how long was it before somebody discovered "Call Waiting?". Way past my youth. Hours, or so it seemed, hearing the busy signal as I only grew more and more distraught. My sister, younger than me by two years and fourteen times more popular monopolized calls like a charity phone drive.

"Get off the phone!" I was likely expecting a call. As if she would call. But she might. And if not, I would call her.

And what would await me? Busy tones.

Christ.

So, let's just say I had a cell phone. Forget instant messaging. Forget webcams. Forget a live conversation. Give me a text message and I would have dominated my youth. Domination.

In a world where my Facebook status is my clothing, positioned for the world to see, I wonder where the notes have fallen. Where the whispered hushes of small snippets of conversation occur? Where the original love poem was scribed? Why we say more with our thumbs than stealing a few moments to write it down?

I would own teenage boyhood, if I had all these damn tools that they have today.

But I guess in having the ability to communicate on every detail (why didn't you IM back in three nano-seconds), we've created even higher expectations and cannot allow the tenuous roots of budding emotions to be absorbed.

Maybe there will be a backlash of sorts, of girls wanting to have those gaps in communications, those delays in discussions. Time to sort things out. Time to respond. I can only imagine the days like those in "Pride and Prejudice" (a pretty damn good movie who's star character is the language expressed between actors) when days and weeks would fall between those in love. Maddening. Exciting. Unknowing.

Perhaps I don't regret growing up in an age where my emotions were on display all the time. Perhaps I learned some things along the way about how people fall in love, over time, over distance, and not online.

Forgive me eHarmony.

Proper writing, full sentences, no abbreviations. Words poured onto a page as though pricked direct from a heart thumping in anticipation of their effect. Words meant only for another's eyes. And nobody else.

And thus, as I write this for hopefully a few people to see, I become the full hypocrite, for without today's technology I'd be merely thinking this in my head.

And wondering why my teenage boy would sit staring at the phone that might never ring.

An Actual Story...or rather, the first pages of something I've written to hopefully be published

The Christmas Ships
“Now that the salt of their blood stiffens the saltier oblivion of the sea…”-Allen Tate
-I-
They came before the first snowfall, before the first ice, when the ground had hardened in its shell and would not yield beneath the steel of a pick nor the weight of a man; the graves would not be dug, the bodies would lay strewn amidst leaves and they would form the brown crust that littered the late days of November. In the crystalline air that had become suddenly silent after days of skirmishes and infantry, there were few cries from the soldiers who had the misfortune of dying too far from home.

These ships. Brown as the dirt, and nearly as wide as the river, pulling up alongside the scaffolds of the town still recovering from the trauma of another lost battle. Sidling up alongside wooden docks, pushed by poles in the narrows of the Rappahannock, the boats glided silent. They would arrive in the late of the afternoon, when color was draining from the sky and men would sling ropes along metal stays anchoring the docks. Most of the crew would wait below, waiting for the first lanterns to arrive and then would they ascend the short stairs to the surface.
At night, when the candles and oils burnt slow yellow glaze and the breath of moving men hung heavy, the sounds of wooden wheels and metal barrows came slightly. The sound of a faint roll of wood over crushed stone, moving slowly down towards the gathered lights at the river. Only in the clarity of two or more lanterns could one see the movement of limbs, gathering dark branches and laying them on the dockside. Sprawling timber it seemed, stiff, wooden, straight lines against the yellow light. And as one moved closer, to almost hear the tug of cloth and the meeting of bone and earth, one could discern a hand, extended outward, with fingers spread. There was no timber in the wagons; rather, the stiff and the dead, the heavy and awkward weight of a man frozen stiff in the wind and frozen stiff for the grave.

Yet they were not being buried here, near the shallow waters where the boats where pulled tight against the wood. Men in boats gathered them as husks, bound and measured and tugged in to the slippery deck to the hole down beneath. There they were stacked, laid, pushed and turned until they fit almost up to the ceiling. And then lanterns, now almost white as wicks found little to cling to, swung with the walk of men hurrying away in the night. The sound of a pole pushing into narrow waters, moving the boat slowly away from the lights that signaled another visit from the Christmas ships.

The Man with the Softest Hands

I have tried them all. The salons, the specialty stores, the chains, the exclusives. I've tried stylists, hair entrepreneurs, burgeoning sculptors...I've paid a lot and I've paid a little.

In the end, the same result: the same haircut that I've had since I've been able to part the left side in the same way that I was taught.

For one long year of my life I received a haircut every week beginning in the hazy hot humidity of August until a wonderful day in March when the long freshman year of Virginia Military Institute officially ended.

I know a barber, and I know a good one, and those two terms are usually mutually exclusive.

Growing up in the 70s in Southern California, your hair was your wavy badge. Mine was exceptionally long, and when I look at pictures from back then I am amazed at what my parents allowed. In the 6th grade it was so long it hit my shoulder and then deflected slightly upward.

I was quite proud of my hair, letting it grow long as a senior in high school, feathered, blown dry and fastidious.

I can remember an inner-dialogue I had with myself in the Ft Benning Barber Shop in Georgia at the advent of Jump School. I had literally been growing my hair for about 3 months since the Ratline ended (VMI reference above) and it was to the point where I could actually comb it.

And in order to start the Airborne School I had to have my head shaved. Not cut; not shorn. Shaved. Stubbled.

Literally, I debated. Silver wings or sweet locks. It didn't take a lot to push me back into reality...I had had my head shaved before, so what the hell.

So yeah, I know barbers.

And I think I found my nirvana, my Grail of the Grizzled men wielding scissors.

Somewhere deep in Northern Virginia, in the tiny Washington DC suburb of Haymarket, VA, there is a barber shop run by a man named Larry.

Larry is a little on the redneck side, probably about 50, white wavy hair, raspy voice crafted by hours of Marlboros, and a drawl that borders on a conspiratorial whisper. He employs mostly Koreans and Asians to help him out, but his prime chair is near the front, and he is normally three-deep in people waiting for him to cut their hair.

Or give them a shave.

You see, Larry is old school. None of this crap like the Grooming Room or some other Male-only salon dripping with faux-leather and charging you $50 bucks to shave you.

Larry's cuts are $13.00. Shears, snipping scissors, maybe an electrical razor for the sides. He whispers hello, spreads the black shear sheet across you and asks what you'd like. He may or may not remember me, but we barely converse. His hands smell slightly of tobacco. His fingers smell of Clubman talc. His hands pale and plump, slightly inflated as if with air. Soft as kittens. Creased and weathered, but smooth and almost dainty.

To me there is an art to shaving, a process we all have gone through and we all likely avoid. If I get lucky enough to go three or four days without shaving, I head on down to Larry and as he likes to say, "get to see the baby's butt."

He lopes on back to the rear of his store for the heated towels, always inquiring if I'm ready, and while I believe I am it is almost always hotter than expected. He spreads it across my face in front of me, twists it slightly and lays it across my neck and then layers it in circles until only my nose is showing. Hot, humid warmth pulsates on my skin, commanding the whiskers to full attention.

After a few minutes, he spreads warm cream on my face, with those bulbous padded hands. Only to return with another hot towel to combine with the cream to create a viscosity against my face, warm, soothing.

While I lay with the heat emanating on me, I hear him preparing. (I've seen him shave others so I know this is what happens while I'm underneath the towels).

Usually taking out the sling blade scalpels, antique single bladed bits of steel. He rubs them on his leather strap, honing to a fine blade.

When he removes the hot towel, he spreads more cream and then hunches close to my face, his eyes focused and his hands touching my skin, pulling the skin taut as the razor glides easily over it. He pauses, scraping the blade across barber paper to clean it.

He takes his time, a shave taking 15 minutes minimally. Hot towels not included.

His studies the angles of my face, the growth lines of my whiskers. With the grain, against the grain. Careful around the nose, the corners of my mouth.

After a few passes, he starts to comment on the smoothness. The Baby's Butt.

I usually sit back, close my eyes, and try not to wonder too much about the man who holds a razor against my throat.

Rather, I luxuriate in the talent and the skill. The slowness and the steadiness. The scent of tobacco and of barber shops, of creams and green potions.

And I always leave with a slight chuckle, knowing that I have a lot of vices in my life, but I cannot help but get genuinely energized when I get to spend twenty minutes in the chair with the man with the softest hands.

Beggars and Choosers

Travel enough to any city and the ever-presence of folks who live on just the flimsiest sheen of existence become part of the never-changing landscape.

A trip through such public domains as New York City's Pennsylvania Station, a hub that connects Amtrak trains, Long Island Rail Road, New Jersey PATH and MTA, is a nexus of travelers, commuters and visitors. Yet sprinkled amongst the colors of those in transit are the small gray sights of those who are not there to travel at all.

I have seen the people approaching visitors as they stream through the large open spaces in the train station. Usually just a whisper, or a gesture. No hands being extended, just an approach.

"Can you spare something?"

Obviously it's money. But sometimes it's just a remark. A response. And usually, because of what I feel is my sometimes glaring blindspot for compassion, I give neither. No response. No money. No glare, no stare.

Merely looking ahead, to the turnstiles and steps that take me away from this subterranean space and back out into the daylight.

The hardening shell around me. I see my fellow travelers in the same vein, hurried, never stopping, never participating. In some way my excuse is that they have shown me how to deal with these small intrusions...the same way one might deal with a slight spitting rain. Indifference. Just get me to my destination. I've traveled long enough.

And frankly the people soliciting know this as well. There isn't a follow up question. There isn't a raising of the voice just in case you didn't hear. They're fishing, with only their appearance or our compassion to attract us to each other, and in the sea of crushing commuters there is a pretty good chance they'll not leave empty-handed. So they expect the brush-by, and merely wait for the next person.

I say that as back-drop into the usual situations where I find myself approached. But I recently had a different experience, and frankly while my actions didn't differ, my reactions did.

As I was coming up the part of Penn Station that opens up to 7th Avenue, a lady actually put herself in my path. She was normally dressed, that is, she didn't appear to be grossly impoverished, and she was carrying a couple of bags. Just as I was walking towards her, I saw a man fishing a dollar out of his wallet to give to an entirely different elderly lady. A lady who looked like she had left poverty years ago and was in full blown disaster mode. Disheveled, dirty, barely intelligible. I saw the well-dressed man hold out the dollar like a sacrament, and she accepted it as such.

So this was my last view before this other lady popped up in front of me.

"Sir", she started, which caused me a bit of a pause, because she clearly wanted my attention. I looked at her briefly.

"could you help me and..."

She had lost me, and she knew it, her voice trailing off, broken off against me. She had seen enough people passing by that my slight pause and then readjustment of my sightline well past her indicated that I was in fact, not going to stop.

But I did. About 50 feet past her. I didn't stop next to her, but continued walking until almost to the escalator. And then I turned around.

I didn't take any steps back. I didn't do anything else. My luggage, stupidly spread out in three separate bages, tugged heavily at me.

I looked to see if I could see her among the onslaught of commuters, and of course I couldn't.

And I felt like I had stolen something. Felt like I had taken a piece of her. Something she had offered up, a complete stranger, and I had batted it out of her hands.

I didn't do anything else, these emotions pinpricking in my head and a slight spill of disgust pooling. I saw nobody else stopping.

I emerged from the stairs and into the loveliness of a dusk in the city. The sidewalk was set up with a table, with an empty water jug collecting coins for the homeless.

I joined the rest of the people, walking by. Not stopping. Glaring at the faces of strangers who I didn't know, didn't care to know. Hoping they wouldn't sense my shame...or the copper-taste of disappoint that suddenly filled my mouth in how I had behaved.

Girls of the South

"Her southerness laid deep within her, as crystalline as slight sugars in a jar of sun-tea, waiting for the stir of a hand to swirl the contents, the sugar colliding and crashing, clinging to the edges and when you inhaled you drew in the sweetness very briefly…until the storm settled and the sugars floated gently again to the bottom."

There is something about southerners. Southern ladies, in particular. And as I send my daughter back to Atlanta this week, I wonder what it is about the exquisite nature of the women, both young and old, who occupy the South.

My wife's accent comes out noticeably with wine, a wonderful sound of consonants and a lilt at the end, with roots tracing back to her time in Southern Virginia and college. Our friends are mostly from Virginia, but even when we visit Atlanta, you can trace the language as the brogue grows deeper and deeper the further south you travel.

Heartiest of women. More than the Scarlett who stands fiercely in resolve to never starve again. Rather, they "fix" things.

They fix the rough spots in men, they fix the holes in people's lives. They fix the meanness of the cities and they fix the hurts of others.

They're not Sarah Palin. They'd never shoot a moose. But maybe they'd take care of a chicken or a well-fattened hog. In order to provide.

The fashion of the south still resonates today, in a mall-infested Abercrombie/Hollister wearing world, where lace and linen can still find flair. Where a hat and gloves are still in vogue. Little eyelet dresses with simple colors can still catch many a fine man's eye.

The manners of the south remain steadfast and unfortunately almost coy. The "ma'ams" and the "sirs", still unfortunately most prevalent in diners and restaurants, but still sometimes found in the small shops where people still work by hand. (Tip: Take a walk down King Street in Charleston, SC).

The weather in the South is perhaps what brings about these Southern women, like hot-house plants that thrive on humidity and bloom in night heat. They fan, they drink teas and lemonades, but they don't complain. They don't mind a sweat from work and they don't mind if their hands get dirty. A lady covered in potting soil, sweating through her shirt, standing amongst the colors of fresh planted flowers is among my most favorite sights.

They bake, they cook. They weed, they churn. And when they open their mouths, it is pure honey.

My daughter hasn't quite adopted a southern accent. But she's gaining on the easy-going nature and civilities that surround her in the oaks and azaleas in Georgia. I could never ask for a better nurturing ground to plant her in.

Control+Alt+Delete

The return to Virginia is almost always by train, almost always late in the week. It is a ride I have taken for over two years, the sights intimately familiar. The rock of the train on rails a comfortable rhythm.

In the coccoon of the car, with quiet business people reading, texting, working, I try to spend my time shedding the layers of gravity and stress that accumulated in the days before. I find the music from somewhere, plug in the ear phones and watch the palette outside me play.

In Gettysburg PA, there is a historic painting, a panorama painted by the french artist Paul Philippoteaux, over 300 feet in circumference and over 40 feet high. It revolves around you as you stand in the center, displaying the horrific July days of the Battle of Gettysburg.

In my train seat, the streets of Philadelphia splay by, unfurling against the window, past the boat houses and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The refineries at the edges of cities, rusting, split by the rails of the train, a view most will never see.

Slums that litter the side rails like discarded cartons. A slice of the American pie left to rot on the counter.

The train ride reveals many things, many sites. Some are beautiful, some are plain. But the single consistent sight is the ever nearing markers that indicate a closeness to home.


The tunnel underneath Baltimore.

The Woodward & Lothrop Building in DC.

The conductor's voice in the overhead speakers: "This is our last and final stop".

Last and final.

I can unplug from work, albeit temporarily. I can hit the Alt+Ctrl+Del keys of my work week and begin the shut-down. I can erase the street scent of the Manhattan sidewalks. I can loosen the tie.

I have stopped being the visitor, the traveler. The stranger, the one-seat at the restaurant goer. The alone in a strange bed sleeper. The unpacker. Repacker.

The one heading into the train station while everybody is heading out.

I can become whole again, with the people and the friends and the family.

I'm a local.

I am home.

Frequent Flyer Mileage

Sometimes I wonder.

The account summary states out of the first 6 and a half months of the year, I've spent one and a half months somewhere else.

One full third of the year. 8 hours of a day in specific ratios. Almost 3 days a week out of each week.

Those are not the travel days. Rather, those are the nights spent abroad.

I sometimes wonder what is the toll that it has taken. What have I missed.

I can remember clearly the nights (early mornings, for what their worth but it was dark out and it was eerily quiet so I prefer to think of it as nighttime) when I stood on the edge of the driveway. Listening to the sounds of nothingness. No cars. No airplanes. Complete and utter silence. A few scary times when a deer would come crashing through the trees and leaves surrounding the house and stand staring at me in the middle of the lawn. Other than that, it was black hole silence.

And then beams of headlights would splice the black and I knew my car had arrived, to take me silently away.

It's not a bad job. In fact, on paper, on a resume, it freaking rocks. The numbers look pretty good, the responsibilities look even better. It is a wonderful and sought-after opportunity.

I embraced it early on, and tore into it in a fairly fiendish fashion. Long hours, far away commutes, my life controlled by the blinking red of a Blackberry in communications.

Yet in 24 months, while I still put the blinking redness into the gaze of every hour that I am awake, the Sunday night packing has worn thin.

The balance of 5s...five socks, five pairs of underwear, five shirts, five ties. It is a week measured on a hand. It is complete efficiency when I can choose one belt and one pair of shoes.

It represents a full quarter of a month, bundled in a black suitcase and left on the bathroom floor so that I can retrieve it in the still-darkness of an early morning.

I will rise with a simple and familiar rhythm. I am a morning person by nature, and I am awake and alert at 3am or 4am...whatever. I need only 4 hours of sleep. I need only to see the blinking redness of a message waiting to know that I am about to start my day. With a decision.

I leave the quiet and warming confines of a bed. I hear the rain from our bedside noisemaker, and I hear the stir of dogs as they notice my movement.

I dress in faint light. I leave knots fairly untied, to be dealt with on a train.

I hear the squeak of woodboards as I step across the floor, the slight jar of a door. I try to depart in silence, but usually I cause a stir.

I am leaving, as I have done now for over two years. And for many years before, but in a much more predictable fashion.

I leave them sleeping, and warm and comfortable. I set off hoping that in the end, perhaps on a Friday, that I can return, albeit briefly, and try to make up for the time away.

Increasingly I cannot. The time away has caused an erosion. A dulling. A hardening.

It has become too hard. It is becoming increasingly difficult.

It is simply becoming too old. Too old to warrant the pittance of rewards based on the efforts of sacrifice. The middle is starting to wear through, and the seams are becoming undone.

I leave in the familiar, and sometimes come home to the unfamiliar.

I am leaving again.

And while the choice is ours to remain, it is really the only option we currently possess. And so we do.

And I depart, quietly, in a morning of Summer when time and hours really don't matter. When school does not interrupt and schedules are wide open.

Except for the moments and minutes that tick away until I return. I like to think those are counted with clarity. And carefully.

A Pinkish Hue

There really wasn't any reason to question my manhood. Honestly.

Imbibing the quaintly colored drink was merely a choice, a lifestyle. The color of a fleshy-grapefruit. The pinkness of lip-gloss. The light crystal skim of ice on the top.

Christ, you'd think I was the only guy to ever drink a Cosmopolitan.

Frankly the transition from hard-core pure Vodka drinker with only olives to taint the texture was probably a bit of a surprise. However, feeling free to join her new-found habit of drinking MY vodka, I felt inclined to join her in HER mixer.

And there, you go. Instant-gay. Just add water. Pinkish water at that.

My very good friend came out of the closet after he had left the Army. We went to graduate school together, worked in the White House together and I even spent one night in his apartment when I had an early shift and he was working a late one. (I slept on the couch). Clueless to all the "indicators"---superbly clean apartment, no mention ever of girls, an almost disciplined secrecy to a social life, I just always assumed he was picky.

Picky.

Okay. Well, so I misjudged.

Years later, when of course I learned and that small tiny fissure appeared in my logic, the ensuing cascade of collapsing emotions was really virgin territory for me.

I wanted to call him. And then I thought, what the hell was I going to say? "Uhm, hey there. So, yeah, I learned something about you I didn't know. Yeah, I know we were paid to keep secrets, but I thought just government secrets, not personal ones."

Or the even better one: "I just wanted to let you know that I'm okay with that."

I'm okay?

Frankly, nothing had really changed in our relationship, except a tidbit of knowledge. A tiny insight into an otherwise highly successful man. And I was acting as if I had become a secret accomplice. That by keeping his secret I was doing him a favor.

What a moron I was.

I never got the chance to have my patently absurd conversation. I learned of his outing from a mutual friend, and I felt certainly he was breathing a sigh of relief being out of the Army and in a successful law firm. Working on Gay Rights. (Now that's an indicator)

But the dilemma has appeared on the horizon again. As the years start to stack up and as the children get older, one of my dearest friends remains exceptionally coy and perhaps even unbalanced.

A little background. Again, an Army buddy. (Yeah, that don't ask, don't tell thing really put us on high alert).

Perennial bachelor. Tom Cruise-like looks, with a sense of humor and friendship that I probably find unmatched in all of my closest male friends.

Exceptionally clean house. (Becoming my go-to indicator of choice)

Has dated girls that I know, only to fall apart when things get physical. His last girlfriend was a 2, and that was being grateful. Maybe she cooked well. Maybe she was the one who cleaned the house. I don't know.

But then he would take vacation. With a "friend." To the Keys. On a cruise. To St. John. At his "friend's house." "His house" was how it was described to us.

Hmmm.

But the sad part is we don't have the nerve to cross the unoffered line. We don't want to question the numerous instinctive feelers, we don't want to change the dynamic.

And frankly, the conclusion I have is who really fucking cares? As long as he's my friend and not shooting straight to video gay porn with underage Filipinos, is it really any of my concern?

Isn't he always there when we want to get together? Isn't he ass-slapping (hey!) hilarious when I have him over to watch war movies? Isn't he unfailing polite when I introduce him to my co-workers? Isn't he, actually, one of my longest-lasting friends that I've ever had.

Hell yeah.

So, I won't ever question him, nor pose the question to him. I won't question his manhood either. I'll just raise my Cosmo in a silent toast to him and hope that he is, of all things, happy.

A Dark Smudge From a Moth

Tonight, washing the dishes, a lone moth had the unlucky happenstance to fly into the miasma of bubbles and water and hands and ultimately, it arrived captured in my hands.

And as I gathered it in some sort of PETA-fashion, it fluttered and left a small smudge against my fingers. A small ink stain. A purple mark. Not a bruise, but a memory of a struggle.

And so I thought about the people who have left their dark smudge against me. Perhaps indelible. Perhaps permanent. A staccato of tattoos that I have captured.

And frankly, it's become something of a topic for me. There has been a fairly recent reconnection, via social media, of people that I literally haven't talked to in almost 25 years. And yet I am picking up literally where we left off.

Is it Deja Vu? No, not really. There are still people that I am fortunate enough to interact with daily, weekly, and they stamp their place on my heart like a stapler cutting into paper. They do it very business-like, and having succeeded, move on.

I'm talking about people who suddenly splash into this planet and create a nuclear cloud. People who I see and recognize, and then a name comes forth over the span of some clues and minutes.

They leave a mark on me. Or rather, they've left their mark on me. And in discovery, I find them. Not suddenly, but as if they had always been there and now I recognize them.

Strangers to an extent.

Does this make any sense? Probably not so much. But in the metaphor of a dying moth, held fluttering in the cupped hands, and released with barely a smudge on my fingers, I do realize the delicacy of interactions.

Of times when our times have intersected.

Of times when we were literally the only things we were looking at, or thinking about or holding in our gaze.

And I'm not sure if I've given those folks a better view than what I've gained. If they've received a portion of their skin in the game. If they've captured what I have seen.

If they've gotten a smudge of the colors and the feathers of their wings that they have left on me.

Because they have. And I go to bed with the dark smudges of them against me.

Sheer Randomness

While most of this should be in my portfolio, it's too lengthy to include there. Therefore, here are some random things about me that I thought I'd share:

-My absolute most favorite movie: "Braveheart", a combination of valor, blood-letting and a bit of nudity to combine against an eligiac soundtrack.

-Second favorite: "Stepbrothers", and thus you probably know enough about me to correctly judge.

-Favorite drink: Stoli Elite, straight up with an olive. Shaken. Icy cold.

-Second favorite: Knob Creek bourbon. A few cubes in odd shapes to make it slightly cool.

-Favorite time of the day: Sunset. Beach side. Probably a point in time when we had a chance to be in Mexico, Pacific side. Fucking sun burning a hole in the sky and bruising the clouds purple and blue as it settled in the West. A sunset you could almost hear.

-Favorite book: "The Stand" by Stephen King. Ultimate good vs. evil. Simple stuff.

(For those insulted by my lack of stating "The Bible" please understand that I prefer single author tomes)

-Favorite song: "Moving in Stereo/All Mixed Up" by the Cars. A defining song(s) at a point in my life when things were starting to stick together.

-Favorite poem: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, by TS Eliot. "Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky"...

-Favorite food: Jack in the Box tacos. 2 for 99 cents. For breakfast. At 2am, when the beer buzz is fading.

-Favorite website: Deus Ex Malcontent

-Favorite Secret: I f'ing love Tom Cruise. From Maverick to Jerry Maguire to Lt. Daniel Kaffee.

More later, but while this may seem boring, it's sort of nice to figure out what I truly, truly love.

Something Absurdly Personal

Somewhere is a picture of him, taken on that day. He is smiling, that whip-bright white flash that still comes through in the photograph.

Somewhere, inside of him, something is attacking his brain. And neither of us know it.

When my son was 10, he left the golf course complaining of a severe headache. When he spiked with fever and was anguishing in bed, his pediatrician asked my wife a simple question: "Does it hurt when he touches his chin to his chest?"

"Yes"

"Call 911. I will meet you at the hospital"

We didn't call 911, rather, I carried his little-boy frame into the back of the SUV and drove him well above posted speed-limits. We entered the emergency room, filled with the usual complement of little boys and girls. I walked up to the lead nurse and told her bluntly "our pediatrician thinks he has meningitis."

Some parts of a hospital act quicker than others, particularly when certain words are uttered. It appears meningitis is one of those words.

At that point, my son and I were masked men. Gauze coverings as I held him and watched as he pointed out "pain" pictures...unsmiling happy faces are medium...he was pointing at the highest pain indicator.

We were isolated and kept in a separate room. Whenever doctors or nurses came in they were masked as well. They treated him as though he had something horrific. And yet they still were unsure.

So, there was only one way to find out positively.

For the unknowing, the spinal tap is also known as a lumbar puncture. If one saw the needle prior to entry, most would blanch. Most kids would cry. When they prepare a child for the procedure, they have them lay on their side like they are doing a cannon-ball off of a diving board. When they punctured the spinal column, he grimaced. He tightened and squeezed his eyes and his mouth in an indication of the most pain he had ever felt. He didn't say a word. He didn't move a bit.

(At this point I should tell you that the doctor in the procedure was showing off for some intern. She was cute, and he was showing off a bit. Unfortunately, when he did the first puncture, he nicked a wall and when he withdrew the spinal fluid it contain traces of blood. "Damn" he said. "I'll have to do it again." I thought briefly about how he would look with the needle jammed into the fat part of his forehead.)

So another was done, with the same impact on my son.

That night, I slept beside his hospital bed. He was shoved full of IVs. In a small act of blessings, we learned that he had viral meningitis...not as severe as bacterial, but certainly as dangerous and certainly as painful.

He thought the nurse button was "room service." He had jello, stayed up later than he ever had in his life and improved each hour.

Three days later he was released, and he walked out into the sunshine of a morning.

He just thought he was sick. We knew that he was better than lucky. But when he was being perforated by some of the largest needles I'd ever seen, he was the toughest kid I'd ever known.

Message from the Generalissimo

-Subject: Motivation

When I fired the CEO after 6 months in position, I truly hoped that it would inspire the troops to rise to the occasion and dutifully overachieve their sales targets.

Apparently not.

Therefore to provide further motivation to the troops, we are cancelling the Corporate Award trip to that Island-place I announced earlier this year.

People no longer have to stretch in their efforts to achieve those lofty targets...the pressure is off!! Why achieve 200% of your objectives when there's no place to go to celebrate?

In lieu of this Award trip, we will be bombing the previously mentioned island, and will put the video up on the marketing home page.

Happy Selling!

Upper Management

It's Not the Heat, it's the Warmth

So we began a Salsa challenge while in the heat-infused days of Lafayette, LA, home of Tabasco and other sundry spices.  A neighborhood challenge.  A throw-down, Bobby-Flay style.

People always wondered why my salsa was extraordinarily chunky.  Carved almost from a dull blade.  Not the small, piece-meal stuff you get in a chain restaurant...mine had girth (a smile at that word), mine had heft.  Mine broke the chips but more importantly, like the taste of a kiss from a girl with freshly applied strawberry lip-gloss, mine remained tingling on the tongue and on the lips.

It was in the smallest of smalls, the tiniest of morsels.  Literally the devil in the details.  To find the hottest on the Scoville scale of chilis (not quite nuclear, but much more enticing than the somewhat mainstream Jalapeno).   Scientific fact:  The jalapeno, a green very sturdy pepper yields about 2500-8000 on the Scoville rating; my little precious is somewhere near the 100,00o-350,000 mark).    It's like dating Britney Spears before the head-shaving or Jessica Simpson from the "Newlyweds" vs. the somewhat pudgy one.  That kind of hot.

But it's the subtlety of hotness, the unveiling in an almost lingerie fashion...yeah, this tastes pretty good, pretty nice, pretty tasty....holy shit, this is melting my teeth!  So, it's the tiniest of slivers in an almost castle of flavors that suddenly pokes you to get your attention.

It's also the greatest therapy that I've come to know.  The chopping, the slicing, the dicing, the mincing.  Throughout it all it is the mixing.  It is the salting.  It is the tasting.  I try to create a cacophony of colors, a deluge of greens, yellows and reds.  In winter I stick to Christmas colors and in fall the colors of leaves.  

The purpose, however, is to introduce.  To take something that is ordinary, seen everyday in supermarkets and grocery stores, all aligned and assembled and nicely arranged.  And like the individual piece parts of a nuclear weapon, when exactly pieced together creates a nuclear yield.  It explodes in your mouth.  It is lulled first to sleep then awakened to an explosion.

My salsa.  It makes me proud.  It reflects that way I want to impact people.  It causes them to pause.  It is something that some folks find addicting.  And I'll be honest.  I want them to want more.  

Message from The Generalissimo

Given the very high body count due to recent self-inflicted actions, I am taking time out of my busy schedule to come visit the troops and hand out free items left over from last year's marketing events (notably pens, balloons and a couple of sparkling bouncy balls). As an executive, I'd ask you have your people formed up into tight ranks so I don't have to mingle with them awkwardly.

And oh yeah, I am also going to host a webinar first. And ask that people submit questions to me. However, personnel actions, pay-cuts, forced furloughs, unmatched 401ks and cuts in healthcare coverage are strictly off-limits. Rather, I will answer questions that fall into the categories of "favorite movies", "customers who's names start with R" and "Potpourri".

Thanks in advance for helping out during this difficult time in our company's history.

Table Stakes...for what they're worth

Growing up in the 60's and 70's, there was a certain rhythm to dinner time and the gathering of the family. It was somewhat chaotic, a bit of a challenge to get the four of us around a table for any length of time. Usually it was my mother and sister and I; my father, a fast-rising Secret Service man usually was not home in time and ate separately.

It must be something in the DNA.

Tonight, we were able to come together and despite the relative late hour, it was a singularly blessed event. A sophomore in college, a sophomore in high school. An 11th hour decision to make home-made mashed potatoes vs. box versions. A full-press effort to find butter, or a favorable substitute.

Most families cannot connect the pearls throughout the day to string together two in a row. To bring the family together, for at least 30 minutes, and to collectively share something in addition to matching chinaware is something special. I'm sure that regardless of how old the children become, the inevitable Cocoon-like effect of the dinner table is forever: we revert back to an age where we once shared time, space and talking.

It was an extraordinarily average day. It was perhaps filled with some elements of drama, and some elements of boredom. However, in the end, with the quiet tones of a clock in the hall, we successfully overlapped our busy schedules into a time together that we shared.

It is, unfortunately, sweet rarity. But at the same time, it merely reminds us of the lure of the next go-around.

And at the appointed time, we devolved into our separate ways. We scattered, merely waiting the randomness that perhaps will bring us back together again.

And I look forward to such gatherings, if only for the notion that we once again share in something beyond just being related. We crave, we hunger, we seek, and as we attempt to satisfy such urges perhaps we put away ones that we can alleviate by being together.

It is visceral, and it is vital. And it makes me ultimately very happy when I listen to the hum of the dishwasher as the lone conclusion of our time together. It is a reminder of a time when we shared.

Anti-Social Networks

In 1979, the terrifying horror movie "Alien" came out with an all-together bone-chilling tag line..."In space no one can hear you scream".

In cyber-space, it's kind of the same thing. Nobody can hear you screaming, whether with laughter, fear, or sheer frustration. People represent themselves in some sort of self-constructed image of themselves, and hope that their "friends" in space find them to be exactly like that...

The difference is that most people are not their avatars; most people are a little bit different than what they represent behind the curtain of their MySpace page, or Facebook persona. But perhaps that's the beauty of such a network application...we can truly become what we want to be.

Either way, where it starts to fall apart for me is in reconciling people I actually know vs. their cyber-space persona. Maybe it's me, but people did not just become suddenly hip. People did not just become artfully articulate. And people still make misspellings, despite handy-dandy spell-check apps.

At the same time, I do realize that when people reconnect on Facebook, time vanishes and your remembrance is of the time spent in the past. I connect with friends who I haven't talked to since I was 16 or 17. In my mind's eye, that's where they remain.

Yet a quick scan of their information reminds me that they have achieved much in the time between. Much more than anything I have done, and it makes me a little jealous of their success because frankly I am having a hard time wrapping my head around this fact. I mean, honestly, who would have ever expected some of these folks to end up where they are at this stage of life?

So I enjoy catching up with them, and the banter shared reminds me of times very long ago. But now, the quips are from somebody who I probably wouldn't even recognize and that part sort of bothers me. That we are looking backwards to find our laughter and connection point, vs. using the very talent they've achieved as a starting off point.

I'll have to reconcile this in my own way, but meanwhile I'll try to find even more friends out there who were with me in my youth. There's only a handful of them, so it shouldn't be too hard!

Martini Moments

I had always wanted to be a writer.  My first foray, a stint in college, yielded $30.00, a check that remains tucked in an album that sits time-zones away.

My problem is my writing comes in bursts, sporadically.  Hale-Bopp frequency.  With no jello or black Nikes.  Rather, almost like a haiku, it spills out in increments that are captured either by a mood, or a vision.  

Kinda boring, right?  Melodramatic?  Probably.  

I've written a ton of things, and probably would score a C+ in many of today's college courses.  My actual highest scoring compliment came from a creative writing teacher in college who put me in his top 11 writers over a 20 year span.  He's dead now, and in some ways so is the person who got his attention with his words.  But kind of like a parasite twin who sits inside you eating away as you go on your merry way in life, the budding author never sat quietly.  

The problem is ultimately I'm almost Faulkner-ian in my descriptions.  I almost once got published in "Cosmopolitan" magazine with a poem about the way a lady looked when she wasn't looking at me.  Highly visual, highly colorized.  A 2nd place choice, according to the editor.  And I wouldn't have changed it.

Because to me, writing is the slow development of Kodachrome.  It is the unveiling of an image, the portrayal of a portrait, that unfolds while you wait.  You can read faster, hell you can fast-forward the book on tape, but if you miss even a single portion you probably cannot absorb the efforts that I am struggling to illuminate.  

It's the description of blond highlights to a blind man.

And I try to not be like anybody else; I try to take classic tools of pen and paper, hammer and chisel.  It's not noble.  Some chicks in high school seemed to appreciate it, and I crafted some prose on our wedding day that I still remember in highlights.  But I'm not sure if my writing was to be read aloud.

Rather, it is to be played silently in a mind's eye.  To unfurl in colors unique to the reader.  To scroll across at a pace that beckons down a lane that has both shadows and light.  At times, yeah, it's trite.  At times, yeah, it's sappy.  But Harlequin sells a shitload of paper with stuff that barely qualifies.

So, it's a bit of an effort.  It's perhaps the most selfish thing I've ever done.  It's also a very transparent act of putting some things out there for others to remark upon.  

I hope over the next few days, and hopefully the next few weeks, and ultimately the discipline of years to put together something that is mildly interesting.  That can be picked up like Sky Mall, absorbed, appreciated and even taken for free if you are so inclined.

But I'll try to be clever.  Try to be different.  Try to be insightful, and try to be something that takes your mind off of a million other options of print and for a brief martini moment be something that is unique to the two of us.

Bitch Forgot My Salt

For those who travel for a living, or even those who travel on vacation, the temptation to imbibe and simply fall victim to the road-side conveniences of America's fast-food machine is incredible.

Time Magazine asks "Why are Southerners Fat?" in a recent article, and frankly, Time has never traveled to the great cities of Chicago or Detroit. Time could've at least thrown the rural types a bone and said "Why are Southerners Fat but at least Tan?" And who's not to say that Time Magazine didn't park themselves near the Train Depot at Walt Disney World and merely assume the vast quantities of flesh were locals?

Either way, as Colonel Nathan Jessup said in "A Few Good Men", "I don't care."

Rather, I ran across an interesting food item about "Evil Foods", and the menu shown indicates the copyrighted Quadruple Bypass Burger. While not advocating fast food, let alone FAT fast food, I did notice something clever at the locale's website: Folks over 350 lbs EAT FREE.

Honestly, I cannot think of a better combination nor economic stimulus exercise than to line up folks who are border-line myochardial victims and offer them quite literally their last meal.

But I do sort of protest the fact that those who only weigh 345 lbs have to actually pay for their meals. But watching them trying to extract their wallet out of their back pockets might be amusing visually.

I, on the other hand, tend to skip these places unless it's Jack in the Box, but more on that later. However, I did fall recent victim on a trip to Boston, when I visited the 5 Guys in the airport.

For a meal.

At 9:30am.

For breakfast, consisting of a small cheeseburger and fries.

Frankly, it was quite good, and almost counted as brunch since it was reaaaaallllly close to 11am.

Message from the Generalissimo

Some important dates in company history:

-New ownership. Check
-Fire key executives. Check
-Fire sales people. Check
-Fire CEO. Check
-Effective immediately, the new CEO is going to talk directly to the most junior people in the company. Bypassing all chains of command, all synergistic resources and asking the guy on the front line for his "perspective." Weekly. In a 5-minute window of time.

Hard to believe, but true.

Dayummmmnnnn

For those unfortunates who are outside the AL East, the forthcoming All-Star Break represents a critical juncture in the life of a team...winning averages mean momentum and a well-deserved break...losing averages allow loser-ville teams time to ponder and fret.

No team in baseball can generate the unbridled love/hate passion like the northern New York team. And as we enter into the All-Star Break period, nothing pisses me off more than the Boston Red Sox blowing their lead in the AL-East to allow the merry band of pin-stripers a chance to gain some mojo.

My father in law loves the Yankees...but he's the only one I don't dislike with total disdain. The rest of you in the Bronx? Just go watch "Cloverfield" while I laugh with my popcorn.

Oh Welcome, oh welcome

To: Reader
From: Management

Why now? What unearthly idea bubbled up from your unrepentant wise-crackery and compelled you to stop writing for yourself and start attempting to entertain others?

Not sure. But like those kids strapping into Space Mountain's open-air sleds, let's just see where this thing takes me. Us.

I invite you to join me, as often as you can. And I'll do the same.

Management