On Gift Giving and an Experience

I have way too much stuff. I know it's too much stuff because there is no way I can justify it. I guess I keep a lot of the stuff that I have because I figure it's better here than in a landfill. Sadly, if I could flip a figurative match over my shoulder and walk away, I would.

There was once a literal match. When I was a young man, a college student, I lived through an apartment building fire. That was a long time ago, and I'm still a little skittish around fire. I do not allow candles in my house. The fire left me homeless with only the clothes on my body. For years after that incident, I did not have much more than I did on the night I crawled out of the fire. Years later, while still working at summer camp, I marveled that everything I owned, including my bike, fit inside my 9' x 9' tent.

Am I Interesting?

I never thought of myself as being an interesting person. Over the course of my life, I have done interesting things, I've read interesting books and I've been both delighted and disquieted from interesting thoughts. I often think about dinner. When it comes to dinner, there are just so many ways you can cook something: you can fry it or broil it or boil it or bake it. The real trick to dinner, plainly speaking, is to search out those raw ingredients which delight the finished project.

My background is writing. I made the decision to become a writer on a sunny day in November. I was with my penpal, before we became penpals. She asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I didn't know. When I asked her, she said she wanted to become a writer. “Me too,” I said. “I also want to become a writer.” Perhaps I only became a writer to impress a girl.

Being a writer, for me, was a great way to experience and express myself in the world. If I met an interesting person who worked an interesting job, I would always ask questions. I've met flour millers, radio personalities, air traffic controls and once a sex worker turned tarot card reader who had so much to say that I'm still thinking about the conversation.

Higher Laws: Compassion Part II

I don't need to tell anyone in this country how hard it is to communicate with 50% of the people you meet. I have people in my family who voted Trump. And since that statement pretty much means that I didn't, you can only image how it's been. We think the other is either misinformed, stupid or trying to destroy the country. Am I right? Both sides see the other as the enemy. I will not spout off my beliefs because it doesn't matter. I don't want to lose half of you right now. And the half I don't lose, I don't want to add to your flames. The truth is it's hard to have any compassion for either side.

These last few years no one seems to be listening, no one seems to want to listen. No one is talking and coming to middle ground, rather, everyone seems to raise their voices. Nothing gets done.

As a point of reference here, I work in the service industry during the administrations of George W. Bush, Barrack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden. I can tell you that the tips were higher, generally speaking, during the democratic years. Incidentally, having to hold my tongue happened the most during the Trump years. Too many people thought that I was a good sounding board for all sorts of stupid shit, after all, if I was rude, I would not get a tip. My whole frame of political culture in America is as a waiter, and there is no refuting that. I still believe that servers can tell you the health of the country with a great amount of precision.

Higher Laws: Compassion Part I

This is an addition to my toilings and manifestos of 2019.

After decades of working and living at night, and completely discarding the morning, I have in recent years become what I always dreaded: a daywalker. I am very conflicted about this. First, and foremost, I longer work in a restaurant, and I no longer work with the general public. This has been a blessing for sure, because I find it much easier to be kind to people now that I am not forced to interact with them for a living. I've been relieved because I don't have quite the opposite schedule to my family. I don't miss being out at night, and I don't miss the late night weirdos either.

Despite all the good things, I still do not feel about the world and the people in it the way that I feel like I should. For instance, I was walking home from dropping off my little boy at school a few days ago. There was a train wailing on the whistle a few blocks down, there were two large excavation vehicles coming down the street, a military helicopter flying around beating the hell out of the air and some lousy jackass laying on his horn. I wanted to scream. After working at night for twenty years, I can tell you, it is never that fucking loud at night. And then there are those people who say that they love the morning, and that the morning is peaceful and promising. This has never, never, never been my experience. The mornings are loud, smelly, aggressive and the ideal time to lose all faith in humanity. I have always believed that those people who get up early tend to instigate economic ruin and start wars.