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True-th

true-th
In this culture, deep truth seems indistinguishable from deep cynicism. We learn at an early age to deeply discount the (air quotes) wisdom of anyone more experienced, AKA: older; anyone, in other words, who might know better. Just because they’ve never yet seen anything like MY brilliant strategy work, doesn’t mean it’s not brilliant. Or that it won’t work. Enthusiasm trumps experience. Naivete supplants knowledge. Youth must make its own mistakes, which tend to be the same mistakes their elders made in their time.

I’m feeling older now, probably because I have grown older. I notice my age in my growing inability to feel cynical about anything, and also in my growing acceptance of what matters. I once believed that I might have stumbled upon a bit of radically new knowledge. I now understand that my elders had staked claim to both that knowledge and its adjacent folly long before I appeared to deride them. Slip over here for more ...

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Pro-Missing

promise
A cautionary tale in two stanzas; a reminder to myself, perhaps to you, too.

My two most dreaded activities: promising and footnoting. I despise these when I get downwind of others doing them, and hate myself when I catch myself inflating these useless balloons. Political speech overflows with promises. Academic writing smothers beneath footnotes (and parenthetical asides). I am more capable of promising than anyone should be. The past no longer cares where anyone learned anything. Frequent reverent reference to the source suggests only denial on the part of the story-shower. Don’t tell, just show. Lecturers and scolds commonly exhibit these flaws. Slip over here for more ...

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Co-Hear-ence

hear

"Our language doesn’t provide a translation to tell us what it is. Only our hearts can do that."

Nothing seems to work very well without it. Push, shove, wink, nudge, nothing really makes anything better without some ability for it to hear itself. Without some mysterious coherence, we’re never more than the simple sum of our parts, and often much less. No instruction manual ever showed how to create or even install coherence. For most, it’s either there or not; and might be the most commonly overlooked component. We might not consciously notice its absence.

I believe we each can feel its presence, though we might not have a ready name to assign to it. We might mistakenly ascribe its effect as luck, or synchronicity, perhaps superior design, though no spec sheet ever prescribes its presence. Only charlatans ever promise to deliver it. Only rubes ever agree to accept that delivery. It might be the rarest element, sufficient without ever approaching necessary; the cherry on top.

Slip over here for more ...
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Gently

gently
Even a half-assed consultant can see far more choices than even their most insightful client ever could because they’re not climbing the spiral staircase, but watching their client climb. Their perspective mostly goes to waste, however, and could not possibly help their client see. Long consulting engagements often start with the so-called consultant trying to persuade their hapless client to see what they could never see from where they stand. Should the client say they can see what their ... ahem ... consultant just directed them to imagine, the half-assed consultant might feel a burst of validation without realizing that they just hobbled rather than helped.

I’ve long espoused the conviction that change arises from choice. I don’t always understand the more subtle point that choices seem scarcest whenever someone’s stuck, and I can (really, I CAN) proliferate choices forever for anyone else, but to no useful end. Until the client sees a choice, he cannot make a choice, and who knows where the insight necessary to see alternatives comes from? I don’t, though I used to believe that I did. I didn’t. Slip over here for more ...

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Who-ey-Two-ey

cat_bag_impossible_object
Reason, long-presumed to be the only thing other than fashion separating us from the chimps, seems over-rated. What the old, reliable predicate calculus can represent kind of skirts around the edges of human difficulties, but we rely upon it anyway; probably over-rely upon it. Just because there’s no reasonable way to resolve something doesn’t limit choice much. Limiting choices to only reasonable ones might be the most common cause of modern difficulty.

I subscribe to the perhaps delusional belief that reason makes a better excuse than it does an imperative. Much of what everyone does every day makes little sense, it just works. If it has to make sense to even qualify to be tried out to see if it might work, we shouldn’t need to make any excuses if we’re stuck. We know the cause and it is us. Slip over here for more ...

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Who-ey

groucho
Hooey’s hard to spot. It seems to show up dressed up like anything else; sometimes professorial, other times, harmless clown; maybe a touch pissed off, or just plain hard-to-stay-on-point distracted. We’re all prone to slip into our disembodied selves; The BriefConsultant, too.

I almost never catch myself slipping into my second person, where a disembodied ‘he’ replaces me. I’m a zombie then, looking for fresh brains, undead but not yet realizing it. I feel strangely powerful when I pad myself behind some projected persona rather than presenting myself as just my little old self. I can spew mindless he-mes as if ithey were genuine self-reflection, and I’m usually the last to know. Again. Slip over here for more ...

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Object-ivity

Falling Cow
We live in an ever-changing world, but we live within a nominal (noun-centric) language. We take snapshots of our experiences, turning motion into statuettes, verbs into nouns, then respond in kind; rather woodenly. Our representations bushwhack us a lot. We might live more securely within our language—within our objectified representations of this world—than we ever do out there where nothing ever stays the same.

I sometimes suffer from a form of noun poisoning. I’ve bestowed a name, a good meme-y one, then strut around as if I’ve conquered it, though it wasn’t an ‘it’ until I objectified my sensory experience into that handy pocket size. I doubt that anyone could ever muster a completely proper characterization. I deal in impressionistic portraits, hardly photographic quality. You probably do, too. Slip over here for more ...

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StepTooFar

StepTooFar
StepTooFar stands prominent on the list of common unknowables. Sure, I can know in retrospect that I took a fateful step, but until then, I’m probably just hypnotizing myself again. I mention StepTooFar here because it well represents The Common Unknowables, pseudo-information everyone seems familiar with ... when observed in someone else, and generally clueless about whenever we’re doing it to ourselves. We do these to ourselves.

These are delicate subjects. Only the most dedicated masochist enjoys awakening from this dream, even though the dream seems to be dooming him to an unwanted fate. It seems way too late for anybody to do anything about much of anything. Fate seems to have already won. What now? Slip over here for more ...

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Ineptitude

ineptitude
“At some point during this engagement, you’ll very likely feel overwhelmingly justified concluding that you’ve contracted with the most inept consultant in the universe,” The BriefConsultant cautions his prospective client. “What we do then will determine the success of this effort.”

There, I’ve done it again. I’ve tried to chase off another client. Some won’t be so easily dissuaded, but others will. You see, I’ve deliberately committed a taboo, and one of the more powerful ones, too. Ineptitude, or, more properly stated, the appearance of ineptitude, might outrank malfeasance on the Must Be Avoided List. A stumble quite easily amplifies far beyond mere accident to tarnish even the most otherwise innocent reputation. Generosity doesn’t seem very high on anyone’s to-do list. Slip over here for more ...

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Smalls

smalltz
Not everyone can pronounce my surname. I suppose it has too many consonants for some. For them, the sch comes out as ess and the ltz sounds like an unadorned s. Schmaltz becomes smalls. It’s okay with me. It reminds me to focus upon the small rather than the huge.

“Let me paint you a broad brush overview, Mr. Smalls.” Every client tries to first show me a big picture of their difficulty, but I’m listening for small things.

BriefConsulting doesn’t scale, but it doesn’t need to scale. How would The BriefConsultant influence an enterprise-wide initiative? Certainly not by focusing upon the enterprise, whatever that is. Size serves as a distraction, a distancing abstraction when scaled beyond small. Slip over here for more ...

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FableTales

fableTales
Have you noticed how we structure our stories? They seem to start with good intentions before startling themselves with some surprise disappointment, then finish with either a redeeming flourish or a catastrophic crash; saved or doomed. Maybe no experience qualifies as a story without satisfying this rough plot outline. The most believable stories seem to be the most redemptive ones. Life doesn’t play out very much like this, but our stories about life certainly do.

The distinction between story and reality seems difficult to maintain. Stories too easily sneak across that unguarded boundary to inhabit the place real life lessons used to live. These invasions tangle up expectations, leaving even the most mindful anticipating salvation or doom, and little else. Clients call the BriefConsultant when anticipating doom, seeking some kind of salvation. Slip over here for more ...

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Project-ionManagement

Project-ion
Management closely trails leadership as the presumed one-size-fits-all prescription for danged near everything. When a project fails to satisfy expectations, we immediately commence to blaming the absence of either 1) leadership, or 2) management, then set about securing more of these apparently indispensable elements.

The BriefConsultant might receive a panicked telephone call about this time, when the earlier projected lifecycle threatens to become an absolutely unanticipated death spiral. Being a skeptic by nature, I almost half-listen as the prospective client recounts the many surprising L and M shortcomings so recently and shockingly uncovered. I’ve heard the story so many times before, only the reported color of Goldilock’s shoes varies from prior tellings. Slip over here for more ...

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Patterning

patterning
Software developers have created an encyclopedia of reusable routines they call patterns, under the notion that many systems perform similar functions and so should probably use the same processes to accomplish them. They repurposed this idea from the field of architecture, where Alexander proposed what he called A Pattern Language to describe otherwise indescribable common design aspirations. Both ideas seem founded in the modern notion that reinventing wheels constitutes wasted effort. Might as well leverage others’ work.

The BriefConsultant doesn’t think like this. While it might seem perfectly possible to classify any observed activity into a pre-existing grammar of actions, I find little leverage in this pigeonholing. BriefConsulting seems deliberately inefficient because it isn’t interested in pattern matching, but pattern pulling; patterning. Slip over here for more ...

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BlankPage

blankpage
BriefConsulting doesn’t deal in universals; BriefConsultants like me were never persuaded that we could be privy to any of the secrets behind even one of the multitudes of One Best Ways. I remain skeptical when encountering anything labeled Best Practice, curious about who licked that label before sticking it on, and why. Neither advocate nor adversary, not over-bearing or objective, I start with a BlankPage. I must seem curious in every possible sense of the word.

I can’t rightfully say that I know much, but I do hope to be learning. I try to acknowledge the here and now as here and now rather than then and there in disguise, and recognize that this moment fully qualifies as virgin territory. Nobody’s ever been exactly right here before. This fact disqualifies my experience but might more fully qualify my senses—my presence, should I somehow find the ability to sense the here and now; right here and now. Slip over here for more ...

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Re-late

network
I might be a little late arriving at this recognition; not that I haven’t been bombarded with clues since before you-know-who outgrew his diapers. I was always related, but couldn’t relate. I competed instead, seeking superiority. Who would settle for parity when the possibility of dominion begins batting those long eyelashes?

I tell a passable, but unconvincing story. Everyone says we’re all about community, but we have yet to develop a convincing dialect to support that assertion. Most often, community serves as code for .community, abbreviated to .com, which means I want to sell you something. If you buy, you belong. If you buy again, you belong more. If you buy early and often, you’re a best customer, qualified to receive special attention. Slip over here for more ...

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Sides

shapes-special
Most controversies seem to demand the taking of sides. Even though most every controversy has fewer or many more than two sides, the invitation always comes addressed to either or to or. This narrowing of perspective might be characterized as the root cause of the controversy, though no one engaged in resolving it would ever suspect that the cause was meta to the maelstrom. This paragraph explains the human condition.

No day ever goes by but what I’m invited to stand up for this or its logical counterpart, that. I’m challenged to show my true colors, as if they could not possibly include a rather fuzzy grey. My clients insist that I see their world through their eyes, and I surprise myself when I find I’m almost able to, but without the conviction they bring to the experience. I might be able to appreciate the sides they see without actually seeing or ever really believing in them. Slip over here for more ...

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ResterRant

blindfold21
I rarely ‘eat out.’ I long ago grew weary of the blind man’s bluff game the so-called hospitality industry plays. What other industry demands that its customers choose from deliberately misleading lists of possibilities featuring the vaguest possible descriptions of their products, expecting their customer to select satisfying results? Who could possibly know what passes for hash browns here? Or home fries? Or even mashed potatoes? No way to know without sleuthing around to other customers’ plates, but even then, looks can be so deceiving.

Ask the poor (literally, slave-waged) server. Who knows what s/he might recommend? Just try and often fail to anticipate what the budding food artiste in the kitchen will produce from what the food accountant says he can spend. Even assuming the chef can cook (not a universally safe assumption), the result amounts to a crap shoot. Slip over here for more ...

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Leaving

leaving
John Gorka once noted that anyone living with their baggage packed, leaves more often than they ever come back. This spot-on observation describes the feeling for both the host and the visitor. However warm or cold any reception or stay, leavings never come easily. Nobody ever intended to stay beyond their welcome, but nobody welcomes leaving.

Leaving seems like grown up stuff, hard and ungratifying work requiring an almost inhuman discipline. I imagine that it must be good for somebody, but the repacking and the heading out cracks even hardened hearts. I seem to shrink from the backside of any adventure. Heading back’s no heading out experience, even when we take an unfamiliar route back home. Slip over here for more ...

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Confessor

confessor
The visitor seems to naturally fall into the role of confessor. Perhaps this transformation occurs because the visitor carries a certain anonymity. Unlike the town priest who will still be there tomorrow and the next day, and also unlike the trusted old friend who might know the history a bit too well, the visitor has neither history nor legacy in your space, and so serves as the perfect vessel for offloading troubling secrets.

As a consultant, I’ve grown to expect my client’s whispered confessions. I hear about a lot more than the business difficulty, that’s for sure, and this should not be surprising since the business no more lives in isolation from the rest of its principal’s existence than the principal does. Those admissions carry the patterns reinforcing all the client’s complaints as well as clues to their resolution. I often need to engage no more fully than lending an attentive ear for my client to hear themselves resolve their own trouble. Slip over here for more ...

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VisitorPass

visitor
Remember the satisfaction a hall pass could bring? It meant that I was special, released from the regular programming, on a formally sanctioned mission away from the ordinary. Whether a restroom or an extracurricular activity called, I was on my own, traversing otherwise no-man’s land, bullet-proofed for the duration. Even if that particularly hostile assistant principal noticed me and asked, I carried a guaranteed get out of jail free card, transforming this usual suspect into a Teflon® visitor.

Supposedly all grown up now, I gain a certain self-satisfaction wearing the badge of a visiting contractor. I have a desk drawer half-filled with used visitor badges, each a testament to my past temporarily special statuses. Security would welcome me, seek my signature, then pass me a custom-made credential before opening the gates to the compound. I’d usually require an escort as if a visiting dignitary, an envoy from the future. Slip over here for more ...

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TwelfthNight

leatheryleaves
On The TwelfthDay of Christmas, night fell. A mighty Chinook wind had blown through over the eleventh night, stealing away most of the snow. Squirrels had for days been purposefully pulling huge leathery oak leaves from the layer I’d left protecting the gardens from the winter; extra nest insulation against the coming Polar Vortex bitter cold. I do not know how they know it’s coming.

The TwelfthNight isn’t about the second coming, but the first one; set aside for the feast celebrating God becoming man, not man becoming God-like. Slip over here for more ...

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EleventhDay

pied-piper-king-williams--001
An old year ended on the EleventhDay of Christmas.

The Muse and I piled old magazines high on the dining room table and started snipping images. For many New Year’s Eves before The Exile, we’d created collages for each New Year. This involved cutting pictures more or less at random from old magazines, then arranging and gluing them onto poster board. A friend who long ago introduced us to this practice insisted that the resulting ‘work’, over the following year, would manifest whatever it depicts. Slip over here for more ...

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TenthDay

palm
On the Tenth Day of Christmas the whole world went silent. The scholar in the basement stumbled upstairs into the kitchen to brew his coffee. He solemnly declared that the house had become boring. He was right.

The traveling tornado brothers left after breakfast, marking the official end of the festivities portion of this holiday. I fell into a coma-like nap. The Muse reclaimed her sewing room. Quilting subsumed her. Slip over here for more ...

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Brief 1.6-NoLedge

ledge
I left the salon conversation feeling angry. The subject: Common Core, yet another revolutionary strategy for utterly transforming the primary education system employing BIG data and frequent feedback-producing examinations. “The results will be demonstratively worse in the short-run,” our evening’s provocateur reassured us. “The data will most certainly show that our students have been performing more poorly than the old, poor data showed, but once we start measuring the right things, students scores will start to improve.”

This assertion seemed about as unlikely as every other confident prediction accompanying every other revolutionary strategy for utterly transforming primary education I’ve watched crash and burn over the last more than half century. Primary educators seem more prone to seduction by The Next BIG Thing than anyone, with the possible exception of your standard Snake Oil Salesman. The wise S.O.S. cautions their ‘fish’ that the elixir might taste unimaginably horrible and could leave the severely deficient feeling much worse in the short run. In the longer run, of course, the canny S.O.S. will have beat town, leaving no forwarding address. Slip over here for more ...

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Brief 1.5-Dot2Dot

dot2dot
Doesn’t matter where I start. It matters THAT I start, but I could begin anywhere then work out from there. No, I do not have a picture of the end result in mind before I begin. More often, I feel inspired: some interesting thought just popped into my head, usually while distracted, often in the shower. Then, writing becomes an imperative. I must find my keyboard and start.

The first sentence just blurts out, though it’s often right and survives every editing pass to remain there on top. From there, I scan the immediate neighborhood, certain that some likely lilly pad will appear. I often hear it calling me, echoing the sound of the seed sentence, without pretense. I hop over there, listening carefully then, bending the initial inspiration only slightly to lightly echo emerging rhythm and assonance. Slip over here for more ...

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Brief 1.4-ThreeThirty

alarmclock
The best alarm clock never rings. I set it, sure, before falling asleep the night before, but I awaken long before it ever starts ringing. Some dream woke me, still streaming story like sea foam streaking off some surfacing submarine. I turn off the alarm while fumbling for my glasses in the dark, holding a short phrase sleep passed to me to carry into this world. I slip into my slippers, quickly brush my teeth, and somehow avoid tripping over either cat as I creep downstairs to awaken my keyboard, repeating that phrase all the way.

It’s three thirty this morning; cold and dark outside. The light from my office window casts long shadows of the garden furniture across the garden wall. Not even the squirrels stir out there. Slip over here for more ...

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Brief 1.3-PhiloSophy

PhiloSophy
“Philosophy begins when you don’t know where to look for an answer.” Philip Kerr, Hitler’s Peace

Anyone setting out to accomplish anything should encounter some daunting contradictions, otherwise they’re probably dozing at the wheel. When selecting a method, none available should exactly fit the situation. When acquiring resources, some will prove unavailable and others abundant but of undesired quality. Even selecting a goal should seem to demand encumbering compromise. No recipe ever baked a cake.

Filling these inevitable gaps seems to require a meta-understanding, acknowledgement of the gaps and acceptance of the personal responsibility for seeing them filled. While we might well rely upon experience and knowledge to guide us up to the edge of any gap, something else bridges it. Almost anything but experience and knowledge might work. Luck, even.

But being human, most of us will try to reason ourselves across. We’ll pull out the Rules of Thumb bag we keep hidden in the front hall closet or dredge up the clouded over laminated card containing what we once chose to be our ethical imperatives. Almost all of us will rely upon what feels like a sixth sense, a quiet angel who rides on one shoulder, whispering in our ear. Each of these comprise our philosophy.

Far from the distraction from action it’s sometimes characterized as being, philosophy might well be our constant, if often quiet, companion. While we might effortlessly describe technique, the reasoning and world view behind that technique remains largely undiscussable, perhaps because that reasoning seems at root unreasonable. I could mention the Münchhausen trilemma, named after the mythical hero who managed to pull himself and the horse he was riding out of quicksand by merely pulling up on his own hair; an illogical impossibility. Proving any truth or falsehood easily devolves into one of three popular techniques, hence the trilemma: Circular argument, where theory and proof reinforce each other, Regressive argument, where each proof begets another--ad infinitum, or by far the most popular, Axiomatic argument, where we “just know” it’s true. Much of what we hold to be self evident, isn’t, but an axiomatic insistence instead.













©2013 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved












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Brief 1.2-MissedUnderstanding

missedUnder
I’d perfectly stated my brilliant idea. Nobody else seemed to understand. Was I suddenly speaking Swahili? Had my thoughts turned to mush? Had I lost my silvered tongue?

My identity felt it first, turning ghostly pale. Maybe I’d become overly ego involved, no longer dealing in ideas but self. To miss understanding my idea might mean I do not exist, or exist distinctly enough. I cannot even muster a decent me without connecting with you.

I’ll try the same message louder, I might even s-l-o-w down, hoping the disconnection came from faulty volume or hasty presentation. These tactics never work. Never. Slip over here for more ...

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Brief 1.1-Universe-ality

spectralpatterns
Franklin calls me on my shit. When my whining exceeds the limits of propriety, he pulls me over to issue a helpful warning. When I don’t quite understand how lost I’ve become, he points me home. He fairly steadfastly refuses to tell me what I really should do, but he can look down his nose at me, and even on a stop-action Hangout® display, I can see that he’s caught me out. Shortly thereafter, I catch myself out, too.

Authoring involves an awful lot of foiled self-deception and foibling self disclosure. It shaves the old pig until it squeals and scurries home. Home isn’t just where the heart resides, but it sits smack dab in the center of the universe. Franklin insists that the key to universality lies hidden in the deeply personal. The more personal, the more likely others are to find themselves peeking out through the prose. The one thing we all have in common might be that we all experience the personal, and we each recognize the presence of the universal in that seemingly least-likely place. Slip over here for more ...

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Brief 1.0-Id-Entity

cigar
Most of every writer’s day will be spent alone. Writing must be the most solitary sport, an internal Olympic competition featuring cognitive Greco-Roman wrestling, conceptual Winter Biathlon, and solitary synchronized swimming. The games always involve dredging up to translate, rediscovery more than invention, rearranging the same old notes into new-sounding tunes. Like with all games, the boundaries deeply influence play and the rules, originally arbitrary, seem inexorable now.

The trick, once mastering bald aloneness, lies in daily re-mastering it, for solitude serves as no more than soil within which unlikely seeds might sprout, where the completely cognitive and conceptual push beyond the leaf litter into space where anyone might experience them. What blooms seems so very different from the parent seed or rhizome that even the solitary gardener might mistake them for volunteers, accidents of potential, nutrients, and time. Slip over here for more ...

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XTimes 1.15-TheCall

rooster
Ever since roosters started crowing in threes, denial has been the first stage of acceptance. Each adventure worthy of the label begins with a good, old-fashioned denial of the call, for without rejecting the premise, no real adventure could ever ensue. Willing volunteers need not apply. Conscripts must go AWOL. True adventure requires denial.

The premise always proves faulty; there are no true pretenses, only false ones. Questioning any premise makes logical sense even if it renders the questioner into a huge pain in the butt. Small misconceptions explode adventure. Questioning premise produces the preconditions necessary for relationship, and adventuring is always a relational experience, even if it seems like it’s just a transaction involving nobody but me, myself, and I. Slip over here for more ...

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XTimes-1.14-Premise

premise
A BriefConsultant walks into a bar. That’s a premise. What’s the punchline?

It’s one thing to pose a premise and quite another to bring down the house with a punchy punchline. Too late, once I’ve posed the premise, to change it to match the punch line. Punchline follows premise, so perhaps I’d better write the punchline first.

My favorite punchline: I would have but I needed the wool. What premise works with that?

A Client walks into a bar, announcing that he’s thought he was a sheep for thirty years. “Why didn’t you mention this before?” the bartender asks.

”I would have, but the consultant I hired to help needed the wool.” (Insert rim shot here.) Slip over here for more ...

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XTimes-1.13-Brilliance

brilliance
It hurts my eyes to think about it, my mind casts around for shadows to hide behind. My own brilliance blinds me sometimes and blindsides me the rest of the time. I have no control over it. No will or volition, no intention guides it. It gooshes around the gaskets, often unnoticed in the moment it appears. Later, when I’m cleaning up some crusty mess, I might glimpse its presence, its past presence, for it’s never present for me, just past. Like light finally washing across a familiar landscape, light that left its source light-millenia ago; far, far from home by the time it finally arrives.

It feels used up, pull-dated, expired, never inspiring. I shove through disbelief into ragged acceptance of mere possibilities. It’s never enough to suspend my unwavering disbelief, I must rough my way deep into it and struggle slime-covered back out again before any magic seems possible, let alone manifesting. Nobody’s in control of anything, really, except for some intermittent illusion almost resembling control. Slip over here for more ...

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XTimes-1.12-Poison

poison
I suppose every language contains poison words, ones best avoided. These words twist back on themselves, biting their own butt, flipping their intended meaning; poisoning.

My poison word list remains gratefully short, though I constantly catch myself teetering on the edge of invoking every one of them. My list?
Should
Must
Do
Can
Is

You must read what follows because it should help you do all you can. It is the truth. Slip over here for more ...

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Xtimes-1.11-Fone

phone
It always starts with a phone call. Not the sort of call prompted by any email barrage advertisement because ads don’t apply to this sort of work. Nobody consults the yellow pages or any of the multitude of social media equivalents to find a BriefConsultant, either. Nobody would ever believe the claims such an ad would have to make to accurately represent the proposed service. This Brief Consultant could never really describe what he might do, anyway.

It follows, then, that there will be no response drafted to any Request For Proposal. This work doesn’t work that way, either. This limits the domains within which I might operate, but gratefully so. This is no retail trade. Slip over here for more ...

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XTimes 1.10-InhabitingStory

noir
I love listening to the radio because it projects better pictures than television or movies. I rarely feel a part of television or a movie because the roles are too finely cast—I can never escape being merely an observer. Books are better, but they demand my active participation as translator. Radio seems the perfect medium to fuzz the separation between here and there. Piped directly into my head, I simply close my eyes to close the distance between the story and me. I can inhabit a radio drama’s story almost as if it were my own.

When I hear you telling your story, I sometimes experience a taste of story envy. I want to inhabit your story. Your adventure might have been mine, if only I’d been there at the time. Slip over here for more ...

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XTimes 1.09-Chainge

chainge
As a veteran presenter of The Changing Change Management Conference, I could be mistaken for a master change agent. I’m not. I’m more of a skilled foot-dragger, quite sensitive to even minor disruptions in my routine. I do not warmly embrace difference. I am not hankering to champion any kind of improvement, more prepared to cope with what seems to be than sculpt something different.

I recently read a book written a little over a hundred years ago. The author complained about the mind-numbing pace of change in these modern times. We, today, feel ourselves especially vulnerable to shifting perspectives. I suspect this sense has always been a feature of modern life, modern being defined as any moment any human has been present and alive. Slip over here for more ...

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XTimes 1.08-Stalemate

stalemate
Push comes to shove before achieving stasis; an anticipated pushover stalls. No bully in the world ever expects anything but dominion. No schlemiel ever expected to stem any tide, but here we are, head-to-head, stalemated. Your will subtracted from my will equals equilibrium. My zero sum game combines with your zero sum game to yield exactly zero.

Few, head to head, reconsider the game. The strategy’s failed, the tactics moot, yet the sticky residue of win and lose holds those opposing foreheads in place. Neither can see any alternative space from there: eyes locked, imagination seized up, too. We still believe we might bull through. Relenting can’t even qualify as unthinkable because it’s unimaginable from there. Slip over here for more ...

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XTimes 1.07-UpGrade

upgrade
I innocently downloaded the iOS 7 upgrade. I claim innocence because I had no idea that I was undermining my mobile experience. Like every upgrade in the history of the world so far, this one degraded pretty much everything. I suppose some user experience expert had determined just what I needed. Like always, their expertise translated into cluelessness.

I make it a policy to always stay as far behind current as possible with everything. I have a hundred year-old lawnmower. I use a ten year old version of Adobe Acrobat®. I used a 1992 version of MS Word until I could no longer find a machine it ran on, then did not purchase the snazzy unusable more modern version. Looking at the more modern Word was enough for me to decide to be forever MicroSoft-free. Slip over here for more ...

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XTimes 1.05-Poll-Ticks

poll
I don’t remember the part of American history where the Founding Fathers ran daily polls to determine the up-to-the-moment opinion of the nascent electorate. Polls in those days would have taken months, results out-dated long before they could be tallied and summarized, let alone interpreted. So, the Founding Citizens selected Founding Fathers by a radically different process than popular election. Our country was founded upon representative selection instead.

In a representative government, individuals use popular voting to select individuals to represent their interests at the time. Interests could and did shift over time, so elections were based upon something different from fleeting partisan perspectives. In those days, character mattered. One chose their representatives more based upon how they thought rather than what they thought. This one principle might explain how a rabble of an electorate managed to select such timelessly thoughtful individuals. Slip over here for more ...

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XTimes 1.04-Righter

ah
I’m dismayed by how easily I get sucked into right/wrong reasoning, even though I probably know better. My admission qualifies as roughly equivalent to a junk food junkie confessing to his Chunky Monkey jones. Few questions meaningfully distill into black or white, wrong or right; they seem to require a broader palette to hold enough perspectives. I know this in my bones yet still find myself taking sides.

Perhaps this bi-polar perspective holds some hypnotic or addictive quality, over-riding knowledge and understanding, eliciting something akin to fight or flight responses: right or wrong. Curious behaviors emerge whenever I convince myself I’m right. My confidence and sense of certainty expands. Being right feels right, even when—perhaps especially when—only a minority share my opinion. It’s gets even weirder when I conclude I’m wrong. Then, my self-esteem seems to plummet and my very identity springs a leak. I can watch myself deflate until I disappear. Marginalized. Loser. Slip over here for more ...

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XTimes 1.02-BallGame

ballgame
My father was one heck of a baseball fan, much more than I. He remembered players’ names and stats, and understood the bones of the game at least as well as any seasoned major league scout. I love to watch the game, not because I understand very much of what I’m watching, but because I do not. I appreciate the mysterious rhythms and rituals, satisfied that the players and the coaches and many of the fans understand these like my father did. I’m more the gape-mouthed sort of fan.

I can be mistaken for a wizened watcher, especially now that my hair is turning mostly grey. I can sometimes see the difference between a fastball and a change-up, but I usually blink as the pitch passes over the plate. I doubt that I’ve ever seen a bat connect with a ball, startled awake instead by the resounding crack. I rather chase the game around the field, arriving just after every play, still deeply appreciative of the game. Slip over here for more ...

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XTimes 1.01-ScaringMyself

scaringMyself
I’m scared out of my wits most of the time. What emotion besides fear could so reliably shove me into that space beyond wits’ end? Wits sanitize and stabilize, but this crazy, changing world requires neither much sanity nor stability.

The energy that appears when moving through my terror seems the best suited for manifesting. Cowering energy never results in much, and though I generate plenty of cowering energy, even the occasional moving through energy seems to counterbalance. Neither can be stored and must be expended in the moment, in trembles or transformation; small beer or fine wine. Slip over here for more ...

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XTimes 1.01-ScaringMyself

scaringMyself
I’m scared out of my wits most of the time. What emotion besides fear could so reliably shove me into that space beyond wits’ end? Wits sanitize and stabilize, but this crazy, changing world requires neither much sanity nor stability.

The energy that appears when moving through my terror seems the best suited for manifesting. Cowering energy never results in much, and though I generate plenty of cowering energy, even the occasional moving through energy seems to counterbalance. Neither can be stored and must be expended in the moment, in trembles or transformation; small beer or fine wine. Slip over here for more ...

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XTimes 1.00- RescueFantasies

rescue
Judging from the many, many come-ons I receive from consultants, their business depends upon rescue fantasies. A proper prospective client must firmly believe they need rescuing and their proper consultant must shamelessly tout a solid track record of doing exactly that. Why else exist?

If I have a problem, somebody’s ready to claim that they have its solution. Their material reads like Johnny Burke’s old swing tune Swinging On A Star: “you could be better than you are, you could be swinging on a star.” Under the Extended Satisfaction Plan®, I could even learn how to carry moonbeams home in a jar. I didn’t even aspire to carry moonbeams until you suggested I could. Slip over here for more ...

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XTimes 1.00- RescueFantasies

rescue
Judging from the many, many come-ons I receive from consultants, their business depends upon rescue fantasies. A proper prospective client must firmly believe they need rescuing and their proper consultant must shamelessly tout a solid track record of doing exactly that. Why else exist?

If I have a problem, somebody’s ready to claim that they have its solution. Their material reads like Johnny Burke’s old swing tune Swinging On A Star: “you could be better than you are, you could be swinging on a star.” Under the Extended Satisfaction Plan®, I could even learn how to carry moonbeams home in a jar. I didn’t even aspire to carry moonbeams until you suggested I could. Slip over here for more ...

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OrdinaryTimes 1.48-Phall

Phall
Summer quietly slipped away leaving the impatiens in peak bloom. The azaleas try budding again, showing a scant sampler of their Springtime color. The cardinal, freshly fledged three short months ago, has gone deep red to match the coming leaf cover. The windows will be open for the next few weeks.

I am most productive when the weather turns. A few days between parting and coming extremes feel like new beginnings. I’d much rather start something fresh than finish anything. I am falling in thrall with the fall. Slip over here for more ...

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OrdinaryTimes 1.47-Phorms

formS
The Muse accompanies me to the eye doctor. Not because I’m particularly afraid of the doctor or the receptionist, but because we’re both certain that they’ll require me to fill out some forms. Last year, she dropped me off at her dentist, thinking that this act would pretty much guarantee that my excruciating cracked wisdom tooth would get looked at. She left, then they gave me a clipboard filled with blank forms. I couldn’t answer even half the questions. I went to the receptionist, explaining that I’d need to leave the office to get some information the forms wanted. Forty five minutes later, I was home digging through The Muse’s filing cabinet, trying to complete the forms. I did not find the information they needed. A couple of hours later, after The Muse emerged from another of her total isolation meetings, she called me, a little frantic. “What happened at the dentist?” she fumed. “I got a couple of calls wondering where you’d disappeared to.”

”They gave me forms,” I whimpered.

’Nuff said. Slip over here for more ...

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OrdinaryTimes 1.46-Synchronicity

synch
I, too, was well-schooled in the cause and effect. I try sometimes to slip loose of the noose and ride the flow, but my callouses guide my feet and my muscle memories seem to continuously nudge me back into the causal and the effective. I am not nearly mindful enough to remind myself much of the time that another order might emerge.

Helping my dear friend find a place to live today, he’d arrived with a pile of addresses gleaned from a thorough scouring of the Internet rental listings. I drove him by three places, one of which might prove livable, and we cruised through a couple of neighborhoods that were completely out of reach. Returning home, I heard myself saying how nice it would be if we could just drive down some idyllic street, happen upon a perfect place with a big fat For Rent sign out front, and be done. I said this like it was a Disney Imagineer’s pipe dream. Completely out of reach, well within the realm of the absolutely impossible. Fantasy personified. Slip over here for more ...

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OrdinaryTimes 1.45-2ndOrderWarrior

windowdoorwall
My friend Lowell works under contract to the DoD, the Department of Defense, as a second-order warrior. Rather than plot drone strikes, he works to understand and reinforce culture by studying the meanings people make and how they make them.

He tells terrific, heartbreaking stories of well-intended but ignorant first-order warriors. He recalls how the Iraqi Reconstruction effort built a power station several times before some second-order warrior thought to sit down with the local chieftains to ask what they wanted. “If you rebuild the plant over there,” one village elder reported, “We’ll just have to blow it up because that’s another tribe’s territory. If you build it over here, they’ll just have to blow it up because it’ll be on our property. We’ve been at war for generations. This is a matter of pride.” The second-order warrior, rather late in this game, identified some neutral ground that could support a shared resource between the warring parties. The next plant was never blown up. Slip over here for more ...

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OrdinaryTimes 1.44-Salon

salon
In DC, honest dialogue happens in salon. A salon here isn’t a place where one connects to their inner hair drier. It’s supper and conversation, in the classic sense. A provocateur’s invited along with many appreciative listeners. We drink some wine, eat some pate, then swallow some supper and engage in off the record conversation. Tonight’s topic was foreign policy. Tonight’s provocateur had several decades of foreign policy experience. Personal friends with some of the higher-ups in the Chinese government. He once sent a cable to the then Secretary of State, saying, “Fuck you, strong message to follow.”

The news never quite captures the subtlety of the real-world. The real world seems to be inhabited with the remarkable people who quite selflessly engage in our best interests, though they might sometimes find themselves sideways to the politicals. We would be sunk without their audacity. We’re nearly sunk with it. Slip over here for more ...

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OrdinaryTimes 1.43-DisAster

lightrain
A light rain caught us as we left the house this morning. Neither of us seemed enthusiastic at the prospect of facing another OrdinaryTimes Monday morning. The Muse was running unusually late, but after the snarls she’d experienced on her business trip last week, she could afford to take her time. I had a day of uncertain preparations ahead. Supper for thirty tomorrow, what can I make beforehand without losing fresh crispnesses?

It felt more like Spring than almost Fall outside. The Muse wrestled with the umbrella getting into the car. Short hop to the Metro station, the usual morning news on the radio heading back. No, wait! That’s not the usual morning news: I hear the word ’shooter’ and suspect the worst. It’s the worst Slip over here for more ...

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OrdinaryTimes 1.42-Mow-Ring

mower
I own a lawnmower with a 1911 patent stamp on it. It still works more or less like new. It features a fine hardwood handle, spindle, and roller; hard rubber tires over cast iron wheels. Steel blades every bit as sharp as one of my kitchen knives. I’ve mowed my lawns with little else for the last decade.

My nephew bought this beauty at a junk shop for a buck and bestowed it on me as a wedding present in 2002. It might qualify as the finest present I’ve ever received. I didn’t sharpen it for the first decade I owned it, not that this ever affected the fine results it produced. It’s a five blade model. It leaves lawn looking as if some manicure scissor-wielding maniac took after the grass. I’ve seen some powered eight blade babies used for putting green trimming, but I’ve never seen a domestic push mower that could produce the trim this one yields. Slip over here for more ...

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OrdinaryTimes 1.41-Meh-Chanical

monkeywrench1
I am not what anyone would call mechanical. Well, not in any traditional sense. It took me about five years to figure out how to change the oil in a car, and even then, not entirely reliably. I can often select the right key to fit the backdoor lock, but only because I’ve color-coded the keys. I feel as though I’ve almost mastered the flathead screwdriver and am doing some kindergarten-level practice bouts with the mysterious Phillips head model. I prefer Vise-Grip® pliers, even though they sometimes maul the nut head.

Last weekend the master bathroom towel rack fell into the tub all by itself. It had taken up this annoying habit ever since the property manager ‘managed’ to yank it off the wall while he was mangling the blistered ceiling joint just above it. I gamely put it back up, but it seemed to have lost its will to hang, and has clattered like Fibber Magee’s closet opening into that huge soaking tub at inconvenient intervals since. I’d had it. Slip over here for more ...

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OrdinaryTimes 1.40-TheBreak

Break1
Life brings two great classes of tragedies: The breakdown and The BIG break.

My break downs seemed every bit as subtle as my BIG breaks. Perhaps they arrived by bus to avoid blocking the driveway before slipping in through the barely cracked bathroom window. Every day fairly succeeded in replicating the days before until one day just could not repeat those yesterdays. I barely noticed. Nothing exploded. Nothing seemed to disappear. The Scientists claim that losing the vision in one eye elicits no immediately recognizable change in experience. Half of the screen does not go blank, or so it seems when the break down or the BIG break appears.

Nobody makes movies about this experience. Subtle works about as well in movies as it does in rock and roll. Slip over here for more ...

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OrdinaryTimes 1.39-CheckingOut

checkout
I’m the sort of person who tends to have difficult check-outs at the store. Retailers these days seem more interested in data gathering than selling stuff, so checkout’s complicated. No, I do not have one of your frequent shopper cards, or, if I do have one, I signed up under an assumed name. Do you discount my purchases if I ‘belong?’ If so, I have an assumed-name affiliation. If not, I don’t.

Yesterday I bought a bunch of fall plants at the hardware store. They were all the same, so I carried one of them to the front counter. The clerk charged me for N of the one I carried, then I went to the back to cart the bunch away. As I was pulling out of the parking lot, a clerk approached my car asking if he could look at my receipt. “I called to the front and they said they hadn’t checked out any bunches of plants,” he explained. “That’s because I only schlepped one of them to the checkout stand where she replicated one by N,” I replied. I was not arrested. Slip over here for more ...

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OrdinaryTimes 1.37-Mean-ing

torpdo-spoon-redwhite
I heard today some shocking stories of mean-ing personified and I cried. I watched several promising possibilities disappearing, leaving no equally promising replacements. I grieve for what might have been and most certainly will never be now. I do not know yet what comes next and I’m uncertain where you’re left. I watched you being bereft and felt my own history stabbing me near that scar in my back. I have nothing wise to share.

I hope I never see it coming. I would rather be betrayed a thousand times than maintain a single cynical callus that might deflect any mean defection. Looking over my shoulder trying to catch a glimpse of someone trying to catch me inhibits my progress. I’d much rather lose any race than live so defensively. Slip over here for more ...

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OrdinaryTimes 1.36-Provisioning

provisioning
I woke at three this morning, fussing about the weekend’s food. We’ve got vegetarians visiting, so I’ll be playing to my weak hand. I don’t roast the ceremonial goat head every night, but I appreciate the depth and texture a properly rendered fatty cut brings to the broth. I believe that even the most ideological or ideo-illogical vegan retains at least a vestigial palate, and I’m learning some of the tricks of the trade. We are all fat and sweet seekers, whatever form we insist upon receiving our nourishment. When the picky eaters show up, I resort to sleight of hand.

A decent veg stock gets built in three stages. The first stage, I raw cut. Carrots, parsnips, celery root and fennel top; beet, chard, and kale stems; shallots and okra tops, hot roasted for more than an hour, less than two, after being baptized in a decent olive oil and sprinkled with sea salt. I want these guys of the edge of char because char compensates for the anemic color and texture of plain boiled veg. Slip over here for more ...

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OrdinaryTimes 1.35-Circling

circling
In lieu of any instruction manual, I’ve been watching how I approach accomplishing. I have not been wearing a lab coat or keeping copious notes, but I’m getting the impression that I almost never do anything the easy way. I’d thought there might be a straight-forward path between there and done. If there is one, it usually eludes me. I circle around, turn back, sneak behind, then sidle in sideways on almost every objective from concocting supper to writing a song. I have found no strait and narrow.

I should be pleased. Heck, I really should be delighted with this discovery. My fifth grade teacher insisted I could move right in: choose a subject, outline the steps, then follow those steps to achievement, closure. But my fifth grade teacher, God rest her weary soul, might have forgotten about learning. In choosing a subject, I should rightfully reject several. In outlining the steps, I could decide that I didn’t know enough to outline the steps yet and go feral, sniffing along some uncharted path. Even then, the best I could ever pull off was a half-way indecent backing into a result. I never once found a front door Slip over here for more ...

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OrdinaryTimes 1.34-Dis-Qualification

Dis-Qualification
I’ve heard that some people seek qualification. I guess I’m the opposite. I revel in disqualification. I felt validated when my high school guidance counselor declared me unsuitable for college. I’ve sat for a few certification exams, but gratefully failed most of them. I do not test well. I’m proud to say that I barely pass my periodic driver’s test, mostly because the state insists upon administering it on a Windoze-like computer, which I learned long ago wasn’t designed for me to use. My darling daughter, unlike me, did really well on her SAT exams, but, disgusted with colleges that used this widely discredited qualification for admission purposes, choose to go to schools that refused to use the damned thing. I guess my perspective might be DNA deep. I certainly hope so.

I live in a world crazy for certifications. I’m surprised that I don’t have to show prior ‘proof’ of some skill to sit on the freaking toilet, but I’m confident that’s coming. With the proliferation of computing has come the inundation of surveys, assessments, and exams, each supposed to prove something. Few of them prove anything except how savvy of an exam-taker I am. I am not a savvy exam taker, and do not aspire to become one. The cost’s just too great. Slip over here for more ...

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OrdinaryTimes 1.33-Problemish

falsedilemma
The news screamed either/or today. Should we or should we not? Partisans line either side of this debate just as if they could persuade the opposition to switch sides. Few suspect they’re considering the wrong question. Should consensus center along either side, nobody ever need realize what the real question could have been.

Whatever the real question turns out to be, either/or never qualifies as the real question. Either/or almost always proves to be the source of even more difficulty than a frame for a satisfying resolution. E/O offers too few choices to support satisfaction. What to do? When offered the choice of either or or, choose neither. I understand that nobody’s offered that third choice, that the unspoken social convention insists that you shouldn’t reject the offered alternatives. Someone might be offended if you refuse to choose from the proffered platter. Do it anyway. Slip over here for more ...

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OrdinaryTimes 1.32-WhoMan

Human
The Muse calls ‘em Stupid Human Tricks, those tendencies we tend to not notice ourselves embodying. The expert almost never notices the over-confidence his detailed knowledge of a system induces. Almost everyone falls prey to a Law of Small Numbers, where we pre-consciously act as if small samples would exhibit the same patterns as large, statistically significant ones might. We seem encased in biases and blindnesses, each perfectly human, each also perfectly delusional.

Economists seem to be about ready to give up on the notion of rational actors engaging in purely self-interested exchanges. Recent studies suggest that even if we tried to maximize our own self-interested happiness, we are not always in touch with what might render us happy. Lottery winners end up no happier than the poorest of the rest of us. Our status quo seems most valuable to us, and we seem imbedded in a continually shifting context. We seem, as a species, very risk averse, even when we characterize ourselves as daredevils. As economists back away from earlier, more wishful presumptions about human behavior, the many professions classifiable under the broad heading of economic activities seem painfully unaware that their profession’s presumptions, too, more than qualify as questionable. Slip over here for more ...

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OrdinaryTimes 1.31-BeLief

BeLief
I’m never happier than when I’m under the thrall of one of my many firmly-held beliefs. The ennobling effect works whether the belief supports an absolute truth or absurd falsehood. Anyone can logically dismantle anyone else’s belief without noticing that the purpose of holding the belief never was to support any volume of truth behind it, but the ‘lief’ it encourages; that starry-eyed conviction, that unshakeable dedication, that otherwise unsupportable optimism renders criticism moot. Belief requires no proof.

I cannot force anyone to believe anything. No matter how powerful my own belief, I cannot coerce you into sharing it. I know, you can pretend, but later, your skepticism will shine through your gauzy cover story; your lief will prove unsustainable. Slip over here for more ...

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OrdinaryTimes 1.30-LightSpeed

lightspeed
The season seems to change at the speed of light. Not a dizzying, hyper-active flash, but an ambiant ambling. One morning, the sun comes up from a different angle, sharing the sky for the first time since June. A cooling moistness prevails, a clear tell that the season was changing all the time. The sun flees southward at about eighteen miles a day, much slower than a walking horse, continually, if only slightly shifting its approach angle, resulting in these moments of recognized change. It seemed everything was the same until it was not the same anymore. I feel like something’s over Slip over here for more ...
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OrdinaryTimes 1.29-MuddleClass

muddle
Give any half-way decent economist or shameless politician a podium and you’ll elicit enthusiastic support for the middle class, a concept nobody’s not in favor of. Some polling shows that many more than half of US households believe themselves to be a part of this vast, undefinable middle. We all support a chicken in every pot, which was once the symbol of the cherished space, but no more. Now, it seems, the flat screen television better symbolizes this space, along with a two car garage and granite countertops. This land where everyone’s supposed to want to own their own home and aspire to hold down a middle management position has long been fundamental to our mythos.

This myth belongs in a consumer economy held hostage to the ability and willingness of everyone to acquire stuff. Advertising encourages this desire; television, too, where we peek into lifestyles few of us even suspected we wanted to emulate until we saw some actors pretending their surroundings represented normal. Slip over here for more ...

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OrdinaryTimes 1.27-InnerNinny

ninny
I confessed to my friend David that I was feeling like a ninny around my long-stalled book project. I would prefer to courageously face it, but that feels like so much bluster. Whatever this book needs from me, I’m reasonably confident that bluster isn’t it.

I’m dealing with subtlety—a substance almost extinguished in the bold branding balderdash of modern marketing. Nobody organizes mass marches for subtlety. No stirring speeches promote it. No cheerleaders pump up the crowd. Almost nobody notices its presence or its absence except the author and The Muse, and they notice too well. Slip over here for more ...

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OrdinaryTimes 1.26-Know-Ledge

synesth
My friend Steve explains that he doesn’t remember stuff by labels. Leaving an exam in college, a fellow student asked if he remembered The Barnes Case to answer one question. “What’s The Barnes Case?” Once she’d explained, he held forth on the patterns and principles involved, but he hadn’t catalogued that ‘knowledge’ like any database would.

Steve’s not a database, but a judge—or has been a judge for most of his career. His work’s not a matter of rule matching, since every case is different and the law ambiguous. His challenge leans toward finding common patterns that might integrate situation with precedent, dilemma with resolution. Slip over here for more ...

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OrdinaryTimes 1.25-8thDay

planning1
And on the eighth day, man began to plan. He started with the end in mind, blinding himself to what stood right beside him. He assumed his way back from that future to find his presence in question. He charted his course as if he’d surveyed the territory, lighting straight and narrow pathways through crooked uncertainty until he was convinced he knew the way. He infected others with his vision, encouraging them to follow his lead, and so he led his followers deep into temptation as if to deliver them from evil. On the eight day, he planned.

On the ninth day, he planned again, reworking original notions, adapting to the inevitably unforeseen, just as if he could more clearly foresee now. Slip over here for more ...

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OrdinaryTimes 1.24-ToodleTwo

route15
US Route 15 must be one of the great American drives. Swooping down from New York State into Pennsylvania, traversing wide valleys and climbing through fingers of mountains. Smooth transition from the weekend into whatever the coming week brings.

The Muse and I went on a toodle this weekend. Not a drive or an excursion or a trip, but a toodle. The rules are different. On a drive, we’re aimless. On an excursion, we know our destination. On a trip, we have at least a clue about how we’ll get from here to there. On a toodle, we throw away plans and hold principles instead.

The principle of this toodle was all about avoiding freeways. We drove about three hundred miles, only resorting to freeways for about ten miles. We considered this a win.

Freeways aren’t free and they are no way to make anything but time, which seemed beside the point on this outing. We were heading North, roughly in the direction of my nephew’s birthday party, but we deliberately avoided knowing how we’d get there on time. This was almost an excursion. We’ve taken longer trips without knowing where we were headed,







©2013 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved









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OrdinaryTimes 1.23-Alignment

alignment
Some OrdinaryTimes days, just a very few, align perfectly. The Muse insists that the universe is always in perfect alignment, and I accept her wisdom, but acknowledge that only sometimes does that universal constant require no nudging from me. Today, apples fell off the tree just as I passed beneath, landing a juicy, perfectly ripe fruit right into the palm of my hand. Again and again.

I’m tempted to believe that I might have hit some turning point where this could become the new normal, but I’m not quite that needy or delusional yet. Instead, I’ll just appreciate, dog-tired, and proceed. I’m confident that there’s no particular reason behind this remarkable series. Randomness explains it adequately without diminishing the experience even a little bit. Slip over here for more ...

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OrdinaryTimes 1.22-Company

company
The Muse seems to be a skillful politician. Her primary weapon might be the strategically positioned supper party. Whenever a group comes to town for a review or a meeting, she invites ‘em over for supper. The program she works for rarely sponsors any outside of work activities, so an essential channel of communication just doesn’t exist unless somebody, like The Muse, makes it happen. She does.

I don’t do much other than clean up the house and prepare the food, perhaps pull out the guitar after supper for a short house concert. Most of the conversation at table flies far over my head. It’s filled with nuanced meanings, so much so that The Muse has to later, once the guests depart, explain to me what really happened. It seemed like so much small talk but it was not. Slip over here for more ...

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OrdinaryTimes 1.21-Prep

At least 80% of every activity can be charged to the preparation account. At most, 20% of wallpapering involves wallpaper. Painting, too, turns out to barely engage either paint or a brush. Same story with supper.

Hours before any flame ignites, I’m plotting, pre-planning before doing anything; then peeling, chopping, and setting aside in bowls, which I set in cooking sequence. By the time I ignite any flame, supper’s set up for a fall-through. The fall-through’s usually quick. Slip over here for more ...

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OrdinaryTimes 1.20-Mastery

mastery1
I enter the shop reluctantly. I’d expected a more welcoming entrance, a better neighborhood. This place, squeezed between the smoky stench of past pull-dated fried chicken oil and a multi-purpose passport photo shop, scares me. The front window needs cleaning—on the inside more than out—and shelves seem randomly-stacked. Inside, though, I’m reassured. I’m in the presence of a master.

A small man, fashionably-dressed for 1973, steps out through a beaded curtain from a dimly-lit back room. He welcomes me with a nod and a phrase I can’t quite catch, delivered in a dialect few ever used. I mumble my query, suddenly stupid, unable to properly form words. I show him and he immediately understands. His body language tells me that my difficulty is small potatoes, but that I’ll have to wait a week, maybe more, for a fix. Slip over here for more ...

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OrdinaryTimes 1.19-XTRMlyOrdinary

ordinary
It was my birthday this morning so I woke up at three am but lazed around until almost four. The cats followed me downstairs and even chose to go out when I opened the front door to check on the weather. Humidity seemed to be moving back in.

I figured this was my day to do whatever I pleased, so I finished that novel so I could return it to the library. The Muse woke up grumbling that she had an early meeting I hadn’t heard about. I would have at least had her coffee waiting for her had I known. Slip over here for more ...

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OrdinaryTimes 1.18-LastNight

lastNight
I was careful to leverage endings back when I still called myself a songwriter. Neurotic, perhaps, but each month-end demanded that I finish at least one more song before the next month rolled in. I suppose this jammed the usual OrdinaryTime defenses that too easily lull a creative mind into knocking off rather than creating.

OrdinaryTime might be the most powerful narcotic known to humankind. It soothes and reassures even the most talented, leaving much unfinished work in its wake. Imagine what it might do to someone as modestly talented as I. I need some jamming. Discipline can work, but unreliably. If it only took hard work, I’d have a lot more results than I seem to produce. Dangle a decent deadline before me and I’ll pretty reliably deliver. Slip over here for more ...

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OrdinaryTimes 1.17-Entraining

chalkboard
By the time I entered fourth grade, I knew trouble was coming. I knew how to read and count pretty well before I started first grade, so the first three grades were easy, but I’d heard stories about fourth and I felt terrified. By fourth grade, I was supposed to start showing how smart I was by memorizing things, and I had never been smart in that way—particularly procedures. For those, I relied upon written instructions that seemed to wave hazily before me, rendering them impossible for me to commit to memory.

I did okay, though, and was even recognized as gifted, even sent to a special class where we did the fourth grade equivalent of sitting around in wing-back chairs wearing leather patches on the elbows of grey cardigans, smoking cigars and engaging in college-bound stuff. I felt like someone had made a big mistake. Slip over here for more ...

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OrdinaryTimes 1.16-ManageMental

Crazy
About a hundred years ago, American society went certifiably crazy: management crazy. Before then, individuals, often collaborating with others, somehow directed their own affairs. After, people started believing things would just work better if a manager was involved. Now, we routinely speak of mis-management as if it was some kind of disease, certain to create illness and perhaps death. And when some endeavor fails, we presume it was first a failure of management rather than of execution.

Smear some of that mysterious goo, management, onto anything, and it’ll magically just work better. Efficiency will increase and waste will plummet, customer satisfaction should soar and time-to-market could be cut in half. So many marbles in our mouths, and not one of us like being managed. Most of us prefer not to be the manager, either, since that job seems the least satisfying of almost all the other possibilities. Slip over here for more ...

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OrdinaryTimes 1.15-Festering

fester
I hold one principle nearest to my heart: Start with whatever’s threatening to fester. I hold this close because again and again and again, it’s proven reliable. When cooking, and stumped with what to feature that evening, this notion’s served me well again and again and again. Maybe because the threat’s not yet quite manifested, and I end up getting peak ripeness. Maybe because my situational leniency saves me a hassled trip to the purveyors. Maybe it’s just magic, but I live by it.

I’m a soft-hearted cook. I hate to toss that last leftover cup of even stuff I know won’t keep, so I have a larder half-full of questionable material. This quite naturally leads me to combine question-ables, yielding unreproduce-able results. Tonight’s supper went down easy, anyway. Tomorrow’s might as well, I figure. Slip over here for more ...

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OrdinaryTimes 1.14-SteppIninSomethin

footprint
I wasn’t sure what that was next to the driver’s side door as I opened it in the grocery store parking lot. It was only clear that someone had stepped in it. I checked my shoes and concluded that it probably wasn’t me.

This wasn’t dog poo, but some graham cracker-chocolate something or other. Someone had dropped a chunk of it, someone has stepped in it, and the forensic evidence suggested it might have been me.

I did not step in it. I watched myself revert to olfactory mode when I thought I recognized my shoeprint there. Slip over here for more ...

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OrdinaryTimes 1.13-Visitation

visitation
OrdinaryTimes depend upon visitations. Not necessarily visits from a Magi, but don’t bet against that. We are splayed across our everyday, dependent upon some old/new/referred friend to stop in and bust up the tenacious status quo. Go ahead. Please try to inconvenience me.

This week was blessed with a visitation. In anticipation, I vacuumed out the place. The Muse dusted: toilets sparkly, ash tray located.

I’m a lousy house guest, so busy apologizing for the inconvenience, I never consider that I might be a gift to my hosts. Slip over here for more ...

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OrdinaryTimes 1.12-ShortChange

smallchange
We stopped for beers after spending the afternoon at the Holocaust Museum.

That’s one lousy way to start a story. Maybe I should start over.

We stepped out of the sweaty afternoon, hoping cast conditioned ales might be on offer at Churchkey.

That’s better...

The Muse found a stout so dark we had to turn on my iPhone flashlight app to hear our conversation. III found a bourbon barrel-aged brew that tasted to me like Sugar Corn Pops. I found a most unlikely Italian IPA called Buracracy; very nice but such a small glass.

III was buying, and he refused to run a tab, handing the server a couple of twenties. “I can run a tab if you’d like,” he offered.

”I would not,” insisted III. Slip over here for more ...

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OrdinaryTimes 1.11-Greenbelt

greenbelt
We visited Greenbelt today. A community founded upon the notion that community thrives by encouraging cooperation rather than competition. The community owns the homes. Individuals purchase leases to live there. Sidewalks connect homes via green spaces, rather than lining streets. Schools, shops, and gathering places are close enough that most trips don’t require a car.

My friend III grew up in Greenbelt, his parents counted as founders. Such an idyllic childhood could have ill-prepared him for a successful life, but it didn’t. Instead, it seemed to instill a deep decency. He’s the one who’s known community since the day he was born. Slip over here for more ...

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OrdinaryTimes 1.10-III

redacted
My dear friend III showed up today. We’ve known each other for about twenty years, though we don’t see each other much. He was present when The Muse and I were married, and has been our guest almost as many times as we’ve been his guest. He doesn’t allow himself to be photographed, holding to the notion that photographs swipe a bit of one’s soul. He might be the sanest person I’ve ever known.

Exile holds us far away from our longest-lived loves, surrounding us with new friends, sure, but all strangers to our past. Those who were there at the time understand the context from which we come. Much of our deepest understanding needs no stating. Most of our conversation needs little explanation. It’s easy. Slip over here for more ...

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OrdinaryTimes 1.09-Friday

fri
Fridays during OrdinaryTimes, I drive The Muse to work. It’s less convenient for me to drive her downtown than it is for her to hop the Metro, but I do my larder stocking on Friday mornings, so I’m heading that direction anyway. She agrees to be chauffeured. We chat as I take our secret passage off the hill into town. She’d usually rather stick with me than hop out when I pull into the No Parking Zone across from the building that holds her office. By Friday, she’s fed up with the mindless bureaucracy. I’d rather she could tag along, too. She’s fed up and I’m fixing to stock up the feed.

With the sequester’s forced layoffs, Friday traffic feels Saturday light. We make the passage in just under a half hour. After The Muse reluctantly departs, I wheel into the on-ramp beneath L’Enfant Plaza and onto the 395. I cross the Potomac into Virginia and exit onto the George Washington Parkway, a narrow four lane where black SUVs weave through traffic like Richard Petty’s driving, wending through the floodplain beneath the Pentagon and Arlington National Cemetery. The signage directs me to the left lane, then the right, then back to the left again before I emerge onto US 50 heading West between Fort Myers and the Beltway Bandit hideout of Roslyn, and take the first exit, cutting an immediate right then left to climb the hill up to Wilson Blvd, where I turn left and continue my climb up into Courthouse and Clarendon. Slip over here for more ...

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OrdinaryTimes 1.08-Magic

rabbithat
I remember both fondly and incorrectly the mornings I wrote my published book The Blind Men and the Elephant. To my faulty memory, I composed it effortlessly, almost stream of consciously, with little subsequent editing needed. In fact, the experience was more like walking to Georgia on my finger tips than dictating flawless prose. That time was every bit as fit and starty as today.

I believe that the finishing touches on any piece of writing erases much of the pain experienced when pulling it up out of its unlikely hat. A flood of joy washes all the blood, sweat, and fears away, leaving a sweet smelling result. This dance between whitewashed memory and blistering experience discourages me. I mean it extracts most of my courage and leaves me stunned and confused. Slip over here for more ...

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OrdinaryTimes 1.07-Spire

spire
An OrdinaryTimes morning won’t naturally inspire much more than rolling over to catch more sleep. I set an early alarm anyway and make my way down the dawn-shadowed stairway to fetch the newspaper, put the teapot on the flame, and refresh the cats’ water bowl and food dish.

The Muse out-sleeps me and I try to drizzle her coffee before she stumbles down seeking extrinsic motivation. I scan the newspaper while my espresso tries to rise in its little pot. I allow myself two comics and a horriblescope reading before emptying my overnight email in-box. The Muse will be prepping her breakfast fruit by then. I’ll meditate some. Slip over here for more ...

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OrdinaryTimes 1.06-OweKnur

oweknur
I rent with an owner’s mindset. I’m the guy who washes the rental car before returning it. I maintain the stuff entrusted to me as if it were my own, to my own standards. One neighbor confided that the place we’re renting looks a lot better than when the owners lived in it.

The Muse distinguishes between what she calls a Renter’s and an Owner’s Mindset. She doesn’t own the company she works for, but she acts like she does. Others seem to endlessly complain about the lack of direction they receive from above, as if their boss, their boss’s boss, or even the head of that operation somehow possessed an owner’s wisdom denied mere worker bees. A Renter’s Mindset encourages otherwise sentient adults to engage as if they are adolescent worker bees. The Muse doesn’t work so much as owns. Slip over here for more ...

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OrdinaryTimes 1.05-MindNumbing

mindnumbing
Today I sing the praises of repetitive, mind-numbing work. Not the exacting, mind-filling work occupying so much OrdinaryTime, but the truly trivial but none-the-less necessary labor I’m sometimes fortunate enough to find myself engaged in. Picky weeding. Tedious cleaning. Vegetable prep.

The Good Lord provided vegetables especially for this occupation. The price of preserving 120 pounds of fine plum tomatoes includes the necessity of peeling every blessed one of those babies, and since The Muse and I will feed ourselves with the result, we must be careful to remove only that celluloid skin and the annoying stem bud. Oh, and we’d like to finish this job in a day. Slip over here for more ...

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OrdinaryTimes 1.04-2MateOh

2MightOwe
Even OrdinaryTimes can be pretty darned special. When summer slips over into her better half, harvesting starts in earnest. When harvest finds her peak, The Muse and I go on the hunt for tomatoes. When we lived in The Valley, the hunt took all of fifteen minutes to drive to Milton and Rose’s truck farm, where we’d pick our own then haul ‘em home to steam up the windows. In exile here, it’s a hundred miles each way to a barn in Pennsylvania, six hours on rolling two lane blacktop, dodging the occasional Amishman’s carriage; still well worth the trip.

Each summer we produce a few dozen quarts of canned plum tomatoes, perhaps a half dozen half pints of tomato paste, and a few freezer bags stuffed with roasted tomato slices, rendered in olive oil with garlic and fresh thyme. We do not can sauce, but make it fresh from our canned tomatoes, paste, and roasted slices. We preserve ingredients rather than finished product so we can use our harvest differently every meal. Slip over here for more ...

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OrdinaryTimes 1.03-Alien

alien2
I hold this sneaking suspicion that I don’t belong. I’ve felt like a stranger everywhere I’ve lived, including ‘the old home place,’ which has now passed out of the family. Home seems an alien concept.

I’m uncertain how I came to feel this way. I was the designated oddball in my birth family, which might have helped form this sense, and I reveled in that role. In my late teen years, I grew my hair long, thereby becoming an instant outcast almost everywhere I went. Later, I lived in a succession of neighborhoods I didn’t feel safe in, where I didn’t know the neighbors very well and they didn’t know me, either. I never learned the corner store owner’s name, nor he mine. Slip over here for more ...

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OrdinaryTimes 1.02-Alonely

alonely
My agent classified me as a Single Acoustic Artist, which meant that I didn’t belong to a band. My current report card, if my second grade teacher was still around to fill it out, would probably say that I don’t play well with others, or, more generously, that I don’t often play with others. I spend most of my OrdinaryTime alone.

I don’t remember a single class in school in the fine art of aloneliness. Not loneliness, since I suppose everyone gets on-the-job training in that, one way or another, but aloneliness, which I might define as the ability to utilize empty time. Writers, musicians, consultants, even arm-candy spouses become expert in this curious craft. They might even appear to be the life of every party you see them attend, but nobody sees the other 99% of their time—their alonely time of which they are masters. Slip over here for more ...

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OrdinaryTimes 1.01-FeedingFerals

ferals
I didn’t expect to learn so much feeding feral cats. A neighbor was ill and needed someone to take over her Wednesday morning responsibilities, and I innocently volunteered. Now, every Wednesday morning, I fill two gallon jugs with water, top off the old kitty litter tub with dry food, and grab nine small cans of wet food (something I’d never dream of feeding my domestic critters), and make my rounds.

I visit five feeding stations: one behind the neighborhood hospital, and the other four around a local shopping center. I don’t always see cats at every station, but I always find clear evidence that they have been there; them or raccoons. I always find empty food pans. Slip over here for more ...

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