Some say that blogs are a lot like pants, and that everyone should own at least two - a long pair and a short pair. The long pair for when you’re full of wind, and the short pair for when you’re not.
I never visit political blogs because they remind me of a closet filled with too many long pants. You open the doors and the wind just blows you across the room, no matter what kind of grip your toes have on the carpet.
Today I crank out some accounting in The Age of Plastic. Yes, it’s The Buggles, because sometimes I like my music upbeat and old, like my wrinkled brain.
“I was General Patton’s fashion advisor,” my grandpa would sometimes bring up after a good meal, which was always hard to believe, considering the man’s own conservative Swedish style of dress. Comfortable slacks, short in the leg, accompanied by a thick, long-sleeved flannel shirt, buttoned high, all over a well-worn pair of long underwear, both top and bottoms - ask any old Swedish man to define “fashion” and he’ll talk to you for hours on good ways to stay warm.
“Staying warm is the key,” he’d say. “I knew it, so George knew it. Some say we won the war because of Patton’s understanding of warmth.” I’d never really thought of my grandpa as a war hero, not even back then, when the war was still fresh in people’s minds and actual soldiers walked the streets, but now I’m not so sure. Maybe he was the general’s fashion advisor. Maybe warmth is the key. I’ve heard stranger things.
The thing is, so much time has passed between now and then, that I guess I don’t see any harm in believing the old man’s lies, no matter how far-fetched they might sound to you. And I think in time, you’ll come to feel the same way.
Imaginary Keith and I are pitching together today, seeing if we can’t hold down the fort while we wait for Economic Recovery to arrive with the supplies. Spring is in the air, but it smells like stale memories.
“How’s it going over there?” I’m in charge of printing checks, and it hasn’t gone well at all. Two hours wasted, trying to figure out why one machine won’t talk to another. But I’ve kept this from Imaginary Keith. No need to alarm the troops.
“I still need that checkbook,” I remind him. “At least until we see Economic Recovery’s face peak over that front gate.” She’ll know what to do about the printer.
“I’m still looking,” Imaginary Keith says. “The checkbook seems to have lost itself.”
The best thing about living in the Electronic Age, as opposed to say, the start of the Iron Age, is that no one actually comes sneaking up to try pounding down your gate. Two men can easily manage a doomed fort.
“The checkbook is on the desk,” I tell my friend. “I saw it there just the other day.”
“Yea, that’s what I was thinking. But where’s the desk?”
“Maybe we should just go patrol the perimeter.”
“Good idea.”
I picked a fight with a bear last Tuesday, which anyone could tell you is a stupid move. Even people who’ve never once laid eyes on a bear know to keep their distance. I think it’s just all that fur, or maybe the large mouth that opens straight back into the head, like a dog’s you know, only bigger.
But I’ve never paid much attention to the way anyone’s mouth opens and closes, and I certainly haven’t spent much time around bears, except for maybe once when my dad piled us all into the old Dodge Tradesman and drove halfway across the country with us kids staring out the back window, not once thinking about where we were going, but like kids are prone to do, paying an awful amount of attention to where we’d just been, and even more attention to where we were not. If you ever take your kids to Yellowstone, know this - you will never live close enough to please the likes of their impatience.
I have a feeling that I never fully recovered from the drive. Not with all those yellow lines zipping out from under the van, the constant heat with my sisters long hair blowing around everywhere, touching us. And where did the wind come from anyway? What was the old man thinking, buying a vehicle with windows that only leaned open slightly at the bottom, held there by that little plastic, pump handle latch that couldn’t be broken, no matter what we tried. No kid survives a trip like that without being able to hang his head out the window, or at least a hand, pretending he’s an airplane.
I bet that trip is the source of so many of my problems, and not just this recent scuffle with the bear. That one trip alone could explain so much. Day after day staring at nothing, then finally reaching the park only to be told to stay in the car because of the bears scrounging around in the trash. This close to the fucking bears with a window that wouldn’t open, while the old man, his head hanging out his own window, pretends to growl like a bear.
I’ll tell you, I’ve never called a bear a liar before, but I did this week and it felt good. It felt like I’d finally snapped that plastic window latch and could feel some wind on my face. Like I could stick my hand anywhere, right in front of that bear’s face if I felt like it, and nothing could touch me. Nothing.
Anyway, I’ve decided to blame everything on that one trip. What else could be the reason behind a grown man calling a bear a liar, and then making matters worse by throwing the first punch? You tell me, because I can’t come up with a single thing.
Nearly seventeen years in business, and I had not once filed my Federal Corporation Income Tax Return by the March 15th deadline. Not one single time.
But this year things were looking up, because on March 3rd I was sitting across a big table with my accountant, laughing with her about my shortcomings as my companies bookkeeper. I remember looking at the date next to my signature and having that short burst of excitement that so many of us often mistake for organization. Paperwork be damned! I was in control here!
“After all these years in business, it looks like I’ve finally gotten it together,” I said. “I finally made the deadline.” I can only imagine what went through my accountant’s head. Numbers, I guess.
I’m not sure just how long that burst of excitement lasted. All day? Into the week? I’m not sure. My history of forgetfulness is well documented.
I do know that whatever excitement was left over, if in fact there was any left, disappeared in a poof of surprise when the envelope suddenly surfaced on my desk this morning. Unmailed!
The constable seemed to be always at an angle, like he was trying to hide something in his hand or just doing his best to make himself smaller, a harder target.
I’ve been running errands for the big guy so long now that I can’t remember the last time my feet stopped touching the ground. Comfortable shoes are what heaven is about, that’s what eternity is teaching me - comfortable shoes. I’m telling you, if you remember nothing else, remember to stipulate comfortable shoes in your will, because if you end up where I’m at, you’re going to be doing some walking, and an old stiff pair of oxfords or some flimsy, barely strapped on pair of high heels are never going to cut it. You’ll walk your blistered feet out of them in no time at all and end up with all those poor souls who thought cremation was a good idea - barefoot. And let me tell you, you don’t want to end up barefoot, not with an eternity of errands ahead of you. No way.
I’ve been asked to judge a writing contest. A battle of wits and creativity involving stories of the afterlife, so it’s only natural that I would think of my Uncle Bernie’s smiling chicken. Man could that chicken smile. Uncle Bernie always said it was the only chicken in the world that could smile, and would travel around Iowa and lower Minnesota in his black MG Midget convertible, with nothing more then one small knapsack, a guitar, and his smiling chicken strapped into the seat beside him. He’d stop in at the local feed mills and word would spread around town, and before you knew it, there’d be all sorts of people gathered round, trying to catch a glimpse of the smiling chicken. Anyway, that’s how Uncle Bernie told it. People loved that smiling chicken, he’d say, and could never get enough.
“They’d sit around and smile at that chicken all day if you let ‘em,” Uncle Bernie would say. “But I’d always push on. Every town had a feed mill back then. Yes sir, a lot of feed mills for me and my chicken to get to. Not like now. No, those days are long gone.”
I don’t know why I thought of that chicken as I sat here, reading through the entries. Maybe it was the idea of so many different takes on the afterlife, just blowing past me one after another, like the way small Iowa farm towns used to blow past my uncle and that chicken. I think of the two of them, sitting there in that MG with the top down on some warm summer afternoon, my uncle’s cap pulled down tight, the wind rippling through that chicken’s bright red comb, as the two of them tore along those county roads , smiling at nothing.
The trouble with honesty is that if you ever do get started down the path, there seems to be no end to it. Honesty meanders through life with about as much clarity and direction as lying does, neither one of them making a bit of sense. And if you really want to know the truth behind the lie (or is it the lie behind the truth? Or does it matter?), I have a hard time distinguishing between the two. Truth or lies, which will it be? Which words do you want me to use, it doesn’t matter, typed or spoken, it makes no difference to me, because really, it’s the question that never changes and that’s what’s important, not the answer itself. The answer is the lie, no matter how hard I try to get it right. No matter how hard I try for the truth. No matter how honest I am, I will in all likelihood get it wrong. It’s my nature, you see, to be lost, and that is all there is to it.
Are you as encouraged as I am about finding the path less traveled? Does it live in your dreams and at the end of every step? Do you imagine it appearing there in front of you, when you need it most, like the welcoming soft crunch of a small gravel path after too many steps across uneven rock? Do your knees ache more then your heart, or is it your head? What pushes you forward?
There was this one time I realized that there was no such path, but I’ll tell you, the thought passed through me the way a whisper might touch a crocus pushing through the snow. If there is truth it is certainly hard to hear, and even harder to hang onto. If there is any hope of knowing what’s on the other side, I’ve decided that I better find some time to walk both paths, both honesty and lying, both less traveled and more traveled, so that when I do eventually stumble out onto the other side and get to wherever it is I’m going, I’ll recognize truth for what it really is, and that it won’t sneak up on me during some desperate moment and end up looking like an outhouse in the middle of nowhere, with a crescent moon on the door and a fresh roll of toilet paper stuck on a nail; and that when it’s all over yet again and again and again, I won’t be caught standing there lost, hopeful for something better then my own shit staring back at me.
All the novelists showed up at my house last night, thinking they could come in and drink the place the dry. I knew there were a lot of them, even though I’ve never actually taken the time to imagine them all gathered in one place, but let me tell you, it’s an impressive sight, all of them standing there like that, bunched up tight, waiting to get in.
But can you imagine nearly twelve acres of novelists? It’s interesting, sure, but not if they’re all waiting to get inside your house. Then it’s not so fun. Besides, I had a bone to pick with them. I kept the chain on the door and yelled through the crack.
“Who ever came up with this idea of writing down stories? Are you out there, hiding in the back, maybe? Show yourself!”
A murmur swept through the crowd. I could see a few in the front, taking notes.
I’ve never understood why the novel was invented to be so long and hard to write. Was that intentional? I’d really like to know. And last night, with all these novelists standing just outside the door, it seemed to me like a perfect opportunity to me to get to the bottom of things, once and for all. Someone was bound to know the answer. Maybe not the living writers, but surely one of the old dead ones knew something. Someone a little closer to the beginning of the things.
“No one’s coming in until I get an answer!”
I wondered if the chain on my door would actually hold against so many novelists. What if they came together at once, in one big push, I thought. But I felt safe that so many novelists would never agree on a single plot, and even if they did, I was fairly confident they would think the move too pedestrian. I mean, bashing down the door?, come on.
Sometime around 11 p.m. the novelists started to wander off, and I’m afraid to say I never did get an answer. The way it ends up, only the living novelists seem to say anything, which of course was useless to me. And I don’t even know why the dead novelists bothered showing up, since they wouldn’t say anything. Not a single word. I suppose it’s hard enough getting the words out when you’re alive, so why waste any time on it when you’re dead. Or maybe they were just here for the bourbon, I have no idea.
I did find a notebook on the ground after everyone was gone, but the writing is so sloppy I’m having a hard time making heads or tails of the thing. Something that looks like fog on moors, I think, which doesn’t sound right at all because I don’t live on the moors, so I suppose it could just as easily be to gone oars, or maybe something to do with smores. It’s really hard to say.
Anyway, let’s just say that the next great American novel didn’t turn up in my yard last night and leave it at that.
I’m losing focus more and more each afternoon. I’m so tired. Coffee is, of course, the culprit.
It may be time for another break. Away, I mean, not more. Regain my natural balance and perfect headache.
It’s a big day, full of questions and answers. You might even call it a financial day of reckoning, but if you do, please just think the words. Around here, we’re firm believers in the unholy jinx. Saying anything out loud, well, that’s just asking for trouble.
“Do you dress up when visiting an attorney?” Imaginary Keith wants to know. I see him looking into the closet, trying to decide what to wear.
“Sure, if you’re a show-off,” I tell him. “Dressing up always makes a person look like a show-off, unless of course you’re going to a masquerade party, or something like that. There are exceptions.”
I should point out that Imaginary Keith and I are also firm believers in the non-straight answer. Never answer a simple question with a simple answer. Never. We both read through the Bible once, and are confident that was the book’s central theme.
“Oh.”
Confusion, on the other hand, can often be expressed with merely a single syllable.
“I’m just wearing jeans,” I say. “But I’m bringing juggling balls, just in case.”
“Oh good. I like juggling. This might end up being fun after all. Who would have ever imagined that our financial da ---”
“Don’t say it.”
We should have seen it coming. Everything it seems, must somehow be squeezed onto a balance sheet to be understood. No one takes a step these days without the numbers to back it all up. The numbers, man! We need to see the numbers!
Imaginary Keith looks half-respectable at the meeting, sitting there quietly in the corner in his blue jeans and Columbia short-sleeve shirt. Out of the corner of my eye I can see him craning his neck, trying to read from the files lying on the attorney’s desk.
I sit at the table, across from the attorney, doing my best to follow the conversation. Nodding is important, I’ve found, at least in America. I don’t know how it is in the rest of the world, but around here everyone wants to believe that the other person is listening. I might even go so far as to say we depend on it.
I nod constantly, showing the attorney that I am capable of absorbing everything he says, proving the foolishness of the American’s dependence on nodding. I mean, if the attorney talked for three or four straight years, and I sat there nodding the whole time, would I have the goods to be an attorney myself?
“Yes, I see,” I say. Nod, nod, nod.
“The first thing we need is an honest look at an accurate balance sheet,” the attorney says.
I nod some more. I will get Imaginary Keith right on it, as soon as we get home.
“Yes, I couldn’t agree more,” I say. “We can do that.” The attorney and I are in the same boat. He’s the captain and I shovel coal. When the meeting is over I walk out into a blindingly bright afternoon, shielding my eyes from the sun. It looks just like I am searching for land.
“We’ll mail you an invoice,” the woman behind the wheel says. From the cut of her blouse, I decide she is the first mate, and wish her well. The gangplank sways slowly under my feet as I head towards shore, and I realize I can’t remember the last time my feet have touched bare earth. I breathe in, searching for coal dust, but smell nothing. Can a person choke on fresh air, I wonder? What becomes of a man, tossed back into the world after so much time at sea?
The village kids sometimes sneak across the field and throw rocks at my garden crow. It’s the sort of thing I used to do as a kid, so I usually watch them from the kitchen window for a few minutes before stepping out to chase them off.
“Hey! You kids get out of here! And stay out!”
Kids are almost always lousy shots with rocks, which is probably what makes it fun. You can burn a lot of time, throwing rocks at a rusty old garden crow. It doesn’t actually matter if you hit it or not, although the sound of the rock connecting with the hollow metal body is exciting. But being a kid is mostly about burning time. Everything the kid does is slanted towards the next minute, and the moment it isn’t, boredom sets in. For an adult, there is sometimes nothing quite as irritating as a bored kid.
But the truth is, kids are just better at time then adults. Call it more sensitive, or more in tune, or whatever you want, but a kid just feels time differently then an adult. You might say that a kid’s palate is more sensitive when it comes to time. They detect tastes and variances that will later go unnoticed in life, and hear things in time that I’m almost positive most adults’ ears have long since lost the ability to hear. For the kid and the adult, time could not be any more different. I sometimes imagine time as the wind, blowing in the face of the kid, frustrating him as it holds him back, yet missed the moment it stops. Kids love the struggle, clinging to that moment of birth for as long as they can, yet wanting at the same time to put as much distance as they can between then and now.
Adults, on the other hand, almost always feel time as a wind at their back, pushing them along faster then they’d like. The adult is constantly trying to plant their feet and hold still, even if it’s for just a moment. We can turn and look back, feeling that wind in our face and imagine what it was like all those years ago, but with our feet slowly sliding in the opposite direction, it just isn’t the same.
Maybe that’s why I don’t mind those village kids sneaking over once in awhile to throw rocks at my garden crow. Watching those rocks miss their mark, I can somehow remember my own struggle a little better. It almost feels like I’m there, with them, chunking rocks at the old man’s stupid garden crow. And even when I burst out the door, roaring at them with my pretend anger, it feels good to be part of it all. The sight of their small heads, disappearing into the tall grass. The sound of their laughter as bits of it catch in the wind and blow back to me in spurts. Maybe I like chasing those kids off because for that moment the wind feels good in my face and time doesn’t feel like such an adversary. For that brief moment, as I stand there on the step, the screen door held open in my hand, and watch the kids pop out of the grass into the clearing that circles the village, it doesn’t matter one bit that they have already forgotten all about me. In that one, brief moment, I feel okay with time, and can almost close my eyes, happy. For that one moment, it almost feels like my feet are no longer sliding along the ground, but stopped and rested, planted in place for the first time ever.
I know when I turn and go inside it will all start again, just as I know that it never really stopped. But it was good to feel it, even if it was for only a moment. And then there is always tomorrow to look forward to. The kids will be back, throwing more rocks. My garden crow will see to that.
There is no center and no apex. The path it travels is in question. Our best effort imagines time as as some sort of revolving door that spins evenly around us.
We feel in control. We feel out of control. We feel back in control.
We think we are the center. The center. We create a god that fits our concept of time. We confuse god with time, time with love, love with desire, desire with control.
Control. Control time and you control god. We love ourselves in the center. Time spins around us.
The coffee shop is nearly abandoned on a Sunday night. I am writing, or thinking about writing, two things that seem at times to be nearly inseparable. Thoughts follow paths and sometimes the fingers move on the keyboard, and sometimes they do not.
My phone rings.
A teacher has died here in town. A forty year old woman, found dead in a locker room at a middle school. I hang up the phone and immediately do a google search, to see if anything turns up. Nothing.
I get up and go to the bathroom, and am gone no more then a minute. I return to the room, my chair, and my laptop. I see the room’s only other occupant still seated, several tables away, reading. I am about to sit down when I notice it. A newspaper.
There is a newspaper on my table, a single section, folded in half, sitting just behind my coffee cup. It is not mine. It was not there when I sat down at the table, and not there when I left for the bathroom. But it is there now.
I pick it up, open it, turn it over, and my eyes fall straight to the story in the lower right corner: Female teacher found dead in Leslie school locker room.
Where did the paper come from? Why is it there? What would it be like, to live every day with this sense of heightened awareness that things are going on when we aren’t looking? Would our heads always tingle? Would our existence seem less fragile, less temporary?
The phone call that led to that paper appearing has not been my only call today that is related to life and death. Earlier today I pushed the button on the answering machine to hear what I had missed. It was my uncle’s voice, giving me the news about his oldest son, my cousin, who cannot be more then four or five years older then I am. A tumor, my uncle says. Several of them. In his lungs and his brain. Two months, maybe more. Maybe two years, he says. We’re praying.
It is a sad, grim message, coming from the man who only last year lost his wife to cancer. But his words are calm and reserved, which actually come as no surprise. The men in my family do not leave overly emotional phone messages, even if the call is about a dying son. I don’t know why this is. It just is.
They are praying, he repeats, praying that something good will happen. And the wedding, my uncle tells me, will still take place. Yes, the man who’d seemed in perfect health when I saw him last summer, had found a new woman. He would make a new start. He would be happy.
Do you ever follow the links like a voyeur, wondering who is on the other end, watching you? Voyeurs watching voyeurs. If it weren’t for the endless stream of dead links that dot every horizon, blogging may have had half a chance of becoming a living, breathing Escher. Life turned in on itself. An image of an image of an image.
But the web will forever be cluttered with trash and the bones of others who have gone before us, a result, as Zellar more elegantly states then I ever could, of that “frustrating disparity between labor and reward.” It’s true. The moment you try to measure what it is you do, you’re dead in the water. You can’t stop, not for a second. Not in this business.
Do you feel it, the way I do? Does every leap feel like it could be your last, with your feet kicking at nothing but air as you hurtle yourself across chasms so deep and wide you lose sight of where you’ve been before you even get to wherever it is you’re going? I don’t like to say it, or think it for that matter, but even Zellar’s words will one day find themselves scattered across the valley floor, kicked around by the bored and the curious, chewed on by the hungry.
Are you as unsatisfied as I am? Are you an archaeologist at heart, thinking that entire civilizations can somehow be uncovered with nothing more then a toothbrush and spoon? And the secrets? Do you think of the secrets, trapped there in the words? Is that where you find yourself looking, pouring through books, searching for meaning? What will you do when you find what you’re looking for? What then?
If you have a Mac and a big box, you can start picking up all those bones. No serious internet archaelogist will want to be without this handy tool tucked in his belt. With the click of a button entire websites are gathered, tagged, and placed onto virtual shelves inside of your own computer. All those bones, put back together, sitting there under the glare of your single bulb so you can sit up at night, staring at all the strange and wonderful creatures. I’m gathering bones right now, as you read this. Your bones. My bones. All the bones that interest me.
Do you feel it? My fingers poking through your thoughts? Your words on my shelf?
No, of course not. Of course you don’t. You can’t. Your stat counter may tell you I’ve been there, but other then that, this cyclical, Escher-like illusionary quality of weblogs seems nearly flawless in it’s ability to create a world of curious, mentally entwined hermits.
I collect you as you collect me. We go round and round and get nowhere.
But the chasm, Keith? Have you forgotten the chasm? We are floating above the nothingness now, but we will soon be there. We will reach the other side, and then we will be somewhere. That, afterall, can hardly be called nothing. How can you call that nothing?
I don’t know about you, but if I ever reach the other side, I’m almost positive I’ll turn right around and jump back. I don’t care about getting there, I just want to get back. As far as I’m concerned, the human knees were designed all wrong. Have you tried jumping backwards lately? Or running? Or even walking? It’s hard enough just walking backwards. No, the only way to get back it seems, is by going forward. You make that leap and get used to the air under your feet. You spend your time thinking about where you’re going, hoping that when you get there, you still have the time and energy to turn around and do it all again.
It’s been a sporadic month, and I can’t seem to get anything down, no matter what I try. I’m never in the right place, and when I am - nothing. I’m either not at my desk when the moment hits, or I’m halfway down the driveway and can’t remember where I’ve left the nearest notepad. And if by chance I do remember where the pad is, and if by chance I do somehow convince myself to make a dash for it, I have inevitably made off with the pencil on some previous stop, and end up staring at the blank pad, watching the thoughts fill my head, then fade completely away. But the reality (and this is something that I probably need to admit to myself one of these days, but not just now) is that it’s been a long, long time since any of the good ideas have found their way onto an actual piece of paper, and I’m beginning to wonder where the passion went. When did that love for paper start to disappear, I’m wondering. Why didn’t I see it coming?
But I can’t get into that right now. Not this morning, for sure. You don’t talk about paper in the morning. Not around here. Maybe later, with a glass of wine and the sun a bit lower in the sky. The clouds will roll in by then, and everything will be softer around it’s edges, including the paper. Yes, let’s wait a little if you don’t mind. Besides, Peter is at the door again, and I really should see what it is he has today.
Have I told you about Peter? I can’t remember. I did tell you about how sporadic the month has been, didn’t I? Yes, there it is, just now. How embarrassing. You see what I mean? I’d almost forgotten about that already. I’m really living one sentence to the next around here this month, so it’s hard to make any real progress. I think that’s why I can’t talk about paper right now. I wouldn’t be able to finish the conversation, or even get it properly started. And there goes Peter again, knocking on the door. I can tell you one thing - Peter doesn’t seem to have much trouble moving forward. Maybe I should just invite him in for once and let him talk. Maybe I’d learn something.
But I can’t remember if I’ve already told you about Peter. Honest to God, you’d think that half an hour of coherent thought wouldn’t be too much to ask for, would you? But like I said, it’s not happening this month, so I guess I’ll just go ahead and tell you about Peter.
Again, maybe, I don’t know.
I certainly apologize if I just finished telling you about him yesterday, and if that’s the case, I’d say it’s safe to just stop reading right now. I don’t know that much about Peter to begin with, so I can’t actually claim that it’s much of a story. Certainly not a story worth sitting through twice; not the way I tell it, anyway. Peter would no doubt do a better job with his own story. I’m sure of that.
Anyway, there’s this man named Peter who keeps stopping by the house, wanting to sell me things. I don’t normally have much patience for this sort of thing, because I like to think I’m a busy man with an important agenda, even if I do spend a lot of time running up and down the driveway, looking for things like a pencil. The way I see it, my time is my time, and I don’t need bits of it snuck away here and there, even if the person doing the sneaking is just trying to make an honest living. I can’t be bothered by every cheap suit with a strong knock and an oversized smile. I don’t care what it is they’re selling.
But somehow Peter is starting to win me over. I can’t decide if it’s his no-nonsense approach to salesmanship, or the fact that he’s never selling the same thing twice. Honestly. One day it’ll be soap flakes and soup seasoning, and the next it might be gold-lettered Bibles and retractable garden rakes. There’s really no telling. One day he showed up with nothing more then a briefcase full of playing cards, and simply dove headfirst into his pitch like selling playing cards door to door was an everyday occurrence. And you can’t throw him, even with questions. Like I said, the man knows how to move forward, and maybe that’s what I like about him. You can’t trip the guy up, and believe me, when he first started showing up, I’d tried.
“Why would I need more playing cards?” I’d asked him. “I have plenty of playing cards.”
“Yes, you’d think so, wouldn’t you?” Peter had answered. His replies were always quick, but so much that you felt like he was trying to cut you off. “But you never know when you’ll need a fresh deck, do you? Tell me this, Keith, can you predict the future?”
“No, I don’t believe I can, Peter.” With Peter, you’re on a first name basis within minutes. He has that way about him.
“No man can predict the future, Keith. No man. That’s the secret behind Vegas, you know. The mystery. The unknown.”
“I’d never thought of it.”
“That and a fresh deck of playing cards. Vegas is Vegas because of it’s fresh playing cards, Keith. Tell me this, Keith, wouldn’t you like to have just 1% of the success of Vegas? Doesn’t that sound good?”
Anyway, I think you might see why Peter is beginning to win me over. Every time he shows up, I get a feeling that he has an answer for everything, and yet, doesn’t feel the need to push it at me all at once. It’s like he feeds me in small bites, one or two things at a time. Peter seems to have that natural sense of knowing his customer’s limits, as if the moment he meets you he already possesses things about you that even you are unaware of. Maybe that’s what I like about Peter. I don’t know.
When I open the door, Peter is there, and hands me his calling card. When he leaves, I will put it on the pile with the rest. One day, I’ve thought, Peter will stop showing up, and then I can count the cards, so that I’ll know just how many times he’s been here. I think Peter would like that about me.
“Good morning, Peter.”
“Good morning, Keith. How are you this morning?”
“Fine. Thank you for asking.”
“I know you’re a busy man, Keith, but if I can take just a moment of your time this morning, I have something here that I believe you’re going to find of interest.”
I think Peter draws me in because he seems to really know just how busy I am. I can count on him to not try and monopolize my entire day, and I like that about him. I like that every time he opens that briefcase, no, I take that back. I like that every time he’s just about to open that briefcase, I find myself leaning forward, wondering what it is he has in there. And I like that he doesn’t try and string me along with the mystery of the briefcase, or take advantage of my anxiety, but rather just throws the thing open and gets down to business. It’s like I said - when it comes to salesmanship, Peter is no-nonsense, and I admire that.
“I think you’re going to really like what I’ve brought along with me today,” Peter says. I notice his callused knuckles as his thumb moves towards the briefcase’s latch.
I’ve been informed that today is Take Your Child To Work Day, so without further adieu (let’s make it minimal adieu), I will push off into the day with my new appendage. We spoke about it on the phone last night, and the boy has everything planned out.
“I have to meet with someone in the morning,” I informed him, “and give them a bid.”
“How long will we be there?”
I’d been under the impression going into the conversation that one of my son’s first concerns might be about money. But he played it cool, choosing instead to inquire about the job’s hours. It was a fair question. As a prospective employee, doesn’t he have the right to know what kind of time commitment this job will demand of him?
“I usually spend between thirty minutes and an hour at a bid,” I say. “Rarely more then an hour.”
“Will we be taking the work van?”
Ahhhh. A cleverly worded inquiry into whether company vehicles are provided for employees. Nicely done, son, I wanted to say, but instead kept my answer short and precise. A good interviewer doesn’t tip his hand.
“Yes."
“Okay. Good.”
“So should I pick you up on my way to the bid or after I’ve finished?”
“No. Pick me up on the way. I’ll put my small t.v. and Playstation in the back of the van in case I get bored. Will you be here by nine?”
A break room? In my van? Why hadn’t I thought of that?
I feel asleep last night easily, proud that my son was maturing into such fine management material. A born leader! Creating a break room in my work van - a stroke of genius, that’s what that is.
I wish that I could say that my dreams went as smoothly as falling asleep did, but that’d be a lie. They gave me fits all night and this morning I’m tired and drained before the day has even started. My subconscious kept appearing in my dreams, showing up one dream after another, always looking like a small man with a clipboard in his hands, delivering news of my demotion.
I miss photography and think I should do something about it. I’m considering a new camera. One that will do what I tell it. Last night I dreamt I was in China, taking pictures of old buildings, light, and people riding on a train. A small boy wanted my bike. I had two and gave him the extra, then took his picture as he rode away. The edges of the picture were filled with other people, busy with their lives.
Understanding how to visualize a landscape for someone else isn’t something you can necessarily learn, I think. You either can get inside the person’s head or you can’t. You either know the tricks or you don’t. Psychology be damned, you don’t decipher people by reading a book, but by watching their face and listening to the sounds they make. You watch what makes them happy, and more importantly, what doesn’t.
Working for someone else is simply a matter of taking them by the hand and leading them where they already know they want to go. Listen to what they have to say, and when you have to talk, give them only the part of you that they can handle. Walk with them and admire the crabapple blossoms. Pet the dog. Show them their dreams. Recognize their struggle.
I am tempted to ask Peter to join me at the attorney’s office, thinking for some strange reason, that he might be of help. I know I haven’t thought things through very well, or even at all for that matter, but somehow the thought of Peter sitting there next to me while I discuss my most recent legal dilemma with a new attorney seems quite appealing. Peter, no doubt, would know exactly which questions to ask, leaving me free to lose focus and think about the two hundred dollars per hour I can’t afford to spend, yet can’t afford not to spend.
“ . . . and a plastic corn on the cob holder will never have the strength and durability found in these stainless models,” Peter is saying. “Set these dandies on the table and the only frown you’ll see will be the one on the sweet corn itself.”
It’s the smile that makes up my mind for me. Not the sweet corn’s, but Peter’s. Toothy and big, but not so big that it wouldn’t fit through the door. I’ll try to explain Peter to the attorney when we get there. I wouldn’t have a clue what to say to him over the phone. How do you tell an attorney you’re bringing a door to door salesman to an appointment?
“Peter, do you have time for a quick question?”
“Do I have time? Keith, my friend, I have nothing but time.” I find this hard to believe, coming from a man who makes a living wearing out his knuckles on a hundred doors a day.
I would later find myself wondering how a briefcase full of stainless steel sweetcorn holders could close and slide under an old man’s arm without a sound. I would even find myself going over the details of the meeting, wondering if it might have gone differently if Peter had arrived with something else, say napkin rings or a rubber doorknob collection, featuring replicas of famous U.S. Presidents’ heads. But at the moment, my mind was on other things.
From where I am, this is how it looks between the lines.
Somewhere along the line people have gotten the idea that admitting a mistake is a weakness. It seems we live in a world of no accountability, yet a world of constant blame.
Am I wrong, or has finger pointing somehow become easier, possibly even an encouraged behavior? And has the admittance of wrongdoing, no matter how accidental or naive the mistake, become nearly the equivalent of signing one’s name to a promissory note? Or has it always been this way, and I’m the naive one here, believing in a time when people took more responsibility for their own actions, or at least gave credence to the idea that human error not only happens on a daily basis, but that they, personally, might somehow be part of it?
When did the sincerity and power leave the words I’m sorry? Was there a moment when money became the world’s universal lifeblood, replacing what little honesty and integrity existed inside of us, or does such an infusion of ideals take time, hundreds or thousands of years? Or can people simply turn on a dime? See there. Even the meaning and gist of some of our best known sayings depends upon our acceptance and knowledge of the value of money. No one says, turn on a truth, do they?
Truth is much too hard to recognize these days. A dime, however, often catches our eye from clear across the room.
Imaginary Keith has been stuffed into a white shirt and sat down in front of the computer. The small bedroom, converted into office space, is just the right size to convince him that he not only has his own cubicle, but a rather spacious one at that.
“Look at the size of this cubicle!” I will often say whenever I enter the room. Encouragement of office staff is vital for the success of any small business.
“Do I have to wear the white shirt? It’s Saturday. Can’t I work in pajamas, or sweats maybe?”
As vital as staff encouragement may be for the success of a small business, it will forever play second fiddle to structure and office discipline. Without strict guidelines, there can be no hope of economic survival.
“Everyone knows casual dress is reserved for Fridays,” I tell him. “Have you finished those quarterly reports I asked for? We have a deadline here, you know.”
“But the white shirt is so itchy. I can’t concentrate.”
“Alright. You can change.”
Flexibility is an important tool for any person in upper management, and when used properly, will result in an increased level of respect among the employees.
“Really?”
“Sure. As soon as you finish your work. Now, chop, chop.”
Flexibility, however, should be used sparingly, never on Saturdays, and never, ever near quarter’s end. Remember, a good employee is like a good pen. Hang on to them and treat them right, but never lose sight of the fact that even the best pen will run out of ink.
One eye on the employee, one eye on the future. There can be no exceptions.