"Put it Behind You Now" Keane

 "Put it Behind You Now" Keane

The haze smelled good.  It was a blend of lilac and purple and smelled of a man's man's drink.  But what was this fleeting imagining of sunsets and hands dangling out of car windows, lifted and pulled and yanked by the wind.  The idea of not losing a hotel keycard, and wondering which restaurant in town would be open late enough for him tonight.  Was it enablement.  Was it independence.  Was it the kind of money his younger version imagined him having one day.  How easily he navigated Salt Lake City -- it did not matter that he'd not been there before.  The streets followed grids followed hills followed streams followed people followed commerce followed history followed future.  He had seen this play out and knew the patterns well and what local deviations existed he felt he could decode well enough to know which corner would have a bar.  But what he craved was the moment between the warm afternoon and the cooling night.  The moments when the light was golden.  The moments at the precipice of a craving.  The hour in the early evening that still allowed for the full array of options for the remainder of the night.  It was the moment of potential.  And what was this--a stiff collar too and nice jeans and an easy smile.  Even strangers were responding to this.

 

Dark Was the Night

Today is the day you ate a really gross burger at the Toronto airport, ate good Thai food in the city, and also watched CNN coverage in your hotel room.  Earlier today--and even until now--it is not known how this Cairo-bound plane from Paris disappeared in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea.

On this flight, as you took a piss and noticed cracks on the corner near the toilet, you imagined a sudden jolt and the ripping of metal and your hanging onto the handicap-assisting handlebar.  It would be for naught, of course.  You imagined being ripped into the the 37,000 feet-high atmosphere.  You could not figure out if you'd freeze to death before you hit the ground.  Certainly there would be not enough oxygen, what with the hyperventilation.  And the hyperventilation and panic and cold would surmount the capability of your central nervous system.  You'd die at around 15K feet.

If somebody took a photo of your last moments on earth, it would be amazing, this body in full flight, eyes closed.  Probably not balletically posed, but weightless still.

What would it take to survive?  You imagined miles upon miles of increasingly thick foliage.  A flick of a whisp of a thought of a slice of a leaf of a fern first.  And then a cloud of dandelion weed flyaways.  And then a massive hammock made of banana leaves, woven together in a basket weave pattern.  You realized this would not happen. 

"Satellite Call" Sara Bareilles

Would it really be the last time he shut that door behind him, quietly.  No inserting of the key.  No turning of the deadbolt.  The noisy price of assuring security for those he left behind was too much to incur.  The grinding of metal against the door, the friction that would shake the still air.  Instead it was the steady tension of rubberized weatherproofing against the lightweight alloy of the doorframe.  The sound of a closed space being vacuumed sealed.

And with this gesture, at this moment, in the sobering coldness of late February, he walked away.  The ensuing moments, the careful opening and shutting of a car door.  The sliding of gears into neutral and of the gravity-assisted slide of the car into the street, all happened without  a problem.  Problems would appear hours later, but at this moment, in the sobering coldness of late February, all he imagined was a turning of the page.  Something about the start of a new chapter, as his mother used to say.

"Hiding Behind the Moon"  Jeff Hanson

I found out tonight that Jeff Hanson is dead.

Jeff at the Bordello singing this song found me tonight.

There's footage of an interview of him in 2009, such a normal guy from Minnesota. He had married.  He divorced.  His parents found him dead, apparently from a toxic overdose.  Nobody knows if it was accidental.

In the first weekend of May, this year, I woke up at 5am.  Maybe 4:30, I was so excited.  I used my sister-in-law's car and drove from Bucktown, north to Wisconsin.  The air this morning was something I wanted to remember.  It had cooled through the previous night, which was humid.  My shirt felt hot that night, walking back to the apartment we rented.  But this morning's air had the quality of a refrigerated watermelon that had just been taken out and cut open:  crisp and life-giving, but latent with a sinister promise of something sticky and wet in some hours.  Just outside the concrete reaches of Chicago, the urban sprawl of squat brick buildings, grass began to appear.  It competed 10 miles north with misplaced 4-story office buildings.  I imagined pale-skinned and overweight commuters sliding into their sedans early in the mornings to do their time.  Their brown pants and routine bitching about supervisors.  But at the point my GPS failed and the blue dot of me in my iPhone lingered miles behind, the grass gained preeminence.  I said hello to it, and soon, hello to the barns and other strange structures these humans had built upon it, to tend to it, to tend to the creatures grazing upon it.

Jeff's voice was so angelic, and so courageously not what it was supposed to be.  And it was born--I imagine--in a place like this.  Green and just far enough from the city.  His innocuous tinkering with a guitar, these random plucks eventually shaping melodies.  His experimenting with his voice, tapping its higher, thinner functions timidly, quietly, privately.  What was it like to let others hear it the first time.  Before he died when did he last think about running through the grass in these cool mornings.

"Every Single Night" Fiona Apple

My relationship with sleep is the worst relationship in my life.  The tiptoeing around, the avoidance, the uneasiness that accompanies every engagement.  Will it be like last night's?  Will there be a sudden detail that springs up from the deeper parts of today's rehashing?  Will it be restorative?  Will I remember my dream?  Will it be enough?  Will the consecutive nights of deprivation further deepen these once indiscernible wrinkles?

Will I require a book for reading?  Or a piece of paper to write on?  Or exhuming an ancient experience--perhaps when I took a beautiful nap in that hammock in Montanita?  Or an imagining of a deeper level of protection:  curled up inside a killer whale, breathing in the warm viscosity of its jewel colored amniotic fluid, numbed to the pressures and stimuli of an outside world by a generous layer of blubber?

Perhaps a jungle and this song.  On an island.

The suddenness of appearing in this context introduces a mystery whose unraveling would otherwise be irresistible.  But I need to figure out my way out or just my way.  The rapid assessment of my vicinity under this moonlight.  The warmth and saltiness of the wind.

"When I Was a Boy" Dar Williams

If below, then above.

I look back fondly at more youthful times.  I smooth out actual history with a romanticized one, tempering rigors and diminishing challenges and somehow rounding out the edges.  What I'm left with is a false memory of what it meant to be 26 having just begun working, 24 and traveling the world, 19 and the independence of college, 12 and taking walks at night around my neighborhood, 10 and eating cereal while watching the Jetsons.

What I seem to casually forget in these moments are the fighting, the uneasiness with being me, the car accidents, the knee injuries, the awkwardness of age 13, the hunger, the deprivation.

At age 45 I will look back at age 33 and remember only the promise of business school, the simplicity of working at a company with a gym, the relationships, the financial independence and good fortune.

But tonight, you are sleep deprived, with a broken Samsung TV, wondering if you're overweight at 154 lbs., having a room mate across the hallway, the ringer volume of your iPhone isn't loud enough, and you're wondering if you can get Dar Williams tickets at the Largo.

"Virus" Bjork

It has been some time and this song is the reason I am here.  I would like to describe what this song makes me feel.

I feel I am floating in space, but am not cold.  And I swim through asteroid belts unharmed and wave my hands through comets' tails.  And around me are glass shards, remants from some faraway explosion, glistening and shimmering and reflecting light from the millions of stars around me.  And I smile and think nothing and remember nothing.  I wait for nothing and came from nowhere.  I just am there being and sensing.

Goodnight now.

"Leyendo en el Hospital" Gustavo Santaolalla

Tonight I miss my old life.  This movie brought me to tears because it so captured the feeling of the road and of travel.  Itcreated that pain in my stomach that signifies a visceral need to seek adventure, or was it, that whole time to shed this life.  To shake things off and rediscover parts of you that remain latent in this normal life.  Parts that this normal life just don't require.  Like feeling secure in the company of strangers, or knowing that within a 3000 mile radius, nobody knew me or communicating needs with hand signals and gratefulness with a real smile.  Of course things have moved on and my life now resembles what those people on the road--perhaps myself too at an earlier age--believe to be an unlived life.  What was i looking for all those years?  Have I found it?  if I am still writing this, perhaps not.  Perhaps it's just one of these complicated biorhythmic cycles, predicated on a very ancient urge to explore your terrain.  Living on the road is unsustaintable--those who do it end up dirty and always give off this impression that their lives back home in the UK or France or Germany presented something to them so overwhelming that the only way to cope was not to--and that living a life defined by strangers in strange places provided the safety and comfort they otherwise could not find.  Where do we go now?  Are the last adventures inside my head?

Test test test

"Stop this Train" John Mayer

Tonight, I am in an apartment that I imagined I might have one day. Large windows, and shiny floors. Exposed brick and new chrome appliances. A couch that took 6 weeks to customize. I am packing for a business trip I thought I might get a chance to do one day. I've run out of cologne, but may pick some up at the airport. I look at the counter and see photos on rotation: This is me in Vietnam being led on a hike, and that is the Eiffel Tower of course, and this is a beach on the north side of Bali and this is a view of the Mediterranean from Alexandria. What a beautiful city that was. I played tennis this morning with an old friend, had breakfast and didn't look at the price. I earn more money now than what my parents did when I saw their tax returns once when I was in college. They raised six children with this money. My career is great. I have traveled the world. I was reminded last week by a good friend that I am loved. Even when all these things are in line and I see the trend lines inching up nicely, I am scared.

No need to be scared, he said. You've done well this far.

I know, I know, but aren't we moving a bit fast here? I'd like to know where I'm headed before I go.

He put his hand on my shoulder.

I knew when I was in Marakesh, despite the heat of that rooftop broom closet (converted into a bedroom) that I smiled for a reason and said to myself, "You'll think of this in the future, and wish for this simplicity." I had woken up much earlier, and took a walk before the city got up, smelling the cool air, breathing deeply in the silence of the emptied streets. Marakesh doesn't stay cool and silent very long. I was preparing myself for a life--this one--that I might have.

You know, this is the way it goes.

I know, I know things will be fine. Please understand, I trust myself, I know I can and I know it'll turn out fine. I have everything I want.

So what's wrong?

Things are changing so fast, I just want to take a deep breath.

I used to run around my house during the summer, throwing all sorts of jagged objects at my brothers. Then we'd scream until we voted for somebody who'd cook lunch. Spam and rice on most of those days, we'd eat it together watching Reading Rainbow on PBS. And in the afternoon before my parents came home, I'd go outside and just lie on the grass and look at the sky and wonder what might happen to me as a grown up, would I ever eat anything besides Spam and rice and Campbell's chicken noodle soup, would I ever see Paris?

"Harrowdown Hill" Paul Wilkinson

Work continues at a nice pace, and the self-consciousness that defined most of the first few months is slowly dissolving. I realized that effective management isn't about the rigid adherance to policies, nor is it passive aggressive wrist-slapping, or even creating a tide of change. Some of these--in the right doses--are necessary elements, but managing is actually pretty simple: Just make sure your team is good.

Alright, what does that mean?

A good team is one that:

• Uses the right tools and resources
• Believes in the value of their work
• Trusts their leader to act as their advocate

That's it. Focusing on these three things has helped guide my decisions. My decisions should support these and cannot jeopardize or even compromise any one.

"Claire De Lune" Claude Debussy



Years removed from Ms. Stark and 5th grade--the handball courts, the passing of love letters, the math games with numbered tiles--I'd occasionally revisit the school. The immediate sensation was smallness. How small these doors seemed. How could such tiny rooms hold such hyperactive, reckless children. The grounds themselves, which once seemed Saharan in their expansiveness, became a swath of grass and asphalt. I'd tried a few times to use the handball court to accommodate my burgeoning interest in tennis. If jelly balls, hammered as hard as possible, were still kept within the concrete boundaries, a tennis ball surely wouldn't give it any fits. I was wrong. I'd hit the ball and it'd bounce beyond the court, hitting the grate of the drain, or a rough patch of dirt. The ball would spin off in an awkward tangent. It did little to develop consistency in my stroke mechanics and I soon learned I had to go elsewhere if I was going to learn Agassi's forehand; I had outgrown the court.



I am not where I was last year. I am not where I thought I would be. I have made a series of decisions that have drastically changed my landscape and my habits. I went to experience what was once familiar to me this past weekend. And by virtue of contextual contrast, I now see that I have changed.



Perhaps when your surroundings change enough, you change along with it. Perhaps it's a matter of one's survival instincts that implores adaptation. Perhaps circumstances that come upon us, inasmuch as they are the product of design and chaos, also portend our futures.

"We Build" Nichole Nordeman


So far I have learned this much:


What's the same?

• Effort: I work just as hard.
• The Others: Spectrum is the same. There are people who are smarter, lazier, faster, brighter, dumber than I am.

What's different?

• Perception: People respond differently to me. Some are happy for me. Some are not. Some challenge me. Others praise.
• Responsibility: I feel even more deeply a desire to be useful to those I lead, to support them and to make them successful.
• Measure of Progress: Completion of a tasks takes longer, involves more deliberation and is harder to track.

What I'm working on?

• Temperance: Be more patient when I communicate. Speak last, speak respectfully but firmly.
• Choosing My Battles: Prioritizing. Focus on what counts the most, tackle less impactful concerns judiciously. Don't waste your precious brain space -- you ain't got much left.
• Seeking Legitimacy: Some don't know that I'm part of my new group, much less leading it. Tempting to declare myself, but be patient. It will come naturally, and that's the best way.

What I'm proud of?

• Maintaining Respect: I feel I've treated those around me with respect.
• Embracing Challenges: I've welcomed every difficulty and every problem as I view these as lessons that will allow me to grow and learn. Nervousness and fear have been replaced by an irrepressible curiosity. I want to be better.

"Everyday Struggle vs. A Day in the Life of a Fool" Notorios B.I.G & Frank Sinatra

The content of this blog had strayed over the last few months, becoming the kind of self-indulgent drivel symptomatic of somebody who really has nothing to say.

But, let's get back to Business (Casualty).

This coming week is my last as a computer go-for. Gone are the days of my scurrying around the 52nd floor of a Los Angeles highrise to examine the squeaking roller of a Hewlett Packard 3450 or to ensure a laptop's ability to detect wireless networks. Sorry, I'm afraid I won't be able to help you convert this spreadsheet into a PDF. Don't misunderstand; these are vital issues, profoundly impacting productivity. But the gratification that comes with desktop support wanes quickly and rare is the creature who finds enduring satisfaction in these responsibilities.

Come June 18th, I will begin an internship to manage Company's Helpdesk. The Helpdesk is the first line of technical resolution for the company. Call us, we'll help. If we can't, we'll find somebody who can. It matters less what this department does than my blatant lack of qualifications for this job. I have to manage people.

So this is what this blog will focus on. Learning how to manage. My methods, my mistakes. My observations and, hopefully, some discoveries in successfully managing a team. It will be an ongoing process, and Business Casualty will become a living document of my experience.

"Half Acre" Hem

1.
She said, "You seem so calm."

But my loosening gums--my dental hygienist is convinced--are testaments of a tense life. She's noticed something about me, about these 20-somethings who drive themselves nuts trying to succeed. My parents generation, she said, lived a more balanced life, and subsequently did not suffer from such periodontal woes. They were less stressed; their teeth were squarely anchored.

"Is your job stressful?"
"I don't notice it."
"Do you sit in traffic?"
"I take the train. It's great."

We ruled out the usual suspects in our lineup. And all she could recommend was the incorporation of vitamin C pills in my regimen and perhaps an increased vigilance with my dark chocolate intake.

2.
I would like very much to make footsteps in snow. This is my New England fantasy. And I look up and breathe and think, "Of all the places I thought I'd be right now, why here? Why now?" I keep wanting you. There's nothing in the sky. I feel my lips are chapped. And to step on a wooden porch and kick the snow off my boots. And to come inside your small room that glows orange.

"Wings" Gustavo Santaolalla

Thought 1.
There are times when I feel I want to help the world. There are times when I think I can just pack up and join an ashram or help rebuild some huts in Ecuador. And then I think of the people who normally inhabit those fantasies and think, hmm, they probably would love to switch places with me. So I guess screw them. That's why I think donating to your favorite organization is good enough.

Thought 2.
I'm thinking about transferring to another office within the company. Maybe London for a couple of years or New York. But I can't stand the rain and snootiness of London and I can't stand the urinal stench of summertime in New York. My life is OK, you know. But sometimes I just get a little restless.

Thought 3.
What I'm most excited about right now is my 4am drive to the airport. I feel so good at that hour. I am most excited about standing in the cold with my bag and waiting and breathing the cold thin air and hearing the sounds and thinking of stuff. Stuff like, "Hmm, what's the point of accumulating wealth or knowledge, it's just more of the same, right? There is no point in that. So I guess life must be about love." I'm just kidding, I don't have those thoughts.

"Roscoe" Midlake

I knew, even before we drove out here, that it would end with me on the road walking in the same direction. Eight hours delayed. Jeans a bit dirtier. I can't recall the accident responsible for this stain on my knee. My pack has half a dozen cigarettes unaccounted for. And my shoulder is sore.

Three hours ago, I said, "I just want to feel the wind." You waited patiently. I realized then that graciousness--or perhaps mercy--is nothing but the postponement of separation.

You've disappeared westward and I head for the darkness of those mountains. Dust. Dust. Dust. Blowing in the still hot air. You were not supposed to believe what I said.

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"Atoms for Peace" Thom Yorke

I am the worst Buddhist. My wants rule my life. And on bad days I covet so desperately that I also become the worst Christian.

"Cigarettes Will Kill You" Ben Lee

My dream from just a few hours ago:

I.
I was on an overground train in New York. I'm sitting next to Natalie Portman. I want to talk to her, but I don't because I don't want her to think I'm a stalker. She smiles at me and begins to get up. I shift my knees to let her pass. I notice strange wide shoulders underneath that white sweater. She bows her head as she walks through the car, searching for a bathroom. While she's taking a piss, I write a poem.

All I can remember is that the first line includes the word "louse."

II.
I am suddenly underneath a television in the middle of this train, watching a Natalie Portman music video. But it is my poem she is singing and she's added a horrible line to the end . Did Natalie Portman just steal my poem? Why would she do this? She seemed perfectly capable of writing her own music when she appeared on Bravo's Inside the Actor's Studio. I wait for the video to end where it shows writing and producing credits. I run back to my seat. She's there with her svengali manager, who is dressed in a tight faded t-shirt.

"Why didn't you attribute this poem to me? I wrote that."

She just turns and smiles at me.

Cunt.

I begin to invade her physial space. I use my forearm to block her attempts to escape. I believe I also choked her.

III.
I am no longer angry with Natalie Portman, in fact we are walking the streets of New York City and are passing through a park. Snow has recently fallen and my Salomon shoes are not the right shoes. I wonder to myself if I brought boots. The snow gets through the shoe an melts in my socks. I say, "Hey, what's that? It's so beautiful." There is a black pinecone on one of the trees, but it is abuzz with small specks of golden light. She agrees that it's beautiful. There are golden specks of light everywhere.