Myron the Magnificent

Magnificence is an utterly rare quality, though one immediately recognized.  It's a sort of combination of elegance, comfort, and personable charisma that can be embodied by anyone no matter how rich, beautiful, or intelligent.

Today I met a gentleman named Myron, and I doubt that I shall ever encounter him again, though in the few minutes we talked my entire being was moved - shifted.

I have been having a lousy couple days - though in truth I have been having a lousy couple years - I've never been diagnosed with depression, though my therapist says it may be a keen possibility.  I am always on some spectrum from sadness to anger, with choices governed by an outlook of scarcity and the resultant fear.  It's hard to enjoy anything - any feelings of "enjoyment" seem like fake projections onto a reality so cruddy that I am simply being a childish fool in denial if I claim happiness - how could one be happy in the midst of what's going on, uncertain if society will collapse and I & my (very few) loved ones shall die tomorrow?

It's all quite unpleasant, and has led to plenty of drinking, smoking, and pornography watching, the latter two of which I've stopped after a particularly miserable weekend that involved some of both.  As for the drinking I have no intent to abandon it but I also have no real desire to do it right now, and at the very least I'll avoid it until the end of the week and see how I feel then.

The lot of them are distractions & numbing agents; I want to remove them and feel the pain.  Because if I can really feel it, feel it all and have to live with it instead of slugging down another mental painkiller, I might finally realize that the work of changing and taking risk to really do something worthwhile in this life will be less painful that enduring the way I live now.

It's a strategy that worked once before, and enormously well.  It led to what was the most challenging, though readily the most enjoyable and legitimately fulfilling year of my life.  What a backslide it's been since then.

I won't belabour it longer - I'm saying all this to set you up with my mindset as my and Myron's paths crossed.  I was feeling sad, quiet, not friendly, basically worthless - I wanted to avoid people.  Perhaps it's the latent shame or embarrassment about myself.  I kept interactions superficial.

I was working with the electric company at the time, constantly going to different substations and communications sites to maintain our private safety & monitoring network for the electric grid.  I arrived at today's substation and was greeted by a few other fellows - one employee - Myron - and one outside contractor.

Immediately Myron offered a welcome, though it was not the procedural, forced greeting merely to satisfy etiquette that is all-too-common.  Rather he was genuinely saying hello to someone who he saw as a friend, if for no reason beyond being a fellow man - and if you have ever experienced this yourself, you know that no further reason is needed.  We're all on the same journey here.

I was obviously much younger than he, and so he asked how long I'd been with the company.  "Just about a year," I said, adding, "What day is it?  The twenty-ninth right?"

"Yes, the twenty-ninth."

"Well then exactly one year today."

"Congratulations on your first anniversary," he said with a smile.  There wasn't a trace of Pan-Am in it - it was a quiet, but glowing, warm smile.  It was a smile that said "You're part of the family."  It's a sentiment to which I'm all too unaccustomed.  "Now you just gotta do thirty-nine more," he joked.

Although he was only half-joking: the clear reference to his own time at the company was far from the first like it that I'd heard.  This was a place for career men, and I learned my lesson two and a half years ago: I have no interest in a career, not of that type.  To be locked into something, with no way to grow, that's the source of much of my pain now.

I may have no interest in that path, though I can respect people who have made that choice, as long as they have actually made it themselves and not simply fallen into it as so many poor souls do with their lives.  I could tell he was one who made it.

He continued his introduction by sharing what his home base is; I didn't recognize it; I shared mine.

"Telecom?" he intuited, and I confirmed.

He moved like he had all the time in the world and not a single piece of unfinished business.

Myron returned to the subject of years worked: "I'm close to wrapping it up.  Got my house, got my daughters through school, and they're having kids now."  He said it all nonchalantly, even with cheer.

"How many do you have?"

"Three daughters, and my oldest has two kids, they're six and eight, they live in Huntington Beach now."  I lived there too; we talked about Huntington for a bit.  He didn't live there but seemed to enjoy the active lifestyle and easygoing vibe.  He asked if I'm "a water guy, do [I] surf?"  I was actually impressed at the level of enthusiasm one practical stranger expressed in an other's pursuit of surfing.  I told him I had surfed, though not for a long time, and part of my own moving there was a not-so-subtle attempt to get myself back on the waves.

His second daughter had two children as well, and he enjoyed how much he was able to be hands-on as a grandfather.  He admits that it wasn't like that as much with his children, "Dad had a lot of work to do, sometimes be outta town."

We kept talking for another couple of minutes, about everything that mattered and yet nothing of particular specialty nor significance.  The big things in life really are composed in little moments, aggregated.

Eventually it was time for him to roll on.  He and the contractor - an air-con & heating guy who was strictly business and probably somewhere between numb and bored, like I would be on a typical day - were checking the air conditioners at various substations, as well as killing the weeds and other such housekeeping that goes invisible to 99% of the population, and for that matter to probably 99% of the people who work here too.

He said he'd close the gate but leave the lock hanging in it, unlatched, talking about minor mechanical courtesy as nonchalantly and peacefully as he'd talked about his dear family.  Then he wished be a good rest of my day, and a good rest of my future, basically I felt like I had been blessed.  I offered my own for him.  We said that it was nice to have met one another, and both of us meant it.  Then Myron proceeded to leave.

I walked out to my vehicle to fetch some tools, and he was in the process of reversing his truck to exit.  On any other day I would have gotten my tools and simply walked from my van back into the building without so much as a glance; I would consider the interaction ended despite the obviously still-extant physical presence.  I knew that he'd be looking to give one last goodbye, and if I wasn't looking back to return it he'd be disappointed, and as a result I'd be disappointed too.  And as soon as I would return to the room I would wonder, "What the fuck is wrong with you, man?  Why couldn't you have just turned your head and smiled, it's so goddamn easy to do!"

And so I did turn to look, and sure enough he was looking back, smile still beaming.  He waved, on the other side of his truck's window, and I smiled and waved back.  He shifted into a forward gear and drove away.

And like that I was in a good mood.  I mean a genuinely, not "I'm trying this but it feels fake and like I'm in abject denial" good mood.  Things were easy and there was a lightness to the world.  I actually...I actually could see a future, something I don't often...hardly ever, in fact.

I was possessed of the sense that what I would do for the next couple hours was a valid and useful stepping stone to somewhere good.  Maybe not a direct and obvious one, but it was motion as opposed to motionlessness, and it was in a productive direction.  All I had to do now was make tomorrow either bigger than today, or pointed in a better direction, or with a little ingenuity maybe both.

Thanks Myron.

 

May 29, 2019

You Think That Guy's in the Band?

          Three years ago some friends were coming into town for a weekend-long music festival, and there were other concerts around town capitalizing on the crowd.  My best friend and I go into a bar adjoining the music hall; we've always understood each other deeply though I have long considered him more connective & social than myself.  I'm feeling out of place, my self-consciousness playing its usual tricks of having me believe I am sticking out as an obvious square in a dimly-lit room full of talent-possessing, love-making, interpersonally-adept people.
          As we get toward the back of the crowded bar I see this tall, thin-as-a-wire guy - who looks as young as we are - with an intensely asymmetrical haircut sitting rakishly in a booth with two very "alternative" styled, patently attractive girls on him.
          I tapped my friend and said, "You think that guy's in the band?"  My friend turned to me, looked me straight in the eyes with amusement and how damn enjoyable the universe is, and in a moment of unrestrained brilliance said something that changed my life:
          "Everyone in the room is in the band."

Designing to Contain Your Shit

It's impossible for some architects to stay away from interior design, for hopefully obvious reasons.  And why should they?  The two are complements...isn't it keen for a good racer to also be a good mechanic?

In designing interiors I'm trying to arrange, or even barely fit, my shit articulately into a space that some other fool designed poorly for the purpose.  In architecture, I'm designing a space to adequately, seamlessly, sans constraint nor exaggeration, fit my shit.

And if you think, in either case, "shit" means personal belongings, you are mistaken.

Shitting the Sun - first trip to Pluto

APR 5 2015

When the conversation turns to the topic of LSD experiences, people inevitably carry on praises about the colours, the heightened pleasure in music, and the sense of cosmic one-ness felt.

But you see, there's another interesting (and similarly primal) aspect of the aforementioned that no one ever warns about, perhaps as a sort of collective possession of this unspoken understanding that is nonetheless universal among those who've tripped before.  It's almost like a joke continually handed down from the previous generation to the newbies, the punchline thus: 'Because we experienced it alone, you're going to experience it alone too.  Welcome to the club!' 

I speak, of course, of shitting while on acid.

Entering the loo I realized I was alone for the first time since before the Undeniable Tripping Action had begun.  Once I locked the door to our small house’s sole bathroom, I was struck by a sense that was both novel and familiar at once: déjà vu, if you will.  I was immediately aware that I had entered an intricate machine which sent me here from my home world:  In there, time and space are sheared at an extreme.

The room was flying through space very fast, accelerating much more so in one direction than another such that the distance from the doorway to the toilet – ordinarily only two or three steps – was now stretched long enough in which to park a Volkswagen.

I strode across the room and assumed position on the throne.  The room – the “ship,” shall we say – continued to accelerate: I glanced back towards the door, and the square floor tiles had become such severe diamonds from the acceleration that I’d venture to say each one was roughly half the length of a tennis court.

There must have been a high-tension mass compressor embedded in this ship’s toilet, because not long after I sat was there suddenly little doubt I was anywhere but halfway through the process of shitting the sun; that isn’t to say literally our Sun but rather some object of collectively the same mass, a quantity that was even more doubtlessly at the same temperature.


This was surprising, seeing as my only consumption that day had been of previously-frozen taquitos and chilled habañero salsa, nary a pound at most.

 Moments after first pondering the fact that this experience shamelessly obliterated the laws of mass-conservation and thermodynamics as I knew them did the in-flight message automatically play.

           “At these speeds, so many collisions occur with stray neutrinos and similar particles that biological organisms will take on significant mass, particularly in the gastrointestinal tract.  Our airline features entangled-shield toilets.”

Well, I’m glad someone thought of that feature, because it’d sure be a bitch to travel near-luminal speeds without ‘em.  After a few minutes the deed was done, and I rose to wash my hands and get off this ship.  I took a quick glance in the tachyonic inverter and beheld an attractive though ultimately uninteresting man, and after we exchanged a hearty glance I decided not to waste any further time with him.

I strode a few miles to the door; I stretched out, my fleshy digits touching the doorknob, and twisted, actuating an ancient cam system to retract the door's bolt from the jamb's strike plate.  What if it hadn't worked?  Three-eights of an inch of metal could keep a man locked in here for a few hours, which for all he knew could be the rest of his life.

The instant I turned the knob, the uncountable trillions of quantum probability

waveforms collapsed into their conventionally comfortable states

I had seen that trip to Pluto - only momentarily glimpsed it, really, and began to see how what I call “information” is most readily defined as “that which can cause change to something else," whereupon I knew this was something I'd have to pursue to far greater ends in my lifetime.

A Day With The Voice

April 26 2015

Wicked deja vu.

As soon as the song I'd never heard before started I realized this was it, the thought I was about to have was going to happen...I knew it was one I liked, ultimately, so I awaited it eagerly.  I'd just have to hold on a few seconds to find out what it was.  I stared at the computer screen, with Photoshop open, working on an image I rather liked that no one I knew would ever see, because they knew my Bruce Wayne.  But Batman was crafting this image.

Then I heard the voice speak.

"Everyone's some character to someone" the voice said, "you think you're a real bad ass, don't you?"

Of course I thought that.  I've learned now not to bullshit myself, and only to traffic in the truth.  Just because it aggrandized my ego doesn't mean I should deny it.

"But everything's relative.  Sure you're hot shit to some folks you know, but what if you're the 'gay best friend' to that chick that's your best friend?"

          "Who cares," I told the voice.

"You know you'd bang her.  Wouldn't you?" He retorted, trying to hold any position he had left.

Even he doubted himself now.  The days had been getting brighter for me, but I'll admit, actually seeing him get weak was a special breakthrough.

          "Yeah I would, but there's a vast difference between will and desire."

The voice just stared at me angrily.  It was the only option he had left.  He'd exhausted all rational arguments and I'd defeated them; he was reduced to moralizing.  How pathetic.

          "I'm not really seeing the problem with being gay, or a friend, and I'm definitely not seeing the problem with being the best."

I tossed the statement to him the way you might to a roommate when you're reading the paper and he asks you for the weather prediction but you're actually paying attention to a different article on the same page.

The voice yelled, "Fuck you you louse!" but I'd already taken another swig of tequila, and I couldn't hear him over the agave tsunami coursing 'round my tongue.

It's Sunday.  I wonder what'll be on the radio later.

Lowkey Brilliance and the Intimate Epic in Vice Prinipals

It's easy to use a T.V. show's host network's own confidence in that show as a marker to decide how seriously to take that show.  Television monoliths like Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, or Westworld get every last frame scrutinized and analyzed as they are held on pedestals like the finest works of classic literature.

And in our ever more frenetic world each of us must decide which art we want to indulge in, since there's certainly more television produced than is worth our time to view.  It's easy to overlook a show like Vice Principals, which compared to HBO's heavy hitters has a minuscule advertising campaign and could probably have the production of half its season paid for by one Thrones episode.

That would be to overlook one of the most subtly well-constructed programmes on the network, and a masterful new entry in that holy grail category I call the Intimate Epic.

These are pieces of literature (any medium) that tell grand stories of consequence (power exchange, life & death, sex) through only a tight lens on just a few characters.  The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly might be the ultimate in intimate epics: the story spans vast physical expanses, but more than that it's the impact of the characters' actions with one another that are immensely heightened, not necessarily because of what they are but because of how they're presented in the film.

What these guys are doing isn't all that important to anyone other than them, yet the way director Leone uses every cinematic tool available to display these events in the movie makes the audience feel like the consequences of the titular characters' actions shall be of universe-altering magnitude.

Kill Bill is another peak intimate epic, with the film bending us to believe that all of reality hinges on nothing but one person's hunt for five others.  What happens at the end of the film is no surprise - it is given right in the title - but knowing that makes no difference.  What makes Kill Bill riveting and immensely rewatchable is how it gets there.  We get to see and hear moments of intense drama unfold between all these key players, events that reach across years and continents.

When our hero does finally kill Bill, a simple and low-key death becomes as climactic as the explosion of the Death Star because of everything we know about what led to it, and because we know how important it is to the main character.  The world will still turn, wars will still be fought, and billion-dollar deals will still be struck tomorrow, but in Kill Bill that all completely ceases to matter as the film manages to shrink our perceptive scale of drama down to the intercourse of just a few people, and that is the essence of the Intimate Epic.

Vice Principals has tread some important new territory in this vein, and I hope this article can help establish it in the annals of great television-making that is worth your time in today's oversaturated tele-visual market.  Principals brings several novel characters to the screen, such as the flirtatious but not-stellar-looking writer Brian Biehn and the batshit sociopath who's managed to remain functional thus far Lee Russell.  About them and others an entire article could be written, but what I want to focus on here is the use of an ordinary, relatable, and - for those reasons - totally mundane setting in which the show occurs.

Previously I'd assumed part of what imbued an Intimate Epic with its epicness was certain qualities of the setting.  It had to involve locations that commanded attention one way or another, perhaps being exotic (the Far East, jungles of South America, islands in the Caribbean), or exclusive and rarefied (Swiss chateaus, modernist houses overlooking sprawling cities, penthouses and boardrooms amid metropolises, government agencies or top-secret facilities), or simply unique in their extremity & beauty (vast deserts of the spaghetti Westerns, curving roadways along the Mediterranean, hostile mountains).  Settings that were unusual immediately capture the viewer, saying "hey, this is not a regular place, the people that are here are doing special not-regular things."

Vice Principals dispenses all of that for a setting with none of those features.  Instead the heightened importance of everything comes from the way it's shot, the way it's edited, the usage of music, and of course the writing itself.  This is one of creator Jody Hill's calling cards, as evidenced from a similar style in Eastbound & Down.  The cinematography, often coupled with slow motion, transforms high school hallways into backdrops for deceit, love, scorn, alliance, and betrayal.  These two men are mid-grade losers working at an obscure suburban high school, yet as Vice Principals progresses they carry on as though the rise or fall of nations is at stake.  Make no mistake: there are full-bore personalities at war here, and the show expands their conflict to fill our brains' scale of what a conflict, at its greatest, can be.

The final nail in the coffin is always the closing music and cut to the credits.  Viewers are left, episode after episode, with the notion that something big has changed, something bigger is afoot, and whatever goes down not everyone will come out of it well.  In short, the musical selections and perfect cutting at the show's conclusions haunt, and that is just about the finest thing that can be said for any piece of art.

This latest episode - the penultimate in the show's punchy run - leaves us with Neal Gamby and Amanda Snodgrass together again, as Miss Abbott looks onward, crushed, while the dreamy, spacey tunes of Roost's Big Black Delta play over everything.  That final shot of her lingers just a little longer than you expect, and combined with a little hint they dropped a few episodes ago when she was shopping with Gamby, my money's on her as the shooter.

Half-Literate

Mar 15 2015

 Knowing how to read it but not how to speak it
sometimes feels worse than not knowing how to read it at all.