101

Most religions on this green earth end in a somewhat similar tale - the idea that we leave our earthly bounds and provided we were decent human beings who never approved of genocide, stupidity or jay-walking we will go to a better place in the afterlife (or come back in a position > than the goose we were two lifes ago).  The getting in through the pearly whites is a little more complicated, sometimes there's a saint, a boat with a man requiring the payment of two coins or a dragon guarding the entrance.

JC! Sup homie!

I would use the term "true understanding" in what is about to follow but that would be a paradoxical phrase to the idea of "faith". How can we, despite what Thaler and Sunstein might want us to believe about the predictability of irrationality, understand the irrational? Nash found patterns in the social movements of doves in the university courtyard - he understood them, but those movements weren't random. The moment we begin predicting the drunk stumbles of a half-crawling college students will be the day I ammend this thesis.

A grasp on the concept of "happily ever after" in religion and a true faith should allow us to grapple with death rather well. It would allow us to deal with ti in the same fashion as births, a terminally ill patient healing or a rock statue weeping. With celebration (and papal judges) where we'd hope for those around us to rejoice and celebrate and slap each other in the back at their good fortune.

I don't understand why'd we say losing someone. No. Someone has left and taken a part of you with them and that's why even the most methodical and precise analysis of religion falls through here. The bioethics committee my parents once ran would be proud at my vulcan approach to the final days.

When a person is in pain and the childhood solution - band-aids - is no longer sufficient, when the JV encouragement to "WALK IT OFF!" isn't likely and the doctors don't get to say - fortunately we caught this on time - it's the logical illogical that takes precedence.

But now the binary says 101 with a character of 5.

This isn't angry, it isn't sad. It's a confused mapping of ideas that circle around the idea of a lot of questioning beings.

I wonder what answer the agnostic, dyslexic, insomniac arrived at.

Castillos de Mexico

En tiempos de antaño y más que nada en Europa la mayoría de la gente vivía en humildes chozas de algo parecido al adobe y techos de paja y Madera. Los nobles ricos así como los no tan nobles pero igualmente venditos por el poder divino del dinero construían castillos, pequeños y grandes a la semejanza de los reyes.

Pequeñas construcciones palaciales con torretas, torres y murallas que los defendieran del mundo exterior. Bloques de piedra y gigantescos troncos de Madera viajaban cientos de kilómetros con el poder loco motivo de bueyes y mulas para construirle un techo digno a la gente con el poder adquisitivo necesario. Está claro que esto solo sucedía en tiempos buenos cuando las cosechas no fallaban y no había impuestos adicionales del reino y no había ni guerra ni iglesia que destruyera los planes de los simples mortales.

Y hoy en día miles de turistas viajan a los bosques de Europa donde se esconden estas estructuras que a la vez inspiran melancolía y respeto.

Lo bueno es que México está en proceso de convertirse en la nueva Europa – estamos atrapados en la edad media Europea donde la iglesia es gobierno aunque el Cardenal y Fecal digan lo contrario. Ah! Y la ley también dice lo mismo.

Lo que sucede es que por todo México surgen mansiones por no decir palacios en zonas exclusivas que si no son boscosas son costosas. Del día a la mañana aparecen docenas de albañiles listos para trabajar y hay material como si estuviéramos en remate de aseguradoras. Los permisos para construcción fluyen del gobierno y nadie le pregunta al prestanombres de donde viene el dinero porque el dinero contesta.

Pero son empresas majestuosas de colores chillantes mexicanos con pilastras donde no hay lugar para pilastras y cúpulas árabes que no van con el concepto pseudo vanguardista que los líderes de la más grande industria Mexicana buscan reflejar. Lo mejor de todo es el horror que les ha de dar a los diseñadores contratados a quienes se les indica que dejen este cuarto para el altar de la virgencita – porque ella nos protege – y que por favor le pinten el techo verde obscuro con estrellas DORADAS. De los balazos y las mordidas.

Bardas muy altas, como de 3 pisos para que nadie los vea (y el gobierno no se les meta) con la mayor protección que aprendieron en su pueblo – botellas rotas incrustados en el cemento a lo largo de todo el perímetro de  la barda. Al fin que ni a los genios se les ocurriría usar guantes.

Ya acabadas llegan las picops (pick-ups) de rines altos, llantas anchas y las Navigator para que la señora se vaya de Chopin (shopping). Quien quita y la casa este abandonada dentro de un ano. 

Dry-Freeze

Picture a house of the sort that is common in Allende or Safon books - a house sort of frozen in the past with crumbling adobe walls, corners filled to the brim with dust and a lost cat or two that make us think of deja-vu.

These houses are always abandoned relics of yesteryear in neighborhoods that saw better days when the Spanish (or the French or the English) ruled over a country now ruled by indigenous left-wing zealots that make up for their lack of education with misguided idea(l)s. The next door cafe - once a sign of progress and richness with a bottle or two of fine wine still left - pleads the passerby for a momentary glance that's teased out of them with a plate of delicately crafted charcuterie.

I walked into such a place but it wasn't frozen; it was alive in its stillness. Because of the memories gathered in the form of forgotten matchbooks and restaurant coasters as well as pictures of the sort you buy on a cruise and that is poorly glued to a laminated piece of fancy looking plastic you could have thought the owner had left the place in a hurry one lazy afternoon and had never come back.

A piece of me lives there.
And that's a poetic way of saying a family member is very much alive in it.

A woman who projects more life than she actually has.

Consider the technological marvel of the project. A small, lightweight box of black magic that makes tiny images - for they must be tiny to pass through those skinny cables connecting it to the computer - into huge high definition pieces of art that would have made 12th century European artists ooh and aah with marvel. We've come a long way since human statues.

Though examples in Paris and Puerto Vallarta might suggest otherwise.

She moves carelessly through a clutter precariously balancing her past and present with no obvious consideration for the future. A yell erupts from her in frustration as she looks for the notebook she is holding and searches desperately for the glasses she has calmly sitting atop her head. Of course it makes sense for the crows' footsteps all over her face to be stretched tight by a magical combination of pigs something or other, blended platelets (her own thank god) and ozone and Co2.

She's obviously found the fountain of youth.

Prescription:
Though the reader might be inclined to finish reading this and perceive a sense of dripping sarcasm I would hope that the melancholy of the beginning be kept throughout.

Maybe we'll all grow up to be whatever age we're supposed to be.

Brecha

A common term used for a road that is not a road. It's more of a path but to call it one would be an exaggeration. A flat (sort of) rocky piece of sinewy way meant for mules but used by cars - the sort of road where you wouldn't be surprised if you had to drive past a creek or two to get to your final destination.

The views are inevitably beautiful and precarious as your soccer mom van teeter totters over a 50 foot cliff with little more than a sand bank between you and that beautiful weightless feeling that led us to explore the skies. People say it's part of tradition, that it's part of a Mexico that's fading into nothingness and that the youth will sorely miss 10 years from now.

The youth 10 years from now will wake into a world where internet has always existed, where we pop a morning pill to protect us from the penetrating UV rays because the ozone hole is now just the hole. Where communication could travel at faster than light speed and everyone has flying cars and last names like Jetson. And yes, robots work for us and follow Asimov's laws except that in this movie they don't go psycho on us.

We even put a stopper on death for a while.

Saramago has detailed a thesis on just this topic and the results are not pretty. As much as we would like to extend our brief instance on this earth nature (like England) prevails.

And as always I digress down a brecha myself only to get to my point (insert a sardonic remark here).

The brecha is the last bastion of true Mexican expression; ignoring of course all of the artisan work that the indigenous populations hock in flea markets around Mexico as well as the family run businesses selling everything from hand-made corn tortillas to spicy chillied candy of unclear origin.

A piece of road that washes away two or three times a year during raining season - a road that would be better of if it were only cobblestoned or paved. It's always a quick fix and a hopeful prayer that leads to the reconstruction and people like. Curves so tight and lanes so narrow so as to only let a car pass at a time - and the local farmers will never cease to park on the banks as well as host entire fiestas completely unaware of how horribly they disturb Mexico.

I love it here.

3 colors

Not on a flag or a three piece pimp suit.

Three colors on my wrist - one the tan the sweet sweet Mexican sun gifted me. Another the tender white of the underhand of my hand. The last one is splashed here and there in the form of freckles - sweet little dots of genetic pattern that make me unique.

Take this as an apology I don't know how to phrase.

My friends know that I'll go to the end of the world if they really need me to. Sometimes even to my own detriment. I'm always up for a hug, or a snuggle or a kind word or a good venting wall when you need it and I hope you know that.

The kind of friend I think I am or that I hope I am.

I'd get a phone call sometime in the next 10 years only to hear your voice for the first time in a couple months as you let me know you are now engaged. I make plans to meet up with you at once and celebrate and organize a bridal shower or a bachelor party as appropriate. I'll pick up your parents at the airport on the day off and keep you cool, calm and collected on the outside even if you feel like dying a little inside and you're not sure if that's a good thing or not.

I'd get a phone call sometime after that around the middle of the day as you tell me you're having a baby boy or girl (though I really know that you're hoping for a girl). I'd rush over - hitchhike across the country all the way to Frisco via Denver - if only to pick you up (even though I know you hate it) and give you a heartfelt congratulations.

I'd be in the hospital waiting room or in your room or holding your hand as you bring forth what I could only consider one of the luckiest kids in the world; perhaps even history.

Down the road I'd like to grab coffee with you and reminisce about the times we were young and I was stupid.

And then we'll turn 65 and wonder where the last 40 years have gone and think to ourselves that we started out in the big city and then progressively grew away from each other only in distance. I learned to consider the gap between us only in time zones and not in driving time or flying time or Amtrak time. This way I could be in Chicago and you could be in NY and the distance between us would only be an hour.

This is the friend I hope I am, hope to be and I aspire to be.

I'm sorry.

Meaning of Names

It would be self serving to quote Shakespeare and talk about roses or analyze the greek (sometimes latin) root of words. The latter I leave to spelling bee geeks and champions.

It’s just I find myself in sideways building hurtling through space at hundreds of miles and hour in a system no one truly understands and that is more likely to fail than to succeed. Planes…hmpf!

I’m on my way to sandy beaches, sand sculptures of the Virgen de Guadalupe and whole Fish deep fried with garlic and spice. A place where the Marimba plays in the town square, where rules are lax but the laws exist. It’s a beautiful place corrupted by its residents. It’s a Utopia gone wild. Like a well maintained pond invaded by the Asian Carp.

But the problem here is names – of things, of people, of places of time and thought.

It comes to mind that the movie Jaws would sound silly in Spanish. That a movie called 12 monkeys would sound like a terror flick in German. Maybe it’s just that the expression for kiss in French also has darker and dangerous implications.

And you wake up one morning from the comfortable unconscious that is every memoery before the age of 5 and realize that you have a name – a meaningful one. But so do dogs that are pets and ficticious characters impersonated by an enthusiastic fan at a football stadium. You either like your name or you don’t. You either have a middle name that you will hide from the world, use in a I-have-a-name-but-go-by-JC,JP,LT,etc Maybe it’s a silent tribute your parents decided upon in memory of a distant aunt you’ll never meet or a name your mother read in a magazine while she waited at the beauty salon one time.

I look out the window and I see the ocean.

Tuesday was named Tuesday because that was the day it was rescued.

Buck took the nickname (yet another confounding variable in this study) of “you big ugly beast you”.

And a nice homeless man baptized every man he met, by the mere effect of calling out to them, Jack.

So what do they mean and do they shape us? I’m working on a list organized by names with a map of traits and character strengths and weaknesses in search of a pattern. I’m looking for a revelation that’s a needle in a haystack.

La-sha.

Seattle HipHop

I'm discovering an underworld of misunderstood beats and the brave new world of jazz without brass.

I'm trying to play music without a pentagram, play a guitar without a tabs, whisper my breath into a flute that's escaped my hands - I'm trying to play with the big boys even if I'm still junior varsity on this world stage.

I miss the slinky curves of a note that flat. A full tempo spirito verse followed by a. Quiet. Quick. Quip. Staccatto. They use to tease me with a playful up and down in a chromatic shape with only two colors.

The days of raspy throatiness, glam and made up rock complete with armor and the child of Polaris are long gone. Now we're idolizing music that's hot for a moment, a day or two on the little iTunes sidebar and then dies of into the nothingness of the internet sensation of the hour.

Maybe I'm just melancholy about the days when heavy metal bands would read Hemingway, when Latin American bands would read Lorca. When artists would sing without televised concerts and governments would move. The days when you didn't need a promotional shirt with a continent outlined to care and catching a practiced smile of the reserved-for-dead-heads would make your heart swoon.

I'm not talking about skinny jeans and flannel and long beards meant to show a channeling of times past but that are so carelessly grown so as to create disgust. When tilting your head backwards and covering half your face with your hand and your smile was something not meant to be bastardized by thug thumping of a careless caribbean beat.

I'm not a snob but I like Caruso as much as the next un-classically trained amateur connoisseur.

I know some of you might say that hindsight isn't 20/20 - but from where I stand hindsight gives me a warm fuzzy feeling that no part of the future seems to provide. Maybe it's because I believe in Seattle poets more than Cereal box lycks on tracks.

D.O.A.

Sum-ah-tiiime

I've been asked to write about the day and night like writing is something you do upon command. Like all we ever need is a prompt and a deadline and writing happens.

I'd like to say that writing is green, and by that I mean organic. That it's renewable and vegan and vegetarian and fair trade and that it retains it's soul (albeit a phlegmatic one) even when mass produced in hot new paperbacks on the stands of the local CVS.

I'd like to contend that a book called the Art of Writing fails miserably at stimulating creativity of the sort that yields lengthy stories about a fictional cathedral in middle earth surrounded by aliens. It falls short of teaching its pupils the value of the elements of style and though it hints at their importance, immediately forgets that a good piece is like a carelessly thought out piece of jazz - impulsive and presumptuous.

Think of a lazy trumpet with a clear sound making it's way across the fiendish trails of cigarette smoke in a dimly lit room with a green glow from the Tiffany oil lamps.

I write like a child throws a tantrum. I try to break what few grammatical rules I know: I start paragraphs with the word because, ignore the Oxford comma, sometimes, and enjoy the gushing feeling that a run-on sentence gives me. Like I'm out of shape and short of breath and I'm trying to get to the very top of the hill with the tiny little church.

Think of writing as that thing you enjoy having as your personal little pleasure. For me it was sneaking candy as a little kid and telling raunchy sex jokes when I was still too young to understand them. The men would chortle and laugh (my jokes were good) and the ladies would balance - rather appropriately - their expression between faux disgust and amusement.

It's like enjoying the raspy, throaty dulcet tones of Louis Armstrong. Like dancing on a boat with a city lit up in the background. Like sitting, waiting, wishing on a Friday afternoon with a large glass of ice tea - the glass all sweaty like - and musing.

Writing is...

Seeing

La verdad es que hace tiempo que escribo en español - el idioma no el masculino- y lo mas triste es que extraño la poesía que en alguna época me dio.

A que me refiero? Pues que simple y sencillamente puedo escribir en 4 idiomas, me expreso en 3, soy experto en 2 pero solo en uno puedo escribir oraciones cortas que lleven un mensaje de mayor extensión que las palabras permiten.

Quizas es porque en mi mente la poesia se tiene que leer en una pequena plataforma con las estrellas de trasfondo, las luces del patio prendidas y una pequena multitud de gente sentada sobre mantas en el pasto. Porque la gente de acá, esa que hace poesia "slam", parece que les gusta pegarnos en el corazón.

Pero volvamos a las estrellas, que nos ven como nosotros las vemos.

Mejor dicho, sucede que en mi imaginación las estrellas son sistemas y en eso sistemas tiene que haber, si no gente, algo (alguien?) que se siente a observar por las noches. Lo contrario, la idea de que en este vasto universo en el sucede que nos encontramos - según nosotros porque nadie mas lo ha confirmado - donde hay billones de estrellas y el espacio tiene un significado, digamos espacioso, estemos solos. A menos de que hayamos sido los primeros (y una breve inspección a nuestros "logros" sugiere que no fuimos los primeros), tiene que haber grupos por no decir civilizaciones mucho mas avanzadas que nosotros.

O les dio miedo o pensaron que no valdría la pena molestarse con nosotros. La situación se parece a la que vivimos a diario cuando en camino al trabajo vemos una hormiga, la ignoramos y seguimos con nuestra vida.

Drake trato de cuantificarlo con una ecuación. Tal parece que al tal Drake nadie le aviso que se necesita un numero equivalente de ecuaciones y variables para resolver algo así.

Mientras tanto.

Hola!

(Senior)s

Your AARP card is in the mail and the real world - life - is pouring in through every hole in your tiny little ship. The reality of bills, independence, growth and maturity is becoming something that you no longer long for but instead worry about till you grow weary and you rub your eyes with fatigue.

Soon you'll be wearing those skinny little glasses they sell at CVS just to read your bedtime book - steaming cup of tea on your side and cloth slippers next to the bed. You'll be leaning over and kissing your significant other (for boy/girl friend has become to childish a term) and wishing them a good night - both of you perfectly content to leave the more adventurous of bedroom activities for some other nights.

The nights of Copa Wednesdays and Thirsty Thursdays will soon come to be replaced by Guys Night, Date Night and Work nights (Monday through Friday). 

I've learned from all you what I was supposed to in college - the models and cases and problem sets assigned in class were rarely little more than busy work providing an excuse to get to know all of you. 

Dear Seniors,

If I had a a thousand roses I'd give each of you one of them. I'll settle for a smile and a hug. 

You have been the ever present role-models in this little bubble we call life.

Your Kingdom: 33rd and 42nd and Market and Baltimore.

Like Kings and Queens there was and will be a royal grace to the way you shared advice, midnight conversations full of liquid and sometimes honest passion - always poised and composed even after long hard nights of pounding (fists) drinks at the place with all the smoke.

Good friends and good company are never forgotten.

Here's to you!

Salud!

Sincerely, 

Diego

Mexico

In little over a week I'll be going.

I grew on sandy beaches, cracked asphalt and
a pockmarked face made of potholes
and sad mirages hidden behind tall trees.

I grew up in a Mexico where my mornings started in a sleepy town with cows and a milkman a la fiddler but quickly scaled up to the land of coronas and dos equis only to end the day in a pre-packaged "American" experience involving Starbucks and Johnny Rockets. The dichotomy between the sweet cool air conditioner and the perennial sun burning the back of our necks was as beautiful as the words politician and honesty in the same sentence.

Black and white.

Don't get me wrong, I love my country like a child loves his mother, like  a brother loves his middle school girlfriend with whom he talks on the phone nightly 20 minutes after having last seen her for about an hour. I love Mexico with a grin on my face, the air running through my hair and my hand on the shift stick.

Mexico was my first "bro" - Mexibro.

There were two of them really; the first was one of open fires, warm corn hand-made tortillas with heaped mountains of beans, meat, sauces in every shade of green and red, cilantro, onion and pineapple. The second was one of nightclubs where my friends and I would measure our level of cool by wearing button downs that were taken literally - buttons undone down to the last two - complimented only by the thin gold chain with a hanging cross around our neck.

One was the story of my grandparents and haciendas on a plane that looked alit with fire every sunset - something about the play of sunlight on the red clay ground and raspberry fields. The other was a tale of a city that grew too big for its own overtaxed resources and where city planning involved little more than a prayer and a "vaya con dios".

What I'm trying to say, if there is a point at all, is that behind the lacrimose gas and gang wars between the druglords and the army - there is a beauty that no amount of PR or heart-stopping ads will show.

It's people.

5 a.m.

I read somewhere that population scientists consider a generation to be 25 years - 100 years of age separate four generations. That means that my hundred year old great grandmother is at least 3 generations away from me.

It sure doesn't feel like my dad is 2 away or my mom is 1. We are all coetaneous.

Yet it's the simple things that give it away. A former student of mine told me yesterday that sophomores in high school today had never heard of backstreet boys or the spice girls. Such classical landmarks in the life of every single college student enrolled in the pop western world today are a thing of legend to the youngsters of today.

So it's 5 am (really 2pm here) in Vladivostok and I'm ever nearer to the mature and ripe age of whenever we grow up.

It's strange that the adults of yesterday always told us that the future belonged to our generation. Well our generation is now and the future is still in the future - we're like the horse chasing the carrot hanging from the carriage driver's fishing stick. The distance between point A and B never changes locally though it moves across the world universally.

I'm not trying to be deep. I'm going for nerdy.

So bear with me as I use Swarley's famous words and suit up.

I hope that the generations to come appreciate Charles Aznavour, the original Ocean's 11 and Oscar Wilde's rant on how all art is useless - the prologue to arguably one of his landmark works. I hope they grow up with landmark art that doesn't involve a fraternal communion of Disneyland and network TV - maybe that's snobbish.

Apathy is growing everywhere but the most dangerous places. Long gone are the days where generations would movilize around the world over an idea or a picture. Long gone are the days where generations would see leaders rise to the height of ideal only to be toppled over by their own sense of omnipotence - I'm talking about Elvis and Cobain. Long gone are the days where generations care about anything other than their localized existence; the bubble.

Don't give me the story of award winning NPOs and NGOs rising around the world along with grass-root organizations and sustainable development students volunteering at this or that group with the words "Without Borders" attached to their back. Props on the street cred.

Talk to me about an individual looking to change the world for good in one grand sweep.

Where's Ender when you need him?

Deal me in

I've been told I'm growing dark and brooding. It's probably due to the sharp contrast of stormy weather and sunny sprees characteristic of both the Philly area and the Black Forest in Germany.

In high school I once played upwards of 5,000 hands of blackjack to determine with probabilistic incertitude that something may or may not have been true. It was then that I learned the power of the words "I'll stay" as opposed to "Peace brah" as well as card counting - in one of its most basic forms. The former is the important part of the message.

The basic premise was probably devised by a 1st grader being taught sums with big numbers (10+11). Look! 21 looks like I'm counting backwards from 2.

Or maybe it was a second grader who realized that having 3 groups of 7 cats would yield the same total as 7 stacks of 3 cookies.

Or (and here is where we skip a couple years of useless education focused on things like Geography - just in case someone discovered a new route to the Indies)  maybe it was a 5th grader being taught about primes.

I realize that I'm leaving out the possibility of a religious man focusing on the holy trinity that 3 is and the idea of a 7th heaven as made popular by a group of Brothers with a warning sign.

Perhaps a strapping young man learning the mathematical background of computer sciences combined his knowledge of proofs with the RSA breaking code algorithm. Visualizing Euler and the Chinese Remainder theory in the same mouthful as a piece of spicy tuna is crammed down his gullet he screamed Eureka!

Then again that man who rides the bicycle on the back of cards probably had an R&D team looking for uses of laminated cards that didn't involve slicing bananas at a distance or performing at a low rent version of Gob's (with his sidekick Franklin of course) THE MAGIC Show.

Maybe it was a lonely farmer in the middle of Indiana yelling angrily at his parents that no matter how hard he tried the Chicken was always getting dinner.

All the while the rain is pouring but and I'm shaking my lucky snake eyes hoping for a warm table.

Who's looking for a whale?

Half-life

I wonder what my half-life would be if I were a chemical compound. What the name of my flagship game would be if I were a video game company. What my real life would look like separate from a Second life account.

In a literal sense half-life could be 50 years if we assume the first world will carry me all the way to a hundred. The genes are on my side but the exhaustion of living might not be.

In a true sense I'll define it as the time before someone grows tired of you in a short period of time.

Imagine this for the scene of a greek dramedy:

Name tage: Dr. Montalban
Profession: Space Cowboy/Dr./I take care of the child I am raising on my own
Hobbies? Descartes, Magritte and French enology.

In and out. Like the burger joint, except rather than a 30 minute wait it's more a really short eternity separated by a little gong knocked unceremoniously every four minutes. A bevy of girls dressed to impress in a variety of out-of-season colors and styles look charming and pretty from afar. The guys, on the other side of the bar all look the same - button down and dark jeans - as they hold a drink and fake a distant far-away-from-here type look.

And we start.

4 minutes to make an impression and the hardest job interview I've ever had rolls around. I want to seem cool and aloof but interesting enough to have them begging with questions. Mention my travels or my small collection of french wines? Should I hint at the idea of a family and a picket fence or derisively refer to that fantasy as part of my larger view on the life, ironic?

The thought of just being myself briefly crosses my mind. Ha!

Her eyes wander away from her and I make one last ditch attempt - I'm not afraid to fall in love. Thinking that's what all of them want to hear. And I'd promised myself I'd get hopped up enough to avoid my nasty habit of thinking. I'm on the patch and everything and it still doesn't help. She looks at me giving me a final appraisal and I feel like the admiral's antiques. She smiles politely as her eyes take on a beautiful glaze.

Hello half life.

Out of Business

A sign should have gone up weeks ago

SALE! While supplies last! Going out of Business! SALE! SALE! SALE!

I think I'm going out of the business I've thrived in so much over the last 20 years. It wasn't a particular product I was hocking or a particular service - it was an experience. A truly mutually beneficial agreement of 50/50 profit split - a shell corporation consisting of offshore bank accounts with loads of emotional funds. For the longest part I was passionate about this business, the industry. It afforded me insights and made me privy to information that those learning how to value companies or understand organizational design only wish they could have.

I suppose that's why business school and I turned out to be a great fit tho.

Disclaimer (because they're necessary and I like them): To all of those involved in my business right now - our contract stands. However implicit it may be. I honor the signed pieces of imaginary paper because times have been both good and bad, awkward and pleasant - and I hope to keep having those times. The terms of engagement shall remain.

I'm going to be like the Customer Service branch of a Car brand going out of business. I won't produce or sell new cars anymore (because we were in the red for too long and Chapter 7 came in and killed us) but I'll continue to fix incidental problems of the cars I have on the road.

I'm just sick and tired of chasing bad money with more money. I'm exhausted of starting out a lucrative real estate investment only to have it turn into your run-o'-the-mill commercial paper transaction. You know what I mean?

If you don't here's an illustrative example that the characters in Alcott's books would have correctly identified as an allegory.

In Chemistry class we'd start out with a collection of vials and test tube thingies with pretty liquids in a rainbow of colors. My favorites were the clear ones that hid their true identity behind a thin veneer of science that our teacher simply describes as "upper level chemistry". NaOH + HCl would start out like this but when mixed the level of clarity would vanish instantly as one hit the other - precipitating into a mixed state I hadn't expected.

The thing I've realized is that in business you can't always keep going forward. No matter how good the returns - growth for the sake of growth is a dangerous path to travel. That's why I'm stopping for a while, reassessing strengths and weaknesses and evaluating the environment with a simple SWOT analysis.

Call it restructuring.

Of two minds

One of them sat in class as a Sex Ed. teacher would extoll the virtues of SAFE SEX. There were bananas, condoms bought by our friends mom and a whole lot of graphic pictures and stories. I was brought up in a catholic country with separation of church and state and a laic education.

The other mind is the one that leads to Oasis's Morning Glory or Ryan Reynolds' now famous "It's the morning...". The other mind doesn't stop to think as I touch the tingly bare flesh of a neck's nape.

I'd like to say it's the compounded effect of Coldplay playing in the background, the soft and rough feel of a raw cotton bed sheet and the warm body on top.

Actually, it's probably that.

The images daguerreotyped into my mind by my education become blotted black ink images meant to comprehend the human mind. I read a book on sexual diseases written by my father. The bee and flower talk doesn't get any more technical than that.

Looking back I realize it's a Jekyll and Hyde story and the unbearable lightness of being...bullish.

That sweet tantalizing moment that gives life a correct interpretation manages to leave a man (and a woman?) helpless. Think of a blank slate ready to receive whatever may come.

Funny what the brain thinks about in the middle of the day.

Golden rings and turtle doves

Aboriginal civilizations around the globe historically used the psychotropic effects of wildlife (brightly colored frogs) to connect with the spirits/seek answers/reach enlightenment. The French called it l'heure verte which allowed for much needed Bohemia. The Inca people used a subtle tea to make a stand against the great outdoors. And here the lack of reference to the Middle East and hashish marks Eurocentric-Americanized problems of our education.

Back on track.

In Asia it digressed into dens. In Colombia it became a booming business using Mexico as customs. And in the culture I currently find myself immersed in, it became a tradition of stands, little johns screaming shots and a chalice full of Upton's jungle juice.

Perhaps that's why I've garnered a fair bit of understanding over the last 20 years.

I've never been afraid to get my heart broken. I'm always looking for that silly little feeling of awkward nervousness talking to a girl I find particularly attractive. Sometimes it's a quirky comment which falls in line with my own idiosyncratic sense of self. Imagine someone who gets the reference to a pop culture movie and a classic piece of Spanish literature in the sentence. It leaves things up in the air.

Oh, and she catches the one in the last sentence too.

It scares me to think that just like in economics, the marginal cost of little piece of brilliant self-awareness will continue to increase exponentially as my life progresses. A scary thought - one that makes me wish I hadn't wasted so much time understanding that the reflection on the water wasn't me drowning or that coffee doesn't magically taste better when you get older - you simply need it and get used to it.

This weekend knowledge was given to me. "We [women] don't understand men". She meant the actions of men.

At least we're all even.

Obsessing

I've been away for a while.

And it has to do with my obsessive and addictive personality. People crave it all the time.
Ha! See what I did there?

I've been reading Ariely, learning about deception training and going through my insurance policy. I've been obsessing about lying. The idea of catching the slightest sigh of relieve, jumping at a proof of innocence or the up(down)swing of lips is something I'm quickly discovering to be a passion.

I'm passionate about understanding people, meeting people and figuring out what makes them tick. More often than not it's a coil mechanism that is both self-winding and solar with both digital and analog display.

There's a(several) reason(s) I'd never do South Florida nose candy.

But I digress - the problem is that the problem isn't selective. It's not just for overachieving, playing squash or attempting to stay up for 13 days in a row. Though the latter is more fatal than I initially thought.

I can't stand not being able to get a read on a person. To think that the girl in front of me is happy when instead she's burning up with the desire to sprint down the block and buy a cup of water (pronounced wuter) ice. Or that the casual dribbling of food down her chin is in fact not proof of how comfortable she is with herself but of a nervousness that she can't quite explain to herself.

Maybe what actually bothers me is the incredibly cute and almost to well-placed use of the "shit"*2.

I reason that maybe that was the one acceptable curse word - other than Crucio - at home for her, or maybe it's that she knows that the high pitched inflection she gives it makes it everything but crass - all of it an adorable sass.

The waitress might come over and wave her wand of magically awkward silence as I sit there wondering what's actually happening, letting my mind race as I nervously reach for the water hoping to catch something in your reflection. And I don't know what it is I expect, a wink? a playful jab to the gut? maybe I hope to see you play with your hair? I just need a sign.

And shit just got theological.

But not really, it's the male psyche. People talk about signals, decoding them, sending them. But they're a confusing tapestry - 19th century, battlefield, Napoleon rides in to an awaiting Josie - of misunderstood truths and are equal parts reality and fiction.

I'll keep reading.

Verified by a confessor

I once convinced an MD that I had an inherited nervous tick that every now and then led to the bridge of my nose bleeding. I also told him (and a litany of sweet and patient nurses) that my life long dream had been to become a doctor so I could help others.

I don't have that nervous tick and though my family is made up of doctors the hyppocratic oath never beckoned me from its streetlight corner.

Politicians might call it massaging the truth, some convince themselves that they are merely fixing the truth - probably because it has the annoying of breaking down - and there are those who proudly display their lies as trophies.

PR people.

Though this is unfair to the PR people in it for the right reasons. It also unfair to fail to mention the marketers that told us smoking was cool, that placed brief snapshots of deserts in pepsi ads to make us drink more and the little kid who broke a mug but says he doesn't know whodunnit.

It takes a skill that only few develop to their max potential. The ability to layer ever-more complicated versions of reality in a beautifully stacked house of cards is a skill available only to kings. To hide our ace and King suited from those around us while spinning tails about floating mountains and blue people that live in a mushroom.

Sometimes it's as easy as saying no when the answer is yes. Or picture a toll road made of ghosts where there allegory of lying is illustrated with a fork in the road.

What's best is when they strike unseen. Like a shiv pulled out in the middle of a prison food fight.

The reaction goes...wait! what? she said WHAT? About who? With that!? Seriously?

A feeling of disgust and revulsion ensues. In my mind I struggle to come up with an appropriate adjective or noun to express the lightheaded feeling and empty gut sensation. An expletive fills in the void and I go about like the gatherer in the hunter/gatherer relationship of the stone age - gathering information from the grapevines.

It's like finding out that glass slippers don't actually exist or that the beast usually never gets the beauty.

See ill.

Consider a series

I woke up jealous this morning. Wishing I could be as clever, as biting and as insightful as what I saw last night.

Called a project - the projects, I saw a family bare itself in a way that the paid hicks on Jerry Springer can only dream of doing. Maury wishes he had a story as real as the one slammed last night. The classical writer of our other time wished they could develop metaphors like they did. Gently threading black fibers across the white, yellow, red, and brown cloth of their existence they were brilliant.

I wish I had that shotgun of a voice.
Or a smile so wide it needs extra space on that face.

I'm trapped inside the flatness of my voice on a screen. Punctuation and grammar are my mean little siblings robbing me of that sweet baritone falsetto I like to pretend I have. Robbing me of the stance I could have and the explosion I want to make.

I wish I could see from within.

We're a little similar but we're very different. I see the stars as women. One of them saw that as well. The difference? He noticed that the stars are beautiful and brilliant but they also die along and no one gives a damn because they're so fucking far away.

And one of them seemed indifferent. Cooly confident that her voice would carry the subtle and penetrating qualities  of the phrases she had for so long worked on.

They sang lyrics without music.

Red light, white light, black out. A tear robbed from the audience as they open up to a crow of strangers and I'm wondering not how but why they do it. What compels them to crack open the book that is their mind and read out loud their deepest darkest thoughts and fears and pains and happy stories.

Thank you.