I've never been happy with the ical to do lists: the type is too small, you can't do a secondary sort, the whole field is too small compared to the calendar. I keep my events calendar on ical and track my time online on harvest, so why not go analog? What is served by a computerized to do list? Rewriting my to-dos every day seems like a nice memory jog Why not go?
I see bikes, Vespas, and motorcycles everywhere.
I regularly get together with people who have lost their jobs or whose businesses have slowed. I notice how much things cost–produce prices surprise me, checks from the pricier restaurants startle me, and the cost of airplane tickets make us think twice about a planned trip.
And yet we are lucky. We have plenty of work. But even the busyness frightens us a little because to be busy is to be overwhelmed and to be overwhelmed is to invite sloppiness and to invite sloppiness is to risk losing business. I see a prosperous business as the first item in a sequence that ends in homelessness. This is called “catastrophising.” I’ve been told to cut it out.
I am especially solicitous of our neighborhood, which was not always prosperous. At least one local building is on Selby but uses a Western Avenue address because people associated Selby with riots. Ever since we moved here, a certain amount of panhandling came with the territory, but the pitch has changed. At first, people I’d never met told me implausibly specific stories, as if they had all read Strunk and White. Then, a few regulars simply asked the patrons leaving the restaurants for money. This angered me, because the neighborhood depends on its businesses and our businesses depend on people from outside the neighborhood. A fellow resident said, “I’ve lived in New York. I’ve seen neighborhoods go bad.” Now I see the restaurants have beefier valets and Blair Arcade advertises its security cameras. The beggars appear to have moved on.
I sometimes speculate about the panhandler we saw the most. He was generally polite, but could become violent. He pounded the trunk and screamed as a mother and daughter drove off. He may have been like my friend C-----, a Vietnam Vet on general assistance and half-assed psychological disability payments whose money tends to run out near end of the month. But C---- doesn’t beg. Whenever I think this, I vow to send him some money, but so far I haven’t.
The closings of local businesses disturb me. Our video store was not a victim of the economy—I’d assume slow economies help video rentals as people search out cheaper entertainment options–but of Netflix. Yet we could feel the failure in that store–the way they would not open on time, the way they could never get enough copies of movies, the sudden laxness in filing. I’ve worked for doomed businesses. In such places, the depression isn’t simply economic; it’s the other kind, a spiritual sluggishness which says to itself: “I’m about to be hit by a truck. Why brush my teeth?”
The story of that storefront ended as well as could be expected. Their space is being taken over by Roots, the thriving salon next door with the great German Shepard named Tud. I’m glad that the space is being filled with a salon. You can’t get a haircut on the internet. I am made happy by our prospering coffee house and restaurants and book store. I have reached that stage in life where property rights become an emotion.
But I don’t want this place to become one of those neighborhoods where poverty itself is looked upon suspiciously.
A friend asked me to join twitter a few months ago, and I reluctantly did, while mumbling about the overpublished life and the overextended web. Then my enthusiasm picked up when I learned that an entire softball team, the infamous Weaselhawk nine, was "following" me. Really? So I thought I'd put the feed on the blog. It's the opposite of my usual posts, which are digressive to a fault. At 140 characters, twitter's like haiku. As a form so instant there isn't an edit feature--note the typos--it's not like haiku at all. In the spirit of allowing for a variety of updates, I've also added a Flickr feed.
I am always a little dissatisfied with this blog, because it always feels like it is neither spontaneous enough to be spontaneous nor considered enough to be good. But I am sitting here on a beautiful holiday morning thinking: blogs get to be desultory, that is their essence or that is one possible essence; they are free form ledgers that reveal purposes rather than serve purposes; they are notes to ones' friends and ones' self.
That is all. I am back to reading Team of Rivals on the couch in our sunny living room and maybe giving Al a longer than usual walk and maybe watching Wimbledon or "some men in identical clothing running around" as E describes sports. I have felt overcommitted and twitching with deadlines pretty much since February. On my vacation, I had a full week of billable hours.
I have some thoughts on Updike, Dylan, and have "discovered" the whole Law and Order meets literature charm of Richard Price. But too busy to write.
What is your favorite color?
That’s like asking what your favorite vowel is--you need them all. (“Y,” by the way.) I like those early sixties modernism a-go-go colors, though, and those blue filters they shoot some TV commercials through. Plus the John Deere logo colors and Coke bottle green and the milky green of Vespas.
What is your favorite flower?
Lilacs. They grew on our farm.
What is your favorite bird?
Foghorn Leghorn.
What are your favorite names?
Winona, for towns. Albert or Shatner for dogs. Engelbert Humperdinck, for sixties singers. Wile E. Coyote for phoenix-like obsessives. The names of the people I love.
As Al and I walked past what had been Thai Delight and is now the promising sounding Mango, I asked a woman working there if I could snap a picture of their sign for my blog. She had me write down the url while she held Al, who may have outweighed her. So i posted this more promptly than I might have otherwise. We welcome you. We welcome your ginger roasted duck and roma spinach peanut curry.
Sunday's dream of a clean office has yet to be realized.
Is it just me or does everyone feel that working on a computer is like surfing in a three piece suit? I always feel constricted by software and I always want the freedom of the pen and the pad . I can work on a computer; in fact, I do most of my work on a computer, but I always find it hard to think on a computer. I think it is time for a resurgence of the analog--not a Luddite reaction, just an intelligent supplementing. There is something about writing with one's hand, scrawling a connection, making something a little bigger, slashing it with an underline, drawing a doodle . . . which allows thought to follow its natural pathways. As much as I hate the fetish of "creativity," true creativity has got a bit of the frolic to it. I've started to use an 11 x 17 pad to jot down and connect stray thoughts and to develop to do lists and project flows. I want that software Tom Cruise used in Minority Report where you can act like a really smart dervish. I want Microsoft Wii.
As if to mock me, my blog software–with Hal-like creepiness–insists that this post is continued. It isn't. This is it.
Continue reading "Unplugged, Possibly Unhinged: Thoughts On Software and Thinking" »
The quality you most admire in a man?
Whatever the opposite of complacency is. That, plus not being a dick.
I would add a question--what do you value in a co-worker--and when I ask that question I think of Doyle Dane Bernbach's original, pre-human resources hiring policy: 1. You need talent because without talent we can't get anything good done. 2. You can't be a bastard because life is too short to work with bastards.
The quality you most admire in a woman?
Myopia.
What do you most value in your friends?
Curiosity. Decency. I would say, "a talent for fun" but that's kind of strenuous.
Who are your favorite heroes of fiction?
Fenwick, in the movie Diner.
Who are your favorite characters in history?
Marcus Aurelius. John and Abigail Adams. George Washington. Abraham Lincoln. Virginia Woolf. Robert Jackson. Jackie Robinson.Both Justice Harlands.
What historical figure do you most identify with?
Gerald Ford.
Which living person do you most admire?
Dave Eggers.
Who are your favorite heroines in real life?
My mom. E. Tina Fey. I’m sure there are a bunch of women I’ve never heard about doing remarkable things.
Who are your favorite heroines of fiction?
Molly Dodd.
If you were to die and come back as a person or thing, what do you think it would be?
Rafael Nadal. God owes me that.
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