Travail

Today when I got home from work, my beloved described an overwhelming morning which involved lots of loud noise and activity out in the parking lot at our apartments. For me, this is not a problem, just part of the goings-on of living in a city.

One of the things I love best about her is that in spite of the ability to interact seamlessly with the human society around her, she processes information in much the same way as a puppy. This ranges from a fascination to things she finds while out walking (and a corresponding desire to stop walking and investigate on the spot), to intense loyalty, to being overwhelmed by a large influx of external stimuli. Much as a dog might get excited and bark at the same levels of activity outside the living room window, so much to process makes her nervous.

Other things overwhelm her as well. The main thing that crops up is anything involving high levels of logistical coordination and detail.  Coming to a mutual decision about an afternoon’s itinerary borders on painful in its complexity.  I compensate by making it up as I go along, a natural extension of a coping skill I had already developed for dealing with huge bodies of detail beyond my ability to grasp.

At the moment, we are preparing our home to live in, and the scope of the project is at times overwhelming, even for me.  She seems to be completely blown into the weeds at the amount of work to be done, and seems comfortable with letting me handle the bulk of the organization.

Travail is an old term used to describe labor.  I mention it because labor is a self-solving problem generally, and always seems long and gruelling in the midst of it.  That is where we are now, and that seems to be the best luck I’ve had communicating our status to her.  She is eternally loyal and patient, and I am overcome with gratitude.

In Closing

My dear murdered friend Alex,

Something like a decade has gone by since last you and I had contact, and somewhere in the interim someone sent me an article that you’d been murdered.

I remember riding on the schoolbus with you, and practicing our mediocre Spanish as a way of having semi-confidential discussions in the midst of an oddly non-hispanic group of fellow busriders.

I also remember paying you $50, more than I really had at the time, to leave my apartment for the sake of my sanity. You got me to watch gay porn with you as a social experiment, which failed to turn me on, and also failed to offend me. That marked one of the interesting high points in a long list of things that have completely failed to offend me, and you seemed more fascinated by my lack of strong reaction than by any actual response I could have made.

You sold me a laptop that eventually made its way onto a jobsite that would one day become the Beaverton Mr. Peeps, playing MP3’s into the wee hours while my friend and I ran network cable for what was ostensibly a very complex and overbuilt phone system.

I bought it from you so because I was slammed with senior year projects and assignments that failed to dovetail politely with a job and a role in the school play. A laptop with a full keyboard seemed to be the only sensible way to turn wasted transit hours into productive input hours.

I paid you $400 for a used laptop in 1997, got every bit that much use out of it and more, and have never regretted it.

A few months later, my parents confiscated it in a battle of dominance, one in which I was loathe to participate, and one over which they felt absolutely necessary to secure a decisive and stunning victory. It would sit in an unheated storage facility for nearly a year, and it was only after some tweaking when I got it back that the laptop could be resurrected.

My parents angrily professed a desire to keep you from corrupting me, being a bad influence, taking advantage of me in business by overcharging me for computer parts, or underdelivering. They ranted about my disobedience when I examined the necessity of a laptop and bought one from you nonetheless, and the subtext was ultimately a terror at what they perceived to be a crumbling of their dominance over me. For me, it was just a way to save some time and make it easier to keep up with schoolwork, but theirs was an emotional pulpit, and those were insane times for them. Can you believe they’ve never recovered?

They saw you as the devil. Starting with a portable computer, you were going to lead me from the paths of righteous obedience and cooperation into a life of subversion and coloring outside the lines. No doubt their nightmares included theatrical scenes of homosexuality far more terrifying and graphic than anything you tried to get me to watch on the internet.

They were worried you would take advantage.

But along the way, about the time you started staying with me in the apartment, your homosexual promiscuity got me thinking more about my interactions with the opposite sex, and perhaps in some small way taught me that sex wasn’t the big scary religious event that I’d been taught it was. For me, it wasn’t the start of my downfall, but rather the beginning of a fulfilling relationship with another part of myself that had been kept in hiding, the sort of forbidden part of my personality kept under a veil from prying eyes, including my own.

We took long drives through the middle of nowhere in which you showed me the sights of Ridgefield. There was not much to work with, but against the backdrop of my public transit-bound existence, the carefree lifestyle of driving without a destination was new and interesting.

Your car stereo was your best friend, drowning out the noises of mechanical failures from your steadfast refusal to acknowledge the laws of physics or maintain your car in any way. Looking back, I suspect it also drowned out the noise of your own thoughts when you were alone.

In passing, you introduced me to Carmina Burana, probably your favorite piece of music ever, and one that you swooned over almost weekly since we first met. I was only 15ish, and you were trying to get me to watch gay porn with you almost in the same breath, so I suppose I assumed that Carmina Burana was one of those experiences that a straight guy wouldn’t quite be on the same wavelength for, about like going to a gay part. I had this notion, I guess, that it was some sort of homosexual anthem, and wouldn’t actually hear it until I tracked down a movie commercial’s soundtrack years after you were gone. At that point, it finally made sense, and I finally fell in love with Carmina Burana.

One night out driving, you parked us at the end of a T in the road, out in the middle of some deserted part of Ridgefield. There wasn’t so much as a cow nearby in a field. Just you, me, darkness, and your car stereo for at least a mile. You cranked up the volume, and were beside yourself with joy at introducing me to Bach’s Magnificat. I fell in love with that one too, and later with her older, hotter sister, the Mass in B Minor.

You formatted my 420-meg hard drive while you stayed with me. It was the one with all of my essays and poetry from the high school years. It was the one with my backup copy of Windows 95 installation files. You left rotten food in the sink, and made my apartment smell bad. You never helped me buy groceries, or pay for the internet access or computer parts that you were always so eager to use. You were not quite the computer genius that you thought. And given the opportunity, you were probably even willing to take advantage of my generosity in the way everyone feared, not by turning me gay, but by forcing me to provide for you.

But at the end of the day, that was a short period of time, and those drives through the middle of nowhere are remembered fondly. Your bad roommate tendencies were intolerable for those six-or-so weeks, but I went on to have worse roommates that turned out to be better friends. Time was able to mend those, because those people are still alive, and I can’t help but think that we both got the short end of that stick with your untimely demise. I suspect that with me back from Texas, you and I would be great friends these days. I’m powerfully heterosexual, virile, and yet cultured, refined, and metrosexual: a term you probably missed out on. You would have found it fascinating.

Alex, I began to remember all this when I realized that even if you did overcharge me a bit for the laptop, and did reformat my hard drive, terribly petty things in the big picture, that it’s all made up by introducing me to music that I would come to fall in love with: Magnificat and Carmina Burana. They still bring me deep and intense emotional pleasure and catharsis, and for those, I am eternally grateful, though sadly I will never be able to repay you.

To your memory, which has already outlasted you by a decade (or something like it), I am eternally indebted.

Requiescat in pace, amicus meum.

Television Fasting

There has been some backsliding since my fiancee takes on a greater role in my childrens’ lives, but broadcast and cable television are essentially banned in my household. The results are relaxing, rewarding, and broad in scope.

All of the downside risk to a ban on television amounts to a certain level of cultural disconnection. At work, I’m unable to discuss last night’s sports scores, or the outcome of a reality show, or even a popular series. There is some failure on our parts to absorb mass-produced network news, though I subscribe to the New York Times, so my grasp of current events tends to be about a day and a half ahead of the cable news schedule. This is not a disaster.

Electronic devices can actually improve my connection to society and the world around me by making communication with other human beings simple, inexpensive, and ubiquitous in a way out would not have been a hundred years ago, all debates about organic vegan anti-technology aside. Where we might be somewhat less intensely interactive at home in the evenings, we are more closely connected throughout the day during times when we might once have been out of reach.

Where we’ve noticed the biggest gains in setting clear limits on technology, especially television, is the hours and hours of our lives that go unwasted. For a typical American diet of 2 hours per day of television (rather light for American habits, actually), a missed 14-hour television week makes itself felt in better reading, less second-hand noise pollution, more intimate discussions, and greater social freedom.

It seems even with technology, good fences make good neighbors.

Business Step 1: Honesty

Polonius put it best: “Unto thine own self be true.”

There should be no titles that don’t begin with the word “acting,” at least internally. I come from an organization that has real titles, real pay grades, and then acting titles with other, lesser pay grades.

More to the point, and more realistically, we are all acting. I’m a debt collector. But in all honesty, I am only a collector so long as I continue to act as one. Frankly, if I fail to do so, I lose my non-acting title. So again, I am only a collector so long as I continue to act like one.

So long as I act like a collector, I should get paid as one. So by the same token, so long as someone is an “acting supervisor” they ought to be paid exactly as that: an acting supervisor. An acting CEO… ought to be paid as such. And should lose the title as soon as they don’t act like one.

In short: rank is as rank does.

Long Time No Post

I’ve been working on my house.

There’s a lot to do, a ton of cleaning, and prep for the contractor to come in. I’m trying to streamline as much as I can so his bill is as small as possible.

I’ve been neglecting my friends, family, studies, and least of all, my blog. While I’m sure there won’t be any readers left when I get back, it’s nice knowing that my true family and long-time friends maintain that same fanatical loyalty they always have. I’m glad I have good people taking care of me.

Bigger Picture

To whom it may concern:

This evening, I’ve been reading on the internet about the five pillars of Islam. Interesting stuff. And properly translated to our culture, it would make for a good system of self discipline and cultural awareness.

In a pragmatic sense, if you continue to allow me and people like me to read that sort of thing unfiltered, allow us to have little sewing circle meetings and drink lots of tea, we’ll be no trouble to you whatsoever. For the staggering majority of people, violence and cultural awareness are mutually exclusive. If we’re aware of those around us, honestly, we’ll actually be too docile to raise a noticeable stink.

Constitutional Basics I

Consider a group of escapees from Somalia. Somalia is unarguably their home, both geographically and culturally, but having exhausted their options under the rampant corruption of the Somalian gangs and warlords, they realize that their best hope for any rational method of survival will be to simply leave the expense and overhead of corruption at home.

Having chartered a boat, they take a trip to a remote section of northern Canada. Somalia does not expect the settlement to make it. Canada is not concerned in any way, also not expecting the settlement to make it.

This isn’t a voyage to avoid persecution. In the grander scheme of things, religious persecution often plays a cursory role in the onslaught of economic forces, sometimes creating a backdrop while trying to protect the innocent, and other times providing a pretext for crusades that were already in motion. No, the purpose of the voyage is simply to be left alone long enough to provide for themselves and their families.

They realize before ever leaving that their chances in their new surroundings are bad. That over half are dead within a year of the voyage surprises no one. Ground to dust by withering poverty, nearly half of the family and friends they’ve left behind in Somalia… also don’t make it, despite having never left home. In their old settings, survival depends on the whims of a power-hungry warlord who cares for them not a whit. In their new settlement, survival depends far more on their own efforts, which means that their opinions and happiness count to someone who can make a difference.

Critical lesson the first: this is the fundamental difference between self-determinism and slavery.

Somalia has no quarrel with the settlers, so at some point it makes sense for the settlers to open trade with their homeland. They trade a few of their plentiful natural resources, things they weren’t going to use, for trinkets, little reminders from home. No one thinks so much about an acre of lumber here or there.

Soon, however, the Canadians take notice of the missing lumber. Somalia likes its freebies. Skirmishes ensue, and ultimately, Canada decides it’s less of a hassle to give up some lumber than to go to war with Somalia.

Thirty years later, the timber trade is established, and children have been born and raised with the expectation that trade with the homeland is the norm. Soon, there is a vibrant market for legitimate purchase of timber from the Canadians for the sake of shipping overseas, and ever sale of timberland broadens the Somalian influence.

Pressure from the homeland to continue timber exports builds, and eventually, inevitably, the settlers disregard the desires of the Canadians, and go to war with them instead. From here on, the expansion of the settler influence is imperial, determined by economic and martial conquest whose rate is subject only to the ability of the Canadians to resist.

Of course the Somalian warlords seem distant, across the oceans, but the have not begun to disappear in the slightest, nor do they fail to recognize the opportunity presented by Canadian settlement. A word is uttered, “tax”, and their greed means that they receive double the timber without any change whatsoever to the trinkets sent the other direction. The settlers grumble.

But it works. The settlers must work twice as hard because of the greed of someone oceans away. Thus starts the Somali/Canadian revolution, without magic, without Providence, and without surprise. Once the distant masters discover that the price of extortion is at their command, greed guarantees that they will continue to raise the bar until the settlers revolt. There is literally no question of whether or not it will take place, but merely when. And indeed, it is an artificial condition. The Canadians will not support the settlers when they revolt. They have already been alienated by the onslaught of settlement.

Lesson the second: the only long-term government is a local one.

This is where it gets interesting for the United States.

The founders of the United States recognized the first two lessons. They were terrified of recreating England in their new homes, and used the word “tyranny” as we use the word “terrorist”, to label and conjure fear at the notion of extortion and voluntary slavery. Mistakes were made, but ultimately, the goal was govern locally, and allow ones efforts to truly determine ones chances of survival or even comfort. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

In principle, if the same principles were preserved in their purest interpretation, it should allow for civil rights for all. The same thing to undo peaceful conversation with the Indians is what will cause the undoing of the American dream on a today basis. It doesn’t come in the form of armed revolt, not a declaration of martial law, but in a simple differentiation between “us” and “them.” Today, this happens between civilians and military, civilians and police, rich and poor. And it will end the American dream for “us” as certainly as it ruined it for the natives.

Causality

My relationship with my parents was rocky, generally unsatisfactory, and quite often abusive. Where I would like to provide my children instruction on several levels, including as a direct example of successful behaviors, my parents displayed an entirely different notion from what I ultimately settled on for my family.

Growing up, I learned subtly from the cues around me that the role of a wife was to make the rules and hold sway over the household. My mother was often the policymaker, the matriarch by virtue of sending down certain edicts and expecting them to be followed. Rocking the boat in any way would make waves, which meant people were going to be hurt and punished. Speaking up was heartily discouraged.

The role of the husband, in turn, was to enable any abusive behaviors by rationalizing them and minimizing their impact. We were taught that this was loyalty. In retrospect, it was his own fear of rocking the boat and making waves.

That seemed like a terribly miserable way to spend the rest of my life with a mate, and I set out to go and do exactly the same thing. Not because that is what I wanted, but because in spite of the shallow surface accoutrements I thought a suitable mate ought to include, my meter for detecting what was normal was calibrated to detect someone “normal” in the same way what I had grown up around was “normal”.

At the heart of my divorce was the fact that while I started out much like my father did, trying to keep the peace, my job as a rent-to-own collector specifically required me to be more assertive. There were behaviors with which I had always felt uncomfortable, but my newfound voice meant that I could verbalize my feelings without being combative.

This did not go over well at all, and eventually ended the marriage where it began: with tantrums and immaturity, mixed with sex. That was my “starter marriage,” and while I believed that it would outlast one of us, I introduced significant change that ultimately turned out to be a deal-breaker. My primary purpose to her was as a financially-stable enabler, and when I ceased to enable, the financial stability was of secondary importance.

I have learned quite a bit that I am certain will help me to be a better husband to my beloved than I started out for my ex-wife. Where once I would have tripped over myself trying to stay out of the way and keep the peace, I now attempt to keep the peace while standing my ground and remaining firm. She finds it exasperating in a fight that I do not budge, but when there are storms outside of our home, she finds the trust comforting. It seems stubborn and steadfast have a similar appearance from the outside depending upon the context.

But why would I have gone to all of that trouble in the first place? Because that’s what I was raised to do. Specifically, that dynamic of keeping the peace in the face of irrational or even abusive behavior permeated every part of my childhood, and did not dissipate even after I left. My brother is still oozing it out through his pores, and I feel great sympathy when he feels forced to straddle a fence to avoid angering two different sides of a disagreement.

Backtracking in time, one can see the process beginning to brew upstream long before I arrived.

In my father’s case, he learned early on to keep the peace, to avoid stirring up emotions at all costs, even at risk of failing to show up for a confrontation that was absolutely necessary. He was taught relatively normal confrontational skills for use entirely outside the home, and to keep things mellow once he came in through the door. Why? Because his father had a medical condition that could cause his heart to fail as a result of stress. Instead of killing daddy, they learned to keep quiet.

He was found by my mother, who was looking for just that exact scenario, in which the man remains calm and quiet, because the woman neglects to exercise any self control whatsoever. How did she end up thinking that this was normal? She was raised by an abusive mother, and a father who allowed it. I never got to ask him why, as he died while I was still too young to grasp the finer points. I can only theorize.

I don’t buy the argument that marriages of that sort must end in divorce. A long-lasting marriage is not one with problems or perfect people. It is simple a relationship between two people with the same level of commitment and understanding of monogamy. Given the notion that both people believed whole-heartedly that divorce was not an option, he should have been perfectly capable of putting his foot down and demanding an end to the unacceptable behaviors, such as grandstanding, tantrum throwing, and disregard for personal boundaries. My first marriage failed not necessarily because I grew out of it, but specifically because her understanding of “lifelong” was actually a euphamism for “so long as I get my way.”

My mother, witnessing the relationship between her parents, got the notion that normal consisted of a woman running around abusing and disrespecting the individuals around her, and a man desparately following behind attempting to mop up the damage. This is why girls marry men like their archetypical father: because in order to replicate their parents’ marriage, they simply need to find an appropriate actor to fill the part.

Because my grandfather was limited in his range of emotional response, my grandmother got the bulk of the work raising children and running daily household operations. My father set out to find an appropriate matriarch to run his household.

Each tries to recreate what their parents had, without being able to rationally consider that the strange behaviors they witnessed were due to a heart condition, or my maternal grandmother being left an orphan at an early age.

Indeed, it is the very break in lifelong monogamy that will enable me to be happy with my mate, by providing a fundamental break with my childhood. My children are young, and for the majority of their lives will get to see me truly happy with someone who is kind to me, and to whom I am kind and loving. They will see both of us make mistakes, and see these mistakes forgiven, but never tolerated. They will be immersed in this sort of environment, and use it as their yardstick for finding their mates.

My daughter will look for a man who reminds her of me. That is a humbling thought, and a great encouragement to be on my best behavior. My son will look for a woman who reminds him of his stepmom, someone who is loving and kind, witty and beautiful. Any less and they will simply not measure up.

The Future of Moore’s Law

Somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind, not so deep perhaps, I secretly hope this post will be brought up decades from now as a defining moment of light shone upon an uncertain future. But I also realize that it’s funny to think that way.

My friend Charles has suggested that Moore’s Law will fail, not by slowing the pace of innovation, but by following it to its mathematical conclusion, and assuming that innovation will become infinitely rapid.

I’m not sure I buy the notion of infinitely fast innovation, but I had a wonderful insight, and then I saw the future, and then I saw my place in it, nearly all at once.

Pro-engineers, as I’ll call them, are problem solvers for problems no one has even discovered yet. Typically, someone builds a widget, then discovers that certain moving parts tend to interfere with one another, or wear prematurely. Pro-engineers preemptively see not only the problem, but are then able to set about finding a solution, before the first prototype is ever built.

I’m fond of telling friend that I get to see the future, but only about 10%. Just as soon as I’m told how funny and worthless that must be, I point out the notion of a dot-to-dot and how much 10% really is. A reasonably intelligent person can put 10% of the dots into a coherent picture at that rate.

I submit that before Moore’s Law fails, in whatever fashion, it will continue its onward march past the point of impossibility with the help of Pro-engineers, inventing past the horizon of the future that we can see, prefetching innovation as it were.

Dear Beloved

Today is a Hallmark holiday, and it frustrates me how readily the commercial taglines come to mind. I want to use words like “priceless” to hide the fact that I feel badly about not going and making a purchase to mark the occasion.

Of course, that has much to do with being ill for over a week, which did not help my classically poor attention to the calendar.

Thinking about being ill reminds me of the things you do here to make yourself the mother in this household. While I was sick, you took care of the children, something I would have had to figure out on my own a year ago. Had I been too dizzy to drive, I would have to choose between keeping a healthy Carissa home, or making the dangerous commute.

One of my greatest frustrations watching people live through abusive relationships is noting that their children are watching and taking note, deciding that living in a crazy or abusive household is normal. History shows that children pay careful attention to the roles their parents play and the examples they set, and later in life emulate them in their own homes. I take great pleasure in noting that my daughter will have your example to follow when she is building her life and nurturing children of her own, and in knowing that when my son selects a mate, he will measure all of his candidates against the standard that you’ve demonstrated. I sleep well at night in knowing that your fundamental influence will be one that I’ll not regret as they grow older.

It’s a hard job you’ve taken on, but one that so far no one has had the chops to see through. They love you plenty, but they’ll be as grateful later on as I am right now.

With all my heart,
Eric