I just finished the excellent novel, Then We Came to the End, by Joshua Ferris. I was so jazzed by the last chapter, I wanted to re-read some Ralph Waldo Emerson, as Ferris uses Emerson as a signpost throughout the novel.

I couldn’t find any Emerson save the snippets included in my numerous literature anthologies, so I picked up Thoreau’s famous sci-fi thriller, Walden. It’s close enough, right? He and Emerson were friends, both into the whole self-reliant thing. It seems like a good back-up.

I read Walden in college, but as I slothed my way through “Economy” again, I realized that this was not a book that you return to. It is a book that returns to you, and what it gives back is directly proportional to your evolution since reading it last. Sure, this sounds like an easy thing to say about any book of ideas, but Walden clearly holds a different reward for me twelve years after first reading it.

But I’m not hear to talk about Thoreau, or Ferris, or the creative.

(

My version of Walden, a pretty hardbound edition I gifted to my friend Jeff and then reclaimed after he passed away, has a simple inscription I wrote to him.

“I like this book a lot.”

Years later, when Jeff and I talked about books as he lay dying in a recliner, I pulled the book off of his shelf and turned it over in my hands. He watched me fondling his book and said that he had read it.

“I found it hard,” was his only comment.

My god I miss him.

Will that ever go away?

)

What I noticed in reading this version of Walden is that today and tomorrow are hyphenated, and appear as to-day and to-morrow.

I tried to discover when the word to-day became today, but my internet skills are always weaker after a long period of reading books. I only discovered that the word today is, obviously, very old.

As is my custom, I invented a past for the word, which I believe is somewhat accurate, if not persuasive.

To-day is short for “to the day,” as in “to the letter” or “to the max.” It’s a measure of time trapped in a prepositional phrase which both serves to pinpoint something we refer to as the present and to account for a range of time surrounding the present, both occuring in a span which cannot easily be considered “night.”

Ahem.

As I read through the first ten pages of Economy (it is hard), I felt that the word to-day is also a toast, of sorts, a salute you might say while raising a glass of something that will invariably distort your “today” and give you a headache “tomorrow.”

Instead of just referring to a frame of time, to-day is an acknowledgment of something meaningful, a proclamation to living in the “right fucking now.” It’s the layman’s carpe diem.

To the day! To the ability to do whatever you want, to reinvent yourself, to dig deep into your heart and rip out whatever it is that keeps you from doing the shit you want to do right fucking now.

I think Thoreau, and Tom Mota, and Jeff, would agree.

“The better part of the man is soon plowed into the soil for compost.” ~Thoreau*

*If we’ve read Then We Came to the End, which we should, we might find the inclusion of a quote a bit suspicious.

I’m changing the design of this site to something with more space for pictures and stuff. You may see things shift without warning. It is all in your mind.

During a trip to North Carolina for a technical conference, I found myself reflecting on a job I held in college as a car detailer. Even though the chemicals I used on the cars burned my hands, I still consider detailing cars one of the most enjoyable jobs I’ve held.

I’ve made many internal observations about cleaning cars in the years since I quit that job–about the filth in which many people drive themselves, about the transportation of said filth from one end of the country to the other, about my role in beautifying something so superficial, about how most people no longer have sex in their vehicles (at least not in hatchbacks and economy-sized sedans). But mostly, I’ve considered the psychological value of manual labor.

During my employment at the dealership, I would try to convey these thoughts to my fellow detailers. Most knew that I was studying English in college and not “in it to win it” like they were, but they humored me. In fact, I believe that some of my coworkers actually adopted more of a philosophical outlook about the work just from these conversations.

One of the guys who didn’t humor me was Clay. He would wave me off anytime I would wax philosophic instead of the car. *cough*

“Damn, Pip. You talk to big,” he would say, shaking his head. (Pip was my nickname. It was short for Pippi Longstockings. I did have long hair in a ponytail back then, but never did I arrange it into two erect braids. Nicknames are a funny thing at a place like that. They don’t have to make sense to stick. If a new guy inquired about my nickname, I’d ask him if he wanted to meet my monkey, Mr. Nelson.)

Clay was from North Carolina, and, the southern creature he was, he pronounced it “Norf Caralina.” He gained quite a reputation at the dealership for microwaving the nastiest southern delicacies anyone had ever smelled in the breakroom, no small feat considering the breakroom also housed the community shitter. I remember him most for applying coat after coat of tire shine to his very used 60’s era VW Beetle.

“Only need look good at night,” he’d say, puffing on a Newport and smiling.

Clay was also considered a bit of a slacker, and I griefed at him from time to time for slowing down my own groove. However, I truly liked Clay. I dug his easy style and his friendly demeanor. When you were around him, you couldn’t help but to laugh at his crazy stories. He had a massive scar running the length of his chest from a knife wound, but you’d never believe anyone would cut him. I believe that this knife wound was a major factor in his relocation to California.

“Did you grow tobacco in your back yard,” I asked him once, knowing that his home state was known for the leafy crop.

“Not tobacco,” he replied with a wry smile. “But a smoking crop was cultivated.”

When Clay was working, when we were all working, when the sun was out and business was good, we’d detail cars non-stop all day. A mix of different music styles would emanate from the car stereos in each of the four detail bays. Sometimes I could hear Clay singing along to an R&B song, or another co-working bouncing his head to the latest rap hit. On a rare occasion, I’d pop off with some punk rock and we’d stop for a moment to mock slamdance around my car.

During those three-hour jobs, it was like a trip to Gilligan’s Island, a voyage for the mind. Working the dirt and blemishes out of a car affected the dirt and blemishes within the soul. I wrote novels in my head at that job, scored albums of richly textured music, teased out difficult concepts penned by the literary thinkers I studied. I went home tired, hungry and content most nights.

I was disoriented my first few days in North Carolina, as the entire landscape around Raleigh is infested with forests. I took long walks in the vicinity of the hotels amazed at how lush everything seemed, how old and untouched. It’s not necessarily a rural community. The Raleigh-Durham metropolis is a sprawling testament to modernity, but it is speckled with old growth trees and dilapidated barns. I found the combination of old and new inspiring.

“North Carolina would be an excellent place to ditch a body,” I told my sister when she fetched me from the hotel.

“Great,” she replied, subtly shaking her head.

My grandmother is 100 years old. She has survived war, poverty, hunger, immigration and the loss of everyone who could possible relate to her. She is almost totally blind and deaf.

Hayden, my mother and I visited her today.

“Happy mother’s day,” I said weakly, propping Hayden up so the light might hit his face enough for my grandma to see him.

She began stirring, trying to get herself out of bed. My mother insisted she lay still.

“David?” She asked, pointing to me.

“Yes, Grandma, it’s David and Hayden.”

“I need to speak with you,” she whispered, pointing near the side of her bed, indicating that I should sit next to her.

Reporting dialogue of my grandma is difficult. She is Russian and has spoken four languages in her life, but English was the last she learned, and it is challenging for her to find the words she wants.

I only know English, and even I have trouble finding the words I want.

I moved to the side of her bed and squatted down, placing Hayden on his feet so she would be speaking to both of us. My mother squirmed and shook her head. She knew, just as I felt, that whatever my grandma was about to share with me would be, at best, unpleasant.

It wouldn’t be fair for me to write all that she said, for I am a born embellisher. When I sit down at the keyboard, the exaggerations, half-truths and outright lies liberate themselves from my mind. Also, what she said was not about me. In fact, I’m not sure if she even realized it was me after she began.

When I left her room, I felt like someone had beaten me with my own arms. So powerful was her plea, so palpable was her anxiety that I could hardly breathe for fear of losing my own sense of balance and purpose in this world.

She spoke of the war. She lived through several, but like most elderly people who speak of the war, she referred to only one in particular, the war that changed her life.

For her, this was the Russian revolution in 1917. According to the limited knowledge I have of her family, her father was an attorney of some sort in the court of Nicholas II (the last Tsar of Russia), making him an enemy of the rising provisional government who ultimately removed the Tsar. Later that year the Bolshevik’s, led by Lenin, overthrew the provisional government and established a new, socialist government.

My grandma and her family had no choice but to flee their homes, their country.

She was nine years old.

She never went back.

I do not know more of this story because my grandma never spoke of it. Even when asked, she would barely acknowledge she had a family before us. She might mention her brother, but this was a rare and cursory admission.

In 1994, while traveling in Germany, I tracked down her older brother, Leon-lev Zakoutine, who was living in a retirement apartment complex in Munich. He was a former intelligence officer and writer, publishing several small run books about religion and philosophy.

The young men who worked the desk at the facility in which he lived called him “Captain” for his senior status and warm handshake. (I hope I am getting the facts right here. I met him in my early twenties, when I thought my memory unshakable.)

He invited me to share a glass of Jagermeister with him and told me that my grandma was a very resilient woman, that she was extremely smart for someone with no formal education past primary school, that she had enormous dignity and confidence.

Older pictures of my grandma featured just the woman he described, but the person I had known my whole life was a distant, elderly Russian woman who argued with my mother and made polyester pants.

During our visit today, my grandma was none of these things–not the things that her brother described, not the unreachable grandma I had known.

Instead, she was a frail, 100 year old human being with so many burdens and fears that her emotions scrambled out with a ferocious urgency.

“I saw bad things, people hanging, people shot, people killed. Right in front of me. I was sick inside. I am sick inside.”

This sentence is a mixture of things that peppered her 10 minute talk with me. I said nothing during this time. What could I say? My life is so very easy, so doughy and reclined, I felt as if I might burst into flames if I even attempted to console her.

“I cannot see. I cannot hear. I’m alone when I’m not alone. It’s awful.”

Within two minutes, my mother had taken Hayden out into the hall, a respite for her and a rescue for him.

“She wanted hugs and kisses. I bought her a car.”

The true focus of her message was her own inability to heal her wounds, to be the kind of mother she wanted to be. Her guilt over her lack of affection with my mother sobbed out of her and then sobbed out of me. Her tears had no choice but to run away out of her eyes as if they were ashamed, and I could do nothing but cry by her side.

I began to smooth what is left of her hair, and her sobs turned to a steady cry. This was not the kind of person I knew, that her brother knew. This wasn’t even the person she must remember from 90 years ago, the little girl from a well-to-do family in Russia.

Since my mind is unable to tether to any fact about her childhood, I painted her portrait. I pictured a beautiful child, all the privileges an aristocratic life could bring, darting through a lush garden in pursuit of her loving older brother.

A large house sits solid and safe in the background with a stern, important man sitting on the porch puffing away at his pipe. A woman carries two cool beverages outside, handing one to her husband, and taking a seat while holding the other. She smiles at his lack of smile, sips her drink and keeps her posture right.

The girl is happy, healthy and alive. She has no gift for premonition, no possible thought of life as it might be in 90 years. There is only chasing to be done, and she greedily seeks the small reward of her brother’s compliments for her upon his surrender.

Dignity, grace and determination simply cannot withstand the years. Many of us make believe that these things are important, that they make sense, that the world is lovely and large and we have a place in it.

Of course, this is all pretend.

I’ve made mistakes in my time. I’ve made big mistakes, little mistakes, mistakes that turned out to be beneficial (a mistake within a mistake).

I don’t think that have I made a mistake that I would consider ‘legendary.’

Yesterday, I may have done just that.

I was troubleshooting an email error I received regarding a system that I wrote. The system handles research proposals for a large group of people, and it is supposed to email the contacts for the proposals when a certain action is taken.

It did. And it emailed everyone else… Across the state.

About 3,000 emails went out to be precise. Emails to my boss, to his boss, to her boss, to everyone in between, on top, on the bottom and at the sides. Everyone in my division received it.

But that’s not the part that makes the mistake legendary. Testing of new systems always yields unwanted results, and this wouldn’t be the first time that something was sent erroneously or just didn’t work.

The aspect of my mistake that makes it so, so much worse/better, is that I was using a test proposal I created during the troubleshooting process.

The name of the proposal?

“Detection of Methane in Central Valley Couch Cushions.”

*sigh*