thank you for not sharing

In January 2017, Dammit Dave and I hit the road north. On a Saturday morning, we threaded our way through the needle's eye of potential lake-effect whiteouts, landing in Kingston, Ontario, for lunch. Why not? On the night before, I floated the concept as a small clutch of friends yucked it up. I liked the notion for its brazen spontaneity, shock value, and merry foolishness. Dammit Dave was up for it. So was I. On the ride up, we talked ceaselessly about our personal histories, buffered with a few cross-currents of editorial comment. I wouldn't say we delved into our fears; after all, we're men.

We had lunch at Curry Original. Very fine food with a view of Lake Ontario outside our window.

For dessert, we repaired to Balzac's Kingston on Princess Street. Coffee and pastries.

A sign said: "Table sharing is kindly encouraged. #makeanewfriend #communaltables"

Dammit Dave and I found a spot near the back, a table to ourselves. I was tired. I was ready to head back to Syracuse. If the coffee did its job, we'd be alert enough for driving back.

Table sharing.

It depends.

I wasn't in the mood for it, though often I don't mind. Many coffee shops depend on such a code of occupancy; they need to keep the place filled. They need to sell products. Otherwise, there'd be no business, no tables to share, no seats to sit on.

There's a time and a place for communal space.

This wasn't it for me, not quite, though, being a social animal, I traded remarks here and there with Canadian strangers, if only to ask about the location of the restrooms.

When I worked in New York in the Eighties, it was not uncommon for me, or intimates of mine, to engage in deeply personal conversations over lunch, at a restaurant, a cafe, a cafeteria, a food court, or a pocket park. New York conferred an automatic shield of anonymity and resulting privacy. It was like the cone of silence on "Get Smart." The people at the nearby table (sometimes at a shared table) could be talking about bestiality or beatific visions. No matter. Zone it out. Not my business.

That was then. Perhaps in a "hear something, say something" world, things have changed.

I've observed that privacy protection via anonymity is harder to come by in a small town or a modest-sized city. They listen in, pause before the fork hits the mouth. Or maybe that's my bias untested by the evidence of ample experience.

And cultural factors are at play, too.

Dammit Dave and I swapped no secrets, revealed no scandals that Saturday....unless he reads this and corrects my subjectively skewed memory.

Honoré de Balzac would have been disappointed in our conversational blandness as blank and small as a finished espresso.

on wheelchairs and treadmills

I noticed him because he was ostensibly reading The New Yorker as he sat in his wheelchair at my "home office" coffee shop. It was The New Yorker that caught my eye, not the wheelchair. No, it was the combination of the two. For no rational reason, I felt it was an odd mix. That betrays a bias I had not recognized in me, the notion that someone so incapacitated is incapacitated in more ways than the obvious physical ways. In the back of my mind had I consigned him to only reading the Daily News? (I enjoy both periodicals.) "Incapacitated" seems like the wrong word, too harsh, too confining. Maybe paracapacitated or quasicapacitated.  

I began to notice he was a regular, always reading, almost always smiling, conversing with other denizens of the hangout. 

One day, I walked up to him and said, "I see you're a New Yorker reader, too. It's my breakfast companion."

"Isn't it great?"

"It is."

I referred to a recent issue that grabbed me, one of those epic examples that you want to save, even in a digital world. I can't remember for sure why I felt that or what issue it was or what was in it. It may have been the Rachel Kushner profile. He later told me he read her latest novel.

The next time I introduced myself by name and got his name. 

Rupe. 

We got talking, easily. I sat beside him.

He has a doctorate in education from Columbia. Taught science. He suffered a bicycle accident in Central Park last year. He has amnesia of the tragedy. It was a hit and run. Cameras couldn't make out the license plate number. Millions of dollars in medical expenses. He is from Guyana. Up here in Syracuse to be with his family, or them with him. Compression fractures in his upper spine. Might possibly walk some day. Can't do any more physical therapy this year because he reached his limit of twenty visits, and it's just June.

"But you're always smiling. You seem genuinely happy."

"What are you going to do? What can I do?"

"I could understand if you were bitter."

He explained how he indulged in bitterness at first and sometimes now, but determined it hurt no one but himself and those around him. He said he has to make the best of it and might as well do so without adding the burden of mental and spiritual misery.

I'm paraphrasing. 

I mentioned to Rupe, roughly and approximately, what Daniel Gilbert said in "Stumbling on Happiness." Gilbert cited a 1978 study that said, pretty much, a paraplegic and a lottery winner were equally, though not quite, as happy or unhappy, a year after the life-changing event. He spoke of this in a TED talk in 2004 and then made some corrections ten years later.  

"So, are you happy?"

Rupe smiled. A genuinely bright and infectious smile.

I felt foolish asking the question and slightly ashamed for not being, well, happier myself.

"Is it simply a gift you are open to?" I persisted.

Rupe repeated the "what are you going to do" theory, and talked about his family.

Or else I don't recall how else he explained his happiness. I'm remembering this poorly, skewed by time and the prejudice of my own perspectives.

After that encounter, I went back to see if I accurately remembered the Daniel Gilbert thing about a year after someone won the lottery or lost the use of limbs. Pretty much remembered correctly.

Then, the internet being what it is, along with my discursive mind, I wandered off into such matters as "hedonic adaptation" and the "hedonic treadmill."

Hedonic treadmill. The rat race, right? Scientists study prisoners, widows, married or divorced people, and, yes, those with severe spinal injuries.

We're never satisfied. We get more and then want more. 

Ancient concepts. In 1621, in "Anatomy of Melancholy," Robert Burton wrote, "Desire hath no rest, is infinite in itself, endless, and as one calls it, a perpetual rack, or horse-mill.^"

Abundance denial. A since-deceased mentor of mine would often say, "If I have enough, I have abundance."

I love these terms.

Great book or poem titles. Or band names.

I too tread my own treadmill, sometimes I trudge it. Only rarely do I jump off it. Maybe it's going too fast and I wonder where it will fling me.

What would Rupe do?

WWRD.

round 'em up! . . . or down!

Some countries force buyers and sellers to round their commercial transactions up or down. There are lots of ways to implement cash rounding, depending on the local custom and the level of currency involved. For example, cash rounding might eliminate all coins or only designated fractions of a currency. Thus, $3.61 could be rounded up to $4.00 or it might be rounded down to $3.60. This technique, also known as Swedish rounding owing to its 1972 introduction in that Scandinavian nation, makes for simplicity and ease of use. I imagine it all sort of evens out in terms of income gained or lost. It must. After all, when an American taxpayer fills out the tax forms in April or earlier, the IRS does not require coin amounts, allowing those who file to round up or down. Tax software typically employs rounding.

Before going any further, let me say I love the Swedish word for "öre rounding": öresavrundning, though I'm not sure how to pronounce it. But I can hear its melodic lilt. Think of the öre as a penny in the United States, except that unlike the miserly penny it was discontinued in 2010. 

Now, as I am wont to do, let's jump to other roundingness situations.

Once upon a time, I went on a trip with two friends, one of them an engineer. We all decided to share expenses such as car rental, hotel, tolls, and gas. At the trip's conclusion, the engineer announced how much each person owed IN DOLLARS AND CENTS. Spare me! Or should I say, don't spare-change me! I objected then, and would now, that among friends we need not break it down into fractions of a dollar. What would one call this: Midwestern Reader's Digest Pecuniary Persnicketiness? I say that, although I confess to similar attributes as a fussy editor. But this is different. To me, it resonates with a moral exactitude rooted in the notion of a Fastidious Bookkeeper Omnipotent Being. 


What sort of person is ruled by such calculations? Does their viewpoint block any vision of the Incalculable? Or am I employing some sort of reverse superiority?

I am tempted to posit that select cultures foster such fastidiousness in daily affairs, not just regarding financial obligations. But that would invite the most prosaic and banal of stereotypes.

I hereby declare Round 'Em Up! 

Teachers and professors, round up the grades of your subjects.

Parents, round up the praises of your kids' accomplishments.

Police officers, round up the numbers on those Breathalyzer tests!

Law officers, round up the mph of cars whizzing by you! (I threw those last two in there for all those who figured I was going all soft and snowflaky on you.) 

Employers, round up the hourly wage of every minion mining profits for you.

For that matter, round down, too.

Dear Father Confessors, round down the sins and peccadilloes of your penitents.

Umpires, round down the strikes of the whiff artists at the plate.

Finally to all cable news pundits, analysts, consultants, moderators, anchors, and co-anchors: round down the decibels. 

Round down to zero. (Perfect for nihilists.)

Armsagettin'

I recently drove by a local building sporting the name Destiny Arms. Why such a name? The "Destiny" part is easy. The owners of the residential complex are trying to associate the place with destiny usa, the nearby mall. But what about "Arms"? Where does that naming convention come from?

Why arms, and not some other appendage?  

Use your fertile imagination.

To be honest, arms evokes some pleasing and primal emotions. Loving arms. Mother's arms. Arms to hold you. Held in your arms.

In 1945 a researcher named Arthur Minton published "Apartment-House Names" in the journal American Speech. Minton found that in the five boroughs of New York City many apartments had formal names that ended with titles such as Court, Hall, Terrace, Gardens, Towers, Plaza -- or Arms. Minton noted that Hall, Court, and Arms arose from a British tradition that sought to lend an air of grandeur or nobility to rather ordinary digs. ("Digs." How did that come to refer to a residence?) He ultimately traced the use of "arms" to the coat of arms of noble families, so that the place could be associated with such lineage, even if falsely.

I wonder how we can update or modify this nomenclature tradition to reflect other perspectives. Yes, people still avidly follow the royals, in England as well as its former colony. But other embedded statements or associations are possible. For example, if we were to advocate for gun culture, we might call an apartment complex Remington Arms; alternatively, for those at the other end of the spectrum: Remington Disarms.

Some others:

• egalitarianism: Remington Commons
• elitism: Remington Rise
• vegetarianism: Remington Leaves (posted at all points of egress)
• agnosticism: Remington, Really?
• hedonism: Remington Raunch
• dairy farmers: Remington Moos
• artists/writers: Remington Muse
• cat lovers: Remington Meows
• contrarianism: Remington Row

Help me out here. What else do you have for us?
   

Getting Even, Going MAD

During the Cold War, military strategists concocted the notion of mutually (or mutual) assured destruction as a deterrent to nuclear war. The prospect — no, the potential and imminent reality — of nuclear war allegedly would be so ghastly and unthinkable as to stop each side from pressing the button, if in fact buttons would be pressed instead of dials turned, detonators plunged, or switches flipped. The concept was known by the suitable acronym MAD.

As the folks at Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (nuclearfiles.org) succinctly put it, “Whoever shoots first, dies second.”

According to one report, the term was coined in 1962 by one Donald Brennan of the Hudson Institute, which was led by Herman Kahn. The 1964 Stanley Kubrick movie “Dr. Strangelove” wickedly satirized elements of Kahn’s strategies.

I am not qualified to comment on whether MAD is or was a viable option. (“Viable option” seems oxymoronic at best.) I am not schooled in war theories or military history; during the Vietnam War, I applied for conscientious objector status. 

But I do claim to be a wordsmith, so let’s start with that.

Mutually assured destruction. Does it work as a relationship tool? Let’s see. Person A threatens to blow the relationship up. Person B counters with, “Go ahead! Go nuclear. Then we both have nothing. We both destroy the planet we currently inhabit.” Kids, house, income, savings, two dogs, three cats, and the pet iguana neither of you ever wanted but the child insisted on all go up in smoke, more accurately it all turns into domestic shrapnel sent flying from your respective attorneys’ offices.

Sound familiar? Veterans of divorce understand this scenario. They and those in their nuclear testing zones intimately and tragically know the radioactive fallout of this strategy when it fails. “Fails” may be the wrong word. It’s safe to say the approach may have worked in the short term — even for years or decades. “Worked” is putting it kindly. It held divorce at bay, the way religious strictures and stringent civil prohibitions against divorce once prevailed.

One need not go the marriage-divorce route to comprehend this. It might just as easily go from threats of infidelity to actual carnal misdeeds, ending with one’s worldly possessions on the curb in the rain.

It all might end with the clanging silence of ghosting, a muffled neutron bomb without detritus.

Maybe MAD works infinitesimally better in domestic relations than on the world stage. An after-nuclear-war planet presumably doesn’t have second and third chances. But uncoupled and divorced people connect anew or remarry all the time, getting a chance to try MAD all over again. Or they trod a lessons-learned path, such as mutually assured security (MAS),  albeit another military analogy.

If you like, carry this same MAD metaphor into the workplace, financial markets, parenting, legislating, and sports. Game-theory enthusiasts and negotiation experts already have.  

Does all or nothing, “whoever shoots first, dies second” ever work in any context?

In the field of substance-abuse and addiction recovery, there’s a tough-love tactic that says, “Maybe you haven’t had enough. Go out and try some more.” Even if it kills you. It’s all or nothing. No half-measures. You don’t hear this much — how else would rehabs make money? Would this be provisionally assured destruction and reconstruction (PADAR)?  

Being twice divorced and not wishing to add the adjective “thrice” to that past participle, I will not suggest strategies for domestic harmony. But as for MAD as a useful gambit in other realms?

Who knows.

The fateful question is: Are you sacrificing a pawn or a king?

Community Values

The TV is on in the Community Room. The community is undefined, but presumably it means the people who live in the building’s 40 apartments, and their guests or friends. The community is entitled to use of the room for family events: birthday parties, wedding or baby or baptismal or confirmation showers, graduation galas, family reunions, divorce or annulment commemorations, book signings, candidate kickoffs or pronouncements, landlord-sponsored and –contrived get-to-know-each-other gatherings with pizza, wings, and soda and coffee, and post-funeral gatherings. We’re in a basement. At the top of one wall are windows facing up at grates on sidewalk level. The opposite wall features glass walls and doors with venetian blinds. The blinds are typically closed. When the TV is on, it most often is tuned to the local Time Warner Spectrum channel with its endless, night-or-day loop of local weather, stories of death and mayhem or small-town thievery or depravity, the scores of high school teams, their success or failure in the sectional championships, the regional marching band competitions, the stray murder or rape, the drunk driver rocketing the wrong way on the Thruway, the statement from the sheriff’s office about the latest suspects, the mug shots of the young and accused with their surprised, scarred, and scared or defiant faces.  All to be repeated again after an appointed duration that viewers are trained to expect, such as “news on the nines” or “weather on the ones.” I walk by in the hallway outside the Community Room. As a resident, count me as a member of the community. No one is in the room. The blinds are drawn. The lights are off. The television is on, the newsreaders’ voices solemn and barely audible to a passer-by. I walk in and pick up one of two remotes sitting on the firm, faux leather chair. I click the O/I power button. Nothing happens. Someone once told me O/I stands for Out of Operation and In Operation. That does not seem plausible three decades later — if that is what I was truly told. Time was, we saw Off / On as the choices. It couldn’t be O and O, for off and on, could it? Too confusing. (I am pausing here to let you Google this modern-day mystery on my behalf. What did you discover? Thanks for coming back to finish reading.) I click the O/I on the other remote, and the massive screen on the wall goes blank, fades and cracles to black-but-not-quite-that-color, accompanied by a palpable silence. The local voices are silenced. The hearth is doused. No smoke puffs toward me or up a chimney. The electronic hearth with its comforting chatter and hum is snuffed out. The Community Room’s temperature is lowered by 1.7°F. I walk out. I do my laundry. When I return to the hallway by the Community Room, its lights are out, its blinds still drawn. And the TV is on again. I keep walking.

what is a cell phone?

Before we answer the question at hand, let me digress (if one can do so with nothing to digress from). I prefer cellphone as one word. Why? Because the typical evolution in American English is to go from two words to a compound word with a hyphen and then to one solid word combining the original two words. Why not skip all that and go straight to one word? After all, we don't say tele-phone anymore. But most style guides go for cell phone as two words, so I will obey, which is not my nature. Here's a rather fascinating and in-depth look at the issue, from an Australian writing 10 years ago. And I won't digress from a digression to ponder smart phone vs. smartphone.

What is a cell phone? 

Wikipedia says: "A mobile phone, known as a cell phone in North America, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link while the user is moving within a telephone service area. The radio frequency link establishes a connection to the switching systems of a mobile phone operator, which provides access to the public switched telephone network (PSTN). Modern mobile telephone services use a cellular network architecture, and, therefore, mobile telephones are called cellular telephones or cell phones, in North America."

Well now! I couldn't have said it better myself. Who knew? Not me. Who knew that this is what that ubiquitous ever-present thing is and how it works, if you understand all that technical stuff.  

But that doesn't get to the existential nature of the thing. I mean, how would Soren Kierkegaard or Martin Heidegger answer the standing question? And would they possess one? 

I'm going to allow for a lot of wiggle, or wriggle, room and say that defining a cell phone depends on circumstances and intent. I won't foolishly say, "It's all relative." I had a philosophy professor at Le Moyne College, the Rev. John J. McNeill, S.J., who told our class about a debate on situation ethics he participated in around 1970. When his opponent said, "It's all relative" or "Everything is relative," McNeill retorted, "You can't make a statement like that. It contains an absolute. It subverts your argument." I always thought that was quick and clever. 

Where were we?

Permit me the Socratic method. Isn't that when the philosopher (which I am not) asks a series of leading questions so that the student formulates a reasoned response?

Is a cell phone a communication device? Obviously. They say that it is. But --hold on -- I submit it is equally, if not more so, a miscommunication device, especially when SMS, or texting, is employed. So we cannot with certainty claim that a cell phone is a communication device. Even if one texts another saying "bring some milk home," the sender assumes the receiver received the message, on time, in English, and without sarcasm, doubt, irony, etc. Throw an emoji in there and land mines may be planted.

Is a cell phone a weapon? You would think so, the way the "device" is brandished. Especially on business calls, isn't the object used as a weapon in the arsenal of persuasive tools? Just watch someone's posture, mannerisms, volume, and word choices.

Is a cell phone a walkie-talkie? It can be, especially if someone is in the attic talking to someone in the basement, if there's service coverage.

Is a cell phone a tether? Is it not a cable, a rope, a binding to the mother ship, your network, your friends, even your enemies, your spouses (plural in my case), your lovers, your ex-lovers, your would-be lovers, and your would-be ex-ex-lovers or would-be ex-ex-spouses? Ask yourself this: what happens if you sever that tether? Can you do it? What happens when baby's pacifier pops out of the mouth and rolls onto the pavement and slips down a storm drain? Tantrum, right? And what does the unshackled slave do without the familiar grip of tyranny?

What is a cell phone?

Tell me.

Testify.