I’m trying to take an online defensive driving course because I got a speeding ticket a while back. Unfortunately, I’m having problems with the streaming video, and I’ve had to watch the majority of a ridiculous teaching movie four times now. They used “teenagers”‘ and “with it” music video stylizing that is annoying as hell to my 43 year old personality.

Sigh…

Now I really have an incentive to never get another speeding ticket.

…for the mighty Patriots have struck out.

Much sadness here in my house where my Massachusetts-born wife is getting taunting text messages from friends.

As of today, February 1 (OK, so I’m 55 minutes late), Random Fate has existed in one form or another for five years.

The nature of blogging, and who blogs, has changed radically in the past five years, as has my life.

Odd are the paths our lives take, five years ago I would not have predicted I would be married to the woman I wed 19 months ago, nor would I have thought one of my biggest concerns would be how the shifting foundation for the swimming pool behind my house needs to be corrected.

Well, c’est la vie as the French say.  Life is like being immersed and trying to swim in heavy surf near a beach, you can either fight the waves to try to get where you think you need to go, or you can surf the waves.  You may not be going where you think is best, but at least you’re going somewhere, and you’re looking damn cool while you’re doing it.

For whatever reason, I am a night owl. I cannot go to sleep before I am ready, and I am generally not ready untill after midnight, often well after midnight regardless of how early I woke up the day before or how little sleep I am operating with.

Unfortunately, this is difficult to understand for those who do not suffer from this affliction, and an affliction it is indeed.

So here I am back “home” in Southaven, Mississippi. I had lunch today at Krystal Hamburgers; not gourmet by any stretch of the imagination, but a vice I miss despite the evolution of my palate since I moved away.

Originally I was not planning on any visit here this holiday, but my fathers mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer a few weeks ago, so I had to join the parade of relations and friends coming to pay respects to the dying. Last night my brother, niece, and I went to visit her in the nursing home where she is currently staying. It is down the street from the hospital my father died in two years ago this time of year. Nothing like déjà vu all over again, but this time was different in that the nursing home, while high quality, was a good first approximation to an antechamber of Hell as we walked through the hallway to my grandmothers room. The soundscape was one of moans of the damned coming from twisted mouths in ancient visages gnarled with lines of pain, fear, and age. Eyes uncomprehending peered out of faces draped with tubes running from mouth or nose to sources unknown intended to aid but resembling instruments of torture. Perhaps sometimes aid is torture.It seemed a hall bounded by rooms populated by denizens from a medieval painting showing the souls of the damned at the base with the triumphant Jesus surmounting all at the peak, raising up those deemed by the Church worthy of Heaven.

I had been warned my grandmother was occasionally disconnected from reality, a temporary dementia induced by waste products building up and other chemical imbalances in her body. She instead seemed lucid and as connected to reality as she had years ago, although she has lost a lot of weight. Given that I have had little to say to her over the years, there was not much for me to talk about now once the brief discussion of the state of my family in Austin was over, and most of the time we spent was with my brother talking about friends and relatives in town that he had seen or spoken with.

I put “home” in quotes because I do not enjoy my visits here, and it is difficult for me to believe at times that I grew up in this area. Despite new construction and the ubiquitous presence of cell phones, time seems to have stood still here, with the radio stations playing the same rotation of songs. I am always greeted when I first turn on the radio with the subtle nuances of Steve Perry fronting Journey in a song with all the emotional depth of a mud puddle with aspirations of becoming a lake. Although decades have passed since Jim Crow was rejected by the nation, there are Confederate battle flags displayed proudly on front license plates on trucks, flying in front of houses alongside a Mississippi state flag in a pathetic display of defiance towards those who tried to get that ugly legacy removed from the upper left of the most visible representation of the state.

My dislike of visits is not one of a simple distaste of memories of an unhappy past revived because of the static nature of the culture;it arises from the sense of decay that envelops everything, even things new. This is not the genteel decline depicted in the Southern Gothic stories of thirty and forty years ago, it is the rotting of something dead. I encountered 400 year-old buildings in France that had more vitality than the newly minted shopping center that hosts the bar where I am writing this. There is no life here, just rage mimicking it, an anger of origins old but continually renewed with each collision between black and white. The race hatred here does not spark the violence like the riots that have broken out in other cities; instead it has turned within, destroying any public spirit. The corruption here is omnipresent, but it is not the roguish style of New Orleans where public works get accomplished through the bribery, it is destructive, murdering any chance of progress. The decay is one of exhaustion.

I hate this place.

I miss my wife and her kids.

(How does one talk about step-children? Saying I miss my step-children simply doesn’t sound right… I guess all the connotations arising from the archetypal evil step-parent prevent the phrase from conveying positive feelings.)

Now, twenty years later, I see what drove me to leave at the first opportunity, despite the fear of the unknown that had governed my every decision. The nostalgia of high school reunions is not for me, nor a yearning for the idyllic lazy days of childhood. I knew then what I know now, but I did not know that I knew it, I only felt it. That was enough for me to be on the outside looking in, and I did not realize what a blessing that truly was. I have no home in the sense that those who sadly realize they cant go home again discover when they revisit the places of their youth.

It is 2007, and I am sitting in the closest approximation to a bar that I can find, listening to music that was popular twenty-five years ago, thanking God that I wasn’t forced to listen to the entire song Christmas in Dixie that started playing in a store when I was leaving after finishing a bit of Christmas shopping. I can’t find a wifi connection anywhere, and even my iPhone cant get a good data link, despite having a good cell phone signal.I have lost my accent over the years, and I continually get the “you ain’t from round here” look (cue the banjos and squeal like a pig) as I ask for things out of the local ordinary.

No, I ain’t from round here, I wasn’t even when I was growing up here.

The dearth of posting has caused what low level of readership I had built up seek more productive pastures, and I don’t blame them.

I think I’m back now. I got disheartened by a lot of what I was reading in blogworld, and I felt I wasn’t making any difference at all.

I’ve decided I can’t give up.

…still a bit blocked, but thinking hard anyway:

That describes me, because someone has taken my Itty Bitty Buddhafrom my cubicle at work.

Isn’t that very bad karma for them?

For those who might be curious, here is my current office setup, with my desktop monitors on the left and the laptop docking setup on the right:

Yes, I’m still a multitasker, far too much of one. A wall of screens wouldn’t be too much for me…

That’s me, beyond stupid.

Sigh…

I wonder, why do I do stupid things?

When will I stop?

I’m just in hibernation. I hope to emerge soon.

…or rather, the lack thereof.

Why haven’t I been posting?

Because of a lack of personal bandwidth. Not from my home internet connection, nor that of my employer, but of my brain.

I now have obligations beyond myself, and I no longer have the free time, the bandwidth, to think and write that I once had.

I am trying to find an accommodation, but it is non-trivial.

Then again, nothing worthwhile in life is trivial….

Two weeks ago today, the man who was my manager for about 9 years before I moved to France was found dead in his house. In the time since, I have found out that his death was voluntarily chosen and self-inflicted (he was far too conscientious and intelligent to accidentally overdose on painkillers). Given all that I have found out about his health and how it has declined in the 18 months since his quasi-involutary retirement, his decision was not an irrational one.

He had been in pain the entire 12 years I knew him because of an accident in his youth, and the last time I saw him, about four months ago, he said that he wished his retirement had been a gradual ramp-down rather than the abrupt ending of his contact with the research that he had spent the vast majority of his life working on. The quasi-involuntary nature of his retirement was imposed by the company for which he had worked for over 30 years, inflicted by the exigencies of the ever urgent pursuit of the short-term profit and the accompanying disregard for history and deep analysis of past and potential future contribution. Even in his role as a manager he stayed current enough that he was able to add significant insights to the newest areas of research we pursued. Despite his extreme intelligence and rapid thinking, he was still a compassionate and kind man. This is an incredibly difficult feat for those truly gifted as he was.

The precipitous ending of the work component of his life, perhaps the largest and most rewarding part, coupled with what I perceived as a lack of deep human connections (he had several contacts, including many of my former colleagues who went to visit him regularly and took him to the doctor when he needed it… unfortunately for me, I did not maintain that contact with him, just as I have not maintained it with many of my formerly close friends) resulted in a set of circumstances that when he became so incapacitated that he could no longer even reply to email it becomes apparent that the most rational decision may not align with what those who haven’t experienced that physical pain and emotional isolation would understand in the least.

I can relate in a very deep way to his conclusion, and many who know me would be uncomfortable with my comprehension. Discomfort with death inherent in our culture coupled with their own limited experience (resulting in limited empathy) create their embarrassing uncomprehension and show to me how truly disconnected I am from most people.

Once I took pride in my march to a different drummer, but as I grow older, the march becomes more tiresome and the loneliness becomes more intense.

I never thought I would feel this way, but there are some things that I am sorry are within my comprehension.

Here is to you, Phil. After my father, you were the man I most admired and aspired to emulate.

The numbers of the good ones are dwindling, and we are being overrun by the mediocre and the idiots.

Kurt Vonnegut has died.

His epitath is best summed up by the repeated line from Slaughterhouse Five:

So it goes.

Twelve years ago, in the midst of a life change the extent of which I had no conception, I started to work at my current location. I would write “my current employer” but the company has undergone so many major changes in the past five years (spinning off from the parent company to be an independent public company, being taken private by an investment group, having the investment group announce they wanted to go public, it is definitely NOT the same company I started with 12 years ago, even though I have an office in the same large cubicle farm.

In that twelve years, there have been more than a few layoffs, almost continuously from within a few months of my start date. Despite that uncertainty coupled with the strains from my divorce, the first four years or so that I worked here had a high “fun factor” because of the people who I worked with or, if I didn’t work directly with them, were in the general vicinity of my cubicle. There were many people with distinctive personalities that if not always pleasant were consistently challenging and interesting.

In other words, fun…

Really.

However, just like the physical process of erosion, the toll imposed by the exigencies of the past few years has washed away those who may have interesting personal characteristics but ultimately are judged to be “not in alignment” with the corporate mission.

I’m still trying to figure out how I keep dodging the “redeployment” bullet. It’s not as if I devote any energy at all to making friends and influencing people. Instead I’m argumentative, I poke holes in every sanguine presentation I see, and I warn against the worst rather than cheerleading the optimists.

At this point, I seem to be the sole survivor of the misfits. The fun factor in the job faded long ago with the continual losses of work-friends.

Once the fun factor is gone, it is just a job.

Sigh…