Is Fall a Time for Dying?

I've been away for a long time here at a blog that was my inspiration; I'm hoping to make up for the lost time.

Erik had written these words years ago in a post on his website and they stuck with me since I read them: "fall is a time for dying". Through my life, I can point to personal tragedies, death, conflict and change  that came in the fall; and even as a student in high school,  I can vividly recall the tension and vague dread that was ushered into my psyche with the crisp morning air, waning daylight and chilly winds of October. A lot of friends and family were struck down with illness, fell victims to grave accidents or death throughout my life - amost exclusively in the  fall.  I'm a September baby and there's always been something in my DNA that's connected me to this time of year; I would say that it was my favorite season for close to half of my life. But now I dread the release  of summer, the stiff mornings and shorter days of light following Labor Day weekend. It's not the cold on my skin but the cold anxious feeling in my stomach that is hard to shake off.

I've been without a FT job for 7 months and am one of the 10% you keep reading about in the  WSJ or hear about on CNBC Squawk Box. I've never been so focused or worked so hard prospecting in any Sales gig as I have trying to find a job in this economy. With nearly 100 recruiters "working" for me, 20+ job boards at my disposal, a huge professional network, LinkedIn job services, Monster.com and a furious desire to get back to meaningful work, you'd think I'd have more to show for the campaign. I certainly thought I would be working in my dream job by now. And there is NO prize money for coming in second for an open position. I've had maybe a dozen engagements where I was a finalist and I spent myself intellectually and emotionally to win each of them. You probably put two or three months effort into those campaigns and when you don't nail it, there's literally nothing you come away with save disappointment. I've employed new tactics and exercised creativity like never before to differentiate myself from the thousands of initial candidates; the content, research and go-to-market plans I submitted to these employers was remarkable...some of my best work. But it didn't get me the offer.

I know I'm not alone here but it's like being on a giant sinking ship, the more time that ticks away, the fewer seats there will be in the lifeboats. And if our economy sees any more unfavorable economic indicators, there will be many more passengers jumping into the icy waters. And with the fall underway, the waters are indeed getting icy.

Steve Jobs died this week after nearly a decade of fighting cancer and it hit me harder than I'd thought. I didn't know Steve Jobs but his loss affected the world we live in. He brought technology and digital media into the home as a lifestyle expression and he did it with relentless marketing genius, design savvy and pursuit of perfection. And his contribution to American business was profound,  especially at a time when yoga geeks are occupying Wall Street, global currencies are crushing our private sector investments and everyone I know is looking to the government to fix SOMETHING for us. Steve Jobs was leading a company that was flourishing and vibrant on many levels. For me the Steve Jobs/ Apple story was somewhat of a lighthouse beacon in 7 months of darkness. And beyond that, I admired his accomplishments both inside and outside of the  company. He WAS Apple and I feel sick considering that a man like this -whose influence was realized globally,  was productive in so much innovation even outside of Apple and touched so  many individual lives with his vision- could have his life stripped away from him at a relatively young age. Life may not be fair or predictable but it is a gift that we need to celebrate every day. We need to use it vigorously.

What made me most sad was that my life,  by comparison to Jobs', is fraught with far too much introspection, analysis and self-pity. I think  my way out of so much action that if it  were a bank I would be rich with unrealized ideas and initiative. Many of us would be. We all have the same 24 hours to work with, so what are we willing to accomplish with that? I lived easily half of my life planning for the real living to start one day and what a ridiculous cliche I've lived as a result.  There is no practice round in life- every day is day 3 of the US Open so there's no time for wallowing or hesitation. We all  need to face a few facts though before we can change our lives: 1) no one is going to help you except you; take control of your situation and be in charge of it daily 2) showing up  for the match isn't enough, you have to play to win so get in that mindset however you can. I watch "300" at least once a week 3) the economy isn't getting better anytime soon- deal with it. It may require retooling your career, expectations or trying some new things. But whether we embrace this or bury our heads back in the sand, life is ticking by right now. Your life. Get out there and rip it from the champion tees and play to win.

 

Tama nettisivu toimii jonkinlaisena time machine-periaatteella. Isani Juha Kaarla ei juuri paassyt kokonaan Internetin sivuille ja nain ollen haluasin saada ainakin pienen muiston hanesta Web maailmaan. Sen verran aina tulen muistamaan isastani, etta han oli aina pukeutunut liikemies asuun ja innolla puhunut uudesta virastaan tai roolistaan uudessa tyokuvassa. Tyosta ja perheesta sitten oli suurin osa Juhan elamankirjan kirjoituksista. Hanen attache oli aina tupaten taynna asiapapereita ja uusia projekteja.

Juha Kaarla oli innokas kalamies ja nautti monista kesista jarven tai meren lahella uiden tai kalastaen. Mokki maisemissa han viihtyi New Jerseyssa ja myohemmin Massachusettsissa Cape Codin lahistolla. Kuten oli tyypillista Juhalle, han usein vaihtoi urakiinnekohtaa ja viimeset tyovuodet tuli tehdyksi Jarvenpaassa, Adulta aikuiskoulutuslaitoksessa. Ennen Adultaa han tyoskenteli muunmuassa Rastor Oyssa. Juha oli ammatiltaan ekonomi.
Juhalle oli tyypillista oleskelu kahden kulttuurin valissa ja han asui perheensa kanssa pitkasti New Yorkissa, Helsingissa, New Jerseyssa ja viimeksi Espoossa. Juhan innostus suomalaista kulttuuria kohtaan oli legendaarinen, mutta han myos oli ihastunut tietyn tyyppisiin jenkkimaisiin tapoihin ja lifestyle valintoihin. New Yorkissa han oli aktiivinen jasen Finlandia Foundationissa.
Juha nautti lukemisesta ja han oli aikamoinen uutistenkatsoja. Ekonoomina hanta kiinnosti seurata eri maiden taloudellisia muutoksia. Myos ihastuksen kohteena oli aina lemikkielaimet kuten kissat Oskari ja Emily ja koirat Kami ja Muffy. Elainten kunnioittaminen oli Juhalle erittain tarkea asia ja han piti elaintenkohtelua yleissivistyksen kulmakivena.
Juha jattaa jalkeensa vaimonsa Tainan, poikansa Erikin ja lastenlapsensa Abigail ja Joshuan.

I Hate Summer

During this past summer of 2011, I came to several realizations about the nature of summer at least as it exists for me now at 46 years old. The summer has always been a beloved destination of mine for the obvious pleasures of heat and sun, but recently I have started a process to unpack my current feelings about summer and I realize that I kind of hate it. Most people happily think about vibrancy and brightness and heat when they think about the summer – how could I hate it? What I say a key detail here is whether we are speaking about pleasantly sunny days filled with buoyant activity in pools and boats or loaded-down days of never ending heat and humidity that seemingly slows down all life to a steady crawl in stalled-out traffic. Which of these pictures is the correct one when it comes to summer in New England? Obviously, we get a fair share of both of these scenarios.

Let's look to Europe for a more dire example concerning the intense heat of summer. It is a fact that literally tens of thousands of seniors died during the heatwave that choked all of Europe during the summer of 2003. This is a staggering statistic; I doubt that any of the casualties were listening to the Beach Boys sing about endless summer as they expired in a puddle of sweat. They probably all cursed the summer during those fatal weeks. So much for the joy of summer. Clearly, summertime can be as deadly as a frosty winter. This is a detail about summer living that is often overlooked as nature is in full bloom and people take in the beautiful flowers and skies.

Summer, then, to an educated adult should appear to have very real dangers about it even as the sun rises early and provides energy during the long brightly lit days. The idea of a perfectly lovely summer of manageable heat, though, seems to be a kind of fantasy unless we are discussing something exotic like an island in the Caribbean. It is a fact that here in the Northeastern United States we have been experiencing hotter and hotter summers over the last decade. New York City this summer of 2011 had weeks of over ninety-five degrees that caused havoc in individual lives as well as in the lives of city administrators hoping to correct for this change in the weather. Many people died as a result of the heatwave. It was considered a heat emergency. Whether in a big city like New York or in a smaller town, when it gets too hot to go outside and to sleep at night most people are in trouble.

All is not a summer cruise catalog in July -- there are many health hazards knocking upon our summer doorsteps and we must become vigilant to at least not die of heatstroke or sun exposure never mind the possibility of developing skin cancer from over tanning as we negotiate the summer months. If our summer lifestyle allows us plenty of swimming, access to air conditioning and time away from the sun, then we are in good shape. For a summer road asphalt crew, the sun is a daily menace and the intense heat is always there as almost a sentient enemy. For some outdoor professions, summer is nothing but a battlefield and survival is not always easy or assured.

In continuing with this theme of summer survival, I will relate that I am an adjunct lecturer working for many local colleges in the Burlington, Vermont area and I am often forced to take whatever classes I can get to teach in order to keep up some kind of income stream during the summer months, which is ironically much slower than the spring or fall – all that fantastic sunshine doesn't make people excited to sit in the classroom. Sometimes particular classes don't fill up with enough summer students and I am forced to look down other avenues for summer employment. My summer employment has usually involved tennis instruction, telemarketing, working for cleaning services and the like. As I have gotten involved in these kinds of positions, I have found that they have not only stressed me out due to their temporary natures, which comes with the territory of seasonal employment, but that they also tend to make the summer into one long waiting game, especially if the job is really unpleasant. And this is a horrible personal reality indeed because you feel the cognitive dissonance of waiting for the summer all year long (especially in frigid Vermont) and then suddenly really just wanting it to be over, so "real life" can begin. To me summer is a complicated season indeed and never really a perfect season of happiness as summer marketing campaigns would have us believe. Sure the fruits and vegetables that we consume are fresh, but they come to us with a price. It is also easy to feel guilty if you are not having “a great summer.” What's wrong with you!

In the jazz standard "Summertime" by George Gershwin, the sentiment of "summertime and the livin' is easy" I took as gospel for decades in my earlier years, but today I don't buy it at all. For my money, summertime existence is just plain tough on many levels even if they are not so visible.

I consider myself to be a connoisseur of air, which is one of the reasons I live in Vermont and I do not enjoy city living. My wife hates that I need every window open and every blind drawn. Fresh air I believe to be the very elixir of a healthy life with clean water coming in as a close second. Generally the air quality of April, May and June is just heavenly in Vermont -- it feels like a return to Eden … but come late July and August, the heat and humidity mix creating more of a tired and heavy ether that surely can be breathed, but it is a tired oxygen to be sure with a kind of fatigue at its core. By August, as far as I am concerned, the air is just plain stagnant and old -- the best of the summer season has passed and now we await the energy spike of the next season, fall. The spirited human feeling of April, May, and June tends to be about optimism in looking forward to the coming summer and this most often involves the beginning of new projects and directions and action -- in short, we are looking at hope plain and simple. By August, all the idealism is gone from our summer plans and in their place stands experienced realism and this is quite a different animal from the innocent young sparrow still kicking around in the spring nest. By August we know if the summer has been great or just so so.

The possibilities of a future season are so important for humans -- looking ahead with positivity is the key to any form of optimism. It would seem that late summer creates a strange waiting game that can only be resolved once the fall arrives. Late summer seems to be a kind of suspended animation, which for my money is as depressing as the early rains of November. It feels like nothing is moving whatsoever and this can certainly be a terrible feeling.

During the end of August the crickets go mad at night as they try to shout out a warning that a future season is on the way, yet it isn't here right now. Strangely, there has been much doubt about the present national economy within the media and much discussion about when will there be new movement in job growth and hiring. The Obama economic plan seems frozen. Well, it seems pretty obvious that sudden job growth and new hiring will not be happening as summer is slowly in a winding down pattern. August seems an especially heavy month because it seems slow to move towards September -- perhaps we are all collectively holding this change back, yet it is inevitable. The Beach Boy vibe of endless summer is over.

Summer has its fair share of nuisances and hazards that just don't exist during any other season. During the past 2 summers I have had a young daughter and son to take care of and my daughter has just been decimated by mosquito bites. The bites swell up into mythic proportions and on occasion become infected. So in addition to the numerous sunscreen applications that have to be applied several times a day to filter out the poisonous sun from the blond twins, insect repellant has also to be applied all over them often and with attention to detail. How, then, with these extra chores that are so very necessary can we make the case that summer is a season of ease? By the afternoon every lotion applied to the children has combined with the free flowing sweat into a kind of summer jelly. Then begins the series of baths and showers to cool down. Summer is actually not carefree in the least and it seems to demand careful planning in order to survive it to the end of the powerful heat cycle.

On the surface summer certainly seems to somehow be connected to the idea that there should be constant fun during this luminous season. I would beg to claim the opposite. Special arrangements have to continually be made in order to negotiate this season successfully and it is my contention that the extreme planning that takes place in the summer is both painful and anxiety causing at least for me. As the heat and fecundity of the season blast away at the human body, I, for one, have the need to be in constant movement, there exists the impulse to run, swim, and play tennis so as to explore every inch of summer fun and now as a father of twins I feel a double anxiety to run in every direction in order to provide the kids with all kinds of new experiences as well. The week becomes a long list from tennis lesson to an exploratory hike to swimming to getting a snorkel in and this all has to happen even as the average adult is working a forty-hour-plus week. This kind of manic energy use certainly drives me crazy and I wonder if on the spectrum this isn't worse than the depression of winter during which energy conservation is actually happening quite effectively thank you. A gorgeous summer sets up a paradigm of having to experience so much at one time that these kinds of hopes just can't possibly be reached. Summer is most often a season of expectations, a weird kind of Walt Disney Christmas that is based upon sheer fantasy.

I would be remiss not to mention that summer brings with it very specific expectations from our childhood. I certainly feel that every summer I try to match up to the thrilling childhood memories of summer as I grew up in rural New Jersey by the shores of a lake. Every moment spent at that lake just seemed so magical that I am forever trying to recreate at least a few of those feelings of wonderment and discovery; behind every log or lily pad was a new creature. Although today I realize many of the profound dysfunctions of my childhood, there is something about capturing those early summer experiences “just one more time”. As a young boy what I enjoyed most was really time spent fishing or observing nature from the row boat or from behind the swim mask as I snorkeled. Missing of course was what my father had to go through to pay for that experience and that is precisely why I stress how childhood can ultimately not be recaptured ever because once you are no longer a child you will be incapable of having that blind spot that makes you concentrate on being innocent and not on what real world actions are paying your way. In this way we can never again experience the bounty of summer by just hanging out and taking in life. The summer of childhood can never come again unless you are perhaps very wealthy and on constant medication.

Perhaps the most soul destroying pain of summer relates ironically to its end. Most people dread the end of summer because it is a definite signal to begin going inward as opposed to jumping from one outward activity with lots of people to another with even more people. The cocktail parties tend to end come fall. I have a feeling that real deep thinking does not tend to happen in the middle of summer. There is simply too much light and social energy drifting around for people to begin answering deep questions about their life paths. As the sound of loons and geese flood the late August nights – the time of plenty is winding down and it is time to face a more realistic season of loss that proves to be a metaphor for the aging process itself. Another summer behind and another winter ahead is indeed a sobering judgment to come to grips with.

I hate summer. It is too full of contradictions to be an enjoyable season for me and I know too well how easy it was to enjoy summers when I was much younger and that truly was decades ago.

All Aboard!

(This posting is dedicated in memory of my father, Juha Kaarla, who died on 12/31/10 in Espoo, Finland after a long battle with Alzheimer's Disease. He was 75.)



Of all the basic forms of mass transportation in our modern age, I feel that the train trip to some far off destination is still the most metaphorical and spiritually rich experience to be had in travel. On a recent train trip to New York City in order to renew a passport and to visit an old friend, it occurred to me that everything from the motion of the train to its sound and its access to beautiful landscapes have been connected to me profoundly for my entire life even when I wasn’t actually riding on a train. Not so for other forms of transportation, which seem to pale in comparison.

Bus trips are somewhat akin to slower car trips. You see traffic and highways and not really any new vistas. If you are on a crowded bus, there is little room to get into your own head space because you are so close to the person sitting next to you. The bathroom is most definitively a jiggle fest and it is not an enjoyable experience to have any kind of an illness on a bus because of the shaking and that locked in feeling. There is just not enough space in which to be comfortable. There also seems little freshness to be had in the experience of traveling by bus; Greyhound advertisements be damned.

Ever since 9/11, I have been terrified of flying and find myself not enjoying the invasive security checks at airports, the endless waiting for takeoff clearance and the very vulnerable feeling of being in no control of my body whatsoever. I don’t like being high up with only the air underneath me to prevent me from falling. Flying usually finds me meditating furiously as I am not the praying type; my wife will be perturbed by my anxiety and I end up feeling wimpy and weak. A number of life reviews take place in flight, but they are not pleasant to say the least. The process of flying is way too scary and intense for this brooding Scandinavian.

Though not considered mass transit, driving a rental car or your own vehicle for business or pleasure is a much more active way of coming and going while traveling -- hopefully you are keeping your eyes on the road and daydreaming as little as possible! When driving in traffic or when reading difficult directions, there really isn’t time to perform any kind of spiritual examination of oneself, especially if you are driving in a big city and using your middle finger for further communication! You sit in traffic, you stop for gas and so many parts of the journey seem exactly the same from town to town and even from state to state that you lose any sense of uniqueness. Driving certainly gives you personal freedom and seems the most American way to travel, but it really isn’t that novel anymore. Always there is the traffic to deal with!

The boat trip is fun but would seem to be more about personal enjoyment than existential insight. One kind of boat journey is even called “a pleasure cruise.” Usually you will want to feel the rocking of the boat under your feet and to smell the breezes wafting over the open deck and to feel the sun on your skin. This kind of experience seems to evoke classic movie images more than anything else. The smell of the ocean may make you remember a summer vacation or some dream trip from the faraway past as well. The smell of the ocean certainly evokes the senses and can partially get existential in an indirect kind of way.

For my money, though, it is the train trip that seems to put together a fantastic chain of psycho-spiritual examinations. Perhaps it is the rumble motion of the train that is the ultimate pathway into the human soul at least it seems that way with mine. When sitting and staring out the window as people and places are left ever more behind, it becomes easy to get a sense of the passage of time and of the very matter of life. There exists the feeling that all is shooting by faster and faster, which is perhaps an exaggerated reaction, but the train ride as life metaphor is relentless with its clear symbolism. It goes on and on until your final destination arrives. Even getting off at your final destination brings home the metaphorical message of there being an actual end to the trip and all of life. As you hear the sound of a night train howling in the distance, it would seem to be the very echo coming out of the void from the end of time. The night train’s whistle sounds forlorn indeed. I won’t leave out mentioning the train wreck headache achieved through drinking the low-shelf liquor “Night Train”. Trains and the railroad exist in a world of incredible imagery that is both dark and magical at the same time.

For myself, I don’t take the train often and after getting married in 2005, I have not been on a train by myself for years. Now as I find myself en route from Burlington, Vermont to New York City in the middle of winter I feel disconnected from my life somehow and weary and chilled as we slowly make our way along the snowy tracks. A train ride is very lonely when you are, in fact, alone. I hadn’t given a thought to any prior experiences connected with trains, but now my mind is suddenly beginning to drift into the past and I suddenly find a genuine train narrative that has evidently run through my life like an invisible wire. Here are some of the vivid remembrances that have brought me back to the world of trains.

Let’s go all the way back to when I was a young boy. I consider my childhood to have been an anxious one having been mothered by an extremely nervous woman and an angry and depressive father; I was a blond and pudgy only child growing up in the Bronx. Time spent with my mother and father was difficult for me; I would characterize it as a piece of personal history without any peace. Always there was tension and fast movement toward some other place or destination that had to be achieved immediately. An oasis from this tension came from my visits to my grandparents who lived in the South Bronx directly behind Yankee Stadium. My grandparents from my mother’s side were Finish immigrants with little formal education and they certainly had their own anxieties, but there was one activity I pursued with my grandfather that somehow provided some calm in the storm. He would walk with me to some local train tracks and we would watch trains roll by for hours it seemed. To be honest, I can’t remember if he enjoyed the trains, or was it that I had somehow shown interest in them, but I do know that from the ages of 6 to 10 or so, I engaged with him in this activity endlessly. Some of the trains seemed incredibly long and perhaps what little math aptitude I have demonstrated in my later life came from those simple days of boxcar counting. As a young boy, I had noticed the rails, the names of the various companies listed on the cars and the sounds of the screeching pistons. Watching trains with my grandfather was a strange kind of early therapy for me no doubt. There was something truly magical within this activity. A sense of movement and time flowed out of those New York trains almost like music out of a cello.

There were many toys in my childhood, and as is the way I suppose it goes for an only child; many of these numerous toys involved building things. There were indeed many train sets that I put together as a youngster. I can remember the laying down of little tracks and then finally getting the locomotive and all of the cars lined up behind it. The switch would be thrown and that little train would go! There was a kind of pulse to the controlled movements that the train would make. Sometimes the train would fly off of the tracks if kept at top speed, but most of the time the train would manage to zoom around and around with absolute certainty. I faintly remember our pug barking at this strange contraption. For me, though, there seemed to be some strange kind of comfort in that endless circling. The movement was anchored into a steady and reliable pattern. I do remember my father smiling as the train went around and around. He said that when he had been a young orphan that the train had been a symbol of freedom for him. Often he had dreamed of jumping onto a train and riding it as far as it would go.

In jumping ahead to my freshman year of college, I found myself at that stage of life to have suddenly fallen in love for the first time. The girl’s name was Melissa. Melissa was a Vermont girl and for those freshman year holidays back in 1984, I would find myself heading to her parents’ home in Brownsville, Vermont. While the relationship was tortured at best, I remember the sex as being volcanic and steadily so … after all, it was quite new to both of us. It is hard to believe today that back then we had to do it every night. OK … sometimes we would even do it twice.

During one of those freshman year holidays, we decided to take a sleeper car from Vermont in order to visit my friend Pat in New Jersey. We, of course, didn’t need to get the sleeper car (it was crazy expensive), but it was necessary for the young lovers to experience sex on the train. It is difficult for me to go back almost a quarter of a century in time, yet, I do remember a few of the details of that expensive ride (literally!).

The sleeper car was tiny and since Melissa was a smoker, I can remember it being full of Marlboro smoke. Since the train trip was essentially happening through the night, I remember being anxious about when it would actually be time to go off to bed! If I really search my memory banks, I can recall Melissa wanting to have the window shade closed as we made love, but I wanted it to be at least half open, not so people could see us, but so I could see lights and movement and places being left behind in the night as we did a simple missionary style with youthful vigor. I remember some diaphragm insertion difficulties as well, but that was a steady event within our sex life – it was the eighties after all.

As I matured and graduated college, Melissa and I were no more. I did not get a driver’s license until my mid twenties, so as a young Bostonian I would take the Boston “T” all around town as I explored being a guitarist and a salesman. On the T, I would usually be carrying a guitar or a briefcase. T rides were frustrating because the trains were always running late and since I was a big coffee and beer drinker back then, it would seem that my bladder was continually full and I would be holding it in all the time and cursing at the slow train service out of Park Street station. One time during rush hour, I broke into a janitor’s closet in order to urinate only inches away from rush hour throngs. For me, waiting for the train always seemed to be a kind of agony. To this day I am an anxious person and never more so, than when I am waiting to board a train. Waiting to board a train seems very much a karmic lesson for me.

I am also connected to the world of trains through my own ambulation. Although I have never been a serious runner, I have found myself jogging from time to time through the years and often I would do this on train tracks. I am not sure why I did this, but I can’t help but think that the tracks somehow connected me to the sense of trains as being life happening in the flesh. Perhaps I am autistic and I was counting the crossbeams in the tracks in a comforting fashion, but I don’t really remember counting so much as trying to jump perfectly from crossbeam to crossbeam. This was truly a grounding sensation and I could feel good as I deftly skipped in perfect time burning at least a few calories in the process.

Another portion of my feelings associated with trains shoots directly to the reading of Stephen King’s “Stand by Me” short story and with seeing the movie adaptation evoking sweet terror whenever running over train tracks that ran near or over bridges. The visual in the movie is particularly striking with the train approaching the boys from a distance with smoke bellowing out of the old time engine. The bridge is also a marvel in its fragility. An approaching train can surely be a killer made out of steel, but really, in a fashion, it is simply the passage of time speeded up. Any old railroad equipment and facilities are usually creepy. The train trestle image in David Lynch’s “Twin Peaks” is one of the most dreadful images that I have ever seen on television. Nothing is spookier than an abandoned train trestle.

One particular jog that I performed on train tracks was especially memorable. At the time my partner was dying from breast cancer and we had a visiting nurse and my partner’s mother helping us out through the end care. The early summer heat of 1997 was sticky and sweet after a terrible spring and to break the existential unease for myself I put on my running shorts and my black Reebok cross trainers that my partner had purchased for me from a yard sale (she loved saving money) and I took off at a frightening speed to which I was unaccustomed.

I was immediately out of breath after hitting a short pathway that led to the train tracks that run from Wareham to Buzzards Bay and the heat washed over me like hot towels. I remember quickly becoming dizzy and my eyes beginning to squint into slits as I concentrated on each cross plank, so as not to twist an ankle. As I ran I realized, too, that this was to be a run that I would remember … and indeed this would be the case as I am remembering it right now! The harder I ran on the train tracks, the more engrained became the memory, or so I assume today. More sweating and mosquitoes buzzing by created a cacophonic soup around my face. I had attained a strange body disconnection when suddenly a huge black snake was directly in front of me with its teeth barred and I remembered some kind of an audible hiss coming from out of its huge mouth.

I cried out and jumped out of its way. It only took me a few seconds to slow down and to want to go back and see the magnificent serpent for I knew that it must have been a black racer sunning itself on the train track. I turned back to look for it, but it had wiggled away. The cars in a train and the lengthy body of a black snake – both these phenomena clearly were agents of change acting for me like a wrist watch that couldn’t quite be read clearly in the blinding light of early summer.

Years later, I was on a train bound for New York from Boston. My partner had been dead for two years and I still existed in a tunnel of sorrow. I had moved to Jamaica Plain and moved in with an older colleague as a roommate. Miriam and I were going to attend the wedding of her nephew in Brooklyn and we were to stay at my godmother’s apartment in the South Bronx for a few nights. This was the same building where my grandparents had lived and that I had walked from to watch the trains with my grandfather, Paavo.

For Miriam and I the trip began in a typical Friday 5PM Boston panic. Everywhere was traffic. The cab was late picking us up. We were whisked to a minor train station downtown where we had to figure out which train to run to. Miriam was panicking and we made a last minute decision to run at a particular train – it was the right one! Again the sense of time needing to be caught arose in my mind and I held on to it because a particular destination needs to be reached and usually this only happens if one is present and running as fast as possible toward the correct train.

There is an anxiety to trains no doubt as in: “Run to catch the train!” I believe in French there is the saying “je me suis trompee de train” meaning I am on the wrong the train. Always there exists the pressure to ride the right train and to move in the right direction.

The train ride to New York seemed to be mini-therapy for me. It was an evening train and throughout the ride Miriam told stories about her family and of her youth growing up in New Jersey. I couldn’t help but notice a kind of free flowing narrative forming with the rhythm of the ride. A station stop would signal the end of a story and a new story would start upon departure. Miriam’s family history scrolled out like a ticker tape that was controlled by the movement of the train’s conductors. She had nine brothers and sisters to talk about; I had none.

Trains link me to my personal history.

Some years ago I had to talk to my mother over the phone about my father’s worsening Alzheimer’s. It would seem that he has been in end stage of the disease for a long time now. My father and I haven’t had a real conversation since 2003 or so when his faculties had just kind of disappeared. My mother and father never had the greatest relationship to be sure and the dark tunnel that my father has gone into has left me with a sense that “when I really got smart and adult” we couldn’t talk anymore because he had fled the scene through his Alzheimer’s. Perhaps, I, too, am on the same train tracks as my father riding into that much disturbing mental darkness in the near or distant future and this causes me much pain.

As I spoke to my mother on the phone, I had the television on a PBS station. This is a technique of mine so as to dull some of her more painful comments made in nastiness and for me not to be sucked down so heavily into things and places and times that cannot be changed anymore. As I observe the PBS station, I notice that it is a program about some of the older train lines operating in Vermont. Even though I am used to using the television for drown-Mom-out drivel, I find myself uncharacteristically being sucked into this particular program. The documentarian's voice is earnest as he tells the story of aging men working through snow covered passes in order to keep the trains running in winter Vermont. It would seem that there is something heroic and inherently masculine about trains. Are they just long cocks that seem to have constant trouble and a lack of support from federal monies? Are trains simply non-Viagra supported withering male sex organs?

Out of nowhere another train image shoots into my mind. For years I played in a blues rock band called “Junction 69”. We played mostly bars and small clubs in Massachusetts and in addition to bringing amps and drums to these gigs, I used to cart an old railroad light that had 4 colors in it. I would strategically place this lamp on the stage with the idea that the audience would catch the connection between our name and the railroad light. I was adamant about carrying that light, too, and would often place it on top of my amplifier as the first part of the sound check. When the band finally did die, I sold the light. It was easy to sell because there are many collectors of railroad items out there. It is eerie that even in my musical life “the railroad” or the “the train” had made an appearance once again seemingly out of nowhere.

The train that I am riding home to Vermont has now changed direction because of a track switchover that was necessary. As I look out the window at the approaching twilight, we have now begun a movement towards the distance at a crawling pace. The feeling is a strange one. For a moment I can remember the train set that I had as a small boy and the laughter that came out of me when I switched the direction of the train.

There arrives the feeling of being pushed toward something. I assume the front engine has become the back engine and it is pushing us. It seems a harder force than is pulling. It feels much clumsier to be pushed towards home rather than to be pulled.

The train seems unable to gather speed. It jerks along while emitting that night train whistle; outside it continues to snow. Is it forever harder to journey forward than backward? Can I read the train signals of my future in time to act on them before it is too late or does it only work while riding the rails and looking backward into the encroaching darkness?

Give me liberty or death -- all is Samsara anyway!

The Ocean of Samsara


For me personally, one of the most difficult concepts in Buddhism is that of that vast ocean called samsara. This is the ocean that we humans will essentially swim in for all of our lives. To me, this ocean basically symbolizes the joyous yet deadly appetite we all have for life itself. The hunger for life itself can and does cause great pain. Samsara is indeed a vast and beautifully crystal clear swimming pool that essentially is the content of our lives. The human content of our lives is full of good stuff including being born, suckling at the breast, making friends, learning to drive and purchasing that first car, having sexual relations, playing a violin concerto perfectly and receiving flowers after the performance or having groupies groping you depending on your point of reference. The pool of samsara is also, unfortunately, about having your own children and watching them grow and leave, attaining the perfect gym-bunny body and then developing cancer, going through a painful divorce, or building a financial empire like Enron that supplies you with riches to be squandered for years – until, of course, it all comes crashing down around you and you wind up in jail. The ocean of samsara is vast and tricky indeed.

The concept of desiring things seems simple for isn’t life essentially about working and building and winning and gaining? It would seem that a life built upon these principles would signify a worthy existence that would be both joyous and fulfilling. Unfortunately, the other central concept attached to Buddhism is the notion of suffering. There can be no surer simple life truth than all sentient existence involves suffering and that suffering is indeed the other part of samsara that is the pungent dump that suddenly is bobbing an inch from your face as you are swimming in the beautiful crystal pool. The samsara pool is, in fact, all about suffering.

I have recently married a beautiful woman and have almost completed another masters degree during my lap swimming in the samsara pool. But I have begun to notice some floating excrement now in various forms. Upon seeing our wedding pictures I can’t help but notice how the creases in my face are plainly evident and the lack of muscle tone in my posture really is asserting itself now. It is not difficult for me to realize that though great joy is coming at me, time is also growing shorter.

Another facet of the samsara pool is the false sense that the more you swim in it, the more you will begin to gain a ready mastery of the proper swimming strokes needed to keep yourself floating merrily along. It would seem logical that the longer you swim, the better you seem to become accustomed to the swimming. Your stroke production becomes magnificent and you feel very powerful, until, of course, your foot becomes ensnared in some barbed wire and the more you try to extricate yourself, the more you bleed and pull away at your flesh. Indeed, life will invariably provide some new and difficult situations that will quickly befuddle you and remove all sense of any kind of swimming mastery for this, too, is the very nature of samsara.

In Googling the word samsara, some of the first definitions that come up include:


• This doctrine of samsara obviates any dream of an eternally happy afterlife; if the changing world is but an illusion and we are condemned to remain in it through birth after birth, what purpose is there in atmansiddhi? The goal became not an eternity in a blissful afterlife, but moksha, or "liberation" from samsara .This quest for liberation is the hallmark of the Upanishads and forms the fundamental doctrine of both Buddhism and Jainism (Richard Hooker http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/GLOSSARY/SAMSARA.HTM).

• In most Indian philosophical traditions, including the orthodox Hindu and heterodox Buddhist and Jain systems, an ongoing cycle of birth, death, and rebirth is assumed as a fact of nature. These systems differ widely, however, in the terminology with which they describe the process and in the metaphysics they use in interpreting it. Most of these traditions, in their evolved forms, regard Samsara negatively, as a fallen condition which is to be escaped. Some, such as Advaita Vedanta regard the world and Samsaric participation in it as fundamentally illusory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsara).

• Eau de Parfum. A woody scent with notes of floral ylang ylang, sandalwood and tonka bean (www.Scentiments.com The Most Affordable Fragrances Online).

As we can see, there seem to be many different takes on samsara. One of them even shows how we can bottle it and spray it on ourselves, which seems unnecessary because we are forever swimming in it when we are alive! The pool of samsara is endless indeed.

One of the areas which to me is the most difficult in coming to an understanding of samsara is the idea that we can somehow control our swimming in this pool. I often catch myself thinking that if I could just finish this degree, or just manage to teach a few more sections of English Composition, then I will feel that I am on the right path towards being a successful teacher. But of course this isn’t the case because just behind the next corner will come a new challenge or angle that negates all that has been learned before and this often brings me to a place of having to change gears yet again and abandon a prior goal. This is a maddening experience, yet there it is. As we continue to swim in the pool of samsara, we realize that all is forever changing and melting away and that no matter how hard we try to grasp at a buoy or a raft – we realize that there is no respite and all that we can do is to continue swimming forever forward for this is the only alternative. Change happens and you have to deal with it. And all is forever changing.

Even some simple discussion about the pool of samsara is difficult indeed for it always implies that if we learn about the pool, then maybe we can learn to negotiate its depths and to dodge the piles of excrement bobbing by and the corpses floating down river – but of course we can’t for as we float in the pool of samsara we become so involved that we can’t seem to notice all of the obstacles that arise and fall away again and again. Often we ourselves can act as the obstacle for the other swimmers and we can become false lighthouses throwing out luminous beams that excite our fellow swimmers, yet these beams also lead them to crash into the coastal rocks and to cut themselves into bloody hamburger meat.

I think that we all make rather generous negative contributions to the ocean of samsara. One of my poorer contributions is the sick anger and envy that comes with a desire to “be better” than everyone else. It is purely an ego drive. If there is any undertow for me that exists within the ocean of samsara, it is my striving for dominance. This demon takes on many shapes and sizes, but I have felt its demon breath most intensely within my two hobbies of tennis and guitar playing. No matter how much I have practiced my tennis game over the years – I still lose many easy matches. No matter how much I practice the guitar, there is always someone playing a hundred times better than me. My mind continues to harbor the illusion if only I was really good at these skills, then I might have a chance at some true happiness. This, unfortunately, does not happen. I continue to mourn my lack of competence within the sphere of these two activities.

Ultimately, as I am swimming within the pool, I get a sense that my ego will eventually get a big rush of competence and that I will be transformed into a highly competent avatar of shining ability. Of course this never happens and though I speak about praising humbleness as a virtue – I deeply despise humility because I know that I must have it within these two pursuits for I am no Andre Agassi or Eric Clapton. Nor will I ever be. And this realization becomes my personal adult swim within the pool of samsara. I often perceive myself to be an eighty-pound weakling floating meekly along waiting for death. Perhaps I enjoy the feeling of rage that comes with never getting any where because I know that I am too weak to move toward large-scale triumphs and successes. Had I made better choices when I was younger, well, perhaps then I could have found some simple career success, but I spent way too much time hitting tennis balls or strumming the guitar!

The constant striving towards becoming is indeed a horrible source of human suffering. As somewhat of an academic, I have experienced this pain quite acutely. For the teacher and educator, the procurement of new degrees seems to be one of the ultimate connections to the bitter striving that is a constant undertow within the ocean of samsara. Though as humans we are forever trapped in the “dynamic of becoming” and change, the person who chooses to pursue academic degrees must continually be working on the next paper, the next reading, the next examination until at long last all of the hard work has culminated in some form of a degree or grade. This kind of life rhythm often feels like a slow torture conducted within a dungeon with no light coming in from any window. You are simply trapped and you must lean into the pain. There is a strong tendency to want to somehow reach some point of completion, yet the real completion is just beyond the hand’s grasp.
The ocean of samsara is vast indeed and the wildly swirling waters are evermore complicated, confusing and draining. For myself, the ultimate koan seems to ask me to maintain an awareness that all is in a constant state of flux, yet somehow to stay aware that there is a now and to notice it for what it is worth.

Give Yourself a Raise

Back in the days of "dialing for dollars" (aka- telemarketing)  about 12 of us suffered through each day making anywhere from 60 to 100 cold calls to other businesses trying to set appointments for the outside Salesmen whose goal it was to get those companies to then switch their long distance phone service over to our service.

We called from lists of worthless leads that were gleaned from some nebulous source that only this Uncle Fester-like troll from Operations was privy to. Somehow all that ever surfaced from that database were the same 120, or so leads for companies ranging anywhere from Raytheon corporate HQ (a measure of difficulty equivalent to calling on the Pentagon) to corner stores that sold helium balloons or Popsicles ( maybe spent $1.04/ month on long distance charges). And let me tell you, when you're calling on on the same garbage week-on-week, you're actually making something more like 22 calls a day and fantasizing about someone's tight blouse for the other 6 hours. The annual salary for that coveted role was $12,500 and if you made enough commission money to pay for your parking tickets and a 6-pack of Bud you were a rock-star.So when one of your outside reps closed a deal, you ate take-out pizza that night.

One day this smarmy blow-hard manager from one of the outside Sales team's brought our group of misfits into the conference room to show us "how to give yourself a raise". Couldn't imagine what was in store. We were euphoric just to be away from the phones and the stench of stale socks and Doritos that permeated our room; so it didn't matter if the meeting was to show us how they'd be stealing a kidney from us that night, it was like recess...with no teachers on the playground.

So he starts in on this math lesson for 5th graders: "Ok guys so, right now you're setting 2  appointments for every 100 calls, right?? And....we close one out of 5 of those appointments ...which on average is about $700 in your pocket. (Bullshit.....we set 5 appointments, you clowns blow off 3 of them and you actually deliver a proposal to one! We all knew it took more like 20 -25 appointments to squeeze out some commission money for our pain and suffering) "So you make 250 calls to net your 7 -hundo, right pal??"  You see, for a small incremental effort of 50 MORE CALLS every three days you"ll INSTANTLY put almost another $150 in the bank..." (Buddy, not a dime of my income from that place ever saw the bank.  I waited at the bank with another friend every single pay day.....waited there sometimes all lunch hour until the payroll deposit cleared and we could actually cash our checks and run like hell with every penny out to get drunk that night...somewhere other than the sofa).

Or if you were really lucky (like me) you took the whole paycheck- borrowed another $30 from a friend- just to get your car out of some guido towing company lot because you had 15 outstanding parking tickets on file with the town parking clerk and the whole system decided to kick your ass.

Some genius said under his breath- "I don't need to make ANY more calls to get a "raise",  I can give myself one in about 30 seconds"

The Purpose of Our Site

We thrive on  speaking freely and philosophizing candidly on "serious" matters like what you expected out of life: workplace politics and career drama, hopes and dreams for a rewarding career (as if you ever had a chance). Leave your political correctness at the office and come here like this was "Fight Club"- a place where you can get bloody or  watch the beatings from the sidelines, whatever your taste. We will do our best to respect your opinion as long as it safely falls outside of the "knucklehead factor".  Stay tuned and I'm sure you'll learn what that means.


My friend Erik and I  started our careers toiling away like good little lemmings in a telemarketing outfit for a long distance telephone company- an industry then said to  be the most competitive business market in the U.S.  I wore a tie into that daycare-like cauldron of stupidity while Erik rarely wore his shoes and made many personal calls to find new gigs for  his band.  At first pass we probably looked like we held little in common but we definitely saw the world through the same lens. Between us, we've held dozens of  jobs, reinvented ourselves, have deep experience throughout the ranks and find a lot of humor in the banality of corporate culture. I guess we just expected a lot more from all the  effort,  pummeling and feigned obedience along the way.   

I once heard a great motivational speaker say "In order to be a great Salesman, you first need to  feel your prospects' PAIN...." The more parochial interpretation is that you have to empathize in order to get people to listen to you. Well, we all have plenty of pain and suffering; our hope is that we can unload some of that here through the exchange of stories, rants, wisdom and even madness.  Ours have only brought us this far,  so don't expect miracles...


Steve