Note: These four poems come from an early era of my writing life—where satire, associative logic, and linguistic mischief are all still operating at full voltage and without much concern for genre stability. They move freely between cultural detritus, private irritation, and comic metaphysics, as if trying to test how far language can bend before it either collapses into nonsense or reveals a hidden structure underneath it. What holds them together is less any single theme than a consistent tone of alert instability: a mind watching itself generate connections in real time, amused by its own excesses but also half-suspicious of what they might mean. Read together, they sit somewhere between parody, dream-logic, and cognitive overproduction—early signals of a style that treats thought not as expression of meaning, but as an event that happens in language.
Note: The disintegration model in Enneagram theory is often presented as a stable directional map—types “move” under stress into predictable neighboring patterns. But in lived experience, this model can become overly schematic and psychologically flattening.
What it risks missing is that what looks like “disintegration” is often not a movement into another type, but a loss of functional integration across multiple systems at once: attention, affect regulation, impulse control, social adaptation, and narrative coherence do not shift in a single vector. They fragment unevenly.
In practice, what gets labeled as disintegration may include: regression into earlier learned coping strategies rather than type-specific movement; situational adaptation under constraint (not structural change); nervous system overload presenting as behavioral inconsistency; or simply fatigue states misread as typological drift.
The model also assumes a kind of psychological symmetry between integration and disintegration paths that is not always empirically supported. Integration often feels like increased flexibility and coherence, but “disintegration” can be indistinguishable from stress, grief, substance effects, sleep deprivation, or environmental pressure.
The core critique is therefore structural: The disintegration pathway is better understood as a metaphor for destabilization under load, not a reliable map of personality transformation.
Which means its value is poetic and heuristic, but limited as a diagnostic or predictive framework for actual human behavior over time.
Epigraph
These days I feel immune To all the sadness and the gloom If things fall into place Get onto the right side of grace
— The Jesus and Mary Chain
Introduction and Thesis
This paper takes a direct and critical look at the Enneagram concept of the “direction of disintegration,” more recently reframed as the “stress point.” While various authors and teachers—including Don Richard Riso and Russ Hudson—have attempted to soften or reinterpret this terminology, the underlying assumption remains largely intact: that movement in one direction represents growth, while movement in the other reflects regression under stress.
This paper challenges that assumption directly. I argue that if one of the central aims of Enneagram work is to evolve through the full set of connecting points (for example, 5–8–2–4–1–7), then the so-called “direction of disintegration” cannot coherently be understood as purely regressive. On the contrary, it may represent a necessary and even ultimate phase of development—one that completes the circuit rather than deviating from it.
More specifically, I propose that what is commonly termed “disintegration” is better understood as the destabilizing emergence of previously repressed or underdeveloped capacities. Movement along these lines—particularly under conditions of stress—may therefore appear chaotic or maladaptive in the short term, while in fact reflecting the early stages of a deeper and more comprehensive integration. In this sense, the concept of “disintegration” does not merely mislabel the process; it obscures its developmental significance.
This perspective may be further illuminated by comparison with cyclical models of development, including certain strands of Buddhist thought, in which the movement from undifferentiated being through structured identity and back toward a more integrated state is understood as a continuous process. From this vantage point, the so-called “direction of disintegration” may be interpreted not as a fall from development, but as a return toward a more foundational mode of experience—one that has been obscured, rather than lost, in the formation of personality.
Personal and Theoretical Grounding
My interest in this question is not purely theoretical. From the outset, I found the concept of “disintegration” difficult to reconcile with lived experience—particularly in relation to my own type, Type 5. In the standard model, the Five is said to disintegrate toward Type 7, exhibiting scattered, excessive, or escapist tendencies under stress. While I recognize the descriptive accuracy of this account at certain levels of functioning, it does not fully capture the experiential reality of the movement.
In my own case, the movement toward 7 has not been merely regressive. On the contrary, it has often represented access to states that feel more expansive, embodied, and alive than the constrained intellectualism of the core Five structure. This raises a fundamental question: if the experiential quality of this movement can be described as more “whole” rather than less, in what sense can it be understood as disintegration?
One possible answer lies in the developmental origins of type itself. If personality structure is understood, as Don Richard Riso and Russ Hudson suggest, as a provisional adaptation formed in early childhood, then it is reasonable to ask what precedes that adaptation. It is at least conceivable that what emerges in the movement toward the so-called disintegration point is not simply dysfunction, but the reactivation of capacities that were present prior to the consolidation of type—capacities that were subsequently repressed in the service of psychological survival.
In this light, the apparent instability of “disintegration” may reflect not breakdown, but overload: the sudden return of domains of experience—such as sensation, spontaneity, or emotional intensity—that the personality has not yet learned to integrate. What appears as regression is, in this sense, the difficulty of expansion. The task is not to avoid this movement, but to engage it consciously, such that what begins as turbulence may ultimately become integration.
Literature Review: The Problem of Directionality in Enneagram Theory
The question of directional movement along the Enneagram’s lines of connection remains one of the least resolved and most inconsistently articulated aspects of the system. While widely taught using the language of “integration” and “disintegration,” there is no clear consensus in the literature regarding the precise meaning, function, or developmental significance of these movements. A review of major contributors to the field reveals a pattern of partial reformulation without full theoretical resolution.
The most influential articulation of directional movement appears in the work of Don Richard Riso and Russ Hudson, particularly in Personality Types (1987/1996) and The Wisdom of the Enneagram(1999). In this model, each type is understood to move along two lines: one toward “integration” (growth) and one toward “disintegration” (stress). Movement in the direction of integration is said to require conscious effort and corresponds to psychological health, while movement toward disintegration is described as automatic, reactive, and associated with declining levels of functioning.
However, this model contains an important and often overlooked tension. Riso and Hudson also suggest that the broader aim of Enneagram development is to move “around the circle,” integrating the positive capacities of all types over time. This implies that the points reached via the so-called direction of disintegration are not inherently pathological, but form part of a larger developmental sequence. The result is a structural ambiguity: movement toward a given point may be framed as regressive in one context and developmental in another, depending on whether it is understood locally (single-step movement) or globally (full-cycle integration). This inconsistency has not been fully resolved within their framework.
Subsequent authors have attempted to refine or reframe this model, often by softening the negative connotations of “disintegration” without fundamentally altering the underlying directional asymmetry. Sandra Maitri, for example, rejects the terminology of stress and disintegration and instead proposes an “inner flow” governed by what she describes as a “logic of the soul.” In her model, forward movement along the lines is driven by a search for fulfillment that ultimately proves unsatisfying, while backward movement leads toward what she terms the “heart point,” associated with a deeper layer of the self or “soul child.” While this approach usefully destabilizes the purely negative interpretation of one directional line, it replaces it with a different asymmetry, privileging backward movement as more essential to growth. Moreover, the conceptual basis of this model remains insufficiently specified, particularly in its account of how and why one direction should be considered developmentally primary.
Beatrice Chestnut builds on and systematizes aspects of Maitri’s approach, offering a more structured reinterpretation of the lines of connection. In her model, movement along both lines can be either constructive or maladaptive, depending on the level of awareness and integration involved. Terms such as “growth through stress” and “security point” attempt to capture the complexity of these dynamics, acknowledging that development may occur through challenge as well as stability. While this represents a significant advance in clarifying the bidirectional potential of the lines, it nevertheless retains an implicit directional logic and does not fully resolve the question of whether one direction should be considered primary, or whether the distinction itself is theoretically necessary.
Other contributors, including Tom Condon, have explicitly questioned the stability of unified directional models. Condon argues that individuals routinely access both connecting points under a range of conditions and that attempts to impose a single, consistent directional pathway oversimplify what is, in practice, a complex and dynamic psychological process. From this perspective, the notion of a fixed “direction of disintegration” becomes increasingly difficult to sustain, as both lines appear capable of expressing high and low functioning depending on context.
Across successive editions and public teachings, Russ Hudson has made a clear and commendable effort to soften the language surrounding the Enneagram’s directional model. Terms such as “disintegration” have increasingly been reframed as “stress,” and there is greater emphasis on the idea that no movement within the system is wholly negative. This shift toward more “warm” and less judgmental language reflects a broader maturation within the field and has undoubtedly made the system more accessible and psychologically usable.
At the same time, this evolution in terminology has not been matched by a corresponding clarification of the underlying theory. The central asymmetry—where one direction is implicitly associated with growth and the other with regression—remains largely intact, even as the language used to describe it has become more neutral. As a result, the model continues to carry an unresolved tension: it acknowledges that all points contain both higher and lower expressions, yet continues to treat movement toward certain points as fundamentally stress-based rather than developmentally necessary.
As other contributors have begun to explore more symmetrical and developmentally integrated interpretations of the lines, the persistence of the traditional asymmetry begins to feel less like a settled conclusion and more like an inherited assumption that has yet to be fully re-examined.
In this respect, the field appears to have reached a transitional stage. The vocabulary has evolved, the teaching has broadened, and important correctives have been introduced. Yet the underlying structure of the model—particularly with respect to directional movement—remains theoretically underdeveloped. For a system that places such emphasis on precision of language and clarity of inner dynamics, this gap is not insignificant. It suggests that what has often been treated as a foundational principle of the Enneagram may, in fact, remain an open question—one that calls for more direct and systematic reconsideration.
Applications: Reconsidering the Nine Directional Movements
If the preceding analysis is correct, then the implications must be demonstrated concretely across the system itself. What follows is a re-examination of each of the nine directional movements traditionally described as “disintegration.” In each case, I argue that what has been labeled regression can be more accurately understood as the activation of a higher function—a necessary but often turbulent phase of integration.
Type 1 → Type 4: Emotional Depth as Higher Function
In the conventional model, Type 1 “disintegrates” to Type 4, becoming moody, self-absorbed, and emotionally volatile. The principled, rule-oriented One—committed to order and correctness—appears to lose stability and fall into irrational feeling states.
However, this interpretation overlooks the rigidity inherent in the One’s structure. Ones tend to operate within strict internal frameworks, often fearing deviation from what is “right.” This can produce clarity and integrity, but also emotional constriction and black-and-white thinking.
Movement toward Type 4 introduces a necessary counterbalance: emotional depth, nuance, and subjectivity. The Four’s capacity for feeling, imagination, and romantic engagement allows the One to move beyond mere correctness into lived experience. What appears as instability may, in fact, be the early and uneven integration of emotional life. A One who cannot access this domain risks becoming brittle and overly moralistic. The 1 → 4 movement, properly integrated, expands the One’s humanity.
Type 2 → Type 8: Assertion as Higher Function
Type 2 is traditionally understood to “disintegrate” to Type 8, becoming aggressive, domineering, and self-centered. The caring, other-oriented Two is seen to abandon empathy in favor of force.
Yet the Two’s structure often involves excessive attunement to others at the expense of the self. Twos may defer, accommodate, and seek approval, losing touch with their own needs and convictions.
Movement toward Type 8 activates the capacity for directness, strength, and self-assertion. The Eight’s willingness to say “this is what I think” or “this is what I need” is precisely what the Two lacks when overextended. While this shift may initially appear abrupt or even confrontational, it represents a critical step toward autonomy. The 2 → 8 movement allows the Two to embody their own authority rather than living exclusively through others.
Type 3 → Type 9: Grounded Presence as Higher Function
In the standard model, Type 3 “disintegrates” to Type 9, becoming disengaged, complacent, and apathetic. The driven, success-oriented Three is seen to lose momentum and fall into inertia.
However, the Three’s relentless focus on achievement can lead to over-identification with external validation and performance. The constant pursuit of success may obscure deeper questions of meaning, connection, and being.
Movement toward Type 9 introduces stillness, acceptance, and presence. The Nine’s capacity to step out of striving and into being offers a necessary counterweight to the Three’s forward drive. This shift can soften the ego’s edge, allowing the individual to reconnect with others and with themselves beyond performance. What appears as loss of ambition may, at a higher level, represent the integration of humility and peace—qualities often observed in mature leaders who transition from personal success to collective contribution.
Type 4 → Type 2: Relational Engagement as Higher Function
Type 4 is said to “disintegrate” to Type 2, becoming needy, dependent, and overly focused on others for validation. The introspective, emotionally rich Four appears to lose depth and become externally fixated.
Yet the Four’s structure can incline toward solipsism—an intense inward focus on personal identity, feeling, and uniqueness. This can limit engagement with others and reinforce a sense of separation.
Movement toward Type 2 opens the Four to relational connection. The Two’s outward orientation—its attentiveness to the needs and feelings of others—provides a pathway out of self-absorption. While this may initially manifest as dependency, it also represents the development of empathy, generosity, and shared experience. The 4 → 2 movement enables the Four to participate in relationship rather than merely reflect upon it.
Type 5 → Type 7: Embodiment and Expansion as Higher Function
Type 5 “disintegrates” to Type 7 in the traditional model, becoming scattered, impulsive, and escapist. The focused, analytical Five is seen to lose coherence and retreat into distraction.
In practice, however, the Five’s core challenge lies in over-withdrawal into the mind. The Five often privileges thought over experience, constructing elaborate internal systems while remaining detached from immediate reality.
Movement toward Type 7 activates sensation, spontaneity, and engagement with life. The Seven’s openness to experience allows the Five to step out of abstraction and into embodied presence. In my own experience, this movement has not been merely destabilizing but profoundly enlivening—an entry into states of being that feel more whole and integrated than the Five’s default stance. The initial excesses of this shift reflect the difficulty of integrating long-repressed domains, not their inherent dysfunction.
Type 6 → Type 3: Self-Confidence and Agency as Higher Function
Type 6 is said to “disintegrate” to Type 3, becoming competitive, image-conscious, and arrogant. The loyal, cautious Six appears to abandon its grounded nature in favor of performance.
However, the Six’s strengths—commitment, vigilance, and reliability—can become limiting when accompanied by self-doubt and over-reliance on external validation. Sixes may hesitate to act decisively, seeking reassurance rather than asserting direction.
Movement toward Type 3 introduces confidence, initiative, and forward momentum. The Three’s capacity to act, to lead, and to project capability is precisely what the Six requires to move beyond hesitation. While this may initially appear as overcompensation, it represents the development of self-trust. The 6 → 3 movement allows the Six to step into authority rather than continually deferring it.
Type 7 → Type 1: Structure and Discipline as Higher Function
Type 7 “disintegrates” to Type 1, becoming critical, rigid, and constrained. The free-spirited, pleasure-seeking Seven is seen to lose joy and become moralistic.
Yet the Seven’s pursuit of experience can lead to fragmentation—constant movement without depth or completion. Avoidance of discomfort may prevent sustained engagement with reality.
Movement toward Type 1 provides structure, discipline, and ethical grounding. The One’s capacity for focus and follow-through allows the Seven to channel its energy into meaningful action. While this shift may feel restrictive at first, it enables coherence and purpose. Real-life trajectories often reflect this movement, as individuals transition from restless seeking to grounded commitment, finding stability where previously there was only motion.
Type 8 → Type 5: Reflection and Restraint as Higher Function
Type 8 is said to “disintegrate” to Type 5, becoming withdrawn, secretive, and overly cerebral. The powerful, action-oriented Eight appears to retreat into isolation.
However, the Eight’s strength can become overextended, leading to dominance and a lack of reflection. Constant outward force may limit the ability to process experience or consider alternative perspectives.
Movement toward Type 5 introduces introspection, analysis, and restraint. The Five’s capacity to step back allows the Eight to refine its actions with insight. This shift does not diminish strength but deepens it, transforming immediate power into considered leadership. The 8 → 5 movement enables the Eight to lead with both force and understanding.
Type 9 → Type 6: Engagement and Commitment as Higher Function
Type 9 “disintegrates” to Type 6, becoming anxious, reactive, and worried. The calm, accommodating Nine appears to lose peace and stability.
Yet the Nine’s desire for harmony can lead to passivity and avoidance. By minimizing conflict, the Nine may disengage from necessary challenges and from their own priorities.
Movement toward Type 6 activates engagement, vigilance, and commitment. The Six’s attentiveness to potential problems encourages the Nine to confront rather than avoid difficulty. While this may introduce anxiety, it also fosters responsibility and active participation. The 9 → 6 movement transforms passive peace into engaged stability, grounded in awareness rather than avoidance.
Conclusion
This paper does not claim to offer a final or definitive resolution to the question of directional movement within the Enneagram. The system itself remains, by the admission of its most influential contributors, a work in progress. What has been offered here is a more limited but, I would argue, necessary intervention: a direct challenge to the prevailing assumption that one line of connection represents “integration” while the other represents “disintegration” or regression under stress.
The analysis presented suggests that this distinction, while historically influential, is conceptually unstable and developmentally incomplete.At a broader level, the persistence of this framework points to a certain hesitation within the field. There remains, at times, a noticeable deference to the foundational formulations of Don Richard Riso and Russ Hudson—a deference that is understandable given their substantial contributions, but which may also inhibit more direct re-examination of their assumptions.
Foundational work deserves respect; it does not require preservation in its original form. In a living field, even the most influential models must remain open to revision where they no longer adequately account for observed experience.The evidence considered here—both theoretical and experiential—suggests that movement along the so-called “direction of disintegration” is not inherently regressive, but often represents the activation of underdeveloped capacities essential for full psychological integration. While this movement may initially appear chaotic or destabilizing, it is better understood as the early phase of expansion rather than contraction. To continue to frame it primarily in terms of breakdown risks obscuring one of the Enneagram’s most valuable insights: that growth frequently occurs through precisely those domains the personality has learned to avoid.If this paper has a broader aim, it is simply to encourage a more direct and less deferential conversation about this aspect of Enneagram theory.
The language of “integration” and “disintegration” has had a long and influential run, but its limitations are increasingly apparent. All theoretical systems, if they are to remain vital, must be willing to outgrow their earlier formulations. It is in that spirit that this argument is offered—not as a final word, but as a contribution toward moving the discussion forward.
Dedication.:
For Tom Condon, the GOAT. And for Lynn.
Note: If you enjoyed this piece you may also like the piece below which also takes up the topic of the Enneagram.
I wrote all night Like the fire of my words could burn a hole up to heaven I don’t write all night burning holes up to heaven no more
Phosphorescent
Note:These reflections were written in March 2019, in the immediate aftermath of a personal experience that destabilized me more than anything I had previously encountered. They were never intended for publication and have not been revised.I’m sharing them now as a record of that moment—not as a finished account, but as a document of what it felt like to be inside it: heightened, contradictory, and often unclear even to myself.
I have written at length about my experiences with the woman I am calling Isobel. You can find the narrative series here, here, and here. You can also find the play I wrote about this time here.
3/28/19:
I went too far. I cannot tell if I went too far on purpose; certainly I pushed and pushed until I came to the end of the line. Like an explorer bent on reaching the furthest possible point, I pushed my mind and body until they could take no more. Now, the wind has gone out of my sails, for how long I cannot say. Perhaps for a long time. Yet I am not at peace, not yet, not now. “I came so far for beauty/ I left so much behind.”
Why was it that I had to roam so far out? What was I running from? Why did I lock my heart up so tightly that it had to explode in order to feel? Was there a point at which I could have taken another turn, or was it all slated to occur just as it did? You can ask why forever and get nowhere. This I know.
So I met a woman and this shook me up. She shook me up. She wasn’t trying to, but she did. My carefully balanced psyche, assembled and jury-rigged over decades, came apart in a matter of days. Anything could have happened, and by the grace of god I was able to retain some kind of governing function, however weak, which helped me stay safe. Over seven weeks everything that could be thrown at me was. I was under massive physical and psychological strain and only my years of amateur study of consciousness and the unconsciousness saved me from succumbing entirely. If I could do it over again (a terrifying notion), I would do almost nothing the same. However, I understand why I made the choices I did. There is little point, really, in interrogating the choices that we made in the light of the circumstances that were in place. Things were, and I reacted to them as I did. There is no getting around this.
Still, I made every mistake in the book. A classic mid-life crisis. Stereo-fucking-typical, scripted to the t. The funny thing is, I knew all about the blueprint and it still happened. “My Dinner with Andre” was a foundation text. I’d read Jung and James Hollis on midlife, extensively. Paradoxically perhaps, the very knowledge of the blueprint may have helped bring the symptoms into being. Or not, maybe I was semi-consciously gathering resources with the implicit foreknowledge that one day they would be needed. Either way, advance information about the terrain only allowed me to stay on my feet—it did not allow me to change course.
I was a Gemini warrior on a private quest, one unseeable from the outside and barely even discernible to myself. So many windmills, so much striving for the grail. To what end? A window seat—a temporary sinacure—and a chance to draw breath at sea level. That’s about it. Can I learn to live as it seems others do, with a little less metaphysical strum und drang, present in the world of the senses, just living? I don’t know what it is like not to live in my head and don’t remember when I started living this way. What I know now though it, it’s a trap. A mire. An maze with no exit. A road to nowhere.
In five years time will this all seem to have been necessary—just part of the process of being a human? God I hope so. That’s what the literature says—the final stage is acceptance. How I am doing with that? I accept that what happened happened. I accept that I made choices that made sense in the moment. I accept that that my personality was in large part a construct and that I am better off without a lot of it. And, I accept the possibility of a silver lining somewhere down the line. The magnitude of the experience and its ripple effects, these are things I am still coming to terms with.
I have seen some things that many will never see. Beautiful and fantastic things, awful things. As a result, I am shaken and somewhat unsteady. That’ll happen when you stray too close to the light. But those things are not mine—they do not belong to me. They have their own location, their own zone, at the edges of the known. I was granted, or gained, access to a sliver of another realm, yet I do not know how deep or how wide that realm is. Right now it is enough to know that it is there, more than enough. Both climbers and divers may feel sick when returning to sea level. I don’t know if I have been climbing or diving or, somehow, both, and in the end it does not matter. Leonard Cohen’s ladies man dies again and again throughout the ages. “It’s like a visit to the moon or to that other star/ I guess you’d go for nothing/ if you really want to go that far.” I didn’t want to go that far, not really, but I did anyway.
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3/29/19:
Why did I give up on my job? Because let’s face it, I gave up. Let’s get some things out in the open. I managed my energy very poorly for a long time. I was using shortcuts and papering over energetic issues to keep going at the pace I was working. For the last three or four years I was also withdrawing bit by bit—taking more half days off, shrugging more off, and putting off longer term planning that was necessary for the program. I was basically exhausted on an energetic level and this led to taking more time for myself and spending too much money just to get a space to reset—to feel something.
What was it that was so exhausting? As I’ve spoken about to many, the constant pushing of the stone uphill, the constant battle to get needs listened to, was certainly tiring. The feeling that it was really just me, a middle man, at the top of a huge operation and I didn’t have the tools or the power to do the things I needed to. The feeling that there were so many program areas that were not as good as they could be. The growing gap in my marriage which allowed me to seek feeling connections recklessly and a little randomly.
After a while, my psyche was being held together by string, by a thread. I was carrying deep wounds from the past which I hardly knew existed, had hardly ever looked at. I was an unitegrated personality in many ways and have no real root here in Japan. The sense of being included in an extended family that existed when I met my wife was long gone. My dream life was giving me warnings and maybe I could have done something with them. I was primed for a crack-up.
What was it about Elodie that enraptured me so entirely? I think it was the combination and sexuality and motherliness, her openness, her painful past which she was so open about, and some kind of deep inherent similarity that we both felt, and proceeded to blow out of all proportion. And she wanted to spend every minute with me! I was around the bend about her within a day. There are funny parts to the story—man I knew I was in trouble. That’s why I was listening to the Mendoza Line non-stop. “Mistakes were made tonight” indeed. I recognized that I was right on the edge and programmed myself not to step over it on the conference. And then I got on the plane and proceeded to step right off the cliff in another way. Long term, I guess it was a better cliff but how I thought I was in the right frame of mind to make that kind of decision, I’ll never understand. The correct move I made was to put people around me to keep me safe. The mistake I made was to recruit them into my plan to leave my job when I should have sought advice and depended on them to guide my decisions.
I feel like I want to say this—school leadership was poor. My decision to leave was not a direct result of the lack of leadership; it was a result of a massive energy change/ charge that took my system by storm and caused me to lose all perspective. However, the energy issues were in many ways a result of stress and repression of anger and frustration over how things were being handled, both over the short and the longer term. The issues were deep—still today my body is not right. I’m fragile, I’m weak, I’m a shell of my former self.
“This is the new not normal”—I’m listening to the new Lambchop album. It’s good of course, but kind of all sounds the same. That’s OK though. How can I get used to this new not normal at this office? There is nothing to do. Maybe that will change, and maybe I can make it change. Right now I am the definition of a clock-watcher. I know I put myself in this position and I’ll endure, but at what cost? Something needs to change, but I know I can’t push myself back into a bunch of old patterns even if I could. Maybe I was acting like an INTP—maybe feeling was the most buried function of all. This is probable.
My damage is deep, generational. If I am right in imagining that for some bizarre reason I had a role to play in clearing up or shouldering this burden and sort of resolving it, well that’s something I did. I certainly felt this way last fall, and that sense, that notion is still present. And now what? I am not special just because I have begun to own up to my damage. The best thing I can do now is to pass on as little as I can to my son—to be as present as I can with him as often as I can.
I also need to extend my working lifespan. This is a priority, and I need to be realistic about this. However, I’ve been stressing myself out to figure this out like today and that I can’t do. My priorities have to be: i) to minimize spending and pay the bills; ii) to cut way back on drinking; iii) to network and think positively about the future little by little. Anything can come. Tell yourself, anything can come. Anything can come.
FIN
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3/30/19:
There is no point in trying to write well right now. I am writing just to pass the time and continue to process my guilt and my heartache. The sense that somehow I was wired wrong is persistent, despite people who care about me trying to tell me otherwise. I mean, I have not been practical, have not made ordered decisions about securing my life and that of my family. I have made ordered decisions in so many other areas, not this one. How could that even be? I have no real answer to this—magical thinking, arrogance, the feeling that I could somehow tread water forever. I don’t know.
Ann wrote that I might have a form of PTSD from the collision with Elodie. This rings true. Meeting her shook up my mind and body at a core level. The ideas of animating archetypes are not just ideas. They are real. When Elodie and I fell into one another, I lost all sense of self. I wanted to give everything and anything to her, falling over myself to do so, to explain, to unburden myself. She was attracted and fascinated by some of this, but was also overwhelmed by the extent and speed of it all. On my end, I was overwhelmed too, overwhelmed by the depth of the attraction and how far I fell into her. We talked, and I could not figure out was this an ascent or a descent. So strange that it could be both. It was more a trip into the infinite. A trip for sure. I exited London and I was undone. I was terrified and thought I was bulletproof at the same time. I should have leaned more into the terror—I should have slowed down and assessed. This I did not do.
Calling Lynn and getting the idea of the kundalini was helpful. This was another juncture I could have turned for the better—tried to get grounded in a more appropriate way. Like the runner I once was, I just thought I could run the energy to ground. In the end I did, too late and with too much cost. So here I sit in a purgatory of my own making, bereft. Is this what I was destined to have to deal with—the emptiness, the total lack of self without the worldly tasks that were set me? I am having new thoughts—thoughts about the break up of extended families and that this is one of the core problems in modern life, perhaps the core one. Loneliness is probably an epidemic, almost certainly.
For a moment there was music, there was dance and movement, there was sexual confidence, there was bravodo. No longer. Why can’t those feelings, those urges, be regulated and controlled? I suppose they can, with practice. Apply myself, that’s something I’ve always had difficulty doing toward a skill. Variety seeking—always on the lookout to change direction. How boring.
I know I need to focus on my health, but how can I do that with these days stretching in front of me like this? I am in a tough situation. This is a fact. I can’t write my way out of this. What am I supposed to be learning? What is it even possible to learn here? Patience, humility? Patience for what, for reinstatement to the culture that pushed me over the edge? I read about principles under stress in Australia and no one wanting the job. I can understand why. I never wanted to be that high up either—really didn’t. I only accepted it because I was apparently the best person. What could have been different? I did all I could to delegate, well, I tried. I felt guilt over my classes being below-par, could not stop working on the weekend, got worn down.
There has to be a silver lining. Well, one is the conference lifestyle is over. That had to end, and an end was forced on me. That’s a net positive. I may be able to address my habits. This is going to be super hard because of the sleep and because I gain pleasure from the pub. Can I keep the pub and drop the rest? That has to be the goal.
Dedication:
For Elodie. I love you.
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Note: If you liked this piece, you may also like the pieces below which also take up the difficulties of modern romance.
Note: This piece takes up the 2008 record The Sunset Tree by The Mountain Goats as a tightly structured emotional sequence rather than a loose collection of autobiographical songs, tracing how John Darnielle moves from childhood survival through adolescent endurance, imagined justice, outward identification with others’ suffering, and finally a grounded, unsettling encounter with memory and partial reconciliation.
Epigraph:
I leaned my head in close to the little record player on the floor
So this is what the volume knob’s for.
Released in 2005, The Sunset Tree is widely regarded as the defining record by The Mountain Goats and the most directly autobiographical work by John Darnielle. The album centers on his childhood and adolescence under an abusive stepfather, and the long, uneven emotional project of trying—never quite succeeding—to understand or forgive that past. It has become the band’s best-known record, both for its clarity and its force, with songs like This Year and “No Children” forming its core identity in the wider culture.
Dance Music
“Dance Music” opens in a small, specific place—Johnson Avenue in San Luis Obispo—and immediately establishes the strange clarity of childhood memory: precise details without full understanding. A television hums with the Watergate hearings, a child senses that something is wrong but cannot name it, and a record player becomes an unlikely refuge. From that point, the song moves with quiet precision between moments of violence, escape, and interior unraveling, compressing years of experience into just over two minutes.
What strikes me is how firmly he anchors the song in space and time: Johnson Avenue, San Luis Obispo, five or six years old, Watergate hearings on TV. It’s precise enough to feel real, but not over-described. This isn’t abstraction—it’s memory with edges.
The child doesn’t understand what’s happening, but senses it. That “spidy sense” of something wrong is exactly right. The record player becomes a kind of accidental sanctuary. And then the line about the volume knob—discovering control for the first time—still hits hard. It’s a moment of agency inside chaos.
Cut forward, and nothing has resolved. The same house, the same structure, but now adolescence, relationships, internal damage. The “secret sickness” feels like a slow internalisation of everything that could not be processed earlier. The movement language—twisting roads, cul-de-sacs—suggests trying to find exits that don’t exist, or lead back into themselves.
And then the final image: police, dance music still playing. No resolution, just continuation under pressure. The refusal to close is part of the point.
This Year
If “Dance Music” shows how survival begins, “This Year” shows how it is sustained. Still rooted in the same autobiographical terrain of John Darnielle’s adolescence, the song shifts from memory to immediacy. It is one of the most recognizable songs by The Mountain Goats, defined by urgency, repetition, and forward motion.
This song is about survival and grit. The details—an older car, struggling engine, movement through space—create a physical sense of instability. You can feel the effort of motion.
The repetition is not optimism—it’s insistence. Saying something until it becomes structurally real. “Manifest” is the right word. This is survival being constructed in real time.
The narrative sections imply violence without naming it. Everything is loaded, but never fully articulated. That restraint is what makes it powerful.
And the ending—moving toward a distant, almost mythic place like Jerusalem—carries the sense of escape not as fantasy, but as direction.
Up the Wolves
Placed mid-record, “Up the Wolves” becomes the pivot between endurance and imagination. Where This Year insists on survival and Song for Dennis Brown expands suffering outward, this song introduces the possibility of emotional reordering—of imagining forgiveness, escape, and restructured power.
The key idea here is that damage is not escapable—it follows you. But alongside that is the introduction of imagined relief. The more aggressive imagery is not literal—it’s emotional escalation, the mind testing what justice might feel like if it were unconstrained.
The Roman myth framing matters: origin stories built from violence and absence. It lifts the personal into something archetypal. This is the first time the album seriously considers not just survival, but transformation of structure.
Song for Dennis Brown
At first glance, this appears to be a departure—a tribute song placed late in a deeply personal record. But it functions instead as expansion. The focus shifts from autobiography to shared human conditions of mortality, damage, and endurance.
Dennis Brown died in 1999, widely associated with Rastafari culture and a life shaped by both musical legacy and personal struggle.
This is not just about Dennis Brown—it is identification. The song places him and the speaker inside the same pattern of fragility and consequence.
The world is not paused by death. It continues. That’s the structural point. The imagery of decay alongside innocence creates dissonance—life continuing in spite of damage.
The violent reworking of natural imagery reinforces that nothing remains untouched. This is the album’s outward turn. Not introspection, but scale.
Pale Green Things
As the final track, this returns to specificity. The stepfather is no longer a looming figure of power but a weakened, aging man after a heart attack, still performing small routines at the racetrack. The focus is observational rather than symbolic.
We are grounded in physical detail: racetrack, stopwatch, Racing Form. A man reduced but still engaged with structure The “pale green things” recur as quiet markers of life continuing—small growth, persistence, indifference.
The shift is subtle but crucial: the speaker is now present with him in this space. Not outside it. Memory returns not to violence but to observation. That is the emotional pivot. What remains is not resolution, but recognition. The mind returns to this moment rather than others.
Closing reflection
Across these five songs, The Sunset Tree traces a coherent emotional progression: from childhood survival in “Dance Music,” to adolescent insistence in This Year, to imagined restructuring in Up the Wolves, to outward identification in Song for Dennis Brown, and finally to direct, grounded confrontation in Pale Green Things.
What makes the record so enduring is not that it resolves the question of abuse or forgiveness, but that it refuses to simplify it. Survival is shown as repetition, will, imagination, projection, and finally memory itself. Forgiveness appears not as an endpoint, but as something unstable, partial, and deeply contested.
It is also worth noting—without collapsing interpretation into autobiography—that these questions are not abstract. Many listeners carry their own histories of harm and difficulty in forgiving those histories fully. I would include myself in that broader human category. What makes this record remarkable is not that it answers forgiveness, but that it shows how seriously it must be attempted, even when it remains unresolved.
That is why The Sunset Tree endures: it treats survival and forgiveness not as conclusions, but as ongoing acts of attention.
Note: This piece argues that male circumcision should be strictly outlawed for non-consenting minors. It approaches the topic from a strict bodily autonomy framework regarding non-consensual, non-therapeutic interventions on minors, and treats irreversible bodily alteration without consent as the central ethical issue. It is not addressing medically necessary or emergency procedures, nor situations where an intervention is required to prevent serious immediate harm, which are outside its scope. The argument also focuses on principle rather than comparative cultural practice, and is intended as a normative claim about legal consistency in liberal systems rather than a commentary on individual intent, belief, or identity.
Epigraph:
Jesus don’t touch my baby.
Ryan Adams
Male Circumcision Should Be Outlawed — 1 Million Percent
Male circumcision of non-consenting minors should be outlawed globally, with legal penalties applied to those who perform or facilitate it, and civil penalties imposed on parents who authorise it. I was circumcised in infancy in a Catholic family in 1974. The issue is not medical ambiguity or cultural discomfort but a basic question of bodily autonomy: whether irreversible, non-therapeutic alteration of a child’s body can ever be justified without consent. In a liberal legal system that claims to prioritise individual rights, the answer should be consistent and categorical. Anything less relies on inherited exemptions—religious, medical, or cultural—that do not withstand ethical scrutiny once the principle is stated plainly.
The core objection is simple: irreversible bodily modification without consent is impermissible when it is not medically necessary. A child cannot consent, and parental authority is not unlimited; it is a delegated responsibility bounded by the child’s future autonomy. Circumcision is not an emergency intervention. It is not a life-saving procedure in the vast majority of cases. It is the removal of healthy tissue from an individual who will live the entirety of their life with that alteration imposed before they had any capacity to participate in the decision.
This is where liberal societies already reveal a partial but incomplete consistency. We accept that consent is not static across childhood. We do not allow children to make binding decisions about sexual activity, because we recognise developmental thresholds of agency and understanding. That is why age of consent laws exist at all, and why they sit at or near adulthood in most jurisdictions. But the same logic applies more fundamentally to irreversible bodily alteration. If we accept that certain domains require maturity before consent is meaningful, then permanent physical modification must fall under the same principle. The difference is not moral category; it is legal lag.
The counter-case is not weak in structure, even if it fails ethically. It rests on four main claims: parental rights, medical justification, religious freedom, and social normalisation. Parents are routinely empowered to make medical decisions on behalf of children under a “best interests” standard. Circumcision is often placed within this framework as a preventive health measure. Some studies are cited to suggest reduced risks of urinary tract infections or sexually transmitted infections later in life, and complication rates in clinical settings are presented as low. On this basis, it is framed not as cosmetic alteration but as permissible preventive medicine.
Religion provides a second pillar. In Judaism, circumcision is a covenantal rite central to religious identity. In Islam, it is widely practiced as a tradition of purification and belonging. Liberal states are deeply reluctant to interfere with such practices, treating them as protected expressions of religious freedom. On this view, banning circumcision would represent not neutrality but intrusion into foundational religious life.
The third pillar is cultural and social integration. In societies where circumcision is widespread, particularly where it is near-universal within certain populations, deviation can create stigma or perceived abnormality. The argument follows that enforcing prohibition could impose social harm on children by marking them as different within their communities. Finally, legal systems distinguish male circumcision from female genital cutting on the basis of severity, medical context, and institutionalisation within healthcare systems, arguing that harm is not equivalent and therefore regulation need not be symmetrical.
Taken together, these arguments form a sort of a defense of permissibility under existing liberal frameworks: parental discretion within medical norms, protected religious practice, and harm-based legal classification.
But each of these pillars collapses under a stricter application of bodily autonomy.
Parental authority is real, but it is not sovereign. It exists only insofar as it serves the future autonomy and welfare of the child. It does not extend to irreversible, non-therapeutic bodily alteration where no immediate necessity exists. The “best interests of the child” standard is not a blank cheque; it is a constraint. We already recognise this in other domains where the state intervenes against parental choice when irreversible harm or violation of fundamental rights is at stake. The question is whether we apply that constraint consistently.
Medical justification also fails the threshold test when examined carefully. Even if certain population-level benefits exist, they are statistical, not essential. They can be achieved through far less invasive means—hygiene, education, barrier protection—without permanently altering the body of an individual who has not consented. Preventive possibility is not sufficient justification for irreversible intervention. Medicine does not normally operate on the principle that minor statistical risk reduction permits non-consensual surgery on healthy individuals.
Religious justification is where liberal systems most visibly reveal their tension. Freedom of religion is a foundational principle, but it is not absolute. It has never been interpreted as permitting unlimited parental action upon a child’s body. The critical distinction is between belief and irreversible physical imposition. Religious freedom protects the right to believe, to practice, and to transmit culture—but it cannot logically extend to authorising permanent bodily modification of an individual who has not consented to participate in that covenant. A child is born into a tradition, not owned by it.
The social integration argument similarly confuses descriptive normativity with ethical justification. That a practice is common within a group does not mean deviation is harmful in a way that justifies irreversible intervention. Social discomfort is not equivalent to bodily violation. Otherwise, any culturally dominant practice could immunise itself from ethical scrutiny simply by achieving prevalence.
The legal distinction between male circumcision and female genital cutting is often defended on the basis of harm severity and medical framing. But this distinction, while operationally convenient, becomes unstable when the underlying principle is examined. If the governing value is bodily integrity and consent, then sex-based differences do not determine permissibility. The relevant question is not comparative severity alone, but whether irreversible non-consensual alteration is being authorised at all. Harm thresholds may differ in degree, but the structural violation—altering a child’s body without consent—remains.
Once these counter-arguments are reduced to their core, what remains is not a justification but a set of accommodations: to tradition, to institutional history, to religious continuity, and to cultural inertia. None of these constitute a moral defence of the act itself; they constitute reasons why it persists.
This is why enforcement matters. A principle without enforcement is not a principle in practice. If bodily autonomy is to mean anything in a liberal legal system, it must be protected even when the practice is culturally embedded or religiously significant. That requires prohibition of the act itself, accountability for those who perform it in violation of the rule, and civil liability for those who authorise it on behalf of non-consenting minors. The aim is not punishment for its own sake, but alignment of law with the ethical principle it already claims to uphold in other domains of bodily autonomy.
What makes this issue more than historical critique is that it persists into the present as a live inconsistency. It is 2026. Liberal legal systems already recognise that bodily autonomy is foundational in adulthood. They already recognise that consent has developmental thresholds. They already prohibit non-consensual genital alteration in other contexts. The remaining question is whether they are prepared to apply the same principle consistently when tradition, religion, and medical normalisation converge.
A system that protects bodily autonomy only after adulthood has not resolved the ethical question; it has merely deferred it. The principle either applies universally to the body of the individual, or it does not. If it does, then non-therapeutic circumcision of minors cannot stand as an exception. 1 million percent.
Note: This piece is part of the Splinter Fraction series of political positions that the two-person Trans-Pacific political party has taken. You can find some of the others below.
New Note: This essay began as a draft conference paper in 2019 and was never delivered in that form. I am publishing it now as a document of a particular period of questioning rather than as a finished thesis. Since writing it, my thinking about archetypes, gender, projection, and mid-life development has continued to evolve. I remain interested in the role dreams play in periods of re-orientation, but I am less certain of universal frameworks and more attentive to context, culture, and personal responsibility. Readers should take this piece as exploratory rather than definitive.
Note: The following is a draft of a conference presentation I was due to give at the International Association for the Study of Dreams (IASD) in 2019. Life, as they say, intervened, and I was not able to give the presentation. The draft below is way too long, and was set to be edited a lot before prime time, however I do think there is material of interest here, perhaps especially for men (and hopefully women) in mid-life.
Stipulated:
The dream examples in this presentation lean heavily toward “anima” dreams, as this is my own experience. I hope that in the discussion period we can re-balance this weighting.
Advance Notice:
This presentation contains frank discussion about sexuality within the context of the main topic.
Postulate I:
The “mid-life crisis” is no less universal and acute than the challenging teenage period. It’s predictably is such that it is better termed “re-orientation” than “crisis.”
Postulate II:
Dreams can provide advanced warning and guidance about how to navigate this period.
Postulate III:
Following Carl Jung, the anima archetype (most commonly in the male) and the animus archetype (most commonly in the female) are the most commonly associated archetypes with the mid-life period, and therefore deserve especially close attention.
Postulate IV:
Although it is not clear how changing norms around gender (e.g. increased visibility of non-binary and other identities) might impact our understanding of the anima and animus in mid-life, we are advised to make space for the possibility that these archetypes develop/ evolve alongside culture.
Question #1:
What dreams have you had that might relate to the anima/ animus archetypes, and to what extent have they predicted/ informed a mid-life re-orientation?
Question #2:
Jung stresses the universal or near-universal nature of the anima/ animus archetypes (as well as other archetypes). To what extent is holding to Jung’s universalistic perspective helpful/ unhelpful for understanding the play of these archetypes today?
Question #3:
Jung says that “when a situation occurs which corresponds to a given archetype, that archetype becomes activated and a compulsiveness appears which {…} gains its way against all reason.” This not a very hopeful prognosis, even if it has an ample experiential basis. To what extent can understanding and attention to our dreams and unconscious decrease the force of an activated archetype?
Question #4: What other kind of dreams/ dream archetypes might also predict/ presage a mid-life re-orientation?
Postulate II expanded:
Dreams, if treated as basically integrative, give us both a heads up and also a faith/ confidence that we can survive and navigate mid-life re-orientation, although when we are in it we can feel totally overwhelmed.
Dream #: 1
7/20/13:
I am in a battle with some quasi-army people, running around a rainy landscape, ducking behind and in and out of cars. I am carrying a very small pistol, possible a “Derringer.” This action goes on for a long time. Finally, the two army factions meet in a parking lot. I am off to to side of where two groups are arguing heatedly. I try to fire my weapon to get everyone’s attention; it makes only a small sound and no one pays attention. However, just then a group forms beside me, to my right. There are quite a lot of people, more than the two factions combined. These people are aligned with one or the other sides in the battle, and are now trying to bring the two sides together. One women, middle aged or a little older and Caucasian, speaks to me very passionately about reconciliation, and grabs me. I put my hands on her shoulders and look deeply into her eyes. The argument is still going; there is a contest to see which group’s energy would prevail.
I disengage from the first women, and there is a younger woman, maybe early 20s with blondish hair. We embrace deeply; I am holding her and stroking her hair. She is “Dusty.” As with the first woman, Dusty and I are involved in some kind of structural reconciliation–we are not simply two people but representing two sides of a conflict.
Dusty has a friend, a thin girl, also in her 20s. The thin girl and Dusty are loosely connected to the older women’s movement. However, the thin girl seems like the prime mover and Dusty is just along for the ride. I get the distinct feeling that Dusty had been around a bit, young as she is. The three of us retire to a sofa—the argument is left behind. Dusty is on my lap, stretched out, while the thin girl, who is also sort of tanned, is to our left. We chat casually, as if we had all known each other for ages. I say, “you are foot soldiers in the women’s movement,” and the thin girl laughs and says yes. I am not in love with Dusty, rather I feel happy and blessed to be able to be connected with her for any amount of time.
THEMES: BATTLE, RECONCILIATION, EMBRACE, YOUNG WOMEN, OLDER WOMAN, CAUCASIAN WOMAN
Dream #: 2
1/17/17:
I arrive late to a pool party with a very deep swimming pool. I am wearing a suit. A lady in an elaborate purple gown falls in the pool (or maybe she jumps in on purpose). In any case, she begins to sink to the bottom. She is underwater for too long, and I decide to jump in and try to save her. I hesitate for a fraction of a second, either because I am fully dressed, or because I am afraid. I feel shame with this delay and dive down. The dive is successful and I go to the bottom of the pool. The woman is only a few feet away however when I try to swim over to her it is like I am swimming through jelly. I can barely move through the water. She drifts away slightly, and I keep trying to make progress aware that my own breath is limited. I resolve to take a few more hard strokes and in so doing try to kind of push the water under her to lift her up because I can’t reach her. Then I head back for the surface and emerge with labored breath—I have used about 90% of my capacity down there. The woman has already surfaced and has been pulled out of the pool by several people on the other side of the pool (the pool is quite large). She is seated on a raised platform kind of similar to a throne. I get out and only one or two people notice that I have been in the pool at all. Later though the woman thanks me for my efforts.
A few noticeable things about this dream are that I had the sense that the woman threw herself in on purpose and also that I knew through the dream that she would get out OK one way or the other. In fact, it was me that was in more danger than her even though she was under water for much longer.
I am at an underground concert/ art event late at night. There are multiple acts playing in a series of narrow hallways and spaces between pipes as such with an audience, including myself, who is kind of milling about. All the acts are simultaneously being fed into an audio feed and there is a second audience in a separate, possibly more subterranean, room. I am not in this second room however somehow know of and can visualize it. The audio feed is being controlled be either Richard Branson or Jann Wenner or someone of that stature. This is kind of a big deal in a weird way—definitely an art event.
I am attached to a show that is beginning. The group is the Red Krayola, and the leader is a youngish female with short hair, creamy skin, a little Asian, probably in her mid-twenties. At first, I am appointed to be the lead singer, which is terrifying. Fortunately, the first part of the first song has a long, chugging, guitar and bass buildup which is transporting and awesome. Also fortunately, for me, the leader starts to sign or hum, no words only sounds. Maybe she will be the lead vocal after all? I begin to try to harmonize as best I can and it goes OK. I am deeply hopeful that my harmonies will stay down in the mix and that at no time will I need to be the lead singer as I know I will not be equal to the task.
The lead-in to the song goes on for several minutes, at least three or four, and it is the best music I have ever heard, which is amazing because the act is almost totally unknown—perhaps this is our debut? I start to fall in love with the leading lady, slowly, totally.
Suddenly, the electricity cuts off and so does the music. I hear a voice from the other audience room ask for our band’s signal to be brought back up. People are asking for more. However, Jann’s voice comes over the speaker and says we have lost power. The show is over.
I am both relieved (because I don’t need to sing anymore) and disappointed (because I wanted to hear the rest of the song). The disappointment registers in my stomach. Before she gets swept into the crowd (which is large and active), I approach the leading lady. She is gorgeous, slight, with earrings. She has a range of cards like small index cards with Taoist symbols in front of her as well as some jewellery and beads, not ostentatious—very tasteful. She asks me where I am from, where I live, and my spiritual orientation. I tell her, wondering if I should describe myself as a Taoist or whether she would see that as pretentious. I tell her I am a new-ager, but only in order to access ancient wisdom—things we have always known and have forgotten. As I tell her, we lean closer together and I am falling head over heels for her. I am sure that she has a line of people waiting for her and will move me along soon, however instead we began to kiss as we lean together. This operation is made difficult by a single metal spike in her lower left lip—a piercing that you sometimes see. The piercing is difficult for me to navigate and a little painful.
Scene cut and we are in bed together, unclothed, coupling. However, it turns out she has multiple piercings all over her body and no matter what arrangement we make the operation is too difficult. The dream ends, with a memory of the music.
THEMES: YOUNG WOMAN, SEMI-ASIAN WOMAN, MUSIC, SPIRTUALITY, FEAR, PIERCINGS, KISSING, FAILED SEXUAL INTERCOURSE
Dream #: 4
10/11/17:
I am in a parking lot with somebody, perhaps the parking lot of a gas station. There is a van that a woman is living in, traveling around in. I know this before seeing the woman. The woman leans out of the van which looks a bit like a food truck and may be. She is Asian but also not Asian and she leans right down in front of me. I kiss her, briefly, and she kisses me back, briefly. Then she pulls back and talks about her life on the road. She says her name is Mary. She is very attractive, with curls in the front of her pretty short hair and big cheeks. She gives me a business card that is handmade. The business card calls her “Wild Mary” and there is a drawing of a map which is full of squiggles and impossible to follow. She says this is a map to her live music event which I need to come to. I want to go, however feel like there is no way I will decipher the map.
I am in a pool like a large whirlpool, maybe 8 feet deep or so, with a bunch of other people, mostly Japanese women. One woman is kind of sleeping in the pool and she leans on me like people sometimes will on trains. She is in a bathing suit and young and pretty good looking, wearing glasses. I allow her to lean on me, she floats away, then comes back. She appears to be relaxing. Then, everyone is getting out of the pool which appears to be closing. The woman becomes totally horizontal and looks at me. She asks for a doctor—just says “doctor.” She is unwell and can’t move herself. I scoop her up and swim to the side where various people are getting out and starting to dress. I tell another woman she needs a doctor and then repeat this in Japanese. Several people move off to find a doctor who will be downstairs (we are in some kind of complex and a doctor will be on hand.) The woman is laying comatose by the side of the pool and I hope the doctor comes soon. Then, my wife is there and I try to explain the situation with the woman. While I am doing this I look up and the woman is gone. She has rallied and disappeared without a word. The doctor never arrives.
THEMES: YOUNG WOMAN, ASIAN WOMAN, WATER, RESCUE, WIFE, ELUSIVITY
Dream #: 6
4/5/18:
I have been chasing a man I think I know up to the 7th floor of a tall building. Although I am athletic and running hard, I can’t catch him, and face a variety of set backs. Giving up, I retreat to the back of a dentist’s office where there are an assortment of rooms up some steps. Entering the highest room all the way in the back of this building I see a woman I know. She is from my college and I have a longstanding relationship with her. She is wearing a beige blouse which is buttoned at the neck and looks to be of Asian design. She comes over to me from the wall where she has apparently been waiting. We embrace and are very glad to see one another. We will spend the next few days together and I know in the course of those days I will be unfaithful to her in some way. I hope not to lose her as a consequence.
After waking briefly I try to renter the dream space to find her again. I am unable to do so–instead I see a bunch of filament-like strands in space. A voice says “maybe everything is connected.” It is possible that a single strand connects all elements in the unconscious and in the universe. Still, no woman.
THEMES: MIDDLE AGED WOMAN, ASIAN DRESS, ESCAPE, UNFAITHFULLNESS, METAPHYSICS
Dream #: 7
6/3/18:
I have a distinct feeling I am being called. This is not the first time I have had this feeling however this time it is as or more insistent than ever.
I dream I am seeking wisdom from some underground women spirits/ half women half spirits. They are locked behind a door and only accessible through an intermediary, also a woman. The intermediary takes my request for wisdom and something more to the women and comes back empty handed. She says the women rejected my request because I have the keys to the door. This is not saying that I have the wisdom, only that I have the keys and need to unlock it myself.
Later I dream of a teacher. I am walking down a hillside and there is a kind of encampment on my left. Here there is a teacher. The teacher quickly vacates the encampment. I see a man in purple on the far shore. He is bearded and serene. Perhaps he is a fisherman. I get a full body chill because he is the teacher. Then, another man appears closer to me on a more accessible bank. He is wearing flannel and also bearded. It is clear that the first man, though dignified, is not the teacher and this second man is. I consider approaching him but instead wind up in the encampment. There is a youngish woman, not so young but younger than me, there. She is the real teacher and she is in town for only a day or so. I go over to her and am ecstatic to be with her. She allows me to nuzzle her neck and we begin talking. She has signs like the dao on her body—not exactly tattoos more sort of birthmarks. A man is there who is kind of her minder and he lets me be close to her. I will take her teaching in a day or so.
I am seeking wisdom and instead of getting it from the underground women I need to make my own way. I see a vertical rectangle with three square boxes at the base. In the boxes are letter like SO, XOS, SXO. These are a symbolic alphabet and indicate a deeper knowledge that I should have access too. I understand that these symbols are the key to unlocking the door to the underworld.
THEMES: TEACHER, METAPHYSICS, UNDERWORLD, SELF-KNOWLEDGE, BODY MARKINGS
Dream #: 8
6/25/18:
I am skiing on a smallish yet pretty steep hill. There are some very good skiers who are blasting down and somehow also skiing back uphill, quite quickly. I am getting down ok but can only ski-walk partway back to the top each time. I am capable yet not fully confident on the skis.
A tall young Asian woman is there and I need to protect her a bit. Probably it is her first time on skis. Later, it is suggested that she does a ski jump. The ski jumps are supposed to take place over a 4-5 foot spiral cone of water but the cones aren’t ready today so I hold out a pointed object like a stick laterally at chest height instead. This seems a little dangerous and also I want her to succeed so I resolve to lower the stick as need be without telling anyone. There is a bit of a crowd around and some delay. Then, she is ready to go.
Suddenly I look up and realize that we are in a carpeted room which is only about 10 feet in depth and that there is a wooden ceiling closing the room from the ski slope. To do the jump, she will need to come across from the left side, jump diagonally, and stop almost immediately on carpet. This seems impossible so I try to call off the jump. The crowd protests and the skier also indicates willingness to continue. This is madness, so I try to demonstrate how little space she has by simulating a landing. I feel like I’m calling attention to something super obvious and the others are dense and irresponsible.
THEMES: YOUNG WOMAN, ASIAN WOMAN, SKIING, DANGER, RESCUE, INEFFECTIVENESS
Dream # 9:
7/29/18:
Last day in Bali. Dreams here have been intense and long. This dream is loaded with metaphysics. I will try to describe it carefully.
The dream starts with an image of a large whisky bottle. The bottle is very fat and also ceremic. So in fact it looks nothing like a normal whisky bottle. It is perhaps of Suntory brand. I know before I know that a story of some kind will unfold inside the bottle. I am reminded somehow of a ship inside a bottle. Suddenly I am inside the bottle itself. There is a whole word here and all sorts of people in a city-scape. I come to understand that everyone lives in relative fear of a species or group of overlords.
The overlords are both omni-present and also very distant. They rule by fear and have the power to rub out anyone at any time. Sort of. When a person is marked for removal their status is updated. Their status is displayed on a kind of glowing chip in their shoulder. There are basically theft types of statuses. First is “needing to have the life wrung out of them.” There are marked people and their time is limited. Apparently they are political criminals, thought criminals. Oddly, even when marked these people continue to circulate and take part in oppositional activity. I never actually see one of them removed, although their actions do take on a greater sense of urgency.
The second category is another worded status. This one is more elliptical and I forget the wording. Though safer than the first, this is still a status to be avoided if possible.
Third is a number. A voice tells the city that statuses will be updated and that anything under 40000 is a safe score. I check my update with bated breath, fearing the dreaded worded status. My number is 49500. Not bad I think—although not under 40000 this is perhaps for young people. 49500 seems reasonable for my age.
Suddenly the view shifts and I can see into the bottle from the outside. All of the people and various creatures and scrambling for the mouth of the body. The bottle begins to approach a wall into which is will soon merge. Here, the entrance to he bottle will be sealed. The I character in the dream is also scrambling for the exit although he doesn’t seem to stand much of a chance. Creatures spill over one another and one baby creature somewhere between a human baby and a little mouse slips through the mouth of the bottle to the other side of the wall. The bottle snaps closed and I am once again staring at the large ceremony bottle from the beginning of the dream. I feel a sense of relief that the perfect creature has escaped.
Only the second real dream since August and the first since the car crash dream three months ago.
I am in a large and ramshackle house which is apparently part of a larger complex of cabins. This may be some kind of resort, certainly it is out of town. There is a ranger hut as well so I guess we are in the woods.
After some interactions with the ranger which are painless (it is clear that I am welcome here) I begin exploring the house with a small team of people, maybe three or four. We are doing some kind of catalogue or space survey, and every space I see I have to climb in and have my picture taken in it. This means like alcoves, cubby spaces, closets, skylights, etc. Sometimes one of the other people also gets in the space, but I always do. It is unclear what the survey is for, however it is obvious that we need to do it. This process goes on for a long time and we cover much of this large house.
Eventually we come to a kind of alcove carved above a hallway, a space that doesn’t really exist in nature. An attractive Caucasian women in a white swimsuit climbs into the space and someone takes a picture. This picture becomes the definitive record of our whole trip. I don’t think I enter this space.
The group moves to a basement floor and suddenly there are a lot more people, maybe 20 or more. It’s crowded and a little noisy. The complexion of the group has changed. There is a trap door to a sub-basement and I open it and drop down. One person at least follows me, perhaps two, an older couple maybe. The sub-basement is about 4 and a half feet high and I have to stoop. It is full of junk, large foam blocks, other boxes. There is barely any room to move and nothing to see or find. I feel immediately claustrophobic and also have a flash of fear that one of the larger group will close the trap door. This fear comes and goes quickly, but it’s enough for me to ask myself why I have to always be the one exploring the spaces. If there is a group of twenty we can share the load. And, I don’t want to be in this claustrophobic sub-basement anymore.
New Note: This is a small, wandering piece built on a simple premise: sometimes the things that stay with us are not the major events, but the minor curiosities that resist tidy explanation. A fragment of stage patter at a concert, a puzzling culinary difference between similar cuisines, the myth and reality of hostel life, the vastly different speeds at which people work, the improvisational courage required to make friends quickly, and the strange cultural persistence of the San Diego Chicken — none of these form a grand thesis, yet each carries its own quiet fascination. On Some Things I Find Interesting is less an argument than a map of attention, a record of the small anomalies and unresolved moments that continue to hover in memory precisely because they never fully resolve themselves.
Note: This is our second “list” piece, following our minor piece on airports. I happen to like “minor” pieces in general, and this piece is dedicated to a reader who said her our airport piece was her “sneaky favorite.” Here, we will simply list a few things I find interesting. There is no particular connection between these items, other than that I am interested in them.
I. Bradford Cox’s Stage Patter at a Deerhunter Concert in Osaka
A few years ago I went to see the band Deerhunter play live in Osaka. The original show I had tickets to was canceled and I didn’t get a notification, so I trekked all the way into Osaka only to find this out. This worked out ok though because I took a picture of some girls in fairy costumes on the trip. Anyway, the show was rescheduled for a few months later and the tickets were still valid.
The frontman for Deerhunter is called Bradford Cox. His side project is called Atlas Sound. Deerhunter is not one of my very favorite bands, but they are pretty awesome. I had seen Deerhunter before at a weekend long event called “Hostess Club Weekender” in Tokyo, which sounds a little edgy but was really just a series of Saturday and Sunday events featuring a bunch of bands. (I also saw the band Mogwai at Hostess Club, a band I thought I liked, but the show was boring and they were kind of bad.) My favorite Deerhunter song is “T.H.M.” from 2013’s Monomania, however my favorite Cox song by far is “The Shakes” from his side project called Atlas Sound. The Shakes opens thusly:
Found money and fame/ but I found them really late
Uh huh. “The Shakes” is more than a sneaky favorite; it contains multitudes. In any case, the re-scheduled Deerhunter show was in January or something and I was excited to see them. They were the headliner, however unfortunately they had an inordinate number of opening bands and by the time Deerhunter took the stage they had like only 45 minutes until the venue had to close. Brief as the show may have been, Cox managed to build in quite a bit of between songs patter. I am a big fan of between songs patter, and wrote about this topic at length here and here.
The one piece of patter I remember from this show was when Cox addressed the issue of Japanese toilets. Now, without getting too graphic, most Japanese toilets these days have a built-in “washlet” which, true to its description, washes your sensitive areas with water after your business is done. Here is Cox on the subject (as I recall, more or less):
“I love your toilets here. In our hotel the toilet has a stream of water which cleans you up after you use it. As a gay man I have to say this is a great feature.”
Now, what was so interesting to me about this patter was not the content per se, which was fairly straightforward and only just a little risqué. What fascinated me was that Cox in various interviews in the American press had referred to himself as asexual. Cox suffers from a serious skin condition, as well as maybe some kind of eating disorder, is super thin and generally has a lot going on. He has been pretty open about all of this, including his supposed asexuality. However here he was in Japan, where maybe only a quarter or so of the audience understood enough English to fully understand what he was saying, identifying as a gay man.
Of course I was and am aware that people’s self-identification, sexual or otherwise, can fluctuate, however I don’t think this is what was going on. Rather, it is my supposition, unproven albeit, that Cox preferred to index his supposed asexuality in the American media for reasons of his own, however in Japan allowed himself to speak his truth as a gay man. Perhaps, as I like to imagine, he thought that no one in the crowd would notice this little slight of hand. In the immortal words of the Lone Gunmen in the X-Files, however, “someone is always paying attention, Mr. Mulder.” In this instance, I was paying attention. And I was interested.
II: The Difference Between North Indian Food and Nepalese Food
In Japan, at least, there are a good number of both North Indian and Nepalese restaurants. The North Indian restaurants, for my money, are, without exception, way better. This is because of one simple reason, Nepalese food, as prepared in Japan, is full of sugar.
There is nothing I want less at lunch than a bunch of fucking sugar. I understand of course that carbohydrates in general are full of sugar and all the rest, so I guess my position is that food already has more than enough sugar without adding more. However, Nepalese restaurants put excess sugar in the curry, and super extra sugar in the nan bread. Sugar is everywhere, and it leaves me feeling bloated and bad. North Indian restaurants do not seem to have this problem. These also feature nans and curries, however they are un-sugared and basically delicious.
Now, I do not wish to demean all Nepalese restaurants, nor indeed Nepali food culture in general as I have never been there. For all I know, Nepali restaurants in Japan just happen to add a bunch of sugar for some reason. But I doubt it. I suppose that somewhere on the North Indian plain there as you move north toward Nepal sugar factors more and more into the cuisine. To each their own, but I don’t like it. This whole matter is of interest to me.
Postscript: As I am now totally gluten-free, I won’t be eating any more nan bread, sugared or un-sugared. Bye bye nan baby.
III: Hostels
Hostels are interesting. I have only really stayed at a hostel once, on the South Island of New Zealand when I was checking out the New Zealand Alps. I don’t remember much about this trip, however the basic features of hostel stays were all in place: the shared room and concomitant lack of a private bathroom and shower, the slight anxiety about getting one’s stuff stolen, and the opposite sense of excitement that one might meet, say, a chick.
A few years ago my buddy Paul (he is actually Tall Paul, but there was already another Tall Paul in Kyoto who kind of owns the nickname) came to town and asked me to catch up. I said yes, and met him at his hostel near downtown. When I got there, he introduced me to two gorgeous and sophisticated Indian-American woman from California. They were his “hostel friends.” (Tall) Paul is a very good looking guy, and this incident confirmed for me what I already suspected, that hostel life could be exciting, even action packed. Me and Paul and the ladies went out on the town and had a great time. My takeaway was that hostels rock.
On the other hand, my buddy Doug checked out of his life and into some Russian hostel action for about six months or so a while back. His plan, as I first heard it, sounded quite romantic, however when he returned from this sojourn he informed me that hostel life was not all it was cracked up to be. Hostel life in Russia, it turns out, was pretty dreary. I had no difficulty believing this, and arrived at a more balanced picture of hostels as a result.
All in all, hostels are interesting, however I don’t think hostel life is for me.
IV: People’s Working Speeds
I have noticed that folks tend to work at very different speeds. I am a teacher, and these days the job of a teacher is basically split between i) teaching in the classroom; ii) working on the computer; iii) taking breaks. Teachers, generally speaking, have a lot of flexibility with break taking, which is nice. And classroom teaching is bounded by the bell, so that’s settled. Which leaves computer work.
Some teachers rip through their computer work in a matter of minutes and are able to move on to other pursuits, such as Wordle. The top-end version of this type of teacher are marvels of efficiency and manage to go home on time every day. Other teachers are super slow, and pick at stuff for days, weeks even. While I respect the fact that everyone has their own process, this is not my style at all. Then there are the teachers in the middle, including myself. These folks are neither hyper-efficient nor super-slow. Rather, they tend to procrastinate around for a bit before settling in to serious work, after which they crunch and get things done.
As an ambivert myself, I like to gather just enough information, Goldilocks style, to be dangerous before I do my computer work. I neither need nor want all the information, however I function best when I have a general “feel” for the landscape. This is just how I work—like I said, everyone’s different.
V: Making Friends Quickly
When I was in university I was trying to hang around some artsy chicks, and was lucky enough to know a few. One day I was hanging out with them and a few girls I didn’t know came over. One of them was called Nadine. These new girls were super cool, and Nadine in particular was so cool as to be a little intimidating. She was from Eastern Europe. I definitely wanted to hang out with Nadine, and sure enough she invited me, right away, to accompany them all somewhere. I hesitated, for some reason. Maybe I didn’t know the first rule of improvisational theater, which is “yes and…” Yes and means, basically, follow the person that goes before you. I would have followed Nadine pretty much anywhere, however I said “I don’t really know you guys,” I said. “Well,” she replied, “this is how you get to know us.”
(The Nadine incident confirms one aspect of my social relations. I’m a Gemini sun with Mars in Leo in my 10th house. I am, basically speaking, not afraid of people. At the same time, I must admit that there is a certain class of beautiful women whom were I to meet them it might take me a second or two to find my tounge. This would include Brit Marling, actress and creator of The OA, Emily Haines, lead singer of Metric, and Kristin Stewart, actress in Personal Shopper. Nadine was not quite in this stratosphere, however she was pretty close.)
Nadine was right of course; I just wasn’t used to making friends quite so quickly. I came to my senses and went with Nadine and the crew. That was a good move.
I find Nadine’s approach to new people fantastic. It can be a little risky to apply it all the time, but in general it’s a good starting point. Love ya Nadine baby.
VI: The San Diego Chicken
Americans of a certain age may remember the San Diego Chicken. The San Diego Chicken was everywhere. As I recall, the San Diego Chicken was originally a mascot for the San Diego Padres baseball team that would run and jump around on the dugout and stuff. What the connection between the Padres (named after the Catholic priests that ran missions into California back in the day) and the chicken was, I have no idea. Nonetheless, the chicken, over time, somehow transcended the role of mere baseball mascot and became an all- purpose mascot for all types of situations. The chicken, in fact, became the uber-mascot, the mascot of mascots if you will.
I have an exact image in my head of the chicken; essentially the chicken was just a dude with a bunch of yellow feathers and a chicken-esque head. The resemblance to a real chicken was decent, however as mentioned the San Diego Chicken was super yellow. Also, the San Diego Chicken was ugly. Like seriously. Nonetheless, the chicken was huge, and became a meme before anyone even knew what a meme was. Therefore, the chicken must have had something going on. The chicken had his own baseball cards; the chicken was everywhere. At the time I didn’t get the chicken at all, and basically still don’t. But as with a lot of topics, there may be something I’m missing. That’s why I find the chicken interesting to this day.
Dedication: For AC, who likes lists, even though this barely is one.
Note: If you enjoyed this piece, you may also enjoy the pieces below which also use the list format.
Raymond Carver is not one of my very favorite writers, but his work is full of resonant nuggets that linger long after one puts him down. Fires contains four essays, a number of poems and half a dozen or so stories. Carver has useful things to say about using common language in writing, although he arguably makes a fetish of it. The best things in the book are a handful of poems, and the standout seems to be “The Baker.” Other excellent poems include: “Iowa Summer,” “For Serma with Martial Vigor,” “Looking for Work,” and “Cheers.” Fires also includes a lengthy poem on Bukowski where Carver appears to be recounting an evening’s worth of Bukowski’s conversation. Good stuff, but not of overwhelming interest except to Bukowski fanatics.
The essays, on his father, on writing, are very sharp. Carver’s prose, as he himself admits, tends to be lean, approaching flat, but accumulates force on that account: “If the words are heavy with the writer’s own unbridled emotions, or if they are imprecise and inaccurate for some reason-if the words are in any way blurred-the reader’s eyes will slide right over them and nothing will be achieved” (“On Writing”). This is fundamentally true and great—and I would add if the words are just right the reader’s eyes will stick, and even come back to them for a second look.
Little things register. From the title story: “On the other end of the line was the voice of a man who was obviously a black man, someone asking for a party named Nelson. It was the wrong number and I said so and hung up.” Here, decisiveness of language (“and I said so”) fused with perfect choice of noun phrase “a party named Nelson” achieve a remarkable force.
Carver’s paragraphs tend to close where other writer’s would just be beginning: (his motto: “Don’t explain. Don’t complain.”): “I really don’t feel that anything happened in my life until I was twenty and married and had the kids. Then things started to happen.” That’s it. What does he mean? does he mean happen, like, “that’s really happening man,” or just happen, as in, flatly events transpired. We are left to guess; the paragraph ends.
Here is “The Baker”:
Then Pancho Villa come to town,
hanged the mayor
and summoned the old and infirm Count Vronsky to supper.
Pancho introduced his new girl friend, along with her husband in his white apron,
showed Vronsky his pistol,
then asked the Count to tell him about his unhappy exile in Mexico.
Later, the talk was of women and horses. Both were experts.
The girl friend giggles and fussed with the pearl button on Pancho’s shirt until, promptly at midnight, Pancho went to sleep with his head on the table.
The husband crossed himself and left the house holding his boots without so much as a sign to his wife or Vronsky.
That anonymous husband, barefooted, humiliated, trying to save his life, he is the hero of this poem.
A great poem, I think, nearly perfect. The one line that may have been implicit is “both were experts.” Cut it, and see how it reads. Also, the “promptly” is questionable. The action verbs, “hanged,” “summoned,” “showed” establish Pancho beautifully. “Showed Vronsky his pistol”-does Carver mean he showed it off, or showed it to him as a threat? The line works both ways. He doesn’t let the husband off the hook either; the “humiliated,” at once celebrates his pragmatism and signals his cowardice. Finally, in the second to last line, the additional, grammatically unnecessary, “he” cements the husband as a man, even if a emasculated one.
The poem ends unresolved; the husband is “trying” to save his life. We don’t know whether he succeeds. Carver doesn’t explain.
Once upon a time I played basketball. I also played a lot of schoolyard American Football. Both of these sports have different possible defensive approaches. One of these is zone defense.
As a basketball player I had strengths and weaknesses. I was good around the basket, played hard, could throw an elbow, and rebounded the hell out of the ball. I was also a poor outside shooter and didn’t have enough quickness to get my own shot outside of about four feet. But the thing I was best at was zone defense. I was very good at zone defense.
As a football player I was a decent quarterback and a good what be called the “possession receiver” role. If I had played competitively I would have been able to catch the ball reliably and pick up a few yards after the catch. But the thing I was best at was zone defense. I was very good at zone defense.
As I understand them, the fundamental skills associated with zone defense are, the ability to read the entire field or court, the ability to pre-perceive the likely movement of the ball, the flexibility to break out of any assigned appointment and react to information as it changes on a micro-second basis, and the ability to take a risk to potentially get an interception. In football, a single interception can swing a whole game. In basketball an interception and dunk or lay in on the other end can be a catalyst for swinging the momentum to your team and change the trajectory of a game or quarter. When I was young I liked the cornerback Everson Walls. This was because he led the league in interceptions. I liked interceptions. I still do.
One time my friend from New Zealand asked to join his touch rugby club team for a game. So I did. He explained the rules and I told him I would get an interception and run it back for a “try.” Kiwis call touchdowns “tries” for some reason. He told me there was no way, interception tries were too hard and it was my first ever game. I scored two tries on interceptions. This was not because I was a good touch rugby player. This was because the above zone defense principles applied perfectly to rugby as well. I didn’t even know the rules really, but I could play zone defense. It was automatic.
Zone defense is one of two main types of defense. The other is man-to-man defense. I do not like man-to-man defense. I’m kind of bad at it. Man-to-man defense requires you to stick to an exact task, for example staying in front of your opponent, to the exclusion of all other considerations. Man-to-man defense is boring. It lacks creativity, it lacks pizzazz, it lacks excitement. Man-to-man defenders are great at what they do, however they are specialists. Zone defenders are generalists. I’m a generalist.
One more thing that zone defenders rely on is their teammates. A zone defender is responsible for a certain area rather than a certain person, however that area can be pretty vaguely defined in practice. So other zone defenders need to be attuned to the shifting boundaries of the “areas” of the field or court. There is no such thing as a fixed area. Areas, it turns out, are relative.
I believe that the principles of zone defense are widely applicable to life, work, and other pursuits. I identify as a zone defender.
Dedication: For Marcelo, my kindred spirit in zone defense.
The plane lands at the airport in Rome around 10 AM and the thin man, feeling semi-human after running a Lysol scented wash towel over his face, deplanes and cleares immigration with the passport from Alejandro. Alejandro does good work, he thinks, not for the first time.
As he departs security, he scans for his name among the line of folks holding placards upon departure. “Jack Bishop,” “thin man,” or any other suitable appellation would have sufficed, but the thin man sees none of these. When he has navigated the whole line, however, he sees a man who appears to be in his early sixties standing with an alert posture at the end of the queue. He stands about 5’10 and has salt and pepper hair cropped close. Ex-military or something, thinks the thin man. The man holds no sign, but nods meaningfully at the thin man. This is the guy.
“Jack Bishop?” the man inquires.
“Yeah, but most people call me thin man.”
“Mitchell Grey,” says the man. “We have a car waiting for you. Right this way.”
The thin man and Mitchell Grey exit the terminal into a parking lot where a dark grey Mercedes is waiting. The thin man slides into the back, where the requisite bottle of water and box of mints await. The driver, who looks to be in his early fifties, and wears a crisp white shirt under his blazer, asks if his new passenger wants any particular kind of music.
“Do you have any Red Krayola,” asks the thin man.
“Best I can do is Pere Ubu,” the driver replies.
“Fair enough.”
Mitchell Grey and the thin man relax for a moment as they cruise through the streets to “Non-Alignment Pact.” Then Grey turns to the thin man.
“Do you know what you are doing here?”
“No idea. Alejandro just told me to come over.”
“OK. Company X has a little problem we need to handle.”
“What kind of problem?”
“A certain senior vice-president has been messing around with a woman who, we have reason to believe, is employed by a competitor, the Pelican Corp. He has, to put it plainly, fallen into a honey trap.”
“I see. Corporate espionage.”
“Indeed. Alejandro said you are a bit of an expert.”
“I just got lucky once.”
“Well, let’s see if you can’t get lucky again. We need to find out what the woman knows and neutralize her position. Then we’ll let the vice-president know his time at the top is done and he needs to skip town.”
“Alejandro said Company X is respectable. I didn’t know we’d have to neutralize anyone.”
“There are various ways to neutralize someone, most of them non-lethal. And Company X is respectable. You and me are just in the respectability management business.”
“I guess we are,” said the thin man. “What’s our first move?”
“There’s a jazz trio playing tonight at a little club downtown. The woman in question will be there with the vice-president. You will ingratiate yourself with her while I have a little warm-up chat with the VP. She is called Maya, and likes intrigue. So intrigue her.”
“I see. Have you done this kind of thing before?”
“I’ve done a lot of things,” said Mitchell Grey. This, muses the thin man, was undoubtedly true.
The driver pulled up to the Westin Excelsior and Grey and the thin man get out.
“Your room is on the 6th floor,” says Grey. The show starts at 19:30, but doors open at 6 for drinks. We’ll get there early to get the lay of the land. See you in the lobby at 17:15.”
Jesus thinks the thin man. Another brutal turnaround, same as it ever was. But he doesn’t let it show.
“17:15, sure thing. What should I wear?”
“Whatever makes you comfortable at a nightclub. And thin man, bring your best smile.”
“Copy,” says the thin man. This all sounds like work, but he allows himself to experience a slight twinge of anticipation for the evening. Honey pots, Maya the goddess of illusion, powerful men behaving badly, a little jazz—it might be fun. He’d try and bring his A-game this time.
