Snow!

 [I'm writing this almost a week after the fact, but back-dating it to the day it happened.]

This is October, right? The middle of autumn? Astrologically, if you pay attention to those things, the sun hasn't even entered Scorpio yet. Right?

Yes, that's what I thought. Thanks for the reassurance.

 

Only ... in that case ... why does my car look like this?

 

I'm in  Sticksville, of course. It's part of my travel for work this month, travel that I allude to here and here (for example). And it's snowing because, I guess, why not? One colleague in the office here (a native of Sticksville) tells me that in her experience the only month it has never snowed is July. It's not July. So sure, hell, of course it snowed.

 

The rental agency didn't provide me with a scraper for my windshield, nor with a brush for the roof. Probably they didn't think it would be needed yet, not this early in the season. And when I looked at the weather projections for this month, everything said it was going to be a lot warmer than this so I didn't bother to pack gloves.

 

This means I got to sweep the snow off my car with my bare hands, pausing after every couple of sweeps to try to warm them a bit because the cold hurt so much. And fortunately by the time I drove back to the hotel from work a lot of other cars had been driving across the roads, so they were more or less clear. The parking lot at the hotel had been at least partly shoveled, so there was no risk that I might fall and give myself a(nother) concussion. That's all to the good.

 

But I did find myself asking Marie why people live in such a godforsaken place. She grew up somewhere very similar, and said it's all about the bragging rights. And she reminded me that if I accept the transfer I've been offered, I can experience this meteorological unpredictability every single year.

 

Just bloody wonderful.

   

Visiting Debbie en route

 As I drove from Faraway City to Sticksville, I stopped to visit Debbie. It was a long drive and she's only kind-of on the way ... but stopping at her place meant I had to drive only nine hours Friday instead of over ten. Then I had another three hours today, but still it was worth it.

It was different from my earlier visits in a couple of subtle-but-visible ways. 

I arrived in the evening, close to dinner time, more or less. Debbie let me in and asked about my drive, and of course I was exhausted. At the same time I had wound up a lot of energy keeping myself awake and alert the whole time. Tired but wired. So I started rattling off at high speed what a long drive it had been and how tired I was, and after a couple of minutes Debbie chuckled.

"Gosh, I feel like I should offer you a glass of wine, or a beer or something."

Wait, what? Is this Debbie? Back when we were dating (fucking) one of the few hard disagreements we stumbled over was about alcohol. I drank; Debbie didn't. It was never an actual problem between us, because we didn't live together and I was always perfectly willing not to drink when I was around her. But the one or two times we ventured to talk about it at a theoretical level, I quickly realized there was nothing to gain from pushing the question. Back when she was a little girl her parents both drank too much, and they fought violently when they were drunk, and so Debbie said she saw alcohol (in the words of the Buddha's five precepts) as a source of great suffering. When I have visited her in the last few years I've noticed that she might keep a bottle of wine or a couple of beers in the fridge, but I've always assumed that it's because her son-in-law drinks occasionally and so she keeps it for him. (The first time I visited, I saw a bottle of wine and asked about it, and she hurriedly said that it was a gift and she was looking for someone else to give it to. Ever since then I have made it a point not to ask.)

Anyway, I waved away the offer. No, of course not, don't worry about it. And went on with my story. (If you've been following this story in a linear way, I had better add that I've fallen away from the dry living I wrote about a month ago. So I turned it down for Debbie's sake and not my own.)

Then after dinner, as we were sitting down for dessert, she pulled out a bottle of Frangelico. She only poured us each a very little bit, but still -- it's the first time Debbie has every poured me a glass of alcohol.

We started to talk about liqueurs. There's a pecan liqueur called Rivulet that she really wants to find a bottle of, but she has had the damnedest time tracking it down. I mentioned that earlier this year I had made a batch of limoncello using this recipe I found out on the Internet. She asked, "Is that the recipe where you start with vodka and soak the lemon zest in vodka for several weeks?" I told her, "Yes, exactly." And she said she has made the exact same recipe. She agreed that it turns out very well. Wait, what? Debbie bought vodka to make homemade liqueur? This visit was shaping up to be different from earlier ones.

When I first arrived, as I was telling her all about the long drive to get there, she said, "You know, I thought about that today. I don't know why it didn't occur to me before, but I started thinking, If he were your boyfriend this would be really romantic. Look how far he's driving, just to spend time with you! Isn't that sweet? I'd be telling myself, He must really love you to do this!"

She said it like it was a joke, like I was supposed to laugh. So I did. But like a shot I added, "Of course, I do!" Then I dropped it. We've acknowledged that the love is still there, but I think she's probably more comfortable if we don't dwell on it. 

Maybe it's my imagination, but it seems like Debbie was more physically demonstrative than she has been during earlier visits, though she still kept it all within the bounds of propriety; that means we hugged and kissed more often but all the kisses were strictly closed-mouthed. I think this must have been at least partly because we've all had to draw back from physical affection during the age of COVID-19, and so we are all slightly starved for it. Debbie and I treated this visit like an exception because Debbie recently recovered from COVID-19, and so we figured she was neither susceptible (no vector pointing to her) nor contagious (no vector pointing to me). 

On the down side, we didn't work together in the kitchen as smoothly and effortlessly as we have in the past, which made me realize we have gotten out of practice. Nothing serious, but we had to pay more attention not to bump into each other, and I didn't always know right away what to do next. Little things. But it wasn't a big deal for Debbie. She still commented on enjoying how well we worked together.

And there were little domestic moments that worked very well. Saturday morning while she was still in the back of the house, I wanted a cup of coffee. I know where her cups are, I know where she keeps her coffee -- and so I just made it. When she came out she remarked how happy it made her that I felt so at home there. And it made me happy too: honestly, that cup of coffee meant way more to me than just waking up in the morning, exactly because I knew where everything was and I knew it was fine for me to go ahead and make it. It was a little bit like being at home.   

I've told you so much about how the visit felt, but what did we actually do?

We meditated together each morning. Saturday we packed a lunch and then went for a long hike around a nearby lake. I was fine on the level parts, but there were a couple of sharp inclines that really winded me; and at one point I actually had to stop to catch my breath. It's really clear to me that my level of physical activity has dropped way down since COVID-19 hit. Meanwhile Debbie has started talking about hiking the West Highland Way in Scotland next summer. She wants me to come along, and in principle I'd love to. But I'm going to have to get in much better shape if I want any prayer of making it to the end. How about if I start exercising tomorrow? (I have mentioned this proposal to Marie, who has so far said nothing much about it. As a memo, I had better make sure it's not a problem for her.)

In the late afternoon / early evening, after we got back from our hike, we harvested everything that was left in her garden from the summer. The weather prediction was for snow that night, so we figured it was best to bring it all in. And honestly there was quite a lot. Some of it made its way into dinner that night, but she had plenty left over for later.

As we were harvesting vegetables, Son2 called to ask me a question about his job-hunting. So far he has had no luck finding a job (possibly this isn't the best economy to look in right now), so what would I think if he joined the Peace Corps? He and I discussed it a little bit, and then after he hung up I discussed it some more with Debbie. She thought it sounded like a great idea. I wondered if it would be an obstacle to his finding employment later (if he looked too much like a starry-eyed idealist) but her point was that any job interview is about whether you can tell a compelling story. And she thinks Son2 could tell a compelling story about the Peace Corps, if he were to join it. So maybe ...?

Sunday morning we meditated together again, and then I made ready to continue my drive on towards Sticksville. But we also talked a little bit about the visit. I told her how much I always enjoy my visits there, that they always give me a chance to slow down, shift gears, and recharge. She said yes, in fact she knows her house can function like a retreat center, some kind of little monastic island. I hadn't thought of it in those terms before, but it is a good comparison. 

And so the visit wound to a close. I packed my car. We hugged and kissed a last time. And I drove away. Back to my Grand Tour. But spending the weekend there, outside of Work and the World, was priceless. It always is.

    

Dinner with Kathleen

I had dinner a couple nights ago with a colleague from an office in Faraway City. I’ll call her Kathleen. She’s a Product Manager with a focus on the products we design in my home office. (I suppose I should say “the products we used to design there,” since we are being shut down.) A while ago – honestly, I don’t remember when or how – I apparently helped her find some data she needed for something. And ever since, she has been telling me, “The next time you’re in town, I owe you a coffee.” Well I was in town last week, as part of the Grand Tour I’m taking of our offices. And about the only time I had free during the whole visit was dinner one night. So we met for dinner. 

She wasn’t really buying my dinner, of course. I’m traveling for work, so I’m going to expense the meal. In fact, if we’d gone somewhere slightly cheaper I probably could have bought her dinner and passed it off as me being very hungry. The point was the meal itself. That we got to spend time away from the office just talking. 

In substance it was all unexceptionable. We were both animated in chatting, we told stories about who we are and where we’ve come from, ... in general the volume of words to food was pretty high. But there was nothing that I would overtly identify as flirting. No soft compliments sotto voce, no delicate pauses, no staring meaningfully into each other’s eyes. She mentioned her husband (once, when she talked about living “in my husband’s house but not with my parents”). I mentioned Wife (once, when she was essential for a story). So we each made a pro forma gesture in the direction of romantic unavailability, and to look at a transcript of the evening you would never find anything romantic in it. There wasn't anything. Open and shut.

Only ... as Plato and Aristotle could easily remind you, the world is composed of form as well as substance. And I couldn't help but notice tiny details of form -- tiny details, nothing more, but still:

• Since Kathleen didn't have the opportunity to buy me coffee, she bought be a bag of gourmet desserts that I could carry home with me. She made a point to add, "I hope no-one in your family is allergic to anything in these" ... and that surely distracted attention from the pink bag she handed them over in.
• After dinner was over, we spent the longest time standing in the cold wind in the parking lot before getting into our respective cars to drive away. I don't remember what we were discussing, and I'm sure that a transcript would have been very banal. Still. Standing in the cold wind in the parking lot instead of just saying "Good bye."
  
• She wore a thin, short skirt. It was dark so I might not even have noticed it except that we spent so long standing in the cold wind in the parking lot ... and the wind kept trying to lift her skirt so that she had to keep holding it down. The interplay between the wind and her hand caught my attention, so that I was able to see how light and thin the fabric was, and also how short the skirt was cut. Admittedly Kathleen isn't as tall as I am. But still, it was pretty short.
• She wore high heels -- delicate, pointy high heels, where the heel itself seemed no more than a needle. It was a bit of a hindrance when she had to cross the street between the restaurant and the parking lot. And she blamed the high heels on the COVID-19 pandemic, claiming to have been housebound for so many months that she was desperate for any excuse to wear "grown-up clothes." Still, I can't help thinking that for some dinner guests, "grown-up clothes" would have included shoes that were a bit more sensible than those ones.

 Does any of this mean anything? Not by itself, no. Wearing high heels does not ipso facto mean you are trying to flirt with anyone. And how often will I even see Kathleen in the future? She works in Faraway City. I work on the other side of the continent.

Oh ... wait ... I won't work there much longer, will I? We are closing that office. I am being given a chance to move to Sticksville, which isn't Faraway City -- but it is only one time zone away, and not three. So it's closer, for whatever that is worth.

On the subject of whether I should take up the offer to move, Kathleen said she would 100% understand and agree with my decision if I said No, because Sticksville is nowhere near as nice a place to live as Beautiful City (my home). Having said that, she went on to say that the transition the company will have to make (absorbing all the work we used to do) will be way more painful if I don't accept the offer. She explained this with reference to all the history that I carry in my head, all the questions I can answer ... that kind of thing. Nothing, not even her tone of voice, suggested that she meant any kind of personal reference at all. As I say, there was really nothing like that going on. But I did notice that she used the word painful instead of clumsy, cumbersome, awkward, or difficult. I don't really think that choice of words meant anything, but this whole post is an exercise in teasing out possible meanings that I don't really believe ... just because they are possible, and I've been wrong before. Maybe we'll see.

   

Stalled, 2

 The train started to move again as I was writing you. So we are traveling through more open space at this point.

But these days I’m stalled in another way too. I’ve told you that my office is closing, and I’ve been offered a position in Sticksville. I’ve also mentioned that I don’t much like the idea of moving to Sticksville, for a variety of reasons — among them, that I’m terrified of the weather. (I didn’t use to be actually afraid of it. But after my trip a year and a half ago, I am.) 

So if I don’t want to move to Sticksville, what am I doing about it? Not nearly enough. My search for local jobs has been very desultory. I did find one job offered by my company in Timbuktu — well, in Europe, but it would have involved traveling the world and it was right in line with my expertise. This looked really exciting, so I applied right away and sent a follow-up email emphasizing what a great guy I am and referencing a common contact that the HR Manager of that division could talk to as a reference. And I was culled off the list before they ever got as far as the first interview. (Sigh.) Very disappointing. Other than that I have poked around, occasionally looking for other jobs locally or else with my company in other locations. But it’s been nothing you could really call a job search. 

So what does this mean? 

Maybe it means that I don’t really think Sticksville is so bad after all, or at any rate that I evaluate it as preferable to starting over at zero in just-some-random-job. Maybe the history and reputation that I have built up with this unit aren’t things I want to toss away recklessly. 

Or maybe — absent something really exciting — I prefer to hide my head in the sand and avoid thinking about the issue altogether rather than confront the hard and purposeful work of looking for a job. As long as I can get away with drifting by taking whatever option is right in front of me, why not do it? 

I guess I find out what I really want by seeing what I do.

But damn, it would have been exciting to relocate to Timbuktu...!

Stalled

 I’m sitting on a train, in a sleeper car, absolutely motionless in the middle of empty land. I see a freeway over there in the middle distance. At this hour of the morning, most of the traffic on it are large trucks. Other than that, it’s pretty much a straight shot to the horizon, over which the sun is about to come up. I don’t know why the train has stopped but it is very restful. It’s pleasant just to sit and look out the window. But somehow I feel like I ought to be working, or doing something otherwise productive: writing a poem, say, or a trenchant philosophical essay for the Patio. I’ve decided to compromise on this instead. 

I can’t see the sun yet, but I can now see sunlight reflecting off the trucks on the freeway over there. It won’t be long now. 

Why am I on a train in the middle of nowhere? The idea is that I’m traveling for work. I have things to do at one of our offices in the metropolitan area of Faraway City, and then at our office in Sticksville, and then at one other office I don’t remember giving a name to. And of course I live on the other side of the continent. Before COVID-19, I would have flown — possibly even making three trips of it. (Though three trips in three consecutive weeks would have been a little crazy.) But my boss wasn’t too pleased at authorizing my travel when there was the risk that I might get sick on the plane, or going through security. So I suggested that I take the train and hire a sleeper compartment. This would give me more isolation, which should help. To be sure, I’m only taking the train till I hit a rough midpoint among my destinations: then I rent a car and drive back and forth among them. In some ways it’s still a little crazy. 

But I should get a good picture of how many miles I’ve been flying over all these other trips. And I’ll have a couple days over one weekend to visit Debbie. That will be nice.

Home ownership, 2

 Do I miss being a homeowner?

Yesterday morning I went to the office. My kitchen sink was clear. When I came home in the evening there were a couple inches of grey, filthy water. I tried using a plunger on them, but nothing.

I live in an apartment, so even if I didn't throw anything bad down the sink (and I'm certain I didn't) the pipes are still going to be affected by what other people throw down their sinks. I have no control over that. That sure looks like a downside of renting an apartment.

So what did I do? I logged onto the landlord's "Tenant Portal" and reported the problem. I washed my remaining dishes in the bathroom sink and went out for dinner. This morning about 9:30, while I was in the middle of a conference call for work, I get a personal call: "Is this Hosea Tanatu? This is XYZ Plumbing, and your landlord is sending me over. I should be there inside of an hour."

I don't have to worry what it costs, or even know. I don't have to scan through a list of competitors to pick the right one, or make any of the arrangements. For someone like me with social anxiety around picking up the phone to make cold calls, this is as good as it gets. 

Score one for not owning my own home.

    

Tolstoy on expert coquettes

“Ask an expert coquette who has set herself the task of captivating a man, which she would prefer to risk: to be convicted in his presence of lying, of cruelty, or even of dissoluteness, or to appear before him in an ugly and badly made dress — she will always prefer the first. She knows that we [men] are continually lying about high sentiments, but really only want her body and will therefore forgive any abomination except an ugly tasteless costume that is in bad style.”

Pozdnyshev, in “The Kreutzer Sonata,” chapter 6.

I don't know whether Pozdnyshev speaks for Tolstoy in this novella -- I think maybe he does -- but right now my interest is more whether this statement is true. 

I think D would have concurred, if pressed. Looking good was really important to her, and she studied it as a science. She thought it was genuinely puzzling that I was married to Wife, because (in her evaluation) I was so much more attractive than Wife was, and she considered it a scientific fact that on the whole spouses are of comparable attractiveness. I'd never heard about this until she told me, but she treated it as common knowledge, rather like knowing that the earth goes around the sun. 

One interesting thought is that there are plenty of misogynists who would agree with the first sentence -- that women are more concerned with their physical appearance than with their moral standing -- on the grounds that women are silly, vain creatures. Pozdnyshev (and by extension Tolstoy) affirms the same thesis on the grounds that men are all horndogs, and that women are perceptive enough to see through our bullshit to the reality underneath.

I sent the quote to Marie, without the comments about D. I wonder if she will concur that this sounds like her mother? We'll see ….

          

Boyfriend 7 is dying

 I honestly thought I'd never have anything more to post about any of Wife's boyfriends, except maybe the occasional retrospective or "blast from the past" when I wrote about something that happened long ago. But I guess I was wrong.

A little after 10 o'clock this morning I got a text from Wife.

Wife: Not that you care, but Bruce* is on hospice.

Hosea: Bruce who?

Wife: Bruce Jenner.* The Bruce who's been part of my life for a number of years now. No matter.

* In other words, Boyfriend 7. Obviously this guy's name isn't really "Bruce Jenner"! Like everyone else in this blog except public figures or authors, I have given him a fake name.

Hosea: OK. I remember the Jenners.** But after all I haven't been part of your life for several years now so my news is a little out of date. For that reason I have to ask you to cut me a little slack on that front. Anyway I'm glad you were able to find someone. Hospice is tough. Hope you can still visit despite COVID.

**Wife met them back when she was attending the local Baptist church, a church she dragged me and the boys to join her at for a few years. Bruce's wife Sue Jenner ran a women's small group for Bible study that Wife was part of for years, and she shows up briefly in this story here under the header "Sunday morning at church" and named "Mrs. B." Sorry, end of digression.

Wife: He's at home right now, so yes. It's a matter of paying for transportation. 

But COVID? What's the worst that could happen? He could get sick and die? A little black humor …. 

Actually, I could. He has enough health care providers that I will be very careful. I'm used to a virtual quarantine.

Hosea: At home? Is he still with Sue? Isn't that … awkward?

Wife: Sue and also Steve, his 30-something son who has lived there the last five years. Awkward? Bruce is my best friend and confidant and vice versa. Would we still be more if prostate cancer hadn't interfered years ago? Maybe. But as it is, we're just the best of friends. Sue and I were friends back at church and if she suspects anything she's never let on, so no. I just blend into the family. Steve is the only one I'm still awkward around. I wish it weren't so. But I would never, ever do anything to come between Bruce and Sue, and I've paid the price for being the "other woman," which BTW is steep. Yet it has been worth it, so what can I say? 

I always knew I'd get hurt, either by break-up or death because he's a decade my senior. I just didn't expect him to die at 67. 

In our world, that is young. 

It was amyloidosis -- in reaction to an extended infection gotten at the hospital with a knee replacement. So his knee replacement killed him.

__________

And that's the news.

I don't know what I want to say about it. Of course while we were living under the same roof I was really frustrated and really upset by the way Wife carried on with all her amours -- at least until I got so disgusted with her that I just stopped caring. But everyone needs to know that someone cares about them, somewhere in the world. Once we were done and I was safely out of the house, it did occur to me from time to time that she probably needed someone in her life as an emotional anchor, whether that person were a sexual lover in addition or not. 

I'm pretty sure that I've talked about this from time to time over the years. Here's one post that I was able to think of and find. (Check Note 8.) There might be others. I realize that the labels I use to categorize posts are never actually useful when I want to track down something specific.

As for the sexual side, … well she says prostate cancer ended that, though I have already expressed myself on why that's a foolish excuse. But maybe I'm wrong. Even before I moved out of the house I remember Wife saying at one point that she could no longer come. I don't know if that was something temporary, or if it was permanent. If it were permanent then I guess she might still enjoy the closeness of sex and being able to host a lover inside her, but any ability he might have with tongue and fingers would be irrelevant.

Whatever. I don't know, don't need to know, and don't even really want to know.

I am glad she found someone for emotional support. God knows, during the thirty years I knew her she needed a lot of emotional support and I assume she still does. It's too bad he's dying now.