Malfred had always been unlucky. His bad luck began the day he was born and his mother named him Malfred. In her as-yet-undiagnosed schizophrenic ranting, she assured the incredulous nurses that it was an old family name. Yes, they replied, and perhaps it should stay that way, but she could not be swayed.
Possibly due to his unfortunate name, and more possibly due to the pernicious influence of mental illness on every aspect of life, Malfred learned to temper his expectations from an early age. He became a sort of virtuoso of bad news, riding the crest of each wave of disaster with an expertise usually found in people who drive extremely fancy but tasteful automobiles.
His even reaction to catastrophe, while laudable, did little to endear him to his classmates. Throughout his childhood, Malfred was perplexed to observe the growth of social bonds all around him, which nevertheless always seemed to fail to grow in his direction. He was well known as a harbinger of destruction, and though he always emerged more-or-less unscathed, those in his proximity rarely considered themselves the better off, and he had no friends.
This sorry state of affairs lasted roughly until the end of the most awkward stages of puberty in Malfred's cohort, when two events occurred, roughly simultaneously, that, as far as Malfred was concerned, Put Him On The Map.
The first of these was the sudden, complete, and final mental breakdown ("episode") of Malfred's mother, who discovered one of Malfred's pubic hairs on the bathroom floor and, before she knew it, had made the mental leap to scaling Mt. Everest in her holy quest to spare her son from the ravages of adulthood by, basically, interring him in a monastery at the top. That there was no monastery, no mountain, and possibly no pubic hair did not dissuade her, and the fire department had to be called to pry her off of the chimney.
With a kindly uncle's guidance, Malfred successfully had himself emancipated, and had his mother indefinitely committed to an institution which would be far better suited to deal with her unique perspective on reality than her sixteen-year-old son could.
The very afternoon of her fatefully imagined climb, just two hours before Malfred returned home to discover the liberating scene, he had met the first love of his life. Her name was Tuva, and she knew how to look at him in a way that completely disarmed him. She disregarded the aura of misfortune he carried, as overwhelmed by the power of youthful hormones as he, and they began a relationship.
There are two more stories like this in Malfred's life, similar enough to elide. They happened years later, and apart, and affected him in much the same way. He never forgot those girls, even after he had been so long separated from them, ages past when the cruel happenstances of his life had driven them far from his side, so that only a wisp of their light and laughter remained.
Malfred was a lonely man, but an imaginative one. All that was prologue.
Thursday, September 8, 2016
Wednesday, September 7, 2016
social mediation
Perhaps you've heard of the research detailing how Facebook can cause depression.
Now, I'm not trying to be tech-alarmist here. Any form of social interaction can result in depression. Facebook just enables us to have thousands of minor interactions per day at a faster rate than was ever feasibly possible before. I don't just mean active interactions -- I'm including just glancing at someone's status update.
The gist of the research is that people with low self-esteem, when forced to constantly compare themselves to others, suffer undue levels of social stress. This stress, unchecked, can eventually develop into anxiety and depression. This occurs primarily because people tend to share more of the good things in their lives on Facebook and other social networking platforms, so users are generally bombarded with how great their friends' and acquaintances lives are (seem to be). Whereas users are all too aware of the problems in their own lives, even in spite of the cheerful facades they maintain on social media, and wind up assuming everybody else is doing better than they are.
That isn't a problem for people like me, who have high self-esteem, and know that how great we are is a fact for the record, irrespective of what's going on in ours and others' lives. We just post all the good stuff about our lives, deal with the bad stuff quietly, and make everyone else miserable thereby!
But there is a flip side to this dastardly equation. All those happy people you see out there? They're all suffering somehow. Everybody on your friends list, at some point, feels as if their lives are spinning out of control. Everyone is looking for a way to keep it together for one more day.
Remember that, the next time you talk to somebody who seems to be doing great. We're all under a tremendous amount of stress. We all carry in our hearts a bevy of regrets, shames, anxieties, and creeping uncertainties. Most of us, I hope, have found our own ways to cope with these, but they're still present. Remember that, and let it be the source of a little more kindness in your day.
Now, I'm not trying to be tech-alarmist here. Any form of social interaction can result in depression. Facebook just enables us to have thousands of minor interactions per day at a faster rate than was ever feasibly possible before. I don't just mean active interactions -- I'm including just glancing at someone's status update.
The gist of the research is that people with low self-esteem, when forced to constantly compare themselves to others, suffer undue levels of social stress. This stress, unchecked, can eventually develop into anxiety and depression. This occurs primarily because people tend to share more of the good things in their lives on Facebook and other social networking platforms, so users are generally bombarded with how great their friends' and acquaintances lives are (seem to be). Whereas users are all too aware of the problems in their own lives, even in spite of the cheerful facades they maintain on social media, and wind up assuming everybody else is doing better than they are.
That isn't a problem for people like me, who have high self-esteem, and know that how great we are is a fact for the record, irrespective of what's going on in ours and others' lives. We just post all the good stuff about our lives, deal with the bad stuff quietly, and make everyone else miserable thereby!
But there is a flip side to this dastardly equation. All those happy people you see out there? They're all suffering somehow. Everybody on your friends list, at some point, feels as if their lives are spinning out of control. Everyone is looking for a way to keep it together for one more day.
Remember that, the next time you talk to somebody who seems to be doing great. We're all under a tremendous amount of stress. We all carry in our hearts a bevy of regrets, shames, anxieties, and creeping uncertainties. Most of us, I hope, have found our own ways to cope with these, but they're still present. Remember that, and let it be the source of a little more kindness in your day.
Tuesday, September 6, 2016
words on fire
In the poetry class I took in those days of yore three-and-a-half years ago, (back when I still believed in a variety of things that have since proven to be one of the following: true, incredibly true, indescribably true, and absolutely, horribly false. Yes, I was right about almost everything. That's my way.), the very same poetry class that provided the impetus that introduced me to the catalyst that got this blog up and running, I was given a very valuable, possibly invaluable, piece of advice by my professor, whose words ever rang clearly and positively with the unmistakable timbre of truth.
I had floated to her the idea of gifting my wife a poem for our 4th wedding anniversary, an idea I found to be utterly romantic, a true present of one's self, my soul wrapped up in some ink and paper. My professor, in her wisdom, drew me up short. Shaking her head, she told me it would be a terrible idea to make such a gift, at least to a non-poet. She was bound not to get it (at least, not in the fancy-poem way I'd intended), and then I was bound to be awfully upset, and the whole thing would be a shambles.
It was a good point. When you're getting someone a gift, get them something they can appreciate, not something that's special to you. That professor had a lot of great advice when it came to poems, and I'm not done relating it to you, you lucky dog.
The next piece of tender guidance she offered was this: do not rely on your emotions to fuel your poetry. She had no problem with emotions being present in poems as such, but she was wary of their serving as the sole inspiration for the works. Believe it or not, it is very possible to run out of emotions this way! It can lead to very fertile works, but few of them, and that's not what makes a good poet. Poets must add inspiration to the world, not subtract it.
This is a lesson I am still trying to learn. Poetry is a noble and admirable endeavor, and I don't want to cheapen it by getting my feelings all over it. But it's so tempting to relate a story that moved me in such florid language as to obscure, a little bit, the honest pain that waits inside. That creates, in the poem, a little escape for me, a little safe spot where I can go to express my pain without activating all the world's mechanisms that spring into motion the instant a privileged person like me says "OUCH, MY SOUL".
I wrote those raw poems. I shared them with my class. By and large, it freaked them out. Their most common response was to say "are you okay?" I tried to tell them that yes, for their purposes I am fine, and please judge the poem on its own merits and don't treat me like I'm taking the bandage off of a third degree burn. That's what I'm doing, spiritually, but I want feedback, not sympathy. I want to be corrected, not consoled.
You were probably hoping to read a poem, but I'm not quite ready to share a full one yet. Instead, let me offer you the first two stanzas of the poem I shared part of two years ago, "A Surfeit of Wishes".
I had floated to her the idea of gifting my wife a poem for our 4th wedding anniversary, an idea I found to be utterly romantic, a true present of one's self, my soul wrapped up in some ink and paper. My professor, in her wisdom, drew me up short. Shaking her head, she told me it would be a terrible idea to make such a gift, at least to a non-poet. She was bound not to get it (at least, not in the fancy-poem way I'd intended), and then I was bound to be awfully upset, and the whole thing would be a shambles.
It was a good point. When you're getting someone a gift, get them something they can appreciate, not something that's special to you. That professor had a lot of great advice when it came to poems, and I'm not done relating it to you, you lucky dog.
The next piece of tender guidance she offered was this: do not rely on your emotions to fuel your poetry. She had no problem with emotions being present in poems as such, but she was wary of their serving as the sole inspiration for the works. Believe it or not, it is very possible to run out of emotions this way! It can lead to very fertile works, but few of them, and that's not what makes a good poet. Poets must add inspiration to the world, not subtract it.
This is a lesson I am still trying to learn. Poetry is a noble and admirable endeavor, and I don't want to cheapen it by getting my feelings all over it. But it's so tempting to relate a story that moved me in such florid language as to obscure, a little bit, the honest pain that waits inside. That creates, in the poem, a little escape for me, a little safe spot where I can go to express my pain without activating all the world's mechanisms that spring into motion the instant a privileged person like me says "OUCH, MY SOUL".
I wrote those raw poems. I shared them with my class. By and large, it freaked them out. Their most common response was to say "are you okay?" I tried to tell them that yes, for their purposes I am fine, and please judge the poem on its own merits and don't treat me like I'm taking the bandage off of a third degree burn. That's what I'm doing, spiritually, but I want feedback, not sympathy. I want to be corrected, not consoled.
You were probably hoping to read a poem, but I'm not quite ready to share a full one yet. Instead, let me offer you the first two stanzas of the poem I shared part of two years ago, "A Surfeit of Wishes".
Oh, did I write this.
Over and over again, I wrote it-
I wrote it with tears on the floor,
With the look in my eyes across a table,
With my jaw working soundlessly.
I wrote and unwrote with the fury of one
Driven by the endless roaring gulph inside,
Who sought just a moment’s rest from fire.
Having cast the words into the flames, I realized late
That smoke, too, sends a message.
Monday, September 5, 2016
red september
Last night, I lay myself down to sleep knowing I was in for strange, unsettling dreams. The evening's unconscious musings did not disappoint.
In my dream, my entire workplace had gone on a trip to somewhere in Asia, though I know not where. The buildings and people appeared entirely Western, though their language was strange to me, but geographically we were somewhere west of Guangzhou.
I had brought, along with me, my baby daughter, though my wife was nowhere to be seen. I kept her safe and happy with a lot of help from my co-workers, who all adore her and were more than happy to assist, and a large supply of infant formula that I kept in my hotel room.
There was a side-trip planned, in which we were all to take the train and perform a play for the pleasure of the Tsar of the Russian Empire. This was the centerpiece of the trip, even though it wasn't our main destination, because a good showing in front of the Tsar would do wonders for the prestige of my workplace.
I had learned my part in the play, and the day we were due to depart, I found myself nevertheless with a very full schedule. My mother had asked me to stop by her home and help set up the new router she'd received from Verizon. A friend was having serious computer issues and asked me to come take a look at her machine. And, I was informed the morning of the trip, the rest of the staff had decided they would not be able to make the trip at all, and it was up to me to perform the play for the Tsar as a one-man show.
I was a little stressed. I needed to learn at least a dozen new parts, deal with two separate computer incidents, and make it on the train with my daughter. Faced with all this, I decided that my mom would have to wait. She would understand.
I stopped by my friend's place and set to work on the computer, but what should have been a fifteen-minute job turned into two hours, and she grew angrier and angrier at the time I was taking. I finally fixed the issue, apologized for my slowness, and hightailed it out of there.
I made it to the hotel, grabbed my daughter, and drove as fast as I could to the train station. I arrived only to learn that I had forgotten two very important things: my passport, and the baby formula. I still hadn't even looked at the script.
My car, naturally, failed to start, and I abandoned it. Instead, I ran back to the hotel, gathered all the supplies and my passport in a giant bag, and carried all of it, daughter included, back to the train station at a full run. I strained and slowed under the immense weight of all the baby supplies, and onlookers pointed and laughed, but I finally limped onto the the train with everything I needed, and we set off for Russia and the Tsar.
On the way, the Russian Revolution occurred, and the Tsar was deposed. When I arrived, all was in turmoil, and nobody knew why I was there or exactly what they should do with me. As a suspicious foreign element, I was imprisoned until they could figure it out. My daughter was taken from me. I languished in prison for days, submitting appeal after appeal for my freedom, but nobody granted the political appointment of Warden ever survived more than a day without being executed for this or that treason.
I spent the rest of that dream trying to work out the tangled web of Russian politics to understand who was ultimately in charge, but even the Prime Minister changed on a regular basis, and my pleas continued to fall on deaf areas.
Instead of the rest I was due, I lost a night worrying about the vagaries of fake Russian political maneuvering, an American unhappily abroad. I am not sure that I ever saw my daughter again, and a gulag was probably somewhere in my future.
I never got to perform that play.
In my dream, my entire workplace had gone on a trip to somewhere in Asia, though I know not where. The buildings and people appeared entirely Western, though their language was strange to me, but geographically we were somewhere west of Guangzhou.
I had brought, along with me, my baby daughter, though my wife was nowhere to be seen. I kept her safe and happy with a lot of help from my co-workers, who all adore her and were more than happy to assist, and a large supply of infant formula that I kept in my hotel room.
There was a side-trip planned, in which we were all to take the train and perform a play for the pleasure of the Tsar of the Russian Empire. This was the centerpiece of the trip, even though it wasn't our main destination, because a good showing in front of the Tsar would do wonders for the prestige of my workplace.
I had learned my part in the play, and the day we were due to depart, I found myself nevertheless with a very full schedule. My mother had asked me to stop by her home and help set up the new router she'd received from Verizon. A friend was having serious computer issues and asked me to come take a look at her machine. And, I was informed the morning of the trip, the rest of the staff had decided they would not be able to make the trip at all, and it was up to me to perform the play for the Tsar as a one-man show.
I was a little stressed. I needed to learn at least a dozen new parts, deal with two separate computer incidents, and make it on the train with my daughter. Faced with all this, I decided that my mom would have to wait. She would understand.
I stopped by my friend's place and set to work on the computer, but what should have been a fifteen-minute job turned into two hours, and she grew angrier and angrier at the time I was taking. I finally fixed the issue, apologized for my slowness, and hightailed it out of there.
I made it to the hotel, grabbed my daughter, and drove as fast as I could to the train station. I arrived only to learn that I had forgotten two very important things: my passport, and the baby formula. I still hadn't even looked at the script.
My car, naturally, failed to start, and I abandoned it. Instead, I ran back to the hotel, gathered all the supplies and my passport in a giant bag, and carried all of it, daughter included, back to the train station at a full run. I strained and slowed under the immense weight of all the baby supplies, and onlookers pointed and laughed, but I finally limped onto the the train with everything I needed, and we set off for Russia and the Tsar.
On the way, the Russian Revolution occurred, and the Tsar was deposed. When I arrived, all was in turmoil, and nobody knew why I was there or exactly what they should do with me. As a suspicious foreign element, I was imprisoned until they could figure it out. My daughter was taken from me. I languished in prison for days, submitting appeal after appeal for my freedom, but nobody granted the political appointment of Warden ever survived more than a day without being executed for this or that treason.
I spent the rest of that dream trying to work out the tangled web of Russian politics to understand who was ultimately in charge, but even the Prime Minister changed on a regular basis, and my pleas continued to fall on deaf areas.
Instead of the rest I was due, I lost a night worrying about the vagaries of fake Russian political maneuvering, an American unhappily abroad. I am not sure that I ever saw my daughter again, and a gulag was probably somewhere in my future.
I never got to perform that play.
Sunday, September 4, 2016
meat, cabbage, rice, friendship
Today, I was able to treat myself to an afternoon indulging in one of the great loves of my life. Many people are surprised when they learn about this particular fixation of mine, though the better they know me, the less out of character it seems. Those who know me best just nod, thinking to themselves, "yes, this is right. this is perfectly consistent with who he is, and who he has always been."
I went to a Korean restaurant. I am a great food lover, a true gourmet, and of all the fine cuisines available on this green earth, that which hails from the Korean peninsula has earned my fervent devotion so many times over that all others seem to pale in comparison.
My food journey is a long and arduous one. As a youth, I didn't really know there was such a thing as good food. I understood that there were some restaurants which were 'fancy', where people spent exorbitant sums to eat food, but since all food was just food, I assumed they just did it as a status symbol, not for any special taste. My favorite things to eat were sweets, because they were the most flavorful! It was not a healthy way to live.
In college, my eyes were opened by some very concerned friends, and I learned how good food can really be. I gradually became more and more selective in my food choices, though I still yearned for sweets. Before long, the common grub of the hoi polloi could no longer interest me, and now I ensure that all my meals are filled with aromatics, complex flavor interactions, and masterfully cooked and crisped meats.
It's only in the last year or so that I've been able to really leave the addiction to sweets behind, and I give the majority of the credit for that to my discovery of the magnificence of Korean food.
Korean cuisine is sweet, but not too sweet. It's savory, but not overwhelmingly savory. It's salty, but not brackish. It has sour elements, but they're never the centerpiece. And it's amazingly, wonderfully, gloriously, haphazardly spicy.
This article by Michelle Zauner (a musician who performs under the name Japanese Breakfast) approaches Korean cuisine with the same sense of intimacy and comfort that I do, though we have wildly different reasons for feeling that way. In fact, I'd guess that she'd probably be annoyed by my familiarity and appreciation for it, as I'm clearly a johnny-come-lately to this party, and an obnoxious white guy to boot. But she gets to the bottom of what sets it apart: the variety and intensity of the dishes mandate a special care that other cuisines can't get away with. The food so quickly becomes an expression of yourself, as it takes on the character you give it in the cooking process. It's a coming-together of the finest kind, a culinary Zusammenbringen.
Since I've started cooking my own Korean food, learning all the different ingredients, hunting them down in Korean supermarkets, teaching myself the right ways to use the various sauces and spices, researching the unusual cooking techniques and implements, I've found more and more ways to improve my cooking all around.
Last week at work, a coworker and I learned that another coworker had never had kimchi. We resolved then and there to throw a kimchi party. On Thursday, we each brought in a jar of our favorite kind of kimchi. I also brought in an electric skillet and some Korean-style marinated beef (bulgogi) and a rice cooker. We had an authentic Korean meal, the three of us sitting in an empty office together, sharing our Korean food, listening to Korean music, talking about what's so great about it and just enjoying each other's company. None of us are Korean, and of course that doesn't matter at all. The food was a unifying force for all of us, and we went away from that meal feeling closer than ever.
I went to a Korean restaurant. I am a great food lover, a true gourmet, and of all the fine cuisines available on this green earth, that which hails from the Korean peninsula has earned my fervent devotion so many times over that all others seem to pale in comparison.
My food journey is a long and arduous one. As a youth, I didn't really know there was such a thing as good food. I understood that there were some restaurants which were 'fancy', where people spent exorbitant sums to eat food, but since all food was just food, I assumed they just did it as a status symbol, not for any special taste. My favorite things to eat were sweets, because they were the most flavorful! It was not a healthy way to live.
In college, my eyes were opened by some very concerned friends, and I learned how good food can really be. I gradually became more and more selective in my food choices, though I still yearned for sweets. Before long, the common grub of the hoi polloi could no longer interest me, and now I ensure that all my meals are filled with aromatics, complex flavor interactions, and masterfully cooked and crisped meats.
It's only in the last year or so that I've been able to really leave the addiction to sweets behind, and I give the majority of the credit for that to my discovery of the magnificence of Korean food.
Korean cuisine is sweet, but not too sweet. It's savory, but not overwhelmingly savory. It's salty, but not brackish. It has sour elements, but they're never the centerpiece. And it's amazingly, wonderfully, gloriously, haphazardly spicy.
This article by Michelle Zauner (a musician who performs under the name Japanese Breakfast) approaches Korean cuisine with the same sense of intimacy and comfort that I do, though we have wildly different reasons for feeling that way. In fact, I'd guess that she'd probably be annoyed by my familiarity and appreciation for it, as I'm clearly a johnny-come-lately to this party, and an obnoxious white guy to boot. But she gets to the bottom of what sets it apart: the variety and intensity of the dishes mandate a special care that other cuisines can't get away with. The food so quickly becomes an expression of yourself, as it takes on the character you give it in the cooking process. It's a coming-together of the finest kind, a culinary Zusammenbringen.
Since I've started cooking my own Korean food, learning all the different ingredients, hunting them down in Korean supermarkets, teaching myself the right ways to use the various sauces and spices, researching the unusual cooking techniques and implements, I've found more and more ways to improve my cooking all around.
Last week at work, a coworker and I learned that another coworker had never had kimchi. We resolved then and there to throw a kimchi party. On Thursday, we each brought in a jar of our favorite kind of kimchi. I also brought in an electric skillet and some Korean-style marinated beef (bulgogi) and a rice cooker. We had an authentic Korean meal, the three of us sitting in an empty office together, sharing our Korean food, listening to Korean music, talking about what's so great about it and just enjoying each other's company. None of us are Korean, and of course that doesn't matter at all. The food was a unifying force for all of us, and we went away from that meal feeling closer than ever.
 |
| 고마워. |
Saturday, September 3, 2016
suspended development
The future is a tough nut to crack. Think about it too little, and you're in for a rough time when those bills come due. Think about it too much, and you'll drive yourself mad trying to account for every niggling potentiality. You need to find that pleasant middle ground where you've put in your due diligence about the future, but remain comfortable with the reality that surprises are in store.
I've driven myself mad, of course. From an early age, I felt the constant need to be in control, to foresee and manipulate events such that nothing would befall me but what I'd intended. I convinced myself that I sat, comfortably ensconced, at the center of a vest and intricate web of control, and I could tug on a thread just so, and see reality unfold itself to my whims. No impulsive decisions, no hint of spontaneity, no single possibly meaningful decision taken without days or weeks of prior consideration. It's not a healthy way to live.
The whole point is to foresee and avoid catastrophically traumatizing events, but they are, by their very nature, unforeseeable. So you can only sustain that kind of mindset for so long before one of those unexpectable, unstoppable disasters hits, and your entire world explodes. Everything you did was for naught. Life...finds a way.
The bag you've held so carefully tips and falls, and you lose your marbles all over the floor, watching in mute horror as they roll into every unexplored crevice of your mind, activating things better left hidden. And when it's all finished, and you're left to take stock of the new layout, and try to feel your way around without falling, the topography of the area is fundamentally changed. And nothing's putting those marbles back in that bag.
Which is to say, I'm a lot more easygoing about what's coming down the road these days. If you'd ask me, say, ten years ago how I'd feel about approaching a situation without a firm plan in mind, I'd tell you that you'd have to be completely insane. Now I'm there, and it seems like a totally reasonable thing not to expect every outcome to be known well in advance.
Granted, I'm probably just gravitating towards the mean, here. This probably doesn't seem like much of a revelation to you. But then, I was always very good at keeping it all together. I didn't maintain a belief in my own relative omnipotence for so long by being bad at it. But it does mean, when the time came, I had a lot further to fall.
I've driven myself mad, of course. From an early age, I felt the constant need to be in control, to foresee and manipulate events such that nothing would befall me but what I'd intended. I convinced myself that I sat, comfortably ensconced, at the center of a vest and intricate web of control, and I could tug on a thread just so, and see reality unfold itself to my whims. No impulsive decisions, no hint of spontaneity, no single possibly meaningful decision taken without days or weeks of prior consideration. It's not a healthy way to live.
The whole point is to foresee and avoid catastrophically traumatizing events, but they are, by their very nature, unforeseeable. So you can only sustain that kind of mindset for so long before one of those unexpectable, unstoppable disasters hits, and your entire world explodes. Everything you did was for naught. Life...finds a way.
The bag you've held so carefully tips and falls, and you lose your marbles all over the floor, watching in mute horror as they roll into every unexplored crevice of your mind, activating things better left hidden. And when it's all finished, and you're left to take stock of the new layout, and try to feel your way around without falling, the topography of the area is fundamentally changed. And nothing's putting those marbles back in that bag.
Which is to say, I'm a lot more easygoing about what's coming down the road these days. If you'd ask me, say, ten years ago how I'd feel about approaching a situation without a firm plan in mind, I'd tell you that you'd have to be completely insane. Now I'm there, and it seems like a totally reasonable thing not to expect every outcome to be known well in advance.
Granted, I'm probably just gravitating towards the mean, here. This probably doesn't seem like much of a revelation to you. But then, I was always very good at keeping it all together. I didn't maintain a belief in my own relative omnipotence for so long by being bad at it. But it does mean, when the time came, I had a lot further to fall.
Friday, September 2, 2016
the road of savvy thorns
It was a muggy evening, the wetness of the air like a coarse blanket smothering everything, even the sun's lingering rays, in its liquid embrace. I and my family, like fools, stood outside, as we watched the little drone I'd gotten for Christmas popping up and down pathetically. No matter what, it could not maintain its altitude. This is a problem for a flying machine.
The little drone had been ailing for some months, and I'd put off flying it because I didn't want to face the prospect that it might truly be broken. Its attempts to take off were half-hearted, and one rotor would only spin if given some initial impulse by my finger. It flew without speed, dropping a foot or more every time I tried to turn it. It looked tired.
The drone had no system of communicating what was wrong. It was up to me to observe it and infer the problem. After a few simple tests, I determined that the weak rotor was to blame, and all the others were exhausting themselves trying to make up for it. So I need to replace that rotor, no problem.
The copy machines where I work are filled with helpful advice on how to repair them when they break. They're so sure of themselves that they will force you to follow their instructions, and if you don't, they'll refuse to even try to make copies. Eighty percent of the time, the copiers are right, and the instructions they communicate resolve the issue. The remaining twenty percent are a real hassle. I'm usually left going through the motions to convince the machine that it was right about the problem, while fixing a completely different (unidentified) problem at the same time. It requires a lot of dexterity and subterfuge to fix a copier, unless you're just replacing a part entirely.
You (usually) can't just replace the parts of people that aren't operating at maximum efficiency. That goes for the parts of their personalities that might impair their efficiency, too. What's worse, people can be difficult to convince to tell you what's wrong, but once they do, they often have even less of an idea than those carefully programmed machines. They don't just get things wrong, either -- they might tell you the completely wrong problem on purpose, just to distract you from the true matter that's affecting them.
I want to be a cobbler, a mender of bad soles. I want to offer what solace I can to those in need. It's something that I've been driven towards since I was a very young child, since the first moment I realized others could feel pain, and I might have the power to help take it away. But I can't do it as a profession (can't, won't). And I've grown increasingly frustrated with the realization that there is so little I should do without any professional training. Is there really no more to it than to rub each others' shoulders, and be content?
I replaced the rotor. I took great care as I peeled back layer after layer of protective plastic coating and circuitry, unhooked slender wires from petite connectors, and untangled the mass of wires hiding within to remove the bad rotor. When I was done putting the new rotor in, it looked more like ivy running through a garden lattice than any cold work of technology. I sealed the drone up, inserted a battery, and watched with delight as its blinking blue and red lights reactivated, indicating its readiness to fly.
Tentatively, I lifted the remote control and nudged it to life. All four rotors spun up rapidly, and it lifted with a steadiness that I hadn't seen in months. Just like that, my drone was restored.
I wish I could help people as well as I helped that flying machine, but my hands will forever be too clumsy. So I will offer what comfort I can, during the unsteadying, the wobbling, the inevitable descent, and together we will find what heights there are, and more.
The little drone had been ailing for some months, and I'd put off flying it because I didn't want to face the prospect that it might truly be broken. Its attempts to take off were half-hearted, and one rotor would only spin if given some initial impulse by my finger. It flew without speed, dropping a foot or more every time I tried to turn it. It looked tired.
The drone had no system of communicating what was wrong. It was up to me to observe it and infer the problem. After a few simple tests, I determined that the weak rotor was to blame, and all the others were exhausting themselves trying to make up for it. So I need to replace that rotor, no problem.
The copy machines where I work are filled with helpful advice on how to repair them when they break. They're so sure of themselves that they will force you to follow their instructions, and if you don't, they'll refuse to even try to make copies. Eighty percent of the time, the copiers are right, and the instructions they communicate resolve the issue. The remaining twenty percent are a real hassle. I'm usually left going through the motions to convince the machine that it was right about the problem, while fixing a completely different (unidentified) problem at the same time. It requires a lot of dexterity and subterfuge to fix a copier, unless you're just replacing a part entirely.
You (usually) can't just replace the parts of people that aren't operating at maximum efficiency. That goes for the parts of their personalities that might impair their efficiency, too. What's worse, people can be difficult to convince to tell you what's wrong, but once they do, they often have even less of an idea than those carefully programmed machines. They don't just get things wrong, either -- they might tell you the completely wrong problem on purpose, just to distract you from the true matter that's affecting them.
I want to be a cobbler, a mender of bad soles. I want to offer what solace I can to those in need. It's something that I've been driven towards since I was a very young child, since the first moment I realized others could feel pain, and I might have the power to help take it away. But I can't do it as a profession (can't, won't). And I've grown increasingly frustrated with the realization that there is so little I should do without any professional training. Is there really no more to it than to rub each others' shoulders, and be content?
I replaced the rotor. I took great care as I peeled back layer after layer of protective plastic coating and circuitry, unhooked slender wires from petite connectors, and untangled the mass of wires hiding within to remove the bad rotor. When I was done putting the new rotor in, it looked more like ivy running through a garden lattice than any cold work of technology. I sealed the drone up, inserted a battery, and watched with delight as its blinking blue and red lights reactivated, indicating its readiness to fly.
Tentatively, I lifted the remote control and nudged it to life. All four rotors spun up rapidly, and it lifted with a steadiness that I hadn't seen in months. Just like that, my drone was restored.
I wish I could help people as well as I helped that flying machine, but my hands will forever be too clumsy. So I will offer what comfort I can, during the unsteadying, the wobbling, the inevitable descent, and together we will find what heights there are, and more.
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