The Coffee Chronicles

So, I was rear-ended on the 710 freeway the other day. That is, my car was rear-ended - but, you knew that. I don't usually run home in the afternoon, after all. Very slight damage, to be sure. Of course, my car was in the front of the three-car smorgasbord that erupted; I can't say that the other fellows got away so cleanly. In fact, the nice new car at the back of the train was pretty well smashed up. Ah well; to quote from the very handy cinema masterpiece The Big Lebowski:


In all honesty, the whole issue of being involved in a car accident usually flashes through my mind once or twice during every trip in my car; this is perhaps par for the course when living with LA freeways. So to say that my thoughts that day were prescient would be to overstate things a bit, I think. Nonetheless, when tires began screeching, I was caught thinking, "Well, it's about time." How's that for being resigned to one's fate?

Anyway, the whole thing should resolve itself in a quick trip to the body shop and a free rental car. After all, all I did to earn a scratched bumper was come to a full traffic stop - just like everyone else in the mile-long column of cars ahead of me. It was the daft fellow two cars back that caused this little distraction.

However, far from ruining my day, he somehow served to widen my perspective a bit. Still, I'm not certain I'm thankful, exactly; let's just say that each day here gets more and more interesting.

I'd love to hear your comments, but of course Netcomments is still misbehaving. I'll give things a bit more time, but my patience is running short. Take note.

Ah; reactionary as always.

However, in my never-ending quest for hyperbole, I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks to those of you who have commented on my latest rant - intended, as it was, for the masses.


Just kidding; it's not actually that bad. In fact, I'm quite busy today, and remember: when you actually enjoy what you do, the outlook always stands to improve. Best of luck to my fellow proletarian warriors; may your free time be yours alone.

Netcomments' site is off-line, so I must apologize for the inconvenience - I know you're all terribly eager to shower me with comments. I'm planning to stick with them, if they can fix their issues: totally free and ad-free, to boot. Check out their user forums and weigh in with your opinions. A Paypal donation couldn't hurt, either. To Netcomments, of course, not me. But, thanks for the offer.

I have to confess, all abrupt shoulder-grabbing and leaned-ear-whispering: I'm not really passionate about spending my time at work anymore. Most of you are probably thinking, "Well, duh," but in truth I usually enjoy coming to work. Crazy? Perhaps; but in truth, I love what I do; that's what makes this realization all the more disturbing.

My loss of direction should be clear to anyone reading this log, as it grows most profoundly during standard working hours, Pacific Time. Ideas flow, and words drip most persistently while I'm supposed to be doing Something Else. This has always been the way, hasn't it? I've written on many an occasion how distracting the call of expression can be while other tasks are at hand. In the past, I have turned in explanation to two distinct hypotheses:

1. The task itself is at fault, benign and uncreative.
2. I suffer from an inherent lack of discipline at the outset.

As it might appear, I have given this topic more than its share of thought. Mostly, as it were, at times when I should have been doing other things. And that's precisely the point. Were it not for Other Things, many - if not most - of us would not get any thinking done at all.

Perhaps this is a symptom of the American malaise; we are a hard-working nation, with our minds on overtime and our bottoms firmly planted in rush-hour traffic. Yet during the fleeting free time we afford ourselves, we fritter away our mortal souls watching TV or staring blankly into our mutual-funded future, wondering what the next day at work will bring. Imagine how less bleak the intellectual landscape of this country would be if we spent our free time as creatively as we spent our lost daydream hours in the workplace. But the question that begs to be asked is undoubtedly also on your lips:


A good question, that. Makes one wonder, then, how full-time authors, poets, and others of the literary sort can get any writing done at all - that is, without another full-time job they find boring and need distraction from. One is led to muse on the distractions suffered by the full-time author: is she distracted from her burgeoning work of fiction by a gnawing need to, say, wait tables at a local "brass and firn" restaurant? That is to say, does the distraction work in the opposite direction? This speculation leads me to add one more possibility to the above list of hypotheses:


What we are left with, now, is a brow-furrowing consideration. Is it possible to conceive of an occupation that does not suffer from this sort of distraction? It should be of some help to posit a difference, then among the different sorts of occupations. Right off the proverbial bat one can see a particular hierarchy:


Realizing full well that a necessary job is not necessarily carelessly chosen, I have nonetheless lumped these categories together above; forgive the tacit generalization. The way I see things, we have but one more category left, the one to which I most have unwittingly most often ascribed:


One can imagine that persons dedicated to different lines of work as described above would suffer - or benefit from, of course - different levels of distraction. In fact, I would say that this is my central hypothesis at this point. Why and how this mechanism behaves in this way is still an unknown.

Right now this is interesting - to me. An important and dangerous question naturally follows: is this because I should be doing other things? Perhaps I'm off the mark entirely; only time and experience will tell. Scratching my bearded chin, I retire for the moment, and return to work.

Okay, much better. I am now working my way down the inside curve of a Styrofoam cup, drinking my way to the bottom. My world is colored light brown. Isn't that always the way? There is something so middle-American, so proletariat, in the way a white Styrofoam coffee cup looks when it's splashed and stained with coffee.

All this doe-eyed musing isn't to say, I should point out, that the coffee is all that good. In plain point of fact, it isn't. Oh, it's fine, philosophically, if you go in for that sort of thing. The lab building is quite cold, in fact, and the warm slide of the coffee in the throat serves to center my experience very effectively. It's not actually good, though. Too bad; perhaps the coffee will be better at the lunch service. Then again, perhaps not; one can never tell. There are all too many variables to consider when trying to construct the perfect cup of coffee. For those of us - including myself - who use cream and sugar, the added complication can be a disastrous combination when carelessly considered.

I think that's quite enough of that for now, don't you? Back to my light-brown world, then.

A pleasant weekend spent apart from the busy world, and I am a recharged person. So recharged and regenerated, in fact, that I am intent on spending most of my first morning back at work filling you in on my impressions of the world at large. But first, a cup of coffee.