The End of Free Recovery

In college, in the dorms, his roommate would drink Tang.

Rob had been there with him when the roommate discovered the powerful psychotropic effect that the orange beverage induced. Just the smell of the powder, he had said, sent a cascade of recollection through his mind. He would suddenly be privy to details surrounding toys, days, people; all for which he had no context, no reference.

Then it would be gone. And as the fragments of his childhood fused back into his subconscious, Rob could see the pain in his roommate’s face. Fighting a losing battle against badly wired neurons and misfiring synapses seemed an excruciating thing. Never, Rob had thought, was the roommate more desperate than when he was coming down from one of these trips.

Rob could understand this. In fact, he thought the roommate lucky. To find a way back, if only for a moment, was something of great value. To him, it aligned with the idea that we spend our lives trying to recreate the happiness we felt in the womb.

Let's Be Professional!

This fucking guy.
This fucking Macy’s mannequin, with his off-the-rack shirt and tie combo and bold colors that are supposed to exude confidence.
“What five words would you use to describe yourself?” he asks.

“Does well-hung count as one or two?” I think to myself.

He looks up from his clipboard and I know the interview is over before it begins. I straighten my tie and look him in the eyes.
“I would say that I am hardworking, a leader, ethical, creative, and uh…” I pause enough between each quality to make it seem like I’m really thinking about it, so that he thinks he’s asked a good question. “I can’t really think of the word for it right now…” I stall. “It’s like when…I’m a really good communicator and I speak well to others and…”

He stares at me blankly. I look at the ground.
“I know there’s a word for it…” There is a long silence.
“OK,” he clears his throat. “Well I have your resume and…”
“Articulate,” I say. “I’m articulate.”
He stares at me a moment longer.

“Well, we’ll call you.”

The brief existence of Elgin Clark

Elgin Clark did not at first like American football, but he liked to think that he could appreciate the strategic nature of it.

There was, he had always thought, something inherently and particularly American about the sport. Maybe it was that he felt that they used sixty or seventy men to do a job that could be done by less than half as many. Or perhaps it was the fact that an American football game was, to him, eerily reminiscent of the earliest American Civil War battles, which were attended as though they were sporting events by socialites and their families.

)(

In a tactical, practical,
personal, political,
evolutionary, primitive
sense,
power is information.