AGAIN!

http://www.andyawards.com/

I don't really like to break my routine to do things like vacation.  You know, exercise, diet, writing - wait did I say I had a writing routine?  no, but I want one.  When you go on vacation you mess all that up.  And then there are certain aspects of my routine I'm not looking forward to returning to, like work. 

For our routine interruption we went to the French Riviera.  If that makes you hate me right now, maybe it will make you feel a little better that we took three kids with us.  We struggled with our french, took budget accommodations outside of anything worth seeing, and had difficulties learning how to get around, so it was a bit frustrating at first, but even when you can't exactly call it "fun", it is still a life broadening experience, that gets you out of your shell, and exposes you to knowledge and culture that you didn't have before, not to mention time with your family, which is always good, even when it isn't.    And eventually we did figure out the buses, got places, saw places and ate ice cream.  Here are some pictures.

From the sky

April isn't the warmest, but it was 70s the first day we were there so we visited the Mediterranean

Gotta ride a carousel.  Cause we don't have those in the US of America.

Fenoccio's 90 flavors of ice cream or something like that.  We tried as many as we could.

French playgrounds are sometimes cool.

But more dangerous.  Please come down now.

(Our third) Wheel lost his first tooth in France.  The tooth Fairy brought him a Euro.

Smile!  (Everyone's got a camera)

A foggy day in La Turbie

Look beyond the bush, that's Monaco.

Roman ruins

Just a roamin'

This sign did nothing.  Watch where you walk!

Geek accountant that I am, I just had to post that this is the best mechanical pencil I have ever used.

Change is not good.  They have changed things here where I write.  They removed my favorite high top table and the remaining high top is too far from the outlet, and the chairs on the lower tables aren’t the same. 

I don’t consider it ideal to work in a coffee shop.  I’d prefer to have an office where I can be alone, a space that’s mine.  Particularly when I first get to a new place, it feels very distracting, and makes me nervous to be out in the open among people I don’t know.  But over time, it begins to feel comfortable.  I become familiar with the people who work there, without having to be their best friends.  I recognize the regulars.  I get into a routine that I come to expect and it becomes natural.  It feels like a neighborhood I’m a part of.  It starts to feel like a home (and it is, in fact, not too far from my home).

And then they go and remove my favorite seat.  It took me awhile to settle in on that seat.  I tried others.  So, change is not good, but dealing with change until the change is the thing you don’t want to change anymore is good, I guess. 

So, dealing with Change - good.  Change itself - only inevitable. 

In the corner silently speaking

Peering past the panel toward outside

I lose myself in relative darkness

I see the ladies, through my mind’s eye, peeking

Cute and careful, beaming brides

Smiles slide down their dresses.

The men in line behind for coffee drinking

Are honest, varied, many sides of pride

Their appearances confess.

And this I know, I know what they are feeling

I close my eyes to open theirs wide

My fiction more real than theirs, or ‘least no less

I smile (down my dress) at such détente

Then it leaves me, alone, and filled with want.

I could see what was going on; I could see it very clearly.  In this transitional neighborhood, renovation and revitalization on the one hand mixed with the old and young street characters of poverty and homelessness on the other.  The coffeeshop catered to the newer residents, it wasn’t a Starbucks, but something like it.  “The Science of the Bean” they said about themselves.  As well, they catered to people driving through towards downtown or towards the highway, which could take you any which way you wanted.  They had their own parking lot, only a block away.  They did a pretty good business.

And they did a pretty good job of politely asking “old Edgewood” not to solicit in front of the store, and discouraging “the poor” from coming in with requests for free stuff.  It’s not that they couldn’t afford to donate, just that they didn’t want paying customers to be turned off, by vagabonds and hobos (can we call them hobos?) 

They weren’t completely unfair.  They would allow a person to come in, use the bathroom and leave.  Or if someone came in with a handful of small coins asking for change, really the reverse of change (“can I have a quarter”), they would painstakingly count every penny and when it turned out a penny short, they would graciously take one from the “take one, leave one” bowl to round it out. 

But then if the “vagrant” turned on the way out and asked if he could trouble them for a glass of ice water, they would discourage it. 

“Ice water is 70 cents.”

“What about without ice?”

“We have ice water and then we have bottled water.”

And the street person would say, “ok” and leave, feeling perhaps a little discouraged from coming back.

Sometimes they would hold meetings here related to coffee shop business, an interview for a prospective employee, or a meeting with a potential supplier of pastries.  So it wasn’t so surprising to see the manager sitting down with a fellow when I came in one morning.  But this conversation seemed less hospitable than usual.  I heard her say, “that isn’t the way..” and I heard him say, “that’s all that I’m asking.”  She had a stern face, and so did he. 

This same day, coincidentally, I noticed all of this during the hours in which I occupied a certain corner, writing, there was an increase in vagrant activity.  It was always someone different, but there seemed to be more soliciting in front of the store, and more requests for water or free coffee or using the bathroom, helping themselves to sugar. nothing illegal (other than maybe a little sugar stealing – he could say that it looked free to him), and never the same person twice. 

But this man speaking to the woman I've assumed is the manager, wasn’t dressed like you would expect a vendor seeking business.  He had flip flops and jeans and a long sleeved T with a number, like a jersey of some sort, not oversized, not hoodlum looking.  He was black, like the old guard of the neighborhood, but also not unlike a percentage of the new guard and vendors as well.  In fact he seemed to be stern, but with every indication that he was trying to be professional, and respectable, just a little underdressed.

After their talk, in which, as the body language suggested to me, they agreed to disagree (and maybe continue the discussion at another time), she brought him out a bagel or something, and he refused it, and then  he left.

All of this made me wonder whether he was trying to extort money maybe to “protect” them from vagrants.  Maybe he had an army of locals who would, one by one, just come in and hang out, ruining business by discouraging those white folk, at least, who didn’t want to be asked for money every time they came in to pay what was already too much for a cup of Joe.

And I started to wonder what would I do if I were them?  I’m not sure I could have a coffee shop.  I would feel bad about asking somebody who had so little not to solicit from someone who had much more, but on the other hand, as a customer, I would likely find some place else to go if I was solicited every time I came.  Cause I would hate to say no, and then I would end up giving a lot of money away, only encouraging it more and more.  And am I really helping?  I’d rather pay more taxes and let an agency provide some real help.  Yes, I said it.  I want to pay MORE taxes.  

So, I understood that, right or wrong, keeping the business clear of “street people” was vital to their success.

Would I pay the guy?  If he had organized these people to be persistent in their attempts to disrupt business it could destroy the very science of this bean.  On the other hand, what would happen down the road?  Now you’ve given him resources that he can use against you and others in the neighborhood.  Now, you’ve proven that it works, and he can take that and recruit with it.  Then once he has a good business going, if you start to fight him, he has more at stake.  This is a livelihood now, income he has begun to rely on.  Maybe he has branched out into things that he can sell back to the vagrants that “work” for him.  Drugs?  Now suddenly he’s got a lot at stake and he doesn’t want to go back.  Higher stakes means greater commitment.  He will no longer go down without a real fight.  Violence.  Worst case for them, they get their neighborhood back, albeit the way it used to be.  This is what you create if you don’t fight it early.

So clearly you have to fight it.  That would be my call, even if I couldn’t do it were it my business.

A policeman showed up a little later and spoke to the manager.  He didn't buy anything.  Something was clearly going on here.  I was curious now.  I would have to stick it out to see how they handled this.  I would brave a few solicitations for their sake.  I might even say “no.”

On the other hand, I started thinking; the guy didn’t really look like a hoodlum.  He seemed to be trying very hard to look respectable and to negotiate.  Maybe a front, in order to make a case for himself, should he be charged, or maybe he actually saw himself as a community leader. 

It could be that he thought the long time residents of this community were being shafted by the changes in the neighborhood and that it was not enough that requests to solicit elsewhere were “polite”.  Maybe he believed that the businesses owed something to the original residents.  He could be a community activist who thinks that when a community rises, it should help to bring its long time residents up with it.  These are people who have been accommodating, for the most part, in allowing the science of the bean to develop, and what do they get for it?  They don’t have to be accommodating.  A little goodwill towards the community, “that’s all I’m asking.” (I did hear him say, “that’s all I’m asking”).

If this conflict continued, I knew that I, as a customer, could be brought into this.  At first I imagined myself cutting him off, telling him that I wasn’t going to be a party to his con.  But then, realizing there was something I didn’t know, I thought it might be worth hearing him out, to ascertain whether his motivation was true community activism.  I still wouldn’t necessarily agree with his tactics, but I have sympathy for his (theoretical) constituency.  And I could tell him all of this.

When you are a writer, and your job is understanding people, it’s amazing what you can figure out in merely a day from observing so little. 

The next day I returned and when I walked into the coffee shop HE was there again.  What IS going on here, I thought.  I sat down, booted my computer, settled in and watched.  He went into the back, like HE OWNED THE PLACE.  He got himself some coffee.  Then a couple of construction guys came in, and talked to him.  He pointed to a door and started discussing the repairs.

Our job in raising kids
Is to teach them to be adults.

That’s why so many adults
Treat each other like children.

And here’s a good poem for Kyle because he said there wasn’t much good poetry on xanga

A Jew, a Christian and a Muslim
Sit down for worse or, so hope goes, better
They must be somewhat secular
Or they wouldn’t be at dinner together. 
In NY, where nations live among nations
The world sometimes indeed seems round
The Jew begins, “I hate the Yankees”
And there they find some common ground.

John has been musing on the topic of religion and science and on whether they can co-exist.  I consider myself a rational person.  Not a scientist per se, but I accept science.  I don’t fight it.

I am also on a spiritual quest.  I’ve realized lately that this is the simplest and most direct way to express my purpose in life.  It isn’t what I decide to do; it’s something I recognize about myself.  It is what I am. Whether I want it or not (but I do), this is what calls me.  It’s why I write, and if I never write another story, if all I get out of writing is that I become a more enlightened being, better husband, son, father, friend, teacher, student whatever, then that’s the down side.  That’s failure (as a writer), and it won’t be bad.  I want to know why I’m here.  I want to grow to be better.  I want to know (myself, what God is, the meaning of it all).  I want to learn what I’m supposed to be here to learn, what I need to become empowered, fearless and happy.

And I would suggest that this is why we are all here, even if we don’t know it. 

I’ll venture to suggest something else too.  The people that fight science also fight spirituality.  Though cloaked in “religion” they spend much of their lives in waiting for the day that they will meet “the father” (at death).  Some even hope (it’s true – I’ve met some) that the end of the world comes in their lifetime.  They fight their spiritual purpose, by denying that they are here for a reason.  To be truly spiritual one needs to embrace this life. 

I did a lot of thinking yesterday.  I almost convinced myself to start every single writing project that I have in mind, which is an exact 10, counting the one reserved for future ideas and the one I forced in there just because I wanted an even 10 (so maybe really 8).  I don’t know why I wanted 10, when 9 is actually my favorite number.

I do think a project is a good idea.  Did you know that one can finish any project?  The way to do it is to keep working on it until its finished.

Which brings me to a struggle I’ve been having lately (wait a minute, lately?  More like throughout my life).  That is the struggle between talent and persistence.  What would you rather have?  I think most people would say talent, although I think that success is better served by persistence.  Persistence can reveal even the smallest talent. Persistence serves those even without talent.

Maybe, persistence can be learned while talent can’t, unless you subscribe to the view that everyone has talent (an acting teacher of mine used to say that talent was a dime a dozen).  Would you rather be able to work hard for things that are hard, or would you want it all to come easy, while lacking the fortitude to realize your potential?

Then every once in awhile, like Buster Douglas, you might get it together and prove that you could have been the best, and for one shining moment, surprising all of the world, you were.

I've surprised people before.  It's a great feeling, almost as good as when someone believes in you in the first place (or is it better than that?)

Parents are sometimes criticized for being “friends” with their kids.  The implication is that friends are permissive.  I think the real problem is when parents bow to peer pressure (from their kids), which isn’t good to do as a parent or a friend.  I want my friends to work hard and achieve their dreams.  I want my friends to do what they enjoy.  I want my friends to avoid unplanned pregnancy and venereal disease and drug addiction and death.  I want to support my friends when they are in pain.

I also want to go on bike rides with my friends and camp out, and hang out sometimes late into the night talking with them.  I don’t think it’s a bad idea to be friends with your kids.  You just have to be a good friend.