Totality;
There’s a cast of characters I dearly miss. They’ve split: left the
region, settled down, died. Most will be missed. Some, not really,
but I either tolerated them in their totality or enjoyed the chaos,
weed, or booze that they brought with them.
The programmer, not sure if I miss him or not. Self-taught in
computer science, he probably thought I was a dumbass for not
knowing all of the ins and outs of C++ and robotics. He’d explain
something two, three times; he might as well have been speaking to
me in Gaelic. It certainly was a language barrier of sorts.
But in all the translating, I thought he was heroically determined
when he’d talk about all-nighters coding, Python indentations, and
Raspberry Pi, which I still think is a silly name for a single-board
computer, but hey, the thing’s fruitful, what can I say?
He once said to me that we were going to be the next Woz and
Jobs: billionaires. With stock options up the ass and gold toilets to shit
in. Or something like that.
“I’m going to program [insert idea for the week here], and you’re
going to get the world to buy it.”
“Oh? Well, how does it work?”
He’d unveil, painting a picture of me onstage like a kitten in dim
footlight, sharing some profound and ground-shattering wisdom. I was
half onboard when I actually knew what the fuck he was talking about.
He went to work for the military for a bit, something about drones,
something about classifieds and can’t tells, something about a two-story
rental for $1,100 a month. It was a resume-building detour.
He’d come back after about 5 months. Things were different, like he
underwent a Fort Bragg for nerds. Saw him a few times after that, and
he’d apparently doubled down on learning JavaScript. Long gone were
the days of micro-dosing LSD and watching Nosferatu in a cluttered
home office. I wasn’t bothered by it, I’d changed, too.
We’d smoke a bit here and there, but I was more drawn to alcohol
at that point. I was getting my feet wet and starting to find the spin in my
wheels. I’d take the most conservative hit imaginable from a technicolored
one-hitter and shift my attention to the booze cart.
“What do you say, shot?”
It was only 2 PM and I had nothing to do, nowhere to be, no one to be.
Simple: I just wouldn’t answer my phone.
“What do you say, another shot?”
I’d get about three in and be in that familiar state of bliss, the one
where that existential, solar knot in the chest—above the stomach, neighbor
to the heart—recedes and unties itself. We’d add music to a queued up
playlist and bullshit about philosophy, Macintosh computers, and Silicon
Valley.
He saw himself in SV like a fly sees itself on shit—feeding off of it,
securing his landing and flying off when finished. He loved the idea of the
West Coast. He just needed a laptop, decent wireless internet, and his pipe
dream would become a real PVC reality: Paying Venture Capitalists. Throw
in a few drawers of pajama pants and you’d see him when the Pacific dried
up, or when the frozen TV dinners ran low, whichever came first on the road
to innovation and giving people more plastic & programmed technologies to
buy.
Me, I’m more of a Pacific Northwest kind of guy. Or maybe Northeast,
I haven’t decided. I could see myself in a one-bedroom cabin in coastal
Maine next to a diner and a rickety, well-lit candle shop, or in Seattle with
the Pike Place hipsters and their Kenyan blends. Slot me in either top
pocket. Just alter my scene. Give me more than the dream of owning
acreage. Take this Midwest state and put it in a blender with the cow’s milk
soaps, wheat fields, and pawn shops with their blinking signs that say “We
Buy Gold & Other Jewelry!” Blitz it all with ice from the cold February
freeze and pour it in the finest of summer glassware. Dump it down the
drain and out into the septic field. Push it far away from me.
I hadn’t had many shares of glory, but I believed in him. I still do.
Twenty miles of subdivision-lined country roads and highway is added
to what feels like 20,000 light-years between the two points of what
was once a friendship, but he’ll make a dent somewhere. I know it.
Shit, he’ll probably even get me a pair of light-wash jeans and a black
turtleneck when he does.
What I understand is that life is where everything goes to die; it’s implied.
What a diagnosis. It all grows up and gets the bad news. Friendships, breath,
the stars, planets, the insects, the birds, love, all of the symphonic buzzing
of deep space; everything leading to one final, universal heart attack from
Andromeda to Alameda to the arcs of event horizons millions of lifetimes
away; four corners stretched, that stretch losing speed. That speed
approaching and becoming silence. Just like growing up.
You know what? I change my mind, I do miss the bastard. He
reminded me complacency is a personal choice.