November 19, 2009
A Hasty Look Over the Shoulder
I'm pretty happy, ensconced here in Velociman 6.0. My work could always be more rewarding, the compensation higher, but that is the immutable nature of toil anyway, ain't it? (I am beyond "careers" now. My daily grind is more or less the same as a street strumpet: I have some skills you desire; I desire to be remunerated for them at the highest level I can negotiate).
My personal life is excellent, although it is leavened with a yeast of depression: I do not see my daughters enough. This is a source of sorrow and vexation for me personally, however they are of an age now that this would be the case even if we still shared the same roof, grappled over the same toothpaste tube.
I sometimes think back on 5.0, at least from a professional standpoint, and wonder: where did the wheels slip the axle? Probably in '97, when I made a foolish decision to switch from operations to sales and marketing. I was good at operations: when I ran the Memphis facility I had one job, and it was quite binary. I had to run the trains on time. Literally. That may seem mundane, but there are a thousand variables conspiring to prevent that Mussolinic accomplishment. A good operator overcomes those obstacles: I ran my trains on time with enviable success.
I switched to the commercial side for the usual reasons. More money, a nice move to Jacksonville to be nearer my family in Savannah, the eternal beckoning of the ocean, the sweet intoxicating allure of the unlimited expense account.
There's this about Memphis, too: it isn't a Southern city. It claims to be, it aspires to be, but it is a midwestern city. It has more in common with St. Louis or Chicago than Nashville. Beyond Sun Records, and Elvis, and barbecue, it is just another pitstop on the Mighty Missipp. Minneapolis shares more with Memphis than Chattanooga does.
New Orleans is the only city in America that does not let the River rule it, by the way. It absorbs the floods, buries its dead in catacombs, goes back to its indolent ways. Once or twice a century. Memphis and St. Louis and everywhere else is afeared of the River. To New Orleans it is just a part of life. Like the yellow fever.
So to corporate headquarters, and those expense accounts. I do not mean to imply that I disliked marketing; I adored it. But at the end of the day your ideas become a concubine, like a Missipp town, to groupthink. To compromise. Implementation is a slog. You become trapped in project work. Today's strategies are tomorrow's boondoggles. Your brainchild, your baby, gets cancelled.
You don't get to run a train every day. When all is said and done, you don't get to run a fucking train every day. You don't get to walk a track, pretending your brogans are caked in coal cinders, even though you run electric diesels. You don't even get to call your hobo-thrashing policemen cinder dicks, because you are on the 27th floor of an ivory tower.
I drank a lot during 5.0. Certainly it was part of the mission, part of the lifestyle. But there has always been a moth-to-the-flame side of me. There's alway something to celebrate, eh? Most ignobly, sitting in a restaurant at a $2,000 dinner in New York or Chicago or Charleston or Dallas, with a belly full of grass-fed bison and a cranium full of 20 year old single malt Scotch, and hearing a colleague say, for the hundredth time, "I'm not a millionaire, I just live like one!"
Indeed.
I've cast a lot of detritus aside in the last two years. Waste product of the soul. I've lost a little bit more that was not detritus, but was lost to me anyway. I've embraced more, much more. It's a far better life; I feel intact. And that which was not detritus? Nothing is lost forever. I believe in the lost, found; the hipped, embraced; the encumbered, free.
It is a better world, I think. At least for me, macrosocietal implosions notwithstanding. But every now and then, when I awaken in the middle of the night, an hour before my alarms, I wish I could just run a damn train. Full of freight both corporeal and metaphysical.
And run it on time.
Your trains run you a bit these days, eh? The schedule kept whether you are at the switch or not, by a big, ugly thing that doesn't even know what a schedule is.
Posted by: Another Andy at November 19, 2009 9:28 PMwow.
Posted by: JohnB at November 19, 2009 9:55 PMUpgrading the ol' software of the heart does wonders, apparently, for this is a beautiful essay.
Posted by: Joan of Argghh! at November 19, 2009 10:23 PMVelociman didn't type that. Velociman's soul typed that.
I for one, am honored to be presented with the opportunity to have basked in the magnificence of such true and powerful clarity.
This one is a lesson, and a keeper withal.
A glass raised in respect, and appreciation.
Jim
Sunk New Dawn
Galveston, TX
A visit to Velociworld never disappoints, but this entry is particularly fine. I raise my glass with Jim to you, sir.
Posted by: Gypsy at November 20, 2009 12:22 AMIs that why grown men collect model trains? So they can have a world that follows a plan and runs on schedule?
Posted by: PeggyU at November 20, 2009 3:09 AMThis one sings, at a time when so much else of life is merely relentness noise -- thanks.
Posted by: MHG at November 20, 2009 4:11 AMQuite nice, quite peaceful overall.
Posted by: Les at November 20, 2009 9:17 AMHappy Birthday V-Man.
Posted by: rob sama at November 20, 2009 9:47 AMFor very nearly two decades, my ass was kicked, but now I am the kicker. You'll discover this one day.
Posted by: dick at November 20, 2009 10:01 AMCool Runnings...I know what you mean.
Posted by: Yabu at November 20, 2009 10:20 AMThe crushed up phenobarbital in three fingers of George Dickel just ain't cutting it anymore, eh? They call them "depressants" for a reason, you know.
Next time, toss in a fist full of Luvox or Paxil. That'll get you where you need to be. Swear....
Posted by: Andy at November 20, 2009 11:46 AMgreat work
Posted by: GUYK at November 20, 2009 12:10 PMParticular fine!
"Clink".
Posted by: Mockingbird at November 20, 2009 1:59 PMDamn. if I grow up, I wanna be you.
Posted by: og at November 20, 2009 3:34 PMSincere congratulations, dude.
Posted by: dr kill at November 20, 2009 3:51 PMI'm glad I didn't know
Where it all would end
Or where it all would go
How life is better left to chance
I could have missed the pain
But then..I'd have missed the dance.
THE DANCE
Tony Arata
My general thinking about conservatives who try to write in an interesting fashion, is cribbed from Samuel Johnson.
"Sir, a conservatives writing is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all."
Well - you do it very well. Even if we don't see eye to eye on much - thanks all the same for smashing a stereotype.
Cheers,
Mintosh
Posted by: Mintosh at November 20, 2009 8:21 PMBirthday? Many more happy ones to you, dear man.
I still remember the day of the brake job.
I hardly knew ye but I was worried.
You were... sad. It was 5.0
This right here makes me smile for you.
I love it when my friends are happy with themselves.
Cheers!
Lots of love on you Birthday.
You are one fine writer. I always enjoy your magical way with words.
Posted by: Vicki in GA at November 21, 2009 12:53 AMIt's called life, Slick, and we live it.
Our Daddys worked in the same plant for thirty years and we swore we'd never do that. We don't. We do other things and at the end of the day we feel the same angst they felt.
A coworker asked how I was going, a simple morning greeting. I replied that "it doesn't suck to be me." We looked at each other and agreed that the day wasn't over yet, and by the end of the day it might suck to be either of us.
Posted by: PawPaw at November 21, 2009 7:00 AMJohnB said it pretty succinctly. You have a gift - a lot more than just walking on your hind legs. Thank you.
Posted by: Bowman at November 21, 2009 9:16 AMIt was your birthday? Belated felicitations!!!
Posted by: PeggyU at November 21, 2009 1:55 PMIt was not my birthday. Apparently Sama is having sport with us again.
Posted by: Velociman at November 21, 2009 3:21 PMNever been to Memphis. It can't be a Midwestern city unless it has a crappy football team.
Posted by: Cappy at November 21, 2009 4:30 PMHell. Call it your birthday. Someone will offer up fellatiations as an aside. Just sayin' is all.
Posted by: Andy at November 21, 2009 5:31 PMHappy Birthday Sweetie...Break Left...
Posted by: Yabu at November 21, 2009 7:10 PMHaving spent way too much time in both Memphis and Jacksonville (courtesy of the US Navy) I concur with your assessment of Memphis. I did enjoy both cities.
And now, off to run my (N scale) trains.
Is that why grown men collect model trains? So they can have a world that follows a plan and runs on schedule?
Grown men collect model trains because they want to *be* Velociman 5.0.
Posted by: Desert Cat at November 23, 2009 2:30 PMHell, I'd be happy to be V-man 4.3 . You sir leave verbiage equal to a fine 30 year old single malt scotch. Something to be sipped and savored. And never, never debased by cube or soda.
Posted by: Guy S at November 23, 2009 10:13 PM..... well said, sir.... and hey, you know where I live....... to see you two happy, alive, and hanging out in my living room a week before the blogmeet was wonderful....... you guys deserve happiness.......
.... oh, and I used those apples that you brought to make one HELL of a pie over the past few days......... thank you for the visit, the apples, AND your friendship...... and, of course, this wonderful post.....
.... keep on boxcarring, man.........
Posted by: Eric at November 26, 2009 10:54 PMWhat sir lots-o-dots said, except for the apples, and living room part. Real men don't make pies. They eat 'em. Chooo Chooo.
Posted by: RedNeck at November 27, 2009 7:20 AMOh, sorry, I meant to drop a gratuitous "Garth
Sux" but forgot to, memory leak in RedNeck 4.0.019