Not cut out for the Fantasy World

I have always considered myself a big fan of (American) football. Growing up in Dallas in the 1970's the Dallas Cowboys were my childhood idols. I remember wearing a shirt with Charlie Waters on the front to elementary school. It was a weird time warp last Christmas when my wife and I ran into Charlie at the mall and Fran asked if she could give him a hug--okay, that bothered me a little bit, actually. Fran has this bizarre knack of running into celebrities...another blog for another day.

I even had a very funny experience when I was a teenager and traveled to Washington, DC. I was riding on the Metro and must have had a shirt on with a Cowboys emblem or something like that--a well-dressed woman carrying a briefcase looked at me, pointed her thumb downward, and with a look of disgust, "boo'd" me! A thirteen-year-old, obviously from out-of-town! Crazy, huh? The adults who were guiding me around had to point out to me that it was because of my shirt, and it took a moment for it to sink in that everyone on earth wasn't a fan of the Dallas Cowboys. Seriously, it's possible that I had never met someone who wasn't by that point in my life!

So...when we get older, we get wiser, right? Nope. I was in an airport last year and knew the Cowboy game was coming on, and stopped to watch it. Yes, assuming that everyone in Massachusetts would love to watch the Dallas Cowboys play the Philadelphia Eagles (in short, no). I had to chuckle and remember my Metro ride 20 years earlier and thinking that my antique, Geocentric-ish (hey, I somewhat worked in a Copernicus reference!) view was somewhat comical.

There's this game that some guys play, called "Fantasy Football". You choose players that you think will perform the best throughout the season and, every week, you compare stats with other guys. It was kind of a fun way to talk about football every week, and no one got too serious about it.

I started this with a group of about 4 guys, about 10 years ago-lasting about 3 years, and we did it just for fun. The rules were loosely organized and he had a great time. At the end of the "season", a winner was declared (not me) and we went on with our life.

About five years ago, I joined this new group of guys that had known each other for years and years. They invited me to join their Fantasy Football League--they all put in $20 or so.

I knew I was in trouble when they scheduled a draft day--lasting 5 hours! I sat in a room with 12 other guys, including one guy on-line from Santiago, Chile and thought, from the moment that I arrived "What the hell am I doing here? What a colossal waste of time! These dudes need a life!"

Turns out, I had joined this hard-core group of guys who lived for football! They had purchased analysis packages of the entire NFL league and had charted out drafting scenarios with fallback positions, etc. I had my list on the back of a Dunkin' Donuts napkin...

Since I had committed to doing it, I stuck with the group and drafted, etc. It would be too embarrassing to just walk out when I realized that I wanted nothing to do with this nonsense. I had just gotten a new job that was requiring tons of time and there was no way I could keep up. Additionally, the "League Manager" instituted an internet program for us to change our teams around each week (like if a player got injured you could substitute another one, or if a team had the week off, you could "play" another player). I guess, after my 2nd week, I forgot my password and couldn't get back in to change my lineup. By that point, I had lost all interest.

It was funny, though. Almost unpredictably, my "team" would be good some weeks and bad other weeks. Some of the guys would really get into it--taunting each other, talking trash, making trades with each other, etc.

About week 8, one of the guys who seriously doesn't have enough to do in life did a spreadsheet analysis of my team performance and figured out that I never changed my team around (the funny part was, I had beat him that week). The nutless bastard reported me to the League Manager! (By the way, this is the guy who, the following year, I nearly let drown in the Kenai river as related in my blog entry Alaska!).

I was then kicked out of the league for not taking it seriously enough! Yeah, what a great group of guys, huh? (really, they're okay--just a little silly about this thing).

As it turns out, I really just like the Dallas Cowboys, and don't care too much about studying the statistics, etc. of the whole National Football League and all of it's players. I just want something to do while I eat nachos on the couch and drink coke...

I was there when the music died....

First, I must confess that, at one point at least, I knew all the words to Don McLean's American Pie, you know:

So bye, bye Miss American Pie
Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry
Them good ol' boys were drinkin' whiskey and rye
Singing 'This'll be the day that I die. This'll be the day that I die."

(Typed this from memory).

---------------------------------

"Hey, wow! Is this thing on?"

I stood in the engineer's booth at the radio station where my brother works. It was last week, toward the end of the week, and I took a break by stopping by to see him. His job is to...well, I guess I don't understand exactly what his job is, after all. It's one of those things where he's supposed to watch this massive twisted tangle of gnarled cables and readout screens, and if he sees smoke at any point, he's supposed to call someone who is responsible for bringing in a fire hose.

Probably a little more complex than that.

So I was listening to this talk show that was coming over his network, and his job at that moment was to be sure that the "spots" (revenue-generating advertisements) played on time--he was supposed to check off the empty boxes on a clipboard as they played. Clipboard in hand, he grinned at me and dramatically put his hand on one of the hundred or so dials on the ancient-looking board, right next to the computer monitor that looked like it hadn't been wiped down since the invention of the UNIVAC.. He started rattling off a lot of jargon about a second "backup" channel that was playing the exact same thing at exactly the same time, then flipped the switch and watched me for a reaction as....the same commercial kept playing.

"Yeah, we're really not supposed to do that..."

Good thing I didn't know what the hell he did, although I feigned being impressed. I was too busy watching the amplitude graph go up and down and thinking of the movie "Contact".

"Hey man, don't get in trouble while I'm here!"

"Are you kidding? Nothing ever happens..."

I remember him telling me about when he took a couple of days off and the new guy forgot to play all the spots for about 3 days--that was a catastrophic moment that all the veteran employees remembered--like one of those things that everyone can relate to: "Remember that week where that guy (what was his name, again?) forgot to play the spots?"

He grinned and flipped the switch back. The spots ended and a guy started droning some conservative rhetoric. My mind's eye saw a cheap grey suit with a striped fat tie and a sock drawer at home that was organized by color with everything matching and running in rows like cornfields. Narcolepsy struck immediately and I lost the urge to ever vote again.

Then my ears started ringing.

Nope, it was some crazy interference coming out of the board. My brother flashed into action, picking up the intercom and paging someone. He turned to me and said "I've never seen this happen before..."

Awkwardly, I said: "Hey dude, I'm outta here--I'll let you get this taken care of..."

"Okay!"

As I walked out, I saw someone running into the booth (I guess he forgot to bring the fire hose). I kept thinking to myself "I sure hope I didn't kick a plug or step on a cable or accidentally brush against a key or something" (I've been known to be slightly clumsy...)

I talked to my brother today and hesitatingly asked if they had figured out where the noise had been generated--he told me it had originated at the broadcast point, so it didn't have anything to do with him.

The funny part was that several conspiracy theorists called into the station thinking that the government was broadcasting interference over the program's airwaves to either mask the message that the program was trying to deliver or subliminally insert counter-programming into their subconscious.

That's what that whiskey and rye will do to you...

What Happened to You?

I feel like I need to generate a public service announcement in the form of a personal story. It’s about a bewildering experience that I had at about the age of 29. First, I have to give a little personal history (sorry):

Despite dark childhood baggage, I feel like I’ve led a relatively charmed life. I was an Eagle Scout, near the top of my class in high school, member of the National Honor Society, and had a great work ethic from earning my own money since the age of about eight by delivering magazines and collecting aluminum cans for recycling.

I always had nicknames like “All American Boy” and “Captain America.” I really tried hard at everything I did, carefully toed the line, steered clear of drugs, drinking, etc.—in short, I was very idealistic and academic about life.

At every job I had, I rose to the top. I worked at a grocery store from the time I was 15 until I was twenty-one, meticulously learning every job in the store and being able to fill in wherever I would be most useful—I clearly remember shaking while I walked into the bosses’ office and asked for a raise—my parents told me that I had to. I had been taught how to be a cashier, but I was being paid entry-level wages, and it had gone on for about three months. The boss, a neighbor who lived a couple of streets over, was a very hard man and there was a very good possibility that I could be fired on the spot, as had happened to several of my friends who “stepped out of line” in any small way. Instead, he gave me a 40% increase, exactly what I asked for (and, the next Saturday, literally had me scrub the floor of the store with a toothbrush for seven hours in retribution).

When I was eighteen, I started working full-time in an office (yes, I kept my job at the grocery store part-time in addition to going to college full time—nobody ever believes my resume’ because my job dates don’t line up quite right). Again, I was promoted immediately, and then again to become the youngest supervisor, at age nineteen, in the history of the company.

I had a wise boss, a woman named Bobbie, who knew the ways of the working world despite having several personal problems at home and living in practically impoverished conditions. Her insight was like magic—she was always right about interpersonal decisions, staffing moves, production, everything. She had told me, “Sorry, kid, but your age is going to cut into your credibility. I’m going to give you this job, but you are going to have to act so mature for your age that nobody can guess you’re still a teenager.”

I did as she suggested, and it worked flawlessly. As fate would have it, I met my wife while working for that company (she was also working there).

To summarize those seven years as briefly as possible, I became one of the most productive supervisors and went on, when PC’s first came to the forefront, to write a customized spreadsheet program that saved the company over $250,000. This brought a lot of attention to our Dallas branch, which became the most productive in the corporation's history. Our notoriously frugal Vice President took our staff out for a steak dinner to celebrate “our” accomplishments!

Nevertheless, when it later became necessary for me to change my hours so I could finish my college degree, the company wouldn’t let me keep my job—I was demoted back to entry level, much to the delight of some. I must say that I was disappointed, actually wounded, that they wouldn’t make an exception for me despite my outstanding track record.

I held this position for three months, then I was scored as the highest-producing employee in the company’s history! I think a lot of people were surprised by this—they thought that when I was “sent down” I would get lazy or something, but I had actually gritted my teeth and was determined to overcome that unspoken negative expectation. The week after my glowing review, the Office Manager came to my desk and led me away on a special project, and I never went back to the heads-down, nose-to-the-grindstone job.

I became an in-house consultant, with the open-ended job of analyzing company performance and making improvements for maximum production and quality control. It really annoyed some of the managers that I was given my own office and whatever supplies I needed, as well as complete autonomy.

Then I graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree, and started going to graduate school with the intention of applying to medical school.

I was offered another consulting job—one that I could do from home and just turn in my hours for pay. It was for a trucking company that wanted me to analyze it’s employees’ productivity and then try to determine the profitability of different contracts and potential contracts with customers.

I felt like this was my first real opportunity to be creative in business, and I seized it and poured my heart into the project. I read books about performance and production, learned several different software programs for analysis, plugged endless numbers into equations, interviewed employees for ideas, and came up with a comprehensive business plan with absolutely no formal training. I even padded my paycheck—in reverse. I rationalized that I was doing research to catch up on my lack of knowledge, so I would subtract 5-10 hours a week when I submitted my hours for payment. I thought that if I “billed” for all my time, my job might go away due to the expense. The reverse actually happened—the owner of the company promoted me to manager, then Executive Vice President. The company went from making little to no money over it’s 17-year history to being truly profitable. And the profits increased every year I was there, and the company grew. The owner had some odd quirks of redistributing money to other corporations via accountants, so it was difficult to tell exactly how profitable things were, but billings increased five-fold and profitability increased dramatically due to the processes I put into place. I was making great money and was putting in about 70 hours per week and had 2 pagers a cell phone, and an office at my home.

Then the bottom fell out of my fantasy business world. The owner, against my wishes, hired a manager who was very politically savvy and wanted me out of the picture. I got my resume’ together and found a new job, but was unceremoniously shown the door by a gloating adversary who screwed me out of a few thousand dollars before it was all over with. The company tanked within two years.

Sorry for the autobiography, but I feel like I needed to lay it out there so I can make the following statements.

You can't let your job be your identity. I'm so glad I learned that by age 29--I've seen some people who didn't learn it until retirement. If you truly learn to believe this, it will free you from guilt and stress from work that a lot of people carry around. Your job is a means to an end--it helps you make a living while you do just that--LIVE!

No corporation will have loyalty to you, no matter what you do--and I feel completely entitled to say it, because I've been a superstar performer in both a small business and a Fortune 500 company. It's a lesson that was eye-opening to me...or was it? I don't think I spotted it the first few times I experienced it--My manager at the grocery store weighed my value as an employee vs. losing me over money, and decided it was profitable to keep me. And my office job? They hesitated all of 20 minutes before telling me that I couldn't keep my job if I went part-time in order to finish school.

The reason is that it's the path of least resistance, and the most easily justifiable decision in business--the numbers "don't lie", and loyalty to an individual does not compute (seems like a Star Trek thing: the needs of the one vs. the needs of the many...not logical). In the end, it's a form of managerial laziness.

Google refuses to divulge to me who first stated that "Capitalism without compassion is a monstrosity", but I first heard it as a teenager and filed it away as a naive, idealistic thought which came erupting back to the forefront of my mind at age 29, when my job with the trucking company was over. I got another job right away for more than double the salary, but the lesson wasn't lost on me--I was using the wrong scorecard to take stock of my life.

The irony is that, in trying to fully devote myself to the company, I hit upon some good resources that came to the surface when I hit this personal crisis.

Steven Covey's "Putting First Things First"
"The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People"
"In Search of Excellence"
"Social Style, Management Style"
Zig Ziglar
The Bible

In the absence of you establishing goals that are important to you, others will impose goals on you that are important to them, and reinforce them. They will make you think that meeting your work goals are the most important thing in life. And sometimes I still have to fight the urge to believe them.

I want to rework this thought--it should be a positive, affirming idea to free you from stress, not a downer about corporate anarchy. Love to hear what you think.

Star Trails in South Texas

I guess it's due to the rotation of the earth, but if you can program your camera to take a long exposure, you can get a "star trail" photo showing a circular pattern.

We were all out hunting in South Texas, and the stars in the sky were fantastic! No big city lights for miles, and we were staying in a shack in the middle of nowhere. When the lights went out it was freaky (2 mountain lions, very rare for this part of the country, were spotted less than half a mile away). The darkness felt like a cloak being thrown over you, with the salvation of looking up and seeing the blanket of stars above.

My buddy, Mike D, is a very good photographer--I would say he's a professional-quality photographer, which to me is someone who turns the dials on their camera and actually knows what it's going to do when it stops on something (I call my blind roulette method "artistic"). So he was going through the steps on creating a star trail. I asked him if he could help me take such a picture with my camera (exactly the same as his).

I actually wanted him to teach me how to do it, but there's one thing about Mr. Mike D.--he's somewhat impatient, especially when someone like me is trying to soak in what I'm being shown about all these features on my camera-it's almost like he feels that I'm not worthy of all the technology I possess in my hands (okay, maybe I'm not)--but he ended up ripping the camera out of my hands and rapidly setting it up for the exposure.

So he programmed his remote control keypad thingie to operate mine so we could start the exposure without having to physically touch the camera--that way there won't be be any vibration.

We went outside, risking our lives against being a mountain lion hors d' ourve, in the pitch blackness, feeling our way around, so we wouldn't contaminate our photos with stray light.

We set the digital camera menu for a long exposure--manually activated and deactivated.

We set the ISO speed to a very sensitive setting so it would pick up the dim starlight.

We laid the whole apparatus gingerly on the roof of my car, taking the risk that the $1200 camera wouldn't fall.

Once we triggered the exposure to begin, we slinked off back inside to wait it out and let the exposure reveal the movement of the earth and make a beautiful swirling pattern. I felt like a gold miner setting a charge of dynamite, blowing open a rock formation, and then going back to see if there is any gold revealed.

When we went back out, Mike snatched the camera, looked at the exposure, and said, "No, this one's no good." He reset some settings on the camera and we lit the fuse and then tiptoed quietly back inside.

We waited it out another 15-20 minutes and then grabbed the camera and went back inside.

That's when I noticed that, in his hurry to get all the settings right, disgusted by my lack of know-how with my camera, Mr. World-Class African Safari Photographer had left the lens cap on my camera! Twice! I knew he would be very irritated about that--of course it was my fault, too! I hope to God he's reading this one!

Here's a real shot of a star trail below (taken by Mr. Mike D himself):

Thinking of Autumn

Autumn is my favorite time of year--the air turns cool and crisp, walking barefoot across the grass gives your feet a chill, and, even in sun-parched Texas, the colors become more vibrant, though not as brilliant as the hardwoods in New England, which are breathtaking. It makes me happy just to know the colors are occuring somewhere that I could visit if I really wanted to...

It's the time of year when Fran and I first started dating, and eventually the season we chose for our wedding (14 years this October!)

Football season starts, Halloween, baseball season ends, school starts (first it was college for me and now it's elementary school for my son, Ryan).

It feels a little cheesy to really like a poem that I had to memorize while (whilst) I was in high school--I wish I could say I was reading volumes of poetry and ran across this as my privately discovered favorite. In this case, I liked this poem even when I was cramming it into my brain during the car ride to school that fall morning twenty or so years ago, knowing I would have to recite it in front of the class (flawlessly, and with feeling).

A Vagabond Song

THERE is something in the autumn that is native to my blood—
Touch of manner, hint of mood;
And my heart is like a rhyme,
With the yellow and the purple and the crimson keeping time.

The scarlet of the maples can shake me like a cry
Of bugles going by.
And my lonely spirit thrills
To see the frosty asters like a smoke upon the hills.


There is something in October sets the gypsy blood astir;
We must rise and follow her,
When from every hill of flame
She calls and calls each vagabond by name.

Bliss Carmen

Weird Weekend

Here are the top 10 weird things I experienced this weekend:

1) Friday night, Fran and I went out with another couple WITHOUT KIDS. This was very nice, but it puts pressure on you to be interesting and act like an adult. That was a little tough.

2) Obsessed about my blog--nearly 4000 hits since June. About 20-30 hits a day, mostly by people who don't leave comments, but that's okay. 170 verbosely-worded entries on my blog, over 210 on my lonely little photo blog.

3) Continuation of #2--had someone come up and comment on my blog--someone I didn't realize was reading, but I'm glad he did--He's a cool guy. But he mentioned that my posts are long. Oh, well.

4) I was mowing the yard when Hurricane Rita's weather came through--could palpably feel the change in atmospheric pressure and temperature drop--large gusts of wind, ominous, solid grey clouds whirling overhead, an oddly beautiful deep blue color to the sky in the northeast. Don--do you have any pictures you could send? He told me he got a shot of a beautiful rainbow as the hurricane blew in and then...blackness. Lost power overnight and the next day fired up the grill and invited everyone from the block to come over for a party (That's so Don).


5) Had a dream Friday night that the police were chasing me through my neighborhood because I was speeding 75 mph in a 40 mph zone. I looked down and Ryan (my son) was riding in the front seat with no carseat, which caused even more concern--I turned off on a dead-end road near our neighborhood and made Ryan get in the backseat in his carseat. Then I realized I was dreaming, turned the dead-end into a through road covered with trees to mask me from the cops and even had them speed, lights blazing, without turning to follow me...

6) Saturday AM, wandered through my house looking for a (ahem) Journey CD to load onto my Ipod. Depressed not to find one. It is one of my last remaining secret guilty pleasures.

7) Gave up on Journey (bet Fran hid my CD to save me from myself) and loaded: Tracey Chapman and Norah Jones. When I was in college, I got totally turned off by a little blonde pixie-like girl who was a huge Tracey Chapman fan because I didn't get her music at all (Tracey) . Wow--things change--I love it now. (hmmm..."Fast Car"--see #5: coincidence?)

8) I actually typed the word "Giggle" multiple times this weekend (To quote Dragline from "Cool Hand Luke": "Now what kind of thing is that for a grown man?")

9) Watched the Dallas Cowboy football game and gave up on them after the 1st quarter--then, like a true fairweather fan, came back and cheered in the 4th quarter as they won 34-31...

10) Most embarrassing, almost omitted item: I was taking a nap on the couch Sunday and Fran was buzzing around the house. I woke up and pretended to fall off the couch with a loud thud, just so Fran would think it's funny (and instead of being ticked off at me for taking a nap while she was working). (Here's another joke I played on her one time--she hates amphibians, and during the spring we tend to get salamanders running through the house occasionally, which causes her to shriek loudly and drives her crazy. I got a foot-long plastic iguana and glued it to the inside of our pantry door so when she went searching for bread or something she came face to face with the red-eyed beast--it freaked her out!). Back to falling off the couch--she is still convinced that I was just so out of it that I just flopped off--she laughed for half an hour--I know, we need to get out more...

Just one Haiku today

Search and, sadly, see
joy, pain, mirth, ecstasy, ache.
Some see a wasteland.



***Update***

I have this really good friend that I go and visit occasionally. Every once in a while we've enjoyed lunch together. He's such a nice guy, a great conversationalist, and he's fabulously brilliant in a neat, analytical way. One thing that he's great at is very quick-witted wordplay, which I get a huge kick out of. It's just fun to throw things back and forth and I am always challenged to make sure I'm not missing any zingers that he's hurling past me in our conversations.

One time I asked him, "Do you find it hard to find people who can follow you?"

And he replied, "It's a freakin' wasteland out there."

I visited with him on Wednesday, and something else came up. He repeated the same thing: "Man, it's just a wasteland!"

I stayed up all night working, then had to deal with a sick 6-year old at 4:00 AM. I was pretty worn out and finishing up my project and his words kept haunting me as I worked away at my desk:

"It's a wasteland."

Or is it?

I never wrote out my thoughts from reading Shogun, because I felt a little silly rehashing ideas that were fictional (albeit likely based on good research) and also probably was read by all the rest of the world (although this directly clashes with the "wasteland" idea). But here was an idea that I liked: The concept of the 3 hearts. One is the heart you wear in your mouth for everyone to see. The second is a more private heart for family and close friends. The third is the heart that is of utmost privacy with yourself.

Many of my friends whom I have told about my blog have mentioned to me that they felt a little uncomfortable reading my blog since there was a lot of private information in it--I think they are used to seeing heart #1 and it freaks them out to see heart #2, sitting there in black and white.

The "public heart" is the front that a lot of people put out there for others to see. Some have it heavily armored and never let others beyond the surface. I've been frustrated in the past with trying to move beyond trivial conversation and talk about "real" things, but then again that type of conversation can't be contrived-it has to be sincere.

It made me sad to think of all these wonderful and sometimes sad things happening to people that I'll never know about. It also makes me sad that sometimes I lose faith that there really is something spiritual inside these people--they aren't soulless zombies.

There it is--mystique demystified.

Unlikely Pair

they say goldfish have no memory
i guess their lives are much like mine
the little plastic castle
is a surprise every time
it's hard to say if they are happy
but they don't seem much to mind

from "Little Plastic Castle" by Ani DiFranco



"Constant discovery is the eternal joy of the ahistorical."

Photo copyright by Kurt Markus (apparently the only photo in existence for TM)

from "The Longest Silence" by Thomas McGuane

These quotes seemed more similar when I stumbled across them on the same day, but they still seem funny to me when placed together...

Ani DiFranco's lyrics refer to the personal act of rediscovering something already known--put with her funny but tongue-in-cheek frankness, while McGuane's classically worded quotation refers to rediscovering truths that already belonged to the world's collective consciousness. Personal vs. universal application of the same concept, which is a great means of contrasting the two authors.

Ani DiFranco's thoughts seem to be a fatalistic acceptance that we are doomed to repeat the same mistakes. McGuane's quote is more of a criticism of the lack of historical knowledge dooms us to ignorance of the world (or to "joyfully" (re) discover things that were already known by others).

---End of thought #1. Beginning of a different thought---

So, I got a fortune cookie from Pei Wei yesterday:

It made me stop and think "Well, there are worse fortunes to be had--and there is certainly no lack of ordinary things, is there?" I'd like to think this is true about me, anyway...

Maybe that's what fortune cookies are all about--you keep the ones you like and throw out the ones you don't like, claiming that somebody else got your cookie today and this one doesn't apply to you (or am I the only one who thinks that way?). That's kind of what life is all about, isn't it? You have choices: Am I going to take the high road or the low road? Am I going to be happy or am I going to let this get me down?

By the way, please don't use my Lotto numbers...I don't feel like sharing my jackpot!

The Compleat Idiot...

"Indeed, my good scholar, we may say of angling, as Dr. Boteler said of strawberries, " Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did "; and so, if I might be judge, God never did make a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation than angling." (from The Compleat Angler, 1653-1655)

Izaak Walton was rolling over in his grave yesterday, when I decided to chase the elusive farm pond dwellers of Denton, Texas.

My brother-in-law, Nate, who genuinely knows what he is doing, carefully and skillfully tied several beautiful flies for me to use, along with my (VERY) expensive Orvis fly rod and reel which I very optimistically bought before my 10-day fishing trip to Alaska several years ago. If I really needed to dress the part, I have the waders, a trout net (hardly used at all), and a humongous backpack for all my fishing gear that is exactly the color of Yoda.

Here's the truth: I don't deserve any of this. Nate could have given me empty hooks with green yarn tied in a granny knot around it--that's really what I deserve. And, if life was strictly fair, I would be using an old broomstick with some twine wrapped around the end with one of those big red and white bobbers--karma should deliver my beautiful rod to a more deserving, more practiced angler (but life's not fair, is it?).

I've been stoked up after reading Thomas McGuane's "The Longest Silence" (Brief commentary: This book has an immense amount of a quality I think of as "word density", meaning that each sentence has a lot to say--it reads very slowly but richly and has a lot of subtlety and depth--just the perfect thing for me right now), which is more a philosophical book but has great descriptions of the mechanical motions of fishing that gave me delusions that, since I understood a good 70% of the terms he used about fly fishing, I actually knew how to do it to a respectable degree.

For example, when he describes sending a tight bow underneath the limbs of a low-hanging tree along the far bank directly in front of a rising rainbow trout, I think to myself "Yes! Of course! That's the way it should be done!" I envision myself shooting yards and yards of line effortlessly across a flowing river into that same shaded pool.

Then there was yesterday. The Day that Reality hit.

I have this suspicion that my rod isn't rigged up correctly--I only know one fishing knot and I use it for everything--if I'm tying backing to a reel, two pieces of line together, leader to my fly line, and a fly to my tippet (thin line at the tip of the rig--it's what the fly is tied to). I once read a book describing like ten different knots for all of these things, so I suspect these things alter wind resistance and other factors--not that it matters to me, Mr. One-Knot.

Then there's my 7 1/2 foot rod. I wish I could say that I effortlessly tossed a tight bow into the farm pond yesterday, but I managed to whip the fly in the air for a couple of casts, lucky to send the line spiraling 15 feet with the line landing in a coiled pile on top of the lure, as if to snare any fish in the vicinity with a Texas lasso. I must correct myself--this is the technique I used before snagging the whole thing in the only tree in the vicinity, whipping a leaf out into the pond and probably convincing all the fish in the place that they need to run for cover!

Trying to get the leaf unstuck, I accidentally pulled the line the wrong way and buried the razor-sharp hook into my left thumb very deeply (probably injecting pondwater into my circulatory system)-- all the way past the barb, which hurt like hell to pull out (At this point, collectively, the ghosts of every fish I had ever treated to this experience cried "Ha!"). Now, with my bleeding thumb, I looked down and realized that all my line was completely twisted into a mass of brambles that was underfoot--it took about 15 minutes to untangle the line, then somehow I realized that in rigging the pole I had missed a couple of the loops in the rod--so I had to cut the fly and re-run the line through.

Great--yes, the big-game fisherman strikes again.

Instead of a tight bow, my casting was a mayhem of line coming and going and not knowing which of the two it was supposed to be doing at any moment. At one point--some of the "going" line met the "coming" line in midair and resulted in the fly fishing equivalent of spontenous combustion--except this was more like spontaneous condensation of all my line in a huge tangle which collapsed limply over my head.

At this point, my wife's sister came out to observe. Fly fishing is a rarity in our area because there is little moving water, trout, or need for a fly rod in general. People that fly fish are thought to be kidding themselves, acting like a "big shot city slicker", or showing off. This is exactly what my sister-in-law was thinking.

"Mike, the fish in my pond like weenies! Should I go get some? You would do a lot better if you put that crazy thing away!" she called from the other side of the pond, half-mocking and half-seriously. I looked down to my bleeding thumb and my rod--I untwisted a newly-caught bramble from the fly line before casting again. The sun was going down and I had tied a very realistic-looking grasshopper fly to my tippet. I did a beatiful cast, this time right across the deep part of the pond (I know this because I was around when it was dug several years ago). I then, with utmost care and the best imitation of actual skill ever, twitched the line enticingly across the pond, through the "sweet spot". Then again. Then again for the next 20 minutes. Finally, the lure went under, but I had been lulled into a stupor and missed setting the hook.

That was the only evidence that whole evening that any fish in the pond had survived the Texas summer. I joked with my sister-in-law that the fish had mooned me for doing such a bad job of casting.

I thought to myself "But wait! This is supposed to be a hallowed experience! Aren't I supposed to be completely relaxed and at peace with the world, like some Zen-Buddhist experience?" But I wasn't--I was frustrated with my lack of skill and lack of results. Intellectually, I could rationalize to myself that I had just been fishing to enjoy myself, but in reality I had exposed the difference in my perceptions (that I had some fly fishing skills) and reality (no way).

The sad part is: If I started out tomorrow and had to choose between fishing and going to work,
I would really have to think about which one I would tackle.

But I would still like to give that casting another go...

The Silvery Full Moon

We got home tonight, and it was time for Ryan, my 6-year-old boy, to go to bed. We were sitting in my office and we both noticed the beautiful, full moon. I had my camera and tripod next to me so we both decided to set up--I told Ryan he could take the pictures, then I grabbed my wife's little digital snapshot camera to document that Ryan was actually doing the shooting.

I think we may enter his beautiful shot in his school's art contest--we'll have to see how it turns out when we blow it up...

It's almost not fair, I think because I work (kind of) with photography every day, so I really want the project to be his. The thing that I think is cool is that he really has a good eye and frames things well, and isn't intimidated by the equipment.

The beautiful full moon made everything silver around us--it reminded me of a poem which I will try to find...

Silver

Slowly, silently, now the moon
Walks the night in her silver shoon;
This way, and that, she peers, and sees
Silver fruit upon silver trees;
One by one the casements catch
Her beams beneath the silvery thatch;
Couched in his kennel, like a log,
With paws of silver sleeps the dog;
From their shadowy cote the white breast peep
Of doves in silver-feathered sleep;
A harvest mouse goes scampering by,
With silver claws and a silver eye;
And moveless fish in the water gleam,
By silver reeds in a silver stream.

-- Walter de la Mare