A secretary, who is pretty in a rather prim way, was standing by my desk as I worked on some text for her.
Blah blah blah, I said.
My iTunes was playing in the background.
Blah, blah blah, I said.
I had my iTunes organized by artist. It hit a patch of Yat-Kha. Their Re-Covers album.
I highly recommend it for any occasion.
I feel obligated to explain my music, I said to her.
Oh? she said.
These are Mongolian throat singing covers of classic rock songs, I said.
Oh, she said. Rock?
Blah blah, blah, I said.

You’re not very wrinkly at all, she said.
Is that right? he said.
Most people seem to get more wrinkles when they get old, she said.
Hrm, he said.
I mean, you have these fat rolls around your throat, but otherwise…, she said.
I see, he said.
I mean, not that you’re getting old. I don’t mean to suggest that, she said.
Getting old beats the alternative, he said. It’s my goal to get old.
I don’t mean like you have this really fat neck or anything. I didn’t mean like rolls of fat, she said.
I see, he said.

One of the main advantages of the modern cylinder lock is the fact that it is not necesary to alter the boltwork to change the cylinder. In fact, changing your average door lock requires the removal of exactly one screw, removal of the cylinder, going to the hardware store or the lock guy with the cylinder (best) or measurements of said cylinder (if you want to lock your door while you are absent) showing the length of cylinder and the distance right and left from the moveable pin part so you get the right replacement. Depending on the cylinder, it costs (where I live) between

1. I was chatting with a friend and mentioned a problem that plagues me, an inability to get things done, either due to never starting or starting but not finishing. She recommended a book about “how to get things done” and within 30 seconds, I had ordered it from Amazon. Impressed by my speed and decisiveness, I wondered whether I needed the book after all.

2. About a week later, Amazon sent me an email informing me that it was going to take longer than the 4 day estimate they’d promised to deliver the book to me, a week or two longer in fact, but they hadn’t forgotten and were working on it, but in the unlikely case that they would be unable to ship, they’d let me know.

They were in the neighborhood, drinking wine at a local Heuriger, a wine tavern, really good wine they said, and since they were in the neighborhood they thought they’d drop by and ask when the rowing club Heuriger was.

It was last weekend, we said, but come in and chat for a while.

Oh, we couldn’t, they said. They apologized for bothering us. Just for a minute. Then they have to run.

Would you like something to drink? Some wine? Glass of water? Juice?

I’d like some of your good single malt, if I may be so bold, she said. He had some wine, but mostly mineral water, since he was driving.

In a generous mood, I fetched a liter bottle of my second-best single malt from the library. It was two-thirds full. The best single malt, my vat-strength Macallan’s is locked away. This was still good stuff, Macallan Elegancia.

I got two Riedel single malt glasses.

We sat and chatted about various things. I couldn’t get over how fast our guest was putting away her whisky. It was impressive. After a while, I felt like saying, why don’t we just insert a valve into your side and pour it straight into your liver?

I had to go pick up Beta at her summer job so I didn’t drink but a glass at the start. When I got home with her, our guests, especially the one drinking whisky, were more cheerful than they had been when I left, which is the way it’s supposed to be I guess.

I heard somewhere that with English men, you can see in the faces of grown men how they looked as boys, and with the French, you can see in the faces of little boys what they’ll look like when they grow up.

As we sat there and talked, and poured (for a drink or two I had matched our guest, but lost the desire and began giving her full refills, and taking symbolic ones myself) I noticed I could see clearly how handsome and how pretty our guests had been before they entered middle age and got heavy and so on.

It is one of my favorite super powers, being able to look at people and see how beautiful they are.

Our whisky drinking guest stopped making sense with about two inches of whisky left in the bottle. Beta was, by this time, also tasting a bit of the Macallan, just half an inch in a glass. Gamma sniffed it and wrinkled her nose and asked how we could drink it. Both girls, though, were mainly observing the woman beside me. They found it both interesting, in a slightly clinical way, a slightly anthropological way, and entertaining in a we don’t usually get to see this stuff way.

Alpha sometimes had to remind me to refill our guest’s glass; sometimes it was empty so fast I didn’t notice right away.

I was getting slapped on the back a lot and that sort of thing, to which I usually said something like, “heh, yeah, hm”.

She declared she wasn’t leaving until the bottle was finished. I thought she was kidding but she wasn’t. I poured her a big glass. She asked me if I were trying to get rid of her. Well, I thought. No, no, of course not, I said. We’re all having a great time, I said.

I half expected her to sit on my lap at some point, but she didn’t.

When I was a kid, a friend’s mom went crazy and climbed my uncle’s pear tree and threw pears at him when he asked her to get out.

They left after several hours of fun, our guests. The husband was fairly sober, having drunk mainly water the whole time. They marched their beautiful selves out to their car and drove off into the night. Come back soon, we said.

The Secret of All Things
Look into her eyes with your patented special look and she, it’s as if she were tired and staring at a generic work of art in an airport waiting room two hours into a five hour layover. Surrounded by cranky babies.
Or, you try to strike up a conversation with someone and you’re so hoarse with trepidation they keep saying, What? What?
Or they’re mobbing you at work.
Or you go into a bookstore, killing time, getting out of the rain, and you start opening books, looking inside, looking for a book the reading of which will cure you of being an asshole. You remember the feeling, you used to get it all the time when you were younger, but none of these books give you that feeling. They hang limply from the shelves, like Dali clocks.
Or you beg someone to do something important and they keep saying, No. No.
Or your habitat is getting boring, or confining, or you can smell a potential mate around the corner and you want out but it’s escape-proof.
The secret is this: there are three things you must do – try, and try, and try.
Don’t stop trying, ever.
There’s no hurry, not necessarily.
It’s not about doing it fast, it’s about doing it.
You must know what you want. Once you know this, you do it. That is the secret of all things.
Say you want out but they have placed an empty planter to block the only exit.
It is unclimbable. It is over your head. And if you were to climb over, you’d fall inside and be stuck again, only worse.
So here is what you do: you fucking climb over anyway.
Think Steve McQueen bouncing that ball, baby.
Bounce. Bounce. Bounce. Bounce.
You scale the outside of the planter a hundred times, and fall back down a hundred times. They laugh at the persistent turtle.
Tortoise, assholes, you think. Persistent tortoise.
Then, one day, they find you inside the planter. They pick you up and put you back into your habitat.
Some might think, All for nothing. But not you. That is part of the secret.
They find you inside the planter a few more times. Every time, they gently pick you up and put you back into your high-security flowerbed.
Until one day. The day you finally taste freedom. Because you never give up climbing. It’s beyond hope, beyond persistence. You just know what you want to do, and you do it.
Climb over the planter. Maybe you fall in, but you climb back out on the hundredth try, or the thousandth. And you’re free! You are outside!
Or, you would be, if they hadn’t plugged the hole under the fence with the concrete pig. Goddamn it.
But, in principle, the secret always works.