I took my son to his second favorite steakhouse for dinner on Monday. His favorite steakhouse shares a name with the neighbour who lived behind my apartment several years ago, when I first moved back to Seattle from London. The neighbor was a poor gentleman with a history of drug problems; he had dealt with them, mostly, and was a wonderful partner. My son thought he was terrific, and he watched over him (the neighbor watched my son, that is) several times. The steakhouse was over the lake on the east side of King County and the cheapest steak they served was roughly a hundred dollars a plate. For my birthday one year, I took the backyard neighbor, my upstairs neighbor, and my son for dinner at the steakhouse. It was a glorious meal and reminded me that the United States was only slightly less racist than it was in 1876. But my backyard neighbor got an amazing steak, with sides, and we all got the opportunity to tweak management. It was a good day, although I still feel awkward about it. The backyard neighbor wasn’t comfortable, even though he felt kind of amazing being able to invade the land of white privilege. The idea of it was, though, that white privelege would have been comfortable with the backyard neighbor. I was wrong, and that still kind of bothers me.
Trading partners
I’ve been thinking a lot about international trade recently. For those of you who don’t know me well, this requires some explanation. First off, I’m a nerd, and thinking about complex issues makes me happy, and reading and writing about them, modelling them, solving out equations which express them – yep, all of that makes me happy. Giggly, actually. Second, trade has been in the news a lot lately, what with tariffs and the like being strewn about willy-nilly, so to the extent my nerdish pondering at any moment is driven somewhat by what’s in the news, trade would naturally occupy some sort of a place (on that note, I’m also thinking a lot about pumpkin recipes). Third, and perhaps most importantly, international trade – and its counterparts in international finance and immigration – impacts me really personally. I worked outside the US for almost seven years and harbor deep hopes that I will do so again someday – but the general trends and operating mechanics which enable and restrict flows of capital, labor, and goods between countries will play a big role in deciding whether or not I’ll have an opportunity to do that. So the recent eruption of a good old fashioned 19th century tariff war, combined with increasingly strident tones about people who “Aren’t From Here”, has me thinking a lot.
Sharpening with water
I’m rather happy at the moment. My friends Mark and Viktoria – both excellent writers with different styles – have joined me on this site, adding their own journeys to the mix, and that is enormously satisfying. I had hoped that would happen, and that there might evolve a kind of dialogue that will stretch all of us – writers and readers, sometimes both in the same body – and would forge, hone, and sharpen the combination. And Engagement seems to be doing the trick. The three of us are engaged in a struggle, not with one another, but with an idea.
Engagement
I couldn’t do it, Viktoria said, writing to me about how I feel compelled to engage with the world as it is, the world of work and corporate life. There is, I think, more to it than that. I live in places which are “normal,” like San Antonio and Seattle. I don’t live in paradise outposts in Maine or rural Ontario, or live in less prosaic but nevertheless lovely and spectacular places like London or other major cities where everything is there for you, where you can detach from normal existence while still enjoying the benefits of cosmopolitan wonder. I don’t even live in Philadelphia or Manchester or Tampa, where the world blends into a kind of stable mix of paradise and normalcy, where the food is good or the sun shines but the housing is subpar and the urban planning is rubbish and most people still dream of the places where it all seems sterling, where people dream of London and Maine in their different ways as benchmarks, as marks of what should be. Continue reading “Engagement”
Incomplete koan
My son read me a story on Sunday night, from an illustrated book entitled Zen Shorts, by Jon Muth. His mother and he had stumbled across the book on the weekly trip to the library. The book is meant to grant children a window into Eastern philosophy, and it involves a trio of kids who befriend a wise panda bear named Stillwater. To one of the children, he tells the following tale (with full attribution to Mr. Muth): Continue reading “Incomplete koan”