It has been a while since I reported on my own socioeconomics as part an parcel of the anthropology cache in the make that Cobb has been for the last 7 years. But as I have just finished Hitchens' memoir and am about halfway through the biography of Warburg, I'm in the mood for the personal.
On the surface everything is smooth, but beneath are rumblings of a disturbing nature. Right now is review season, meaning that for the first time in a couple years on the job, we're actually going through with the ratings and rankings and all that. I have a strange relationship with my boss and with my company owing to the fact that I'm only one of a few people who lives on the West Coast and I don't get much business here. I feel I ought to be generating business, but I'm always booked solid delivering service. It's all about the age old dilemma - nothing local. Nothing local. I don't know where the people are that should be friends and business associates at my level, I travel far and wide from point to point and establish friendships and relationships that last six to twenty weeks, and then I'm off. I've had six at bats in two years - six recyclings of the same kind of work with different kinds of people, two of which have been miserable, two of which have been good but abortive, two of which have been short, but sweet. It's OK to be average at my stage in life, but I'm not accustomed to it. My attitude is one of soldiering on, like a movie star with a mediocre run of movies, people start questioning whether your ego is worth the trouble. What have you done for me lately? That's all you ever get at this level of society. Nobody pities the affluent.
I'm an formalistic entrepreneur in a too small company. I ought to be a new markets guy in a big firm with lots of money, patience and vision. I ought to have troops. Instead, I have work. Just work. And so I just work, and work is boring sometimes. But, I do have work.
I'm playing the market these days, with just a little bit of money so that I feel the small joys and sorrows of the market as it bumps and jitters along. I understand how I could make a bunch more, with options and whatnot. But I don't want to try just yet. On a daily basis, losing or gaining 20 bucks feels about right. If I increased my playing investment by ten, it would make me sick to think I don't have that much control. I'm beneath the noise of brokerage fees - it doesn't make sense for me to play when the only thing I can do to influence my ability to make money would cost me 10% of my profit. So I would have to play the options game. I'm almost tempted, but I'd rather not.
Warburg has the asceticism I wish I had again. But I lose my focus in a house full of other beings on whose personalities my influence is not constant and daily. The great irony of being a father of the sort I have become is that your love exceeds your desire to discipline when your children are generally successful. You just want them to be happy, knowing their souls are good. All you can do is destroy that by inches with the knowledge that old men have of death and corruption. I introduce them to R rated films. I tell them how false men and women can be. I try to get them to read Martin Amis and understand the pathos of Tupac. A teaspoon of bitters helps the sweet life go down.
Kira's Creatures from Michael David Cobb Bowen on Vimeo.
My son, now M16 wants to join the Air Force. I listen to him singing every day he is home. I watch him spontaneously compose on the piano. I endure his manic speed metal gaming at full blast. Will he fight and die? If it comes to that. And it always comes to that in one way or another - we always sacrifice our children to the world. We spin them out like lucky pinballs and hope they score, but we cannot shake the playfield and change the physics unless we are that overbearing, and then what are they but pinball progeny? I have already dreamed and imagined the worst among all of my loved ones. I'm already prepared for the suffering and I live every day in a world of 'As If'. But at every opportunity my lambs come home loyal and loving. So I will let them fly afield. There are about 5600 aircraft in the Air Force, 2500 of which are fighter jets. There are 350000 personnel. They are all elite, as are all those I've known from that service. They are perfectly admirable men and women, of the sort my son already is but has yet to prove to the world on the world's terms. And I wonder and fear if this world's terms will require the sort of change Air Forces provide. I have begun Martin Amis' latest book with foreboding. A Pregnant Widow indeed. He wants to travel and speaks of going to college in England. We both are Anglophiles and have been checking out old Blackadder and new James May. It's so funny to hear his male sense of humor, but then I knew that was coming when he started reciting verses from the Book of Armaments from memory.
When I say that I am proud of my oldest daughter, she asks why. Force of habit. Unconditional love. I love her for who she is, not what she does. I love what she does because of who she is. She is most like my wife embodying the care and concern, practicality and moral fiber of the kind of woman who cannot be ignored, who often sacrifices in silence and doesn't understand why this world has no respect for that. But again she comes back. I told her that some things come easy for people - people who think the world will be placed at their feet because they are quick thinkers. I tell her not to be fooled; to be thorough and consistent even if it takes all day. She knows how to ask questions, she knows how to listen. And still she speaks in a quiet voice. I think, if I may be so bold to say, that I'm starting to understand the feminine ideal by watching my daughter. I'm starting to understand the yang of her being. For me, it's not about me and it's not about being but doing. And when I look at the beauty and loving qualities of my daughter I suddenly see that it *is* all about her and the very fact that she exists. She doesn't have to do anything, but remain the wonderful person that she is. Why? Because I would, as any proper man would, do anything and everything for her.
The gremmie has been born. It's no surprise that the youngster has taken to surfing. She stood up on her first longboard over the last weekend. She continues to be a boundless kind of energy and intellect. But she's not a reader and that puzzles me. So I asked her and she said she's too lazy. I said well, poetry is for lazy readers and she immediately agreed. She dug up her old Shel Silverstein and recited her favorites. So now I have a new task - to find her more poetry. In the meantime I got her a new computer, new for us but not new from the store. I let her be an administrator now, so she's got her new gigabytes and is at this moment creating new creatures in Spore. Finally putting some of those creatures into a format she can share online.
I spend more time thinking about my nieces and nephews these days. There are things I can share with them that they may be more interested in than my own three. But that's all just boring stuff right now.
The upper middle class. Where is it going to go over the next decade? I've seen several signs that there is plenty of hunger and ambition and talent waiting to take over. So I don't worry about my America. I worry about the whole of America but I do wonder which segment will get the airplay as we lumber along.
Yesterday I purchased two flat screen monitors for $65. The lady I bought it from was moving from Torrance to Gardena. Downscaling as far as I could tell. She had three and were offering them for 40 each. I made a deal. I like making a deal but when I was a kid I never learned much about it. The experience was oddly gratifying, and I made a lesson out of it to my son. I emptied my wallet, and my son emptied his as well for the lady - there was $65 in cash between us. I remember daydreaming as a teenager as I looked through the classified ads - The Recycler thinking that if I had $1000 cash, I could buy and sell stuff from people. It is an experience that I haven't participated in quite enough - the satisfaction of buying and selling and dealing person to person and shaking hands. My business is much more complicated and impersonal, but this is something I expect to be doing more of.
I worry about the 'new normal' but I'll get through it like I got through the 70s. I look forward to doing mroe business off the grid, catching up my personal with the corporate aspects of my life. This organic angle is coming back around. I see it on this side of my conservatism and I'm teaching my family. We will save money and will have some swap meet integrity.
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