My Miracle Shower

I have a miracle shower. It's blocked in by thick glass panels, and there needs to be a door swinging open, which means there must be cracks, and you can't seal them because then, obviously, the door wouldn't swing open. You can actually see air through the cracks to the left and to the right and under the door. What's more, the shower head faces those cracks, spraying them relentlessly. This should not work. It's non-viable. It's impossible. And yet—and yet!—my floor stays dry. Luxuriously dry.

I don't understand how it works. Water spraying relentlessly on cracks should create leaks. That's basic science. Yet it does not leak. Hence "miracle shower".

What's more, I enjoy a truly great bath mat. Whatever you're imagining, it's better than that. As I exit my miracle shower, my feet are welcomed by a generous rectangle of fresh fluffy clouds. There is music. There is a sense of a life lived to its fullest.

Delight is fragile. So I was not surprised when, one morning, I stepped out of the shower and discovered that my mat was drenched with water. As my foot touched down, it made a "sploosh" sound.

Three problems at once:

1. My impossible shower had finally fulfilled its Wile-E-Coyote-suspended-in-mid-air-past-the-cliff-edge destiny, and was leaking the way it was always meant to,

2. The primacy of my bath mat was made a mockery of,

3. It being the cold/moist season in Portugal, nothing dries till springtime. We are in the Age of Mold. So I can hang this mat on a line until the (fluffy) sheep come home, but it will...not...dry.

When the problem continued, I consulted with contractors and chatbots, gathering enormous knowledge of sweeps and dams—silicone strips and such to glue to the door's underside to minimize the crack. And I ordered them from China, where—good news!—vendors stood ready to rush me this stuff in absolutely no more than five weeks, max!

Awaiting my silicone workarounds, and having swapped in a fast-drying piece-of-crap bath mat (oh, how the mighty have fallen), my shower began to leak worse and worse. I kicked the mat four feet from the shower, and still it drenched in pooling run-off. Finally, I tried something, purely by whim: I tilted the shower head a random one millimeter to the left.

Complete dryness ever since. Nary a drop of water, anywhere.

In the aftermath, I'm left rubbing my eyes and pondering What Happened Here. What can be learned. I'm not normally one for auguries, but this is so "on the nose" that I can't avoid the feeling of being force-taught something life-critical.

First of all, it reminds me of the time when I was a kid and a New York Mets pitcher (Ron Darling?) was in the midst of a horrendous slump, with no end in sight. Tom Seaver traveled to Shea Stadium to offer him the following advice (I'm paraphrasing): "You feel like you're a million miles away. But you're actually not. You're off just the tiniest little bit." That image stuck with me, and I refer to it whenever strike zones start to seem unhittable.

But while this circumstance echoes that, this was less about resilience than about premature conclusions about fragility. Just because you know what's wrong doesn't mean you Know What's Wrong. It's another "Cousin Manny Thing", where "knowing" is a map, while "experiencing" is ownership.

And this makes for a particularly bright example, because the entire shower situation is shrouded in mystery. None of it is truly sealed, nor could it be, so every dry shower has been a bona fide miracle. And whatever shower head movement had produced a unicorn trajectory to break everything was another miracle, as was my random adjustment returning it all to impossibile functionality. It's been raining miracles. Showering them, if you will.

This all presents a rich field to harvest for insight and revelation, but, really, I'm drowning in that, already. Especially the confusion and catastrophe which give rise to it. I don't regret what I've gone through to learn what I've learned, but, going forward, I'm out of the market for life lessons. Adolescent me would have eaten such lesson-teaching for breakfast, but, at age 62, I understand more than I want to about the world, so the catastrophes feel needlessly obtrusive and exasperating. Really, I'd just like to take a shower, please, thanks.

If you find yourself unwittingly embarked on a long, grueling adventure with no clue and no user manual, and finally return, battered and scarred, to find some glib wizard eager to finally dump all the secrets, it won't feel like reward. "Too little too late," Gandalf!

That said, I must confess that I'm far more delighted now, stepping out of the shower to a bone dry floor and my unimaginably fluffy bath mat, than even before. This brings to mind, yet once again, the very first joke I learned as a child (from "The Bozo the Clown Show"):

Q: Why are you hitting yourself in the head with a hammer?
A: Because it feels so good when I stop!

Bozo really knew what's up.

Over the last two years, I've endured twelve trips to the emergency room, seven campylobacter infections (leaving me with risk of antibiotic resistance and a permanent ban on street food and third world travel), six severe orthopedic conditions requiring immediate surgery (which I'm managing via yoga), and way more. I withstood it all smartly, and am able to walk and eat more or less normally, which feels awesome. And having achieved this respite, last month I made a brief prayer.

I normally avoid prayer, because 1. I don't want stuff (I'm the sort of guy who's impossible to buy presents for), and 2. I fear unintended consequences, and 3. other people need way more help than I do, so I hate to occupy attention. But after ceaseless catastrophes (health and otherwise), I amiably requested "no more tough-love lessons." Also: if The Powers That Be get entertainment value from watching Jim narrowly evade peril, maybe they can maybe wind that down just a smidge.

I'm not someone who hears voices, but the gist I picked up by way of response was something like "Oh, sure, ok; I thought you liked it like that."

But now this.

Yes, it's just a leaky shower. And the lessons were rich. And the outcome was pure delight. So...I guess I do "like it"!

Choose a lesson! They're everywhere! Like with serendipity, it's all a question of which you choose to tune in to—which you choose to frame. I'll start with this unassailable observation:

A dry bath mat is no small thing.

Post-Covid Narcissism

The data is beginnning to support my observation (see all postings tagged "Post-Covid Narcissism" in reverse chronological order) of a profound and enduring increase in narcissism since quarantine.

From Wall Street Journal: 

Staying in My Lane

When I learned to say "peht mahk mahk"—with a relatively convincing Thai accent, to boot—I thought my spice problems in Thai restaurants would be over. But the very first time I swaggered in screaming this phrase, and my waiter giggled in surprise, I was brought spiceless curry.

Why?

Because "Americans don't like spicy."

"Do Americans who've taken the trouble to learn to ask for spicy heat in Thai also 'not like spicy'?"

No answer possible, no answer proffered. Gears shifted, he promised me that next time, it would be spicy.

"What if you're not working?"

"Just tell the waiter you want it spicy"

"I just told you I wanted it spicy, in Thai!"

For the sake of Jesus, Mary's lambs, and all the king's horses, I honestly give up.

But I never do, do I?

Nepalis have taken over a nearby pizza/kebab joint. I chatted with the new owner last week, running through my many favorite Nepali dishes that are, alas, not preparable in a pizza and kebab joint. And today I walk in, am greeted warmly, and ask for "tzzia", the Nepali term for milk tea.

"Peht mahk mahk" is pretty obscure, but let me give you an idea of how much more improbable it was for me to ask for tzzia. A Bhutanese friend of the owner hangs out there, and even he doesn't say it right. When I ordered, he quizzically repeated it back to me from across the dining room. I corrected him until he finally achieved the not-quite-"ch", not-quite-"t" initial consonant.

That's how rare this is.

Also: I watch mountain climbing videos for fun (dog grooming when feeling even less aspirational), and haven't seen a single Everest climber order tea correctly, even ones who spend tons of time in Nepal. There is a serious possibility that I'm the only non-Nepali not living in Nepal who pronounces this word correctly. I am a fricking unicorn.

The milk tea arrives. It is low in sugar, and spiced all wrong. I figure the guy just doesn't know how to make it.

Afterwards, I pay, and he asks me, guardedly, how I liked it. Just as guardedly (not wanting to insult), I let it be known that the half dose of sugar and the use of cardamon as the sole flavor were not what I'm used to.

Shocked surprise flashes across his face. Woah. This guy wants it the real way.

What a surprise, right?

Once again, I give up. For today, anyway. There's a particularly rowdy Jack Russell Terrier who’s about to be shaved, gotta go.

Reciprocity

Way back in 1992, I hooked up saxophonist Ralph Lalama for a week long gig in Spain, where we both performed at the Seville Expo with a Catalan big band. We got along well, and a couple of weeks after we returned to New York, I bumped into him at a jam session he was running in the East Village. "Hey, Ralph!" I chirped. He glanced at me cooly, nodding imperceptibly before turning away.

One of Ralph's buddies explained things to me. "Ralph, you see, fancies himself an elder statesman in the jazz scene, so he figures that who he greets and how he greets them confers a certain anointment and validation. He wasn't sure you'd earned a full level of public respect from him."

"But," I replied, "I wasn't looking to be anointed. I was just saying hi." Ralph's friend shrugged helplessly. This is how it parses to Ralph. It had nothing to do with what I was looking for. I was hardly in this movie. This is the Ralph movie.

A week later, I bumped into Ralph in a Chinese restaurant. "Hey, Jim!" he chirped. I glanced at him cooly, nodding imperceptibly before turning away. I didn't run into him again for thirty years, whereupon he was still furious about the slight. He wouldn't look at me or talk to me, the ogre who'd dissed him. I never expected him to make the connection of his behavior in his sphere of influence to my behavior in mine, but I certainly never expected any of this to rock his world.

After a long period of unilateralism, I've started leaning into this behavior. I remain non-reactive, and always try to help where I can. I don't act spitefully or hold vendettas, and don't sneer or raise my voice. But I’ve begun to follow the playbook I'm handed. As with Ralph, I mirror. Not with venom or malice. Certainly no extra "oomph" to prove the point. I let people set the rules of engagement, and I amiably follow along. I reciprocate.


Since COVID quarantine, people feel less obligated to reply to one other. They don't answer messages if they're busy, or distracted, or didn't fully understand or approve of what was said. They'll let it go if they don't detect an immediate deliverable. And sometimes they don't reply just because.

I was eager to try this out for myself. It seemed like it might be liberating! So I did an experiment with a couple of longtime friends who'd grown less and less engaging, and declined to reply to each of them just once.

I never heard from either of them ever again.


I stoically followed the Golden Rule for my long unilateral period. But I eventually realized that it doesn't work if there's only one person doing it. As I wrote in The “Golden Rule” is Loftily Unattainable (I'd suggest reading the whole thing; it's short):

When the Bible suggested doing to others as you would have them do to you, it turns out this wasn't a helpful reminder. I always figured it was like "Sit up straight" or "Eat more vegetables"—a sappy homily people sometimes need reinforced, despite its blatant obviousness.

No. I see now that it was flabbergasting existential judo—a Copernican flip of perspective. And it was received as a lofty principle which, like other forms of godliness, could only be aspired to, and never put into actual practice.

Play Your Own Game

A few years ago I shared some strategies I used against the inevitable psychopaths and scammers who floated in among Chowhound's million users (particularly one troublingly metallic individual named, among other things, "Julie").

They are strongly counterintuitive, which was the whole point. If you do the expected thing in battle, response will be quick and escalatory. Playing the other person's game likely leads to stalemate or loss unless you have the time, persistence, and resources to match their investment. But if you play your game, aloofly declining to be baited into the blunt oppositionalism favored by the persistent and/or psychotic, you can win your game without their even noticing.

In fact, if you do it right, it's win-win. They can win the contest they've imagined themselves in against you while never noticing that you're winning the contest you're playing against them. Because they don't even understand what that is. Because it's counterintuitive, and not just rotely, bluntly oppositional.

Here's the thing about people settled into a game-playing mental frame: they will assume, unquestioningly, that the other side is playing the same game. Like military leaders throughout history, we discovered the secret: it's a huge advantage to flip the script and find a way to play a different and higher-level game, unbeknownst to your adversary. This relocates the adversary to a sealed box, under a bright light, where they can unknowingly be examined, manipulated, and disarmed. They carry on their fight, and may even feel they're winning, but you can't lose because the conflict's been transparently reframed on your terms.

Of course it's never quite that antiseptic and seamless. Periodically, Julie would become faintly cognizant that our game did not match hers. At such moments, we were forced to switch tactics and shift protocols, leaving us momentarily vulnerable to further escalation. But she never quite got the best of us.

Julie assumed the game was a simple cat-and-mouse. She'd try to post, and we'd try to detect and delete. If we tipped our hand by rapidly and thoroughly deleting her, that would provide her with juicy, useful feedback regarding our capabilities, and she'd develop countermeasures. Escalation! Julie's prickly antennae were perpetually tuned to this dance. Again, she was no mastermind (for example, she could never quite fully organize her myriad personas), but, like any sentient organism, she could absorb feedback and use it to learn and to grow.

We recognized early on that we were under no compulsion to play the same game. Honestly, we didn't care much if Julie posted, so long as she wasn't damaging the site. Her attempts to ingratiate with the community - to blend in, apparently defeating our defense systems by posting like a normal harmless Chowhound user - actually didn't bother us at all. So we left those up.

Most of them, anyway. We'd randomly delete a few, after waiting a random amount of time, just to confuse her feedback curve with noisy data. Consistency on our end would teach her things.

Two followup thoughts:

1. Persistent and psychotic people are Strong Drunks.

I picked up a book about "urban survival", which turned out to be pretty silly, though highly amusing. But it did contain one insight which I've retained. In the chapter about surviving bar fights, it explained that drunk people are sluggish and clumsy, so it's easy to outrun or outmaneuver them. But if they ever get their hands firmly on you, watch out, because drunks are stronger than sober people.

I've never been in a bar fight, but the image of the strong drunk has become a touchstone for me. Time and again I've found myself confronting people (or institutions) functioning as Strong Drunks, and who therefore needed to be finessed or adroitly outmaneuvered. The mantra is: don't ever let them get you in their clutches!

Cops, for example, are strong drunks. If a policeman decides, rightly or wrongly, that you're on the wrong team, and has you within his grasp, you will be out of options. There's ample maneuvering room in defusing that determination, but if it goes the wrong way, and you're within their range, you'll find yourself utterly powerless.

Cockroaches are the opposite. A roach can't hold or harm you...but they hide well and they run fast. If you manage to catch one, it can be effortlessly stamped out, but there are always more of them craftily evading you, and you can't do much about it. To a cockroach, you are the strong drunk.

Even if you deem yourself smarter, stronger, and in a superior position, you must avoid getting caught in a clench with a Strong Drunk. Rather, the move is to skamper wildly between their legs, like a cockroach. You need to smell the scent of a Strong Drunk and avoid clenches at all cost, because that only plays to their strength.

2. This is a broad strategy for life—at least those parts of life where you're forced into some sort of competition.

Note: if you are competitive by nature, every word of this will strike you as nonsense, because you are viscerally compelled toward blunt oppositionalism. Toward clenches. Best regards, you strong drunk you, from me here in my cockroach hidey hole.

It particularly explains my investment philosophy. I never try to outsmart other investors. I know my limits, and I recognize that there are many people who will beat me in a clench every time. There are smarter, more powerful people (institutional, professional investors) and there are more rabidly persistent ones (day traders). I can't beat either at their own games, so I don't try.

As I've written many times, I've paid my bills by buying Apple whenever its stock dips (circa 25% every couple of years) and then riding it above its previous high. This strategy isn't secret or brainy, yet almost no one seems interested in it. Why? Because they're playing different games.

Day traders are occupied with hourly and daily results, while my approach requires thinking in months and years (with the added benefit of low taxes on the long term gains). Meanwhile, professional and institutional investors pursue massive jackpots with no interest in the comparatively modest gains that attract my attention. To them, I'm like a dog nibbling discards beneath the dining table.

If I tried to compete with either group, I'd be ground into hamburger meat. Instead, I play my game, on my terms. And the curious thing is that everyone would readily concede that my way works. It's just not of interest to them. So I operate in my own little ecosystem, quietly picking ripe fruit from low branches, with no predators to contend with.

I think I've always done things this way.

Belabored Serendipity

I've made critical improvements to my recent posting on Serendipity.

I can't understand how I could have published it when it was still so blurry, but blurriness doesn't look blurry until you've thought of a sharper way. By the same token, the photos I took with my iPhone 5 look comically bad, though they seemed awesome at the time.

It's not actually so difficult to come up with fresh and credible observations, connections, and explanations. I've been explaining this as one of my themes, outlining how we fritter away attention and creativity on self-defeating whims (see postings tagged "Creativity", but start low, not with the more recent). It's also not hard for me to write clearly and entertainingly, after 35 years of professional experience. But it's really hard to introduce a fresh thought and make it land for readers. For starters, you need to judge whether it will actually land or not, which is like stepping into a cognitive house of mirrors.

I've been using chatGPT to poke me when I'm foggy or tedious. It doesn't fix stuff, it just points to problems, keeping me on my toes. But a chatbot learns faster than a human, so at this point it can see through my fog—and to my essential point—too easily. It's like the smart minder of a babbling idiot, discerning bright gist even from drooly mumblings.

This process never gets easier. Which is weird, because I'm mostly improving. My insight has sharpened and grown more fertile, and my writing skills continue to hone. But the two must struggle to keep pace with each other, which feels pretty vicious circle-ish. Plus, my cosmic background fogginess increases with age, layering in another unknowable fog factor, as I grow too foggy to notice my fog. My kingdom for a reliable fog detector!

But, hey, the venture feels like a fitting Zen art, so here I am. I proudly declare my foggy essay on serendipity newly razor sharp. To me, anyway. You? You might find it totally foggy. And next week it may seem a turd to me as well. And so it goes.

Scorn and Grace

I feel that it is a matter of basic respect and courtesy to graciously allow others to dislike or even hate me for no good reason. If we can’t allow each other our whimsical preferences, then what does it even mean to be human?

This represents just part of a broad spectrum of bad behavior I feel compelled to accept. I watched my mother make awful decision after awful decision as she aged, while her confidence - and her derision toward my smart, compassionate input - only climbed. It occurred to me, like a bell ringing, that she's allowed. We all are. This is a matter of basic human respect. We viscerally feel that love compels drastic intervention when, in fact, it compels something much more challenging: restrained tolerance.

Every one of us is entitled to be wrong, counterproductive, toxic, self-destructive, demented, blinkered, and all the rest. We’re free to stroll obliviously off of cliffs, even as our friends scream in alarm. This isn’t edge-case stuff for losers or elders. It's a basic proposition of human sociality.

If I can insert a word of wise council, I'll certainly do so, never insisting on compliance. But I never interject in my own self defense. It would be disrespectful overstep and, worse, it's low-priority. With nearby cliffs to holler about, we must choose our battles!

A former friend of mine became an airline pilot despite having the emotional control of a disturbed toddler. I did say a gentle word to him a few years ago, and there is a non-zero chance, as he continues to endlessly curdle and fester on that atrocity, that he may one day hunt me down and strangle me. I don’t regret my gentle word—someone needed to say something before he endangered multitudes. But I won't "fix" his hatred, nor should I. It is a matter of basic human respect and courtesy to graciously allow others to dislike or even hate me for no good reason.


A few weeks ago, I wrote this related thought:

If someone has a wrong idea about you—about something you said, did, or thought—you might, with effort, convince them otherwise. Maybe!

But here's the problem: we exalt our assumptions and opinions, even when they're whimsical. They outweigh even provable truth. So after all the explaining, you won't have cleared yourself. You'll have been given a reprieve. They'll frame it like forgiveness. They've forgiven your transgression...this time!

So the next time you offend, confuse, or simply trigger another wrong conclusion, you’ll be treated as a repeat offender. No more benefit of the doubt for you, mister.


I no longer correct people. Whatever wrong thing they're thinking about me, they can hold on to it. I don't exhaust myself playing whack a mole.

John Adams on Reframing

John Adams, writing very early in the Revolutionary War, well before the Declaration of Independence:

"That we are divorced is to me, very clear. The only question is, concerning the proper Time for making an explicit Declaration in Words. Some people must have time to look around them, before, behind, on the right hand, and on the left, then to think, and after all this to resolve. Others see, at one intuitive glance into the past and the future, and judge with precision at once."

Reframing is instantaneous. But we can be sluggish in our consideration, and in our trigger-pulling. We tend to overcommit to the present frame, even when it's untenable. It's the same phenomenon as a "frozen perspective".

This is also what Buddhists mean by "attachment" (upādāna). It's about attachment to a given framing, not greedy attachment to possessions. This attachment is deeper and more foundational, leaving us feeling stuck and unable to shift perspective. Hence suffering.

Adams recognized that people get stuck, but couldn't quite place the "how" and "why". And even the Buddha struggled to express this subtle notion in understandable language. "Attachment" has been eternally misconstrued. Consider all the Buddhists through the centuries who stripped off their clothes and wandered naked into the forest, ferociously (and ironically) stuck in a framing of Seeking. Stiffening their backbones with resolve to transcend precisely the sort of attachment they were stoking.

The Troubling Gauntlet of Self Forgiveness

If you're still a jerk by your 60s, it's not because you're oblivious.

By then, you've had ample worldly feedback. But you ultimately decided "I gotta be me."



The usual thinking is this: "Those who wish to reap the rewards of being around me need to prove themselves by putting up with me. And I’m worth it."

It hardly seems worth mentioning that such a person never is worth it. Because they're the sort of person who'd gladly collapse into being a jerk. And there's a word for that: "Jerk".

A 20 or 30 year old jerk might grow out of it. They may be momentarily distracted or confused. Forgive them, for they know not what they do. But by age 60, you've had a red line drawn for you beneath your awfulness very many times. You can try to disregard it, or shrug it off, but you are well aware. You've merely practiced self-forgiveness. So you're cool with it.

By that age, we've spent enough time in the kiln of worldly feedback that we ought to be just about perfect. If you'll think about it, it's strange that people can maintain their jerkiness for the better part of a century. It's not because they're busy, or oblivious, or their faculties have begun to fail, or terrible things have happened to them. No, none of that.

It's that they've made peace with it. They're fine with it.


Corollary: I've previously observed that old people don't repeat stories and jokes due to failing memory. They do it because of failing to give a fuck about forcing us to sit through the same stories and jokes. They have self-forgiven.

Insomnia Dreams

This is part of a series of postings on self-healing, which you can access via the "Self-Healing" tag which appears in the Slog’s left margin below "Popular Entries".


I have a theory about chronic insomnia - the kind that lasts for weeks or months. It's rarely actual insomnia. Instead, it's a dream of insomnia. We are not insomniac in bed. We're insomniac in a dream. While sleeping.

There's a way to check. If you're a chronic insomniac, next time you feel unable to sleep (after having laid still for a good while, and without a racing mind occupied with daily life issues), try to find your arms. As often as not, you will need to forcibly remind yourself where they are. You will need to reconstitute them.

The observation may not seem to offer much pragmatic help, but try this reframing which works for all sorts of insomnia:

Grant permission for some trusted, benevolent entity to whisk you and your bed elsewhere. You don't need to know where, or observe the journey. Swaddled comfortably in blankets, surrender control of the process and let it happen while you sleep. "Take me wherever," like the mindset of a trusting toy poodle stuffed into its owner's satchel.


This may explain why many people insist they get zero sleep but don't suffer from the expected health effects. They might be irritable or drowsy (from the anxiety of it), but do not present as never-sleepers

Other postings on Insomnia