Amanda Knox Needs You to See Her the Way She Needs You To See Her

Pure narcissism, of the variety currently and fatally plaguing us (it's the header to this article, which you don't need to read, because the header says it all). This is the more dangerous epidemic in America, where everyone feels poor and victimized (hey, it's a chic trend; all the best people are totally into it!).

All Americans are rich and only a wealthy, comfortable, entitled person would imagine they would/could define the world's view of them. To imagine the world owes you any such thing is the blinkered, twisted conceit of a messed up narcisstic aristocrat.

As I move through the world, no one has the slightest notion that I was a hip jazz musician (I don't look like it anymore) or an Internet sensation (I never looked like it) or a devoted yogi (jesus christ do I ever not look like it) or someone who's figured out fresh answers to big questions or received enthusiastically positive notes from a succession of oddly slinky girlfriends. I look/seem like someone with a very stout, very stern wife who dominates the bejesus out of him, and who recedes to his basement to play endlessly with his model train set or collection of caged weasels or whatever to escape her, and spends his days as an assistant accounting professor at some community college. I am phenomenally unimpressive and uninteresting-seeming. 

And all of that's ok. I'm not complaining. People are entitled to their opinions, if nothing else. In fact, if you tried to control the opinions of young Ms. Knox, she'd howl like a banshee. She wants to control yours, not the other way around. Fair's fair.

You may not have as wide a reality/appearance differential as I do, but you're likely closer to my end of things than to gorgeous rich young Amanda Knox who indignantly demands the right to define herself to others; to determine their view of her. What sort of self-raptured lunatic thinks they can or even should control what other people think about anything, much less about them?

Her fury that a little murder or whatever might deprive her of her inherent right to determine her own image in the world illustrates all that's wrong with contemporary America. Even murder aside, the image determination chunk, alone, blows my mind (add the murder part back, and it's a double wallop). As a comfortable middle-aged white boomer dude who's supposed to enjoy all the entitlement, I'd never imagine any such thing. No one sees me! No one has ever seen me! And it honestly never occurred to me that that they would, much less should, much less must! What is wrong with people?!?

This novel notion is exclusive to the bubble of spoiled, choleric Mrs. Howells that's arisen in the latter decadent stages of this unhealthily wealthy, entitled, and narcisstic society.

Economics, Shneconomics

My house, which I plan to sell, has some problems. Everyone's advising me not to fix them, but to simply discount its price accordingly. Let the next owner fix it! And this strikes me as unbelievably poor advice.

Say you own a car worth $30,000. And say - for whatever reason, I'm not judging - a large mammal died in it, and the corpse wasn't discovered for a few (summer) days. And say you got an estimate from an industrial cleaning service for $11,000 to replace fabrics and expunge stink. And say you didn't want to lay out that money. So you put the car for sale for $19,000. Let the next guy do it!

You will not sell the car. You won't sell it at $15,000, either, or even at $10,000. At maybe $7500, there's a ghost of a chance you'll connect with a crazed bargain hunter who'll crack open the door, smell the bouquet, and holler "I'll take it!" But if you're lucky enough to find this buyer (you won't), it will only be from loads of advertising and months of waiting. Most people don't want your corpse car at any price. Car buyers want a nice car, not a corpse car.

My house's problems aren't quite so bad. Some asbestos insulation in the basement ($10K), lots of peeling lead paint on the exterior ($18K), and a stalled bathroom renovation ($8K). Lowering my sale price by $36K won’t cut it, because home buyers want a nice house, not an asbestos house.

Even if I discounted it to an irrisistibly low price, only a slim fraction of buyers want a PROJECT. So my house would sit on the market for months, acquiring the stink of disinterest. If I were very lucky, I’d sell the house at a 2X discount ($72K) to its problems.

Economics assures us that value is value, period. So a discount should balance out an inadequacy. This is nonsense, conceived by dry eggheads with no understanding of actual human beings.

Self-Healing: Shin Splints

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". For general tips and background on self-healing, read this.


I am the king of shin splints. They feel like torture, and no one seems to have a solution. After being plagued for years, the following completely fixed the problem. Nothing else works...I know, I've tried!

There's a yoga pose called Hero's Pose (that's it, above), and if you practice it before you run, you won't get shin splints. The problem is that most non-yogis (and even some yogis) have trouble doing it (the physical issues that make it tough are the very same ones that produce the shin splints). But there are modifications to make it more approachable.

Here are tips for the 99% of us who can't do the full pose. There's a good chance you'll need more than the single yoga block used in that article's photos. I'd suggest you order two right now.

Even if you resort to blocks and other tricks, you'll still feel a certain amount of discomfort (that's how you know it's working!). I have a kooky trick to offer: visualize steam vents at the outer corners of your knees, and let angry hot steam puff out of those imaginary vents. It helps!

Note: once you eventually remove the blocks and bring your hips right to the floor, people may warn you that this position is harmful to your knees. But as long as your feet are in proper alignment, with toes pointing backwards and soles facing directly upward, you will be fine. Though it's always a good idea to check your form with a yoga instructor (Iyengar yoga teachers are the most rigorously trained in form and alignment).

I follow this with a quick downward-facing dog or by simply straightening my legs and extending my achilles tendons.

There's a sizable industry around prescribing yoga poses for physical ailments, but two of the best - Hero's Pose for shin splints and Triangle Pose for knee pain - are only rarely mentioned. But now you know!

Self-Healing: Panic Attacks

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". For general tips and background on self-healing, read this.


The cure for panic attacks is to say - repeatedly and preferably (if there's no one around) out loud:

"It's ok!"

Say it in the most reassuring voice possible - the voice you'd use to comfort an upset child.

There's a twist: this isn't self-soothing. Don't say it to yourself. Rather, direct it to an imaginary child. It's the speaking, not the hearing, that helps. Don't absorb the reassurance; offer the reassurance. It's a flip (aka reframing).

You may need to repeat it a number of times (again, it’s best spoken out loud). But you'll quell even horrendous panic attacks via this surprisingly simple little move.


This can make you feel self-conscious if you have a tendency to view yourself on an imaginary movie screen.  You might decide you’re a weak, pathetic, and shaky character grasping pathetically at straws. Three thoughts:

1. You're not in a movie. To imagine you are is to take leave of reality (aka madness). Repeating "it's okay" is unconventional behavior (you might raise your eyebrow if you saw someone else doing it), but it's sane and helpful, while disrupting a helpful process because you don't like how it looks when you peer at yourself through an imaginary camera lens is neither sane nor helpful. This is not a movie. Snap back to your senses.

2. It's nearly impossible to survive and thrive in this world without a few go-to moves (healthier than snorting heroin or gambling the rent on blackjack) reserved for tough times. They may not be "in-character" for the personality you ordinarily try to project, but, believe me, the most confident and secure people you know have moves they do in private when no one's watching (that's how they maintain that veneer). It's ok to drop out of character once in a while to do what it takes to get through hard stuff like panic attacks. It's not weakness, it's strength. It's not how one loses, it's how one wins.

3. Human beings spend their lives in conflict with imaginary people: mentally rearguing old arguments, worrying about faceless attackers and detractors, reliving bygone humiliations, and generally using our imaginations to make our lives a living hell. That's considered "normal", but using the same imaginative faculty in positive ways to help us cope seems, for some bizarre reason, childish and loopy.

Self-Healing: Knee Problems

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". For general tips and background on self-healing, read this.


Knee problems make life difficult, and doctors are very quick to suggest surgery. At age 30, I couldn't walk down steps without howling in pain (my doctor said it was a meniscus problem, and that all options were expensive, invasive, and uncertain). But I figured it out, and never had such problems again.

Doctors often advise patients with bad knees to build up their weak quadricep muscles. And that's good advice (if you really do have weak quads). But what they don't tell you is that it's equally helpful to stretch your hamstrings. If your quads are already strong, that's all you need to do. And I'll bet you need it. Show me someone with achey knees and I'll show you someone with tight hamstrings. A regimen of stretching will bring great relief, and pretty quickly.

If you do haphazard hamstring stretches, you'll see mild improvement along with some backtracking. But if you can find a few minutes to methodically stretch them twice per day, you'll see great improvement. I'd strongly suggest taking a yoga class or two to learn many ways to safely and thoroughly stretch them out, but you can do it on your own. There are many web pages, videos, and books about stretching.

Check with your doctor first to make sure that you don't have a condition that can be made worse by hamstring stretching. 

Hamstring stretches will help, but tight quads and IT bands can also exert torque on your knees, causing pain under certain conditions. If, after a couple weeks, the hamstring stretch hasn't entirely fixed the problem, get yourself a foam roller (as firm as possible). They look like this:

...and roll the sides and fronts of your legs from just above the knee to the top of the hip. It may be painful at first (go slowly, and do this every other day until it's comfortable enough to do daily), but it quickly becomes much easier. Here's how to do it (I let my feet drag on the ground for stability), and remember to go slowly (she's going way too fast):



If you want to go further and develop super knees, yoga offers a miracle, called Triangle Pose. Probably the most famous of all yoga poses, it's also one of the easiest. It's what they start beginners with!

You'll definitely want to start off by using a yoga block to make your arm longer:

Another good pose, usually taught along with Triangle, is Side Angle Pose.

These two are panaceas for knee problems (if your doctor approves). And they are simple and easy! But if your hamstrings, IT bands, and/or quads are very tight, you'll need to work on them first, or concurrently.

Don't let knee problems interfere with your lifestyle - or resort to invasive medical procedures - when these moves are so effective!

Self-Healing: Hiccups

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". For general tips and background on self-healing, read this.


Only read this if you're in the middle of a hiccups attack. Or read it now to learn how to cure other people. But once you know the secret, it may lose some effectiveness. I'd also like to note that this is the first self-healing trick I ever devised. It dates back to third grade.

To cure a hiccup attack, it's crucial to time the interval between hiccups. Have ready a pen and paper, plus a watch or timer that shows seconds. Start timing immediately after a hiccup - precisely at the moment the hiccup occurs. Then time the frequency of each subsequent hiccup. Be accurate!

Ok, when you're ready.....go! Your next hiccup starts the clock!

---

The hiccups are gone, aren't they? :)

If you're helping someone else, try to "control" the experience by giving lots of intense directions. Show how diligently you're timing their hiccup frequency, and coax them to try to hiccup as soon as possible.

Self-Healing Addenda

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".


In my previous post, "Self-Healing is the Move You Don't Want to Do", I explained how I've worked out fixes for conditions like tendinitis and arthritis. Here are a couple of followups:

But Which Stretches Exactly?
In the arthritis section, I describe stretching and contracting "the bejesus out of" my feet "in every direction", and that I can "earn a sublime 24 hour pain timeout via 30 seconds of clenching and wriggling."

"But wait!" you holler. "WHICH stretches? WHICH clenches? WHAT wriggling?"

It seems like a sensible question. After all, I glossed right over this seemingly critical issue. Arthritis sufferers (or tendonitis, which I cured via a different sort of stretching...described with similar vagueness) would surely need precise directions for the exact magic stretches that will fix the problem.

This is a distinctively grown-up request. Seven year olds wouldn't ask this. They'd instantly know what to do, and get busy with their hands and feet, trying different stuff curiously, all in a spirit of play. They'd keep coming back to it. And it would work.

With adults, I could sigh, roll my eyes, and cook up absurdly detailed intructions to meet the whiny, helpless, fraught need to have everything explained (and, at some point, I guess I will). But they'll get so caught up in instruction-following and compliance-self-doubting (all on top of the intrinsic skepticism that this stupid weird fuzzy crap even works) that they'd remain light years away from the spirit of it all. They won't be Doing The Move, they'll be anxiously Following Instructions, which is a whole other sort of activity.

There's no one magical action to do, nor am I doing anything unusual or cleverly sequenced. Honestly, nothing smart here. Just stretch and contract the bejesus out of your arthritic body part (if your doctor approves). That's really the best instruction. That's the move.

So: summon some resourcefulness. Clench and stretch your feet IN EVERY DIRECTION. Be creative! Take time! Explore, and keep coming back to it, like kids learning to whistle! Learn what works! It doesn't need to click immediately. Find some patience and curiosity.

You needn't replicate my exact foot movements. You do need to replicate my spirit of playful, patient exploration; stretching and contracting in lots of different ways; trying stuff. That's the easy part! I've already done the hard part by pointing the way, so it won't take you the full year it took me. But it might take a week. One lousy week of playful experimentation to relieve the pain without expense or side effects or doctor visits. Sounds reasonable to me, but it's too much for people, who mostly can't manage to get to the gym or keep up their French lessons or meditation practice, or drive an extra mile for slightly better pizza.

People don't do stuff. They can, however, bitch prolifically about the torment of their arthritis.

Life consists of a series of revisitations to tired clichés, certain with each new pass that we now really understand them. It's time to reconsider "God helps those who help themselves."

Success from Slowness
In that previous posting, I wrote that

Despite my success with self-healing, it's a realm where I'm extremely slow, and have never sped up. Nothing smart, snappy, effortless. Never a snazzy "TA-DAH!". It takes me a year or two to figure out each Move, and when I do it's always cloddishly simple. The Move never involves praying to Akhkhazu or grinding owl molars or concocting some perfect blend of rare herbs. It's dopey, coarse stuff.

Riffing on the odd-seeming combination of slowness and success...

I can toss off nuggets of shiny impressiveness in realms where I'm talented and fast-minded. But magic can be conjured from the realms where I'm pathetically slow and ploddish.

Yoga is like that for me. If a teacher directs me to reach my left hand behind my head, I need to think about it. For a long time! I've driven teachers mad with my hapless dimness. I seem absolutely unsuited for yoga. But when I finally get a move (after working 1700 times harder than the rest of the class), I get it deeply (see the Vedic anecdote here). It took me 25 years to touch my toes, but the insights I gleaned en route could fill a library, whereas a naturally bendy person who easily flops right over learns nothing. And I'm here to learn.

This quote is often attributed to Einstein: "Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid". Turns out Einstein never said it, but it's still a great quote. And the reason most people never discover their genius is because it usually lies in our slow/sticky zone, which teachers and parents urge us to give up on. Most people need to feel smart and look smart, and steer well clear of their Achilles heels.

Me, I embrace my shmuckiness. I ply, with perverse delight, those realms where I'm thick as a fricking malted. I'm not trying to improve/accelerate that side of me (our innate plodding talentlessness, being innate, can't be sped up any more than our innate gifts can be retarded). I plow those fields because I've discovered a great secret: that's where the best stuff comes from.

The hard stuff I can do effortlessly might impress you (cool party tricks!) but doggedly relentless slogging through bleary thick-headedness produces minor miracles. For instance, I can cure incurable conditions...but it takes me forever to figure it out, and, when I do, it always sounds super "duh" and leaves me feeling extra stoopid.

I linked to this post ("The Infinite Potential of Slow Learners") above, but I'm repeating it now because it's such an important point, and one I don't see anyone else making.

Self-Healing is the Move You Don't Want to Do

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".


When people inquire about my health, I never know what to say. My genetics are shit, so I've been afflicted with way more than my share of issues, but after 50 years of ardent yoga practice, I have a knack for self-healing. I've escaped, Houdini-style, from myriad dire scenarios. And I feel pretty great. The peak of good health...even though it's all held together with staples and duct tape, and I need to do a thing for my back and a thing for my feet and things for my neck, etc, etc, etc.

I've dodged many supposedly incurable conditions, never aiming for anything grand, just grappling with physical puzzles, one after another, necessity mothering invention. I'll be cataloging my tricks and tips in case anyone out there can benefit.

I consider memory issues a health problem, so I've tagged my two recent posts on memory (one about opening extra slots and the other about recovering forgotten info) accordingly. Both were developed via my standard approach to self-healing, which I'm about to outline.

This posting is nominally about curing tendinitis and arthritis (both incurable) and blasting through meditation plateaus, but, on a higher level, it shows how I came up with the fixes, so you can do the same. You'll need vast patience and worrisome levels of persistence. One must be an extreme contrarian to try hard while living among lazy, comfortable, self-satisfied rich people. There's not much inertia to draw from!

Despite my success with self-healing, it's a realm where I'm extremely slow, and have never sped up. Nothing smart, snappy, effortless. Never a snazzy "TA-DAH!". It takes me a year or two to figure out each Move, and when I do it's always cloddishly simple. The Move never involves praying to Akhkhazu or grinding owl molars or concocting some perfect blend of rare herbs. It's dopey, coarse stuff like "try it while hung over" or "do the tiniest possible stretches" or "work the part that hurts". Most importantly, it's inevitably the thing you didn't want to do. That's why people don't ordinarily stumble onto these fixes. Self-healing most often involves the move you don't want to do.

Again, there's nothing smart about it. I’m a syrupy-thick dim bulb amid myriad hotshots too lazy to make an effort. One thing about me: I make the effort. Remember, I'm an ant. And, as I keep mentioning,

Life consists of a series of revisitations to tired cliches, certain with each new pass that we now really understand them. And so it is with Edison's "Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety nine percent perspiration." That quotation used to conjure up images of wild-eyed fanatics banging hammers in garages in the middle of the night. But it's just a matter of normal people blithely but indefatigably putting out. The Colorado River, etcher of the Grand Canyon, is just some shitty little river. The best among us are shitty little rivers. To me, that's what Edison was saying.

Ok, here goes.

Curing Tendinitis
Note: I'm trying to explain how I came up with the cure more than how to implement it yourself. Stay tuned for better instruction in an upcoming posting.

I was suffering from awful tendinitis (likely Carpal tunnel, as well) in my hands and wrists from holding a heavy instrument all night and typing all day. As a longtime yogi, my instinct was to try stretching. But nothing worked, and I realized that that was expected. Millions of people have repetitive stress issues, so every conceivable stretch has been tried thousands of times. If one could stretch one's way out of this pain, it would have been noted.

My younger self once sent my future self a tip: always try flipping it. Don't try to be clever. Don't orchestrate it. Just, whenever you're stuck, capriciously flip things upside-down, inside-out, whatever. You may not find an instant eureka, but you'll view the issue freshly, opening up landscapes of possibility (this was an early exploration of perceptual framing, the deliberate shifting of perspective).

Big yoga stretches wouldn't work. So what about tiny ones? It didn't make sense, but I didn't need it to make sense. This was an exercise in creativity. A flip. So I playfully tried my familiar stretches at 1/1000th scale. Teeny-tiny. And then shrunk it even further, until they were invisible. Nothing visibly moved, yet there was discernible action. My hand might look stationary, but, under the skin, there was sloshing. I found I could make it smaller and more subtle still, until there was only intentional movement (fully engaged; i.e. poised to move).

It worked. Knocked out all pain, and the smaller the better. Sometimes it returns, and I can knock it back out again in 15 seconds flat.

This works for all tendon and other soft tissue and nerve pain. Muscular pain responds best to conventional stretches.

I've tried instructing others, but it's like teaching orangutangs to read. Way too subtle. People either do big fat careless stretches, or else they stare at their motionless hands, "wishing" or "visualizing" or god knows what. I urge them to remain engaged - don't just imagine movement, actually do it....but tiny. It's hard, because it's something different, and people don't cotton to "different" (we’re deluded enough to presuppose we’d cure the incurable with something familiar!). So they get confused and bored, and would prefer to pay a specialist $$$$ for ineffective treatment (nothing out there works for this), risking side effects, than spend a full minute entertaining Jim's weird thingee.

Anything familiar has been tried to death. You must go the other way and try moves nobody does. Moves that seem alien and counterintuitive. Or uncomfortable moves you’d normally resist. This next one is a great example of an uncomfortable move.

Mojo Rising
Valentines Day 2005. I am very badly hungover, can barely move. I'd been meditating twice per day for years, and made great progress (my resting heart rate's slowed by 25%, and I was surviving an untenable work situation with relative equanimity). And the thing with meditation is that you have to commit to never missing a session. The practice must slot in as top priority.

Hungover people don't want to exercise. Or socialize. Or work. But what they really really don't want to do is sit up straight intoning a mantra for twenty minutes. That's literally the very last thing hungover people want to do. And so it never happens!

Also, diligent meditators aren’t usually the insouciant type. Me, I was a devoted meditator who loved craft beer (drinking for the flavor, not the high), making me an edge case. And for centuries you weren't taught meditation until you'd made certain lifestyle commitments, alcohol abstinence being the most common. So it is really really really really edge case behavior to meditate while hungover. I doubt it's happened more than 1000 times in the history of Earth.

But this day I sat up and meditated, and within moments, coils of molten liquid energy snaked up my back, fueling an ecstacy lasting for weeks (it's never fully died down). If the experience could be compressed into pill form, it would easily sell for $100,000 per pill.

Since then, whenever I plateau in meditation, I deliberately get hungover so I can blast past it (my theory: the body gathers powerful healing/detoxifying inertia from hangover recovery, and meditation rides that tailwind). It’s not always ecstatic, sometimes it’s just peaceful. But it always breaks the logjam. 

Note: don't try this until you've established a strong meditation practice for a couple of years (I do this - and also this and eventually added this and this and this - but I recommend skipping the author's other writings and his online forums). And don’t do it too often. Maybe once every year or two, tops.

Curing Arthritis
I was immobilized for a full year due to foot problems. You name it: plantar tear, capsulitis, bursitis, plantar fasciitis, arthritis, and nerve damage, all at once. Recovery would take 3-6 months with likely setbacks, given that the plantar tear could easily re-tear, resetting my recovery clock.

Very long story short, at the one year mark, I realized the remaining pain was entirely arthritis, which often appears in under-used limbs, joints, and extremities.

You can simply try to put the arthritic bodypart to use, but there's a vicious circle. The arthritis pain discourages you. And if you try to brute force it, you'll keep suffering ad infinitum. Eventually, it will wear you down, and you'll settle into immobilization...which worsens the arthritis. It's ghastly.

After several MRIs and lots of ginger experimentation, I was finally certain I wouldn't reinjure the tear, and I did the very last thing my poor tormented feet wanted: I stretched and contracted the bejesus out of them in every direction. Not suble movements. Great big ones. Since it was the last thing I wanted to do, it was also the last thing arthritis sufferers ever try. And it worked. Perfectly.

Except, that is, for one toe, which remained painful. One solitary throbbing toe. I hemmed and hawed, plotted and experimented, but I could not figure out a way to contract/stretch this specific toe until one day I became consciously aware that I was avoiding a certain move that hurt even a little more. Nothing excruciating, nothing I contemplated with dread. I just kinda didn't wanna, so I hadn’t. I did it, and, ka-ching, the toe was fine and I'm once again walking 7 miles at a stretch. I feel like a condemned prisoner set free.

The incurable arthritis has been wiped away like magic, though it returns daily, requiring me to redo my Moves, stretching and contracting in all the wrong ways. It's mildly painful (I'm used to it!), and I'm careful not to overdo it - to unnaturally over-stretch (it's not the pain, per se, that fixes it!). I earn a sublime 24 hour pain timeout via 30 seconds of clenching and wriggling.

To clarify: stoically walking around on an arthritic foot will provoke pain forever. You need to go a step further and systematically clench and stretch every part of the foot. Then walking and other activity will be pain free…at least for a day or so. Obviously, ask your doctor first. S/he will doubt the effectiveness, but can help ensure you don’t create fresh problems.

Redux
I've done a bunch more self-healing, as well. This posting offers the master key, explaining how to go about it. But I'll be posting fixes for actual maladies.

See this follow-up posting, explaining why I'm being vague about how to stretch (or micro-stretch) for tendinitis and arthritis, and riffing about why sometimes slow-mindedness is a feature, not a bug.

Something's Off

I expected changes after the lengthy lockdown. Irritability, jagged social skills and raggedy presentation. I expected depression and neurosis. We've been through stuff, and I didn't expect it to pop back the same.

But above/beyond all that predictable stuff, people seem different in ways that are hard to pin down and which don't seem tied to our recent trauma. It's eerie. If this were a sci-fi film, I'd suspect we'd been replaced by Earth 227N, a similar parallel world.

I often identify societal trends early and can come up with some sort of shaky hypothesis to account for them. But I have nothing insightful to say about this, no framing about what's different. Zip. Yet it's different in a tectonic way.

I don't think it's me; I wasn't much traumatized by Covid. So I'm still me, but the world's not exactly the world.


I'm offering the following anecdote not as an example (I can't give you any single example...it's just a spidey sense), but as a surreal vignette about post-COVID big biz.

I went to Bed Bath & Beyond yesterday, and it was weirdly strewn with empty space - very Soviet - and just a couple of forlorn sales people. I asked one if they carry folding tables, and he looked at me with oddly penetrating intensity, tremulously replying "We only have one kind."

I said that might be ok. He wagged his head ruefully and asked how big I needed. I gestured with my arms. He nodded knowingly. Yep. Nope. Our one table's not that big. I'm REALLY SORRY (deep eye contact) I can't help you.

I walked out through the dense silence feeling like my oncologist had given me 2 months to live, passing an old woman clawing among the many drab unmarked cardboard boxes occupying prime floor real estate as if her grandson had been sealed in one of them. Even the light had a weird dystopic glint.

I'm sure there are easy biz explanations for a lot of that. But the personal stuff was totally Earth 227N.

As a topper, BB&B used to carry these weird chairs that were essentially a big fluffy pillow on spindly legs. Cheap, lightweight, portable and oh so comfortable. I was delighted to see them back, and flopped into one, and found it fiendishly not-comfortable. Not actively uncomfortable, just the absolute zero point on the comfort thermometer. The disappointment rattled me, so I got up quickly, and I heard a crashing sound. I spun my head around, trying to figure out if I'd broken anything, but the Antithesis-of-Comfort Chair looked fine, as did the Stonehenge of grey unmarked boxes being desperately scraped at by anguished grandma. The store manager glanced over at me and winced, ala "Jesus Christ; now this." I got out fast.

I want to note that I'm not emerging from a cave. I've been shopping pretty freely during all but the very height of the pandemic (with mask, etc), and all retail near me has been maskless and back to normal for weeks. There's some new X Factor appearing, and I'm not even close to putting my finger on it.

Vigilance

Watch like nobody’s dancing.