I blew out my voice at Harvard (not entirely, but close enough), probably more from telling stories while projecting from the front of a minivan than in actually doing my job coaching. I made a serious case advice blunder at Harvard that cost a team that had been cruising through the tournament a trip further in the outrounds and our team a shot at ascending in the rankings. But today I woke up more at peace with the latter and especially more okay with the former. I’m realizing that I’ve been sick in some general sense (allergies, feeling run down, actually sore-throated, etc.) for probably more than two full weeks and today was the first day it didn’t seem debilitating. My voice is still a bit froggy and I still have some congestion, but today made me feel like I’m actually going to beat my association of maladies and I realized how much of my general downtroddenness the last couple weeks has stemmed from just not being physically 100%.

It also is a day where, for the first time in ages, I’m feeling like I’m not behind on anything. This may be an illusory feeling, but I think it’s combining with a particular piece of mail I dropped in the box on Friday that I didn’t even realize was freighting me down the way that it apparently was. Mental energy is a hard thing to gauge, especially when one’s distracted and running behind, and yet the last 24 hours have provided this overarching lift from finally dispatching something I have put off in order to not let it weigh me down. Feels like, once again, I misread that situation completely and its true impact on my daily functioning soul. So suddenly there’s a chirping bird where there was not long ago an ominous crow.

The weather is gorgeous. That doesn’t hurt anything. It’s an October 10th that eats like an August 17th and while that itself can raise disconcerting feelings and perceptions, it doesn’t surprise me that a stock exchange located in New York City decided to jump 3% today for no rational reason. I think it’s almost impossible not to feel optimistic in weather like this, an optimism that just doesn’t burn in the face of reason or logic or the reality of a winter oncoming. Eat, drink, and lay in the grass for tomorrow we freeze. Perhaps, perhaps. Or maybe there is a hope in the innate simplicity of embracing what surrounds us and not resisting.

Even Jersey has felt friendly and warm and open today. I played cards yesterday and felt like I was making friends with everyone, going out way up after a roller-coaster ride that should have fazed me way more than it did. Of course I was doing so in the wake of something more emotionally involving, but ultimately that’s even infused me with a sense of peace. And I retrieved all my stuff from Enterprise today – I somehow left everything in our rented van when we dropped it off after Harvard, including my credit card in the cupholder and my backpack, which is basically my lifeline to existence. The retrieval was one of the friendlier corporate or Jersey interactions I’ve ever had, especially for it being something so boneheaded on my part and so annoying for them to deal with.

There is something, essentially, about being alone and more quiet and rested and healthy and introspective in the wake of several consecutive tumultuous days, that has prompted an internal Zen flame of simple humanity. I could describe it better if I understood it better, but I’m tempted to let it be and try to savor this hurricane-eye kind of calm. I think it has something to do with keeping my own company after so long surrounded, but I even enjoyed grocery shopping a little today. The best I can explain it is that it feels like there’s some sort of lack of pressure, an absence of a pressing weight that’s been there for weeks. Whether that’s more sinus pressure or paperwork pressure or success pressure or simply an amorphous spiritual angst is anyone’s guess. And how long it will remain away is even less tangible.

But as Adam Duritz would say, that’s all right for me today.

Explanations, you ask? No one ever called me an enemy of the sine-curve. And since there was nowhere to go but up a few days back, the universe promptly complied. Or I dug myself out. Whatever narrative you prefer, based on your accordance of free-will, control, fate, or what have you. As soon as I can resolve the paradoxes of absolute free will and the benevolent safety-net of the universe, I’ll let you know.

Suffice it to say that I’ve had the best 50 hours of my last 2,500. It’s been over a hundred days since the crisis began, and it feels like I’ve been truly happy in a sustainable (read: more than a few hours) way for the first time in that whole duration.

Some causes:

1. UPenn vastly surpassed Maryland (which was only two weeks ago, and the last competition we attended) as the best tournament in RUDU club history (caveating again the legends of early-1990’s teams that were comparable and technically organized as a different club). Dave & Kyle won the tournament, the first tourney win in the 10-year history of RUDU. Farhan & Chris broke for the first time as a team, including Farhan’s first-ever break, won quarters on a 3-0, and then barely dropped semis on a 3-2, finishing 3rd overall. First and third. Needless to say, the team was euphoric all weekend and everyone was just beaming at the team dinner as we basked in the glow of having come a ballot short of closing out finals. And Krishna & Bhargavi were in a bubble round to boot. As the post that will go up on the debate side will attest (once we get an image unloaded off someone’s camera to display atop the site), Rutgers is now 5th-ranked in the country, breaking our all-time high from two weeks ago, and Dave & Kyle are the 4th-ranked partnership in the country. Yeah. It was a pretty good weekend.

2. Today I got a call about a job interview for one that I’d applied to long enough ago that I’d given up on it. Turns out that they were sifting through 400 resumes and I’m one of three (3) finalists getting interviewed in the next couple days. It’s in NYC, four days a week, wrapping pretty neatly around debate. It looks like I can get monthly train passes that keep the transportation costs from being prohibitive, and carry the added bonus of giving me a marginal-cost-free ticket into New York whenever I want. There’s no guarantee, but I’m feeling pretty good about it. And even if I don’t get it, it bodes well for future such applications. My interview’s tomorrow.

3. The San Francisco Giants, long my second-favorite team in baseball and my favorite NL team, are one win away from the World Series title, their first in the city I used to work in. While my obsession with their playoff run has been limited to listening on the computer due to not having a TV and generally being lower energy for much of October, I’m still elated to see them on the verge of this milestone, especially coming at the expense of Texas. I can’t imagine how Gris must be feeling right about now.

4. There has been another development which I will refrain from overtly discussing, probably for a long time depending on how things go. But it’s good and has helped turn things around in conjunction with the above.

Happy? Yeah, I’ve been happy lately. For real. Today especially, with that job interview coming in on top. I can look at these four things and think they might not look like much. You might even say they were all obviously inevitable. But in the throes of the last hundred days, not a one of them, let alone all four, felt even likely. That’s the nature of a tunnel.

It’s far too early to declare any sort of emergence from the tunnel and it’s clear that all four of these things are tenuous (well, probably not debate, since that’s pretty well established and no one can undo the accomplishments of the past nor deny the momentum it implies for the future). But it’s a big fat start. And there’s enough factors that even if one or two collapse completely, there’s a lot to build on. It’s rally time, kids. Get your caps on.

Postscript:

Cleaning up my place today and doing the surprisingly enjoyable laundry (having it in the basement instead of down the road or at the laundromat is remarkably fun – this is the closest I’ve lived to a washer/dryer since living at home in high school), I was listening to Pandora. And paying close attention when a song I’d never heard came on.

It was Tom Petty’s new “Something Good Coming”, and I submit it to you as the best encapsulation expressible of my current mood:
Listen to/watch “Something Good Coming” here.

The last few days have been about as eventful as any days are for me these days. Days, days, days. They cascade not like a waterfall or something glorious to be beheld so much as the drip in my bathroom sink. Day, pause, day, pause, day. The passage of time has become an annoyance, something to be swatted away like a lingering mosquito. There are moments each day that are almost okay… a good debate round or a fun practice, a moment of volunteering or walking that sparks imagination or hope, the second the heat started coming on in the apartment yesterday unbidden. But they’re rare and their ceiling is low. For the most part it’s a long trudge to school, uphill both ways in the snow. Sludgy, dirty snow, not the good kind.

Things are happening this Friday too, things I’m loath to preview here lest they raise concern from the worriers among you. It’s a long overdue meeting with my past, I can say that, and it comes at a time when the risks are low because I have nothing (almost nothing?) to lose. It’s something much better discussed upon reflection than anticipation. So I guess I’ll flag this post with a “Keepin’ It Cryptic” and move on. All will be revealed at some point.

Similarly, I have an upcoming project about which I’ll also be vague until you can see what it looks like. It’s adding a new dimension to the collection of things here at the BP, and it’s a major experiment. With any luck, it’ll be something that at minimum creates an archive of moments in time in a new and exciting way that can at least serve some posterity. At maximum, it could, like anything done serially on the Internet, become a phenomenon. So I’ll let that whet your appetite and, again, soon there will be much more to actually evaluate.

I have this last bit merely because of the Zen state of mind that came from tearing leafy greens from their stems for literally 150 consecutive minutes. This was my assigned task at the Cafe yesterday – I actually showed up an hour early because I’d misread the e-mail confirming my time, and thus was drawn up to the sink with a gargantuan box of greens whose name I never ultimately caught. Spinach? Arugula? An obscure lettuce? It was something like that. The repetition and the small satisfactions of working one’s hands against the bounty of the earth plunged me through the worst aspects of the mental void and into a deeper place where I could contemplate connections and possibilities rather than the mere horrors of the past. And it was in that state, not unlike a shower or even some of the better walks, that I was able to stumble over the obvious project I’m on the verge of launching. This was more of what I hoped for when I pictured volunteering as a key component of this year.

Of course I never really pictured this year and my subconscious is really having trouble catching up. This morning I awoke from a terrifying and disheartening dream that, while I was working at Glide and Emily was at the Labor Fed, she’d decided overnight to go to LA for six weeks straight. She was endlessly unconcerned about the toll this might take on our marriage, couldn’t seem to care less about my loneliness or missing her or anything of that ilk. I could detect, vaguely, in the dream that there might be someone in LA she was trying to see or some deeper thing to fear from this sudden trip arrangement which she was announcing to me the morning before she left. I panicked more and more as the dream hurtled toward her departure, clinging to her presence that I would soon lose for so long.

I awoke to a reality that made the dream look more ideal than nightmare.

Miles walked Wednesday: 1.2
Miles walked yesterday: 2.8

As soon as she had the diagnosis confirmed, she rushed home to look herself in the mirror in her new state, a cancer patient. But the only mirror she had had slowly transformed into a funhouse mirror. Its glass was warped by the passage of time. It was shattered in places, the result of a long journey, now shedding thousands of tiny reflections where there should be one. It was partially angled by careful bending to try to squeeze it into its imprecise location on the too-small wall in the bathroom.

And when she held up her arm to the reflection, it looked like nothing but cancer. The ominous dark mark was not a spot, not a lesion, but a whole arm’s worth of calcifying damage. No matter how she turned her arm in the pale glow of the funhouse mirror’s radiation, it shone back the clear and damning evidence that cancer had overtaken her arm.

She reacted in fear. She refused to look at her arm directly, turning away from even the slightest sidelong glance that wasn’t sealed in the protective shield of the glass. Her arm was Medusa, requiring the subtlest of subterfuge to yield evaluation. And every time she dared steal a peek, always in the undulating twists of the funhouse bathroom hanging, it only confirmed the worst of her suspicions.

Her doctors recommended emergency surgery, an attempt to repair the small lesion actually occupying a little swath of her true arm. But she put it off, made excuses, worried and fretted at the idea of losing the entire arm, that maybe it was too late to salvage anything since the arm was such an integral part of her whole being. She determined that she needed to consider more, take more stock in the dim glow of the funhouse mirror, look forward to a day when maybe a different mirror was available.

All the while, the cancer spread. Slowly, surely, much more slowly than it would ever seem in the reflection she saw. But it spread all the same.

There is no reason to get up. No reason in the world. Dreams are more appealing somehow. This is all but unprecedented, echoes of a wedge-shaped room bedecked with posters and pictures of ineffably distant faces offering mild support and outstretched hands. The soft sad derision of a one-time friend, slinging a shoulder bag in a picture of hurried productivity, shaking his head as he charges out the too-thin rickety door. A roommate. A roommate. The echoes plink down the caverns of memory like a musical pebble. Playing “Moonlight Sonata” or perhaps “Taps”.

Back and forth, left and right, light on both sides, the strange overlarge pillow offering infinite patience as the dreams remain out of reach. They are less scary, less haunting, less true. They will not come back. There is only the dirge-like shuffle of time in its plod, the hard roll of the streetcar, the loungey traverse of the aimless local down the sidewalk. Step, pause, step, pause, step. Living in steps, in hapless direction, in picking up one leaden ankle to put it in front of the other for no particular purpose.

Everybody feels the wind blow. You don’t spit into the wind. The wind has been my friend, my ally, trusted and sure, but it is a force of nature and not to be trifled with. The wind, like time, chooses a direction and points unrelenting, offers assistance in one way but only angst in the other. You can fight it, fight them both, fight everything in your path. But you’re going to lose. You’re going to lose.

I’ve been here before and I deserve a little more.

And then there are those special unique days that manage to be both. That manage to be, dare I say it, the best and worst of all possible worlds, rolled into one.

Discretion demands that I don’t speak of this further, but perhaps for this:

The Best of All Possible Worlds is now available in PDF. Drop a line my way if interested.

If you need me, I’ll be trying to surround myself with people.

So, at the risk of ridiculousness…

ELGC-GS: 2/2 (?C, ?H, ?O, +P, +Y)

No word on money yet. The postal service is slow.

For a variety of reasons, I have to keep many secrets in my life at this juncture. I hate secrets. They make me sad. As someone who doesn’t really believe in privacy beyond passwords and social security numbers, secrets are antithetical to the way I aspire to live my life. And yet, I have some other obligations and constraints at times in this life.

So all I can offer you now is at the bottom of this message. I promised people I would keep them updated. Someday, hopefully soon, I will be able to use English to convey what’s going on and what I feel.

ELGC-GS: 1/1 (?C, ?H, ?O, ?P, +Y)

That train’s heading nowhere good. But you knew that already, didn’t you?

Call me if you strongly disagree. Or if you agree and want to vouch your support. Or if you’re really confused, but concerned.

Hopefully there won’t be too many cacti. And maybe a little water nearby where I land.

Imagine that you are on a train. As long as you are on this train, you will be fed money at an almost alarming rate. You will be reassured. You will have people tell you how wonderful you are.

And eventually, at an indeterminate time, this train will careen off the tracks and plunge into a deep ravine.

But the train doesn’t stop at any stations. Or at least isn’t planning any stops until the ravine-dive. So to disembark prior, you’re going to have to jump. Which is infinitely safer than plunging heels-over-head into a ravine, mind you. But perhaps adds that extra special little disincentive (along with the money and the reassurance and the praise) to leaving the train behind.

The obvious question of the day is:  When do you jump?

It should probably herein be noted that one can’t really jump when one sees a ravine on the horizon. Maybe the train is always skirting a ravine for its entire run. (Presumably one would jump in the opposite direction when deciding to flee the train.) And no one can imagine being coordinated enough to jump one way as the train is plunging ravine-ward. So let’s just leave that hedge out altogether.

We’re also going to caveat that you can take it with you… you’re being paid in a form that you won’t at any point weigh yourself down and make a leap less feasible. At least not physically.

So when do you jump?

There are those, including my childhood self, that would advise jumping ASAP. Immediately. Posthaste and without delay. As long as that train rolls on with a chance of taking you into the ravine with it, there is nothing worth letting that happen. Prevention of worst-case scenarios is a principle I’ve lived by a lot, and maybe it’s the obvious solution to this one.

And there are probably many of you still looking for a way to hedge this one. Surely you can get some clues or indications that the ravine is coming, right? I mean, the whole train can’t go into the ravine at once, right? Unless maybe there’s an earthquake. (Indeed yes, unless there’s an earthquake.) Surely you can hang out in the caboose and minimize your chances of a negative outcome?

I mean, maybe. But maybe I have to push this metaphor to the extreme and say there’s a thick mesh netting around the train that takes a decent amount of time to cut a jumping-sized hole out of. So one has to prepare to jump – it’ll take much longer than a few seconds. Yes, let’s go ahead and commit to that. This mesh also has the dual impact of making it very hard to see where the train is going at any given time. And adding yet another small disincentive to jumping at all.

But you have to jump. The ravine is not survivable. Or if it is, it’ll be so crippling that no amount of money/reassurance/praise will be worth the cost. If nothing else, you’ve learned that lesson before.

While I wrote this scenario primarily with one (maybe two) setting(s) in mind, I think it’s widely applicable. All over the country, people are making calculations that look a lot like trying to figure out when to jump from the train. Or perhaps they just should be… it’s more likely that most folks are actually trying to discern how long they can cling to the train, regardless of how many ravines it attempts to navigate. For many, jumping looks like the most dangerous option. As though a million phantom cacti appeared to them in every direction, everywhere but onboard the train and on the tracks themselves. Making jumping so viscerally painful that even worse consequences could be swallowed wholesale.

But the cacti are small and spread out, if indeed they exist at all. The train probably slows to a good 25 or 30 miles an hour sometimes, though it probably has to go at a constant speed for the analogy to work. Then again, one could always just hold out, hoping for a slower train. Hoping that maybe it would stop sometime and the jump would be palatable.

Don’t get your hopes up, kids.

Clock’s tickin’. Train’s a-whistlin’. Ravine’s a-waitin’.

It is still too early to be too late.