One Page a Day

By Carl Ehnis

One Page a Day is the anti-Seinfeld. It's not a book about nothing--it's a book about EVERYTHING, from the perspective of a novelist, marathoner, musician, husband/dad, cook, investing pro, agnostic, train commuter. In 365 ultra-short chapters, One Page a Day will keep you amused, enlightened and aroused. It's your daily fortune cookie--a crunchy treat with a message that constantly packs a surprise.

Things like the secret to playing guitar solos like a rock god, why it's dumb to take dreams seriously, how to get the best seat on the train, coping with people who are better than you, avoiding runner's knee forever, a path to financial security...and EVERYTHING else.

So pamper yourself. Each night after getting into your jammies, brushing your teeth and scrubbing behind your ears, burrow under the covers and savor your one page for that day. Then douse the lights in total serenity. For tomorrow will bring you another page!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Carl Ehnis
• Release date: Dec 30, 2013
• ISBN: 9781310205897

Carl Ehnis

Carl Ehnis used to spend way too much time writing soaring marketing prose for a major financial services company. By night he tried to create magic by authoring such novels as MEDICUS, Verite, the curious non-fiction project called One Page a Day, and most recently, Race Riot. Now that he's ditched the day job, he's working on a new novel with the working title Let's Cook!. He's a life-long resident of New Jersey, has a wife and two married kids, two domesticated animals, plus other unwanted vermin taking up residence in the walls of his rambling 100-year old residence. Among his many interests include...well, you'll need to download One Page a Day for the complete list.

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One Page a Day

by Carl Ehnis

Copyright by Carl Ehnis 2013

2016 Smashwords Edition

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Table of Contents

Preface

One Page a Day

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About the Author

Preface

I have never kept a journal and, clearly at the age of 55, this is no time to start. Never needed to before: the first four books came and went quite easily, without notes, diaries, journals, creative writing workshops, and so forth.

My first book was completed at the age of 27, and my buddy said, Wow, it's great. Didn't know you could even write, dude. You should get it published.

But I said, Nah, I can do better, then boxed it up and stashed it in the attic.

Book number two was started at age 28, completed at age 34, and was called remarkable by another good friend and college professor.

But I said, Nah, I can do better, and it, too, found its place in the attic. At age 35, book number three was begun and subsequently rewritten eight times because it had legs, or so I was informed by a host of admiring readers. And I had hopes, because it was my masterpiece, thick with plot, rich in style, and brimming with insight and provocation. So I sent it to a publisher and it came back with a polite note saying, This is a very promising manuscript, but our list is filled at this time and, unfortunately, we cannot take on additional projects at this time, and suggested that I find an agent.

Needless to say, my wife was quite excited by the response and encouraged me to keep sending it out, but I declined. I had learned something about myself. What I learned was that I was not good at handling rejection. So, at the age of 45, I let this book join its exiled cousins in the attic.

Now, it’s just another orphan in a brown box embrittled by the breathless heat and shuddering cold of a poorly insulated gable-roof warehouse of neglect. Then came the fourth, begun at age 44 and completed six years later. A nice work, a corporate thriller, mature in tone. A story of revenge exacted by a powerful female protagonist. My wife thought it was great stuff and told me I had to send it out.

But I said, What if it's rejected? and with that the manuscript joined my third-story den of detritus about three years ago, as I turned 52.

I haven’t written a word of fiction since. Maybe I had nothing more to say. The compulsion for self-expression in my twenties and thirties slipped into an occasional apathy in my late forties and has since become a full-blown complacency in my mid-fifties.

But apathy/complacency precedes death and I’m terrified--terrified of dying. So I will write again, even if I don’t particularly relish the demands of its practice. To write is to be—if I write I can’t die, or something to that effect. Writing for writing’s sake—or rather, writing to ward off the permanent shroud, yeah. Happily, I have happened upon a theme and a style, which I'm calling Extreme Pastiche. The title of this project indicates exactly what it is: One Page a Day. And the topic is: Everything.

Day 1. May 27, 2009

Since this is the beginning, I’ll go back as far as I can. My first memory was of running down a grassy incline in front of my house on a sunny summer afternoon wearing brown shorts and a yellow shirt made out of a corrugated fabric, somewhat like seersucker. I was three years old at the time. I was hugging a large rubber ball in front of me, most likely to join a clutch of neighborhood kids at the bottom of the hill, but that part I don’t remember.

The memory cue comes in the form of a stentorian fire horn blast that startled the hell out of me because the siren was mounted on a telephone poll not more than 50 feet from my position on the bluff—so I was subjected to the full effect. The ball popped out of my arms as I clamped my hands to my ears to muffle the sound blast. That’s when things get sketchy.

There was a stumble over the ball and then a tumble and shouts from the valley at the base of the hill. I was off my feet and bounding against edges of sharp rocks embedded in the grassy slope. I don’t recall making it to the bottom of the hill. This is what I recall: being hoisted up high by adult arms and feeling very sleepy and being shoved into the back seat of our ancient DeSoto (Let’s date this around June of 1957) and then there was a zooming take off followed shortly by a brutal stoppage of forward momentum and the sound of crumpling steel and a powerful whiff of motor oil.

The following I can only surmise and piece together from subsequent discussions with family members:

I surrendered consciousness when my body was hurled against the back of the front seat, this being the days before seat belts and other forms of passive restraints.

There was a welter of commotion from grim rescue teams.

The multiple trauma rendered me comatose for more than a week.

I missed the funeral.

Day 2. May 28, 2009

That, as previously mentioned, is a fair account of my earliest memory. I’m not a psychologist, and have precious little patience for self-analysis other than a random curiosity for interesting behavioral phenomenon. (Yes, I know, odd behavior for a person who has written four novels.)

For example, why do I remember my earliest memory? My assumption, as slyly inserted in the previous section, was that the sudden blast of noise—perhaps the loudest sound ever to rock my forming brain in those days—was behind the staying power of that memory. While the key, life-changing events that followed its initiation would, I think, be the professional interpretation of my memory, it is the running with the ball and the sound that I truly remember—the events afterward were simply events that occurred and were relayed to me through conventional narrative.

I’m glad, though, that for the first time I have put this memory down in writing. The gradual onset of senility is a family characteristic and it could start spreading its insidious vines up my brainstem at any moment, if it hasn’t already. But now it’s down in electronic form, which means I will have this memory forever, or at least long after I have forgotten it.

Here’s a little exercise for you while I finish up my one page for today: Think back: What is your earliest memory? Be sure to write it down on a piece of paper and put it somewhere you can find it so that you can recall it after you forget it. You’ll be glad that you did.

Day 3. May 29, 2009

(Yesterday’s page came up a little bit short, so I’ll try to make up for it today. It’s easy now to tell if I’m content cheating, given Microsoft Word’s ability to give you a running word and character count.)

Now that I’ve introduced my earliest memory, we’ll skip through all subsequent periods of my life and focus on the present—my current state, or the building of my next future memory.

As usual, I’m writing this at work because I have nothing else to do, really. I write investment brochures for a mutual funds company and we are in the worst investment crisis since the Great Depression, so no one wants to buy our products and thus have no desire to read the stuff I so ably churn out.

People have been cashing out of our mutual funds right and left, which is killing our bottom line and has led to numerous force adjustments. My department has been cut by 20 percent. They keep me because I’m the only writer, a skill they find awesomely mystical, even though, as an unpublished novelist, I don’t really consider myself a true writer. Just a guy who can string together sentences with enough coherence and persuasion to help commercial organizations sell products and influence people. And for this skill I probably make gobs more money than 95% of published novelists.

I’ve been doing the same job for about 20 years and I, like most people who have done the same damn thing for more than 20 years, am bored out of my skull. My boss was fired some months ago on account of his breathtaking incompetence. (I helped write the dismissal recommendation for his boss!)

I applied for my boss’s job, thinking that directing others and being the strategic mastermind behind the various collateral produced in my area might be a pleasant and reasonably challenging change of pace for me—a brooming of the cobwebs threading the creative stalactites of my soul, so to speak.

They went in another direction for the job, much to my dismay. Of course, perhaps there were issues with my disinclination to hew to various company dogma, and a wit that at times dipped into the sarcastic (they said), which I preferred to characterize as sardonic, a much more agreeable term, in my opinion.

I also know that they don’t think of me as much of a team player. They assured me that they value my contributions, that I play an important role in the organization, et cetera. And they’re right. I’m an old shoe and a comfortable fit. I’m a copy-generating machine and in that role I am, to my management, a reliable utility. Like a light bulb or a faucet. But there’s something else, too. But that’s tomorrow’s page.

Day 4. June 1, 2009

Alert readers will notice a calendar anomaly in this endeavor in which June 1 is following May 29 in apparent violation of the thematic structure of this book. Had you been even more alert, however, you would have remembered that this project is being done at work on company time, which precludes page production on weekends, holidays, and vacations.

In other words, Happy Monday! (Most likely other structural improvisations will intercede over time that will corrupt this format, not to mention the havoc that serious editing will reap once the initial draft is complete. But we soldier on.)

Last Friday’s page ended with a fairly dynamic cliffhanger of sorts, in which I intimated that there was more to my not getting the job from which my boss was fired than I had disclosed up to that point. The thing is, a whole weekend has passed and now I’ve forgotten what that thing was.

So there you have it, a structure to a book based on daily output—no more, no less—from an aging author with a failing memory and with an inherent laziness that precludes him from maintaining a journal to compensate for the stuff he would otherwise forget. So, going forward, when a cliffhanger is employed (which will be as often as possible), I will jot a few notes in the margin to remind myself of the forthcoming payoff.

The good thing about all of the preceding dissembling is, as I finish today’s page, I will have an exceedingly juicy fresh memory for tomorrow. (I do remember that the task at hand was to counter balance my earliest memory with my most recent.) Tomorrow I will meet my new boss and will relay my impressions before I forget them shortly thereafter. (I guess this is a semi-cliffhanger.)

Day 5. June 1, 2009 replaced on January 20, 2012

You will note the date has been superseded in this installment. It is because an ironic impossibility has occurred that enables you to read this fine literary creation. One of the compelling themes driving this work describes my previous disinterest in potentially encountering serial rejection in the course of seeking publication of four novels. Now, ironically, I have actually broken into print via a change in attitude. I've taken a position of publish or die.

I've self published--and skipped the middle man and you, some stranger, can now read my gilded prose. So, about this replacement page.

The zero chance of publication that I had assumed while crafting these pages freed me to be boundlessly honest, explicit, and free with my thoughts. I’ve exploited that potential to quite an extent and, in most cases, you will be treated to the unvarnished me.

However free I may be to practice my art, there are some entries that would put aspects of my life in jeopardy, i.e., things that could blow up my marriage, family relations, job, and friendships. Given the now public exposure of these pages, some of the stronger stuff must be replaced. This entry, for instance, goes into great depth about my current management, not all of it complimentary and, as long as I depend on this job for material sustenance, the replaced entry must be…replaced. My insights into the nature of my new boss may be a little…too…much.

Now, now, please stifle that groan. Yeah, I’m creating boundaries and stifling my art. But, what the fuck. I’m mature and seasoned and experienced and have learned over the years that art isn’t everything. Besides, why must you be such a voyeur? This thing will still be 99 percent pure—and the stuff that’s left out could only hurt others who you don’t even know. Yes, replacement pages constitute a compromise. But listen, Skippy, everything in life is a compromise.

Day 6. June 3, 2009 replaced on January 20, 2012

Yes, it’s happened for a second day in a row. A replacement section. So it was basically a continuation of my impressions of my new boss and what she had in store for me. Let me set the context. As noted previously, I have been in the same job for the past, oh, 14 years. Of course, back when the original entry was done, it had been 11 years. But once the momentum of time kicks in, 14 years isn’t much different than 11.

Fact is doing the same job for such a long time can make things rote, boring, and unchallenging. And I feel the same way now as I did on June 3, 2009. Two and half years later, nothing has really changed. But, since I’m on an irony kick, I’ll put some more ironies on the fire. (No excuse for that!)

I was not happy when I was not selected for my boss’s job. But over the intervening years, she’s proven to be a good editor, which has enhanced my work, and has served as a reliable buffer in terms of process and administration so that I can focus on the carefree world of content development. My bitterness at the time was partially a result of career frustration, of carving my rut deeper and deeper.

But as red tape and bureaucracy and the obsessions of those around me to adding value pretty much ground progress to a halt, I actually can count my blessings. I would’ve hated my boss's job if it had been offered to me. Even if she gets hit by a bus or finds something better in the Big City, I will not apply for her job. It’s a thankless perch with just a high enough profile to expose yourself to the wrath of your many clients and nights of a churning stomach and disquietude.

Not for me. Now I treasure the days when I can hunker down to the screen and churn out fragments of drivel, un-beckoned to a raft of meetings because it’s her role to go to meetings.

So even if I had kept my less than complimentary entry in place here, it would have been misleading because she turned out okay for me, contrary to expectations.

Day 7. June 4, 2009

There’s a young woman on my train, let’s call her Chinless, since that is her chief facial characteristic from my point of view. It’s unfortunate that such an unfortunate construction should detract from an otherwise attractive woman. She has lovely blue eyes, long silken brown hair and a fetching slim figure.

Alas, it’s the chin, or lack of same, that dominates, but that is not the point. Chinless and I board the same trains each morning and evening and never exchange more than a cordial nod. But yesterday our relationship deepened to a mutual eye roll when a certain blowhard four rows up from me was yakking at trading pit volume on his cell phone for most of the ride.

This is at 6 a.m. when most riders, including myself, address our chronic sleep deficits. So we are in this silent car except for Mr. Master of the Universe pricing this and selling that at rock-star pitch, his voice bouncing against the walls, punctuated by thunderous laughing guffaws and exclamations.

I could’ve yanked the phone out of his fist and he could have simply talked into his hand and his hapless party on the other end could probably still have heard him without the intercession of electronics. I sighed heavily, other passengers moaned, I happened to glance at Chinless and we rolled our eyes in unison.

The anger, my indignation, a violent rage—I could picture myself rising from my seat, striding over to the fat, balding phone guy, yanking the damn thing out of his, stomping on it and slapping the side of head so it would bounce against the train window.

Then I would tell him to spare his fellow passengers the boring details of his private conversations. And if he rose out of his seat, I would stamp on his foot, knee him in the balls and push his nose in with the heel of my hand, so as not to injure my guitar-playing fingers.

But I didn’t—and wouldn’t do that. And you want to know why?

Day 8. June 5, 2009

I’m a flaming coward. A frightened little bunny. I’ve never been in a fistfight, ever. Not even a pushing and tripping skirmish. I’m afraid of getting hurt, I suppose. I have no clue how to scuffle, quite frankly.

What if I truly bashed someone—how would I deal with the mess issuing from opened-up facial wounds and so forth? What if they hit me in the face, in the nose and blood gushes forth or they belt me in the stomach and I lose my wind and can’t breathe, like that time in Little League when I took a pitched ball just below the ribs and it knocked the air out of me and I thought the gray blanket of death was about to smother me? I’m fast and nervous—I can outrun any bully or cower in the face of physical threat that would turn any potential abuser away in disgust.

So that’s why I didn’t smack the guy with the phone in the side of the head, even though he deserved it. Or the chatty fatty ladies who sit at the front of my car on the evening train and carry on like clucking magpies while I’m trying to read good literature. Or any of a multitude of permutations of such rude and obnoxious people who share my commute and deserve my violence that will never be issued because of my cowardice.

Cowardice, though, takes many forms, which I’ll cover in its many shapes over the course of this project. If that’s the kind of theme that distresses, bores, or depresses you, then stop reading now.

The agony won’t be worth the precious moments that may provide amusement in these daily reports. (Today’s Friday, the next entry will not be contiguously numbered calendar-wise (Just a reminder.).)

Day 9. June 8, 2009

Today is Monday, which long ago ceased being Go for the Gusto day. My gusto has been fading badly the last few years, and when I didn’t get my boss’s job, the gusto just got up and left. It happens when your opinions aren’t valued, when you come across clearly contemptuous of management, when the only reason they keep you is because no one else can do your job, which you can do in a comatose state, but have absolutely no other choice but to continue doing what you’re doing until the day comes when you leap victoriously into retirement, a prospect over which I obsess daily.

Why is Monday Go for the Gusto day? Well, obviously the attitude and energy levels are set for the week on Monday. Guys in Sales do the whole Marine Hoo Hah! thing on Monday and then hit the phone banks like they’re storming the beach.

I’m supposed to think about things—about how to pitch our products better, devise powerful new processes and initiatives that will break through the clutter, explode out of the box, innovate the collateral that will break down barriers and make assets under management skyrocket.

Well, been there. Done that. Now each Monday I face the wall, dispirited, disheartened, apathetic, flaccid, enervated, defeated. Before the week has even started. I’m stuck in a yes loop, a bobble-headed nod of concurrence with whatever bright ideas management cares to inflict.

I used to be more swashbuckling—a push-back kind of guy who would get angry over stupidity and question the boss to his face. I thought my behavior was heroic—showed a passion for quality, et cetera. No, I was wrong. Instead, I was a bad team player with questionable leadership skills. But I was good at writing, doing what I do—forever and ever and ever. That is my wall.

This leads to a discussion of another form of cowardice of which I am guilty.

Day 10. June 9, 2009

Fear of change. Fear to take a risk. When I catalog the list of things I hate, it all seems rooted in my cowardice.

I hate my rut, my routine, lack of authority in my day-to-day, the tedium of at my desk at 8:00 and back on the train by 5:09, the dull conformity of my company, my glacial progress in accruing an adequate retirement stash, the inability to enjoy life with the gusto (that word again!) of my children, the regret of the things I’ve never done including, but not limited to, bungee jumping, snow skiing, organizing a running race, coaching Little League, running for mayor, doing cocaine, doing LSD, sipping absinthe, making a movie, driving cross country with no money and no plan, visiting Africa, jumping out of plane (attached to a parachute), attending Bonaroo, and so forth.

It’s all cowardice. Even 30 years ago I knew I wasn’t cut out for the corporate thing. Never was a very good team player—baseball was my only team sport and the part I liked the best was just me with a bat in my hand against the pitcher.

Why did I study English in college when I should have taken some business courses and picked up some skills in starting my own gig? I regret bitterly accepting that safe, comfy corporate job in 1978 and sticking with it only because it was easy and secure and …well.

Cowardice, fear of failure, bankruptcy. But what would bankruptcy really mean to a 25-year-old? Instead I’m this nondescript mid-manager-type guy with four perfectly fine unpublished novels and working on a fifth, whose footprint in life is a dull impression in the sand waiting to be washed away at the next high tide. Here’s something: Honesty is but a painful acknowledgment about one or more personal failures that lends perspective to misery.

Day 11. June 10, 2009

Yesterday was heavy but today’s a new day. During this morning’s run I was listening to Sister Andrea, a cut from the Mahavishnu Orchestra’s live Central Park recording that took place back in the early 70s and it brought to mind the vehement insistence of my virtual guitar teacher who said speed is not important when it comes to soloing, rather it was the hook and story that matters.

But I was/am addicted to the breathless, electric buzz saw fingerings of the great maestro John McLaughlin who is nothing without the blinding speed.

Still, I can see his point. The great bluesmen B.B. King and Buddy Guy and immortal rockers like Page, Hendrix, Slash, and so forth—speed was an element, but it was the beauty and logic of their stories that sold their music. But what’s not thrilling about the great McLaughlin or Malmsteen or the whole clutch of metal guys who reel off the cascading notes with preternatural velocity. Well, speed, yeah!

Part of it is I’m not fast. My fingers stiffen and lock up when I try to arpeggiate too quickly. I’m more cut out for the slow blues and torchy rock.

That’s why I admire the speed demons, even though, back in the day, it was fashionable to sneer at the conceit of athletic fret-burning at the expense of structure and pace. Nah, it was jealousy!

Day 12. June 11, 2009

Nothing to write. Only Day 12 and nothing to write. This happened sooner than expected. Makes me long for the days when the fiction writing flowed like blood on the page, which in sunny retrospect now seems like an effortless exuberance. I’m sure I had my dry days then, too. Wasn’t really different then.

I did a page or two a day first thing in the morning when I got to work. But I’m really stumped now. Maybe it’s time to introduce a major character. We’ll call her Micky, her real name. She’s been my wife for a long time, going on 35 years. She has made me what I am. She changed my diet. I no longer have bread and butter with every meal and I don’t eat unusual species and cuts of meat, such as lamb, pigs knuckles, beef tongue, and a broad range of charcuterie. I now eat lean meats, steamed fresh vegetables, lots of potatoes, brown rice, papayas and other exotic fruits.

My contribution to her diet is shrimp cocktail, which she has me prepare because I am a meticulous cleaner of shrimp. I also introduced her to Beefeaters martinis, extra dry, up with olives. When I make them, I skip the vermouth entirely and go with a few drops of olive juice to cut the juniper nectar a tad.

We limit ourselves to one jumbo martini a week, usually on Fridays. Given the current psychic death spiral of my life, it is taking enormous self-discipline not to haul out my drinking tools more frequently. Self-disciplined--it's over-rated

Day 13. June 15, 2009

I have been trying to learn how to play the Beatles' Michelle on the guitar for about three years now. It's a classical arrangement and requires a strong ability to read music, which I have, and a decent knowledge of the entire fret board of the guitar, which comes and goes.

It's damn hard, but I plug away at it almost every day. Classical guitar is similar to violin in that it takes highly coordinated, but very different, movements with each hand. Michelle, for example, involves a lot of moving up and down the fret board, a modicum of stretch between the index finger and pinky. I have an annoyingly weak pinky, which is a major liability with my instrument. As for the right hand, there's a lot of intricate plucking of interior strings throughout the piece and I am prone to hitting the wrong adjacent strings or stroking more than the requisite number of strings in certain passages.

And this has been going on for years. The first year was mainly about figuring out the notes and where to play them and which fingers to use to stroke them. Now it's a matter of playing cleanly, accurately, and with emotion--you know, the things that require endless practice and repetition.

Natural musicians can conquer such a piece over a period of a few weeks. But I am not a natural musician and I could go my entire lifetime with but a handful of passable Michelles to my credit.

But I love the challenge and embrace the frustration. At least during the times that I don't have an overwhelming urge to shatter my beautiful Martin D-19 against the concrete walls of the basement.

Day 14. June 16, 2009

The longer I live, the more I appreciate the pervasive role of luck. Luck is not a myth and luck is not an excuse. Luck is real. Some people are born into money and some people are randomly endowed with certain talents while most of us are not.

It comes down to luck.

Who can disagree that children born into poverty, in broken homes, sent to poor schools and, though they may manage to survive their circumstances, never truly rise to even a middle class existence because of the bad luck of their birth circumstances?

In my case, I look around the floor where I work and see various people rising through the ranks and forging careers that may take them to the C-suite. They are indeed talented and competent people and may even be good at their jobs. But so am I. The difference is they happened to know the right people, were mentored early in their careers and made the advantageous connections that led to recognition and reward. They worked no harder than I did, but they had luck working for them as well.

Me? I've never had mentor I could count on. Most of my promising connections were either fired, left the company or changed entire industries. There was no one ever looking out for me. While I have managed to rise to a middle management position, who knows where I'd be with a little bit of luck? I hope you do not interpret this as whining, but rather as a series of objective observations.

But here's some actual news that you can use. It takes luck to outperform the stock market. So-called whizzes who claim that they can consistently beat the markets are deluding you and themselves. Maybe they'll make dazzling gains for a few years, but don't be fooled, they're just being lucky. And bad luck is just as powerful as good luck, and those high fliers are merely set up for a crash landing.

The numbers are in: 93% of professional money managers fail to outperform the market over a 10-year period. Don't trust in luck when it comes to your money. Invest in index mutual funds.

Day 15. June 17, 2009

One of the hardest things about writing fiction is creating credible characters of the opposite sex. This problem is especially acute in my case because the last couple of novels I wrote feature female protagonists, which is probably nervy for a guy to try to pull off.

I thought I'd have somewhat of an advantage because I have two sisters and currently live in a house filled with women. Still, I worried that I was creating characters that thought like women as imagined by a man. I was not sure it was working.

After all, I'm not overly interested in or knowledgeable about things like fashion, make-up, romance novels, long hot baths, snuggly bathrobes, chocolate, feelings, having close friends in whom you can share super-secret confidences, etc.

Even so, are all or part of the foregoing list just female clichés? If I tried to write about them would that expose me as a phony? What can I say about that darling canary camisole or rockin' rain boots without sounding like a know-nothing idiot?

My solution in the end was not to overly feminize my characters and to make them unusually forceful and confident and hope that they were credible enough not to blow my cover.

Day 16. June 18, 2009 replaced on January 20, 2012

Here’s another thing. I’m not going to apologize every time I replace an entry. This one wasn’t especially juicy but it was fairly personal regarding the sex life of the author and his spouse. Even in this day of full disclosure and the open-door policy of social media, I’m disinclined to share the quotidian details of our intimate life. Instead, let's talk about the guys who fix our cars.

I think car mechanics are the most underpaid workers in society. They don't make as much as plumbers, electricians, computer geeks, yet their job requires skills that touch on all those areas. To me, it takes supreme intelligence to dope out the mysteries of engine malfunctions and, even with the advent of computer diagnostics, it's easy to be led astray by the vague and often contradictory readouts from these systems.

Then, when the mechanic finally figures out what the problem may be, he or she must then have the manual dexterity to root about tight and filthy cavities and exert leverage where it's often impossible to find a purchase to extract, replace, and adjust faulty parts. And they must be able to do this quickly and precisely in order to profit the business.

I gave up working on cars years ago. Usually I was clueless when it came to troubleshooting engine issues and I'm just not that great with tools. A brake job that would take an experienced mechanic two hours would take me an entire weekend. And the blood that I shed--and I never considered a car job begun until blood was flowing.

It takes the highest level of experience, judgment, specialized expertise in an endless number of car models, and physical strength to be a good mechanic. Be kind to your auto technician--he practices a difficult art and seldom gets the respect and monetary rewards he deserves.

Day 17. June 19, 2009

Maybe I should have been more sensitive to the telltale signs that make all revolutions both impossible and inevitable. The hunched shoulders and nervous grunt of the octogenarian owner of the gentleman’s barbershop on Brighton as I greeted him the other day. The refusal to post Today’s Specials in the window of Primavera’s Italian Delicatessen for three days running.

Sirens in the