Untitled (for now)

For the past nine years or so, I have been going to this online forum for figure skating. Well, actually it started out much earlier. First, I found a figure skating group on usenet back in the 1990s, when I was still in pharmacy school. Once the worldwide web came to popularity, the same circle of figure skating fans migrated to several online hangouts. At some point, someone clued me in on two largest forums that have remained to this day, and I generally frequent one of the two. I go there off and on for nearly a decade, with stretches of indifference alternating fervent passions. This forum's owner is based in Europe, and many regulars are as well, giving the discussions a European perspective not apparent in North American skating circles.

On any online forum, there are always people with a larger presence than others. They have a more constant and concentrated presence than lurkers and casual visitors. Given the limited size of worldwide skating fans and limited outlets elsewhere, the regulars on the forums have remained surprisingly stable. A few years ago, a Polish young man became one of the big regulars. His posts ranked high in both volume and frequency. He was one of the die-hard skating fans who take obscure skaters and junior-level competitions as seriously as the Olympics. He was passionate about skating and about voicing his opinions --- primarily about but not limited to skating. Smart, articulate, strongly opinionated, passionate. He couldn't help but leave a lot of footprints on the forum.

About a week ago, it was suddenly announced on the forum that this Polish young man had died in an accident. He was just past 30. It was a shock, since he left posts all over the forum only a day or two ago. Many people wrote mourning comments under the announcement, including lurkers who rarely come out of the woods, saying how much they had respected and enjoyed reading his opinions and jokes and snarks. The loss is clearly felt by many people. Two of his friends found their way onto the forum and declared that they had no idea he had so many admirers online. According to the friends, the young man was well loved and popular in real life as well. He was certainly not a loner, despite the substantial time he apparently spent on the skating forum.

Except for three or four local skating fans whom I have met and socialized with in real life, I have always maintained a mental distance with the skating forum. I don't socialize or seek friendship that is solely online. I had no direct connection with any fan on the forum that I have not met in person. Yet, I've been thinking about the Polish young man a lot since the announcement.

I wonder if he knew how much his persona as an uber skating fan had been respected and admired and enjoyed by so many people. I wonder if he had any inkling how acutely his own absence would be felt. I often agreed with his opinions, but said so only occasionally with my trademark restraint and distance. Now I wish I hadn't had so much restraint and had openly praised his passion and insight more often, or just engaged with his discussions more even if I disagreed vehemently --- I think he would have enjoyed it, too. I hope he had known the size of the footprint he had left on other people's minds, but I doubt that.

Does anyone know one's own impression on the world? On people around him or her, close and far? It seems impossible. It is impossible, unless you believe in the afterlife. The thing that struck me is how little we tell each other "I care about you/your opinions." Perhaps we don't even think about it. It feels awkward and gratuitous to discuss our connections of varying degrees. The attachment is only felt acutely upon a loss, when it's too late.

So the inevitable question is, if I were dead now, who would feel a loss? Naturally, some would feel it more strongly than others. I think I have a pretty good idea. I have never thought about my interpersonal relationships in this way. Who will mourn me for the person I am and who will mourn the loss of my usefulness? Who will be empathic enough to feel it and who will be too narcissistic or numb to care? 

One of the common traits of neurotics is their obsession of others' opinions of them. "How do they think of me?" is the question that keeps them (us) up at night. Let's be honest. Most everyone cares about other people's opinions of himself to some degree, and those who completely do not give a shit are more likely to be jerks, assholes, and psychopaths. But the balance between caring and obsessing is precarious and potentially problematic.

Perhaps defining one's place in a social context can be approached from one's absence. At least, this way of thinking has immediately crystalized for me my relationships with people I know. Who care about me? Who do I care about? How much? Of course, people differ on the types of relationship they care about. If you are Andy Lau or Jackie Chan, your first loyalty might be to your fans rather than to your wife and children. Nevertheless, this provides a useful framework to sort out the importance and meaning of various relationships --- rather than intimacy alone --- and makes it easier to choose where to invest one's time and emotional energy.

The Cashier

I had a few hours free on Wednesday afternoon, so I decided to go watch the 3:30 show of Boyhood at the theater around the corner.

The ticket price was $9.50. I took out a twenty and two quarters and handed them to the cashier, a short, pudgy guy in his late twenties to early thirties with a scraggy and rather inadequate beard. He opened the register and stuffed my bill into the twenty-dollar slot, and then started pulling out one-dollar bills one after another after another. 

Being a mildly obsessive-compulsive neat freak with an aversion to small changes, I had a gloomy suspicion that he was going to give my change in a fiver and six singles. "What are you doing?" I wanted to say, "Look, you've got several five-dollar bills in the slot. Just give me two fivers and a single." 

He didn't though. I watched his two fat fingers pulling out a dollar bill, crumple it into a ball in his left palm, and another one, and another, four or five times, until he finally switched to the right hand and handed me a one-dollar and two fivers. The other crumpled dollar bills stayed in his other hand. 

It was not until I sat down in the darkened theater that I realized that he was probably stealing from the cash register while I stared at his fingers --- drawing the dollar bills and crumpling them in his palm. He did it calmly and paid no attention to me whatsoever. 

Then I remembered the few years in which the green stuff passed between my own figures, first at a small independent drug store in Monterey Park, California and later at the outpatient pharmacy at Kaiser hospital in West Los Angeles. At the former, I was paid five dollars an hour sitting or standing between the low counter in the front and the high counter behind, through which the pharmacist would hand me bottles of prescription meds to give to mostly Cantonese-speaking little old patients. There wasn't any kind of security measures guarding the cash register, but then the bosses --- pharmacists and part-owners of the outfit --- were by configuration always standing behind me. The senior technician and the boss's favorite girl, Brenda, would take cash straight out of the register to buy us lunch every day. Later at Kaiser, I would run the cash register only occasionally when it was short-handed in front, as I mostly worked in the back on dispensing, as I was a licensed intern pharmacist then. Every tech was assigned a specific register on the counter with a PIN. At the end of the day anyone manning a register was required to reconcile the sales printout and the money in the register. Pharmacy interns and pharmacists shared one register, under the assumption that they were less likely to steal. Indeed during my three years of employment, the pharmacists' register never seemed to miss more than a few bucks at any given time. 

Anyway, in those years the thought of palming a few bucks here and there never crossed my mind, as far as I can remember. It's not like I have never thought of stealing in my life, but when the thought did cross my mind, it was never induced by currency. That's not because I don't like money in a general, practical sense, but rather money in itself is so impersonal and abstract --- pieces of paper or cloth --- that seeing and holding it never quite inspires a salivating desire to possess it, somehow. Its allure is one or two steps removed for the actual pleasures it promises. Impulse is not enough; one has to think and imagine. 

Duke, Capote, and Thoughts on Biography

There is something in the format of the conventional biography that leaves me unsatisfied, like an itch that refuses to be scratched. Teachout's biography of Duke Ellington certainly left that impression on me. Re-watching the biopic "Capote" again reminded me of this thought. The director of the movie, Bennett Miller, seems to have a fascination with real characters and his two subsequent movies were also biopics of sort: Moneyball and Foxcatcher (about the Dupont heir who murdered a wrestler).

While re-watching the movie, I looked up some stuff about Truman Capote's own stab at nonfiction in the form of "In Cold Blood" and discovered (perhaps not surprisingly) that he had made fabrications of his own and afterward vehemently defended the veracity of his accounts. In In Cold Blood, he is said to have "invented" a form of writing nonfiction, in which the author recounts real people's actions and thoughts known to only themselves, as if the author were with them in those past moments. Should I believe the author? That is the question. Indeed I am usually suspicious. The author can only base such narrative on his subject's confession. There may have been witnesses to someone's action, but the thoughts and motives are entirely invisible. In recalls, the power of deception and self-deception cannot be underestimated. Everyone is an unreliable narrator of his own history, especially his own thoughts.

Given the vast capability of self-deception, the human mind is by nature and by default untrustworthy. Autobiography is in many ways even more unreliable than biography. The problem is that the extent of deception, intentional or not, is unknown. Perhaps my problem is that I carry an expectation that I should learn something about the subject I'm reading about, but the biography leaves me with more questions than answers and a sense that I'm no closer to the subject than I was before I started reading. Not that I didn't learn a thing or two about Duke Ellington's limitations as a composer from the biography, but an assessment of his place in musical history is hardly what I wanted to know in the first place.

Sometimes I wonder if a person is able to truly understand another at all. When the end was near, Maugham's secretary found him frantically burning his private letters. Perhaps he needn't have bothered?

With biographies I remain unsatisfied, but perhaps that is inevitable.

Duke

Teachout's biography of Duke Ellington still leaves many questions unanswered at least for me, but it is a good overview of what Ellington did in his career. Well, most of what he did was touring with his constantly churning, frequently dysfunctional, often brilliant and sometimes lackluster band.

I am of course interested in his psychology as a person who was simultaneously irresistible and unknowable, but unfortunately Teachout didn't provide a lot of analysis (speculation?) in this area. Every couple of chapters Teachout would gripe about how Ellington stole credit for music written by his band members (including an entire chapter about how Billy Strayhorn was wronged by not only Duke but also critics and historians) or how he mistreated women in his life. He does not, however, provide any explanation on why Ellington was able to do these things without losing their attachment to him.

For example, one could argue that Strayhorn remained in Duke's shadow because of his lack of marketability as a homosexual, but by all account Strayhorn did not act as if he was ashamed of his sexuality and never pretended to be straight. He could have stayed in others' shadows if he were so inclined. Why did he stick with Duke's band for most of his life and watch Duke take credit for his own work? Why did many others in the band? Band members trickled (or stormed) in and out over the five decades, some left in a rage and struck out on their own. Some came back. (Johnny Hodges was an example of success in both places.) I can believe that Strayhorn grew to resent Duke's credit-hogging of his work, but he nevertheless drifted back into Duke's fold until his (Strayhorn's) death. They were jazz musicians for god's sake, by nature and definition unabashed individualists. They are notoriously harder to herd than cats!

The same with women. It's not like Ellington's major long-term relationships were with weak, submissive women. His first love and only wife slashed his face with a razor. Another of his long-term partner Evie had a fiery temper. None of them seemed like spineless voiceless victims. Every few chapters, Teachout would indignantly remind the reader that Ellington refused to give the title of Mrs. Ellginton to women in his life. Yet most of them did not leave him. Why? What was his pull? Ellington spent lavishly on his friends and family, so much so that he was deep in debt at the time of death. But money alone cannot explain his hold on people around him.

One thing in Duke's personality that did come through in the biography is his intense fear of being alone and his actual loneliness. He needed the band and could not live without it, but this busyness never provided the relief from the loneliness.

Another thing that came through, without heavy-handed treatment, is the scars of racism that all American jazz musicians have to live with. And yes, the white ones too.

Not being a musically knowledgeable person or a connoisseur of Ellington's discography, I am not able to assess Teachout's critique of Duke's music. It seems that Ellington's innate sensibility as a visual artist --- he showed a lot of talent in art before he got into music --- gave a strong impressionistic character of his music. Teachout does not, however, comment on the sensuality and sexuality that are evoked bluntly, almost nakedly, in some of his pieces.

Philip Seymour Hoffman

I don't think it's quite real to me (yet) that he's dead and I won't get the chance to see him on stage ever again.

The only time I saw him on stage was "Death of a Salesman" a couple of years ago. My seat was really too far to see the full scale of his performance, but I did see him frown, a kind of disbelieving despair, as if the darkness that is closing in on him could not possibly be real, and yet here it is.

Nothing about PSH is beautiful, not his face, his body, or his voice. I fell in love with him the first time I saw him in Magnolia. His male nurse is maybe the only thing I remember from the film. Him and the raining frogs.

No, actually Magnolia was not the first time I saw him. It was a season 1 episode of Law and Order, in which he played a preppy little shit who raped a girl and then got acquitted. That was his first role.

In Capote, every emotion, every fleeting thought, every repressed urge was utterly transparent through a frown, a look, a gesture, a flicker of the eye, a crack in his voice. Every moment I knew exactly what the character was thinking. But in Doubt he was complete opaque and unknowable. In The Master he was both unknowable and ... omnipotent, or so he convinced me.

To me the worst of all this is that he's not going to ... No, who am I kidding? The worst part to me is that I will never get to see another movie directed by PSH or watch him lumbering around and twitching his eyebrows on stage. It's my loss. Why didn't I go see his Iago? Or a bunch of other theater performances, when I still had the chance? Perhaps because I thought I'd have loads of time ...

Once in a while, or hardly ever, you encounter a kind of terrifying and irresistible intimacy and vulnerability that is not of this world. "Nobody knows anybody. Not that well," said Gabriel Byrne in "Miller's Crossing." In life I've learned the truth of it. Yet, here's someone who gave you the most naked truth about humanity in all its blood and guts, searing with the inexplicable glory and horror. He was raw not as crisp green vegetables or even fresh red meat; he was RAW as a gaping wound that's gushing bright red blood and life. He forced you to know him and, in turn, yourself. I don't know if I really want to, but I can't look away.

We all survive on lies we tell ourselves, happy lies to feel somewhat good about ourselves and keep going. He came along and showed you the truth, which sends a chill down your spine. 

When I saw his only directorial effort, "Jack Goes Boating," in 2010, I found myself bawling uncontrollably a few hours afterward, alone in my car on the road. It was a quiet and restrained little chamber piece, packing a much-delayed punch. It had a happy ending for god's sake! His character got himself a steady job and even a lovely and warm girlfriend. But the darkness was unmistakable and unshakable. A melancholy with a smile of resignation.

That is why I cannot shake the suspicion that somehow he wanted it --- to die early, I mean --- even if not consciously. That is why I wonder, maybe, the two decades of his life he had shared with us is a fluke, a gift, and pure, undeserved luck.

(P.S. I guess I'm moving through the grieving steps because I'm finally crying now.) 

The Bull Running Story (continued)

"Before the start of the bull run, they made an announcement on the PA --- in Spanish of course --- that there would be two gun shots: One at seven fifty nine, one minute before the bulls are let out; and one at exactly eight, when the bulls are let out. So, on the first gun shot, we were still standing around, loosening our joints, preparing to run, and joking around. Then the second gun shot. After a little while we saw this swarm of people just ... rushed down the street, and we ran.


"It was a little ridiculous. The street was all cobblestone with broken stones here and there, and wet with vomit and trash all over the place --- because of all the drinking and partying the night before. You could barely run on the street by yourself, without the bull or the crowd. But I didn't get to think about it. The crowd came and I just got swept up in it."

"The whole route was 800 meters, in the middle of it was a turn on a street corner called 'dead man's turn.' The bulls are all muscle and weight, but they can't, you know, change directions easily. I saw a bunch of people get crushed into the wall by the bulls. When we got to the end where the bulls were supposed to go into the ring, I saw these people in front of me all laid down on the ground. I was totally dazed and could barely think, so I just stood there, not knowing it was actually pretty dangerous. Someone pulled me aside, like, 'What are you doing?' Then they explained to me that the bulls would just jump over the people lying on the ground, maybe someone would get kicked in the head.

"I had never been in the war but I imagine that's as close as you would get to fighting in the war. I'll never forget it.

"Afterwards we went to have breakfast. I was so hungry and ate a lot."

He told the whole story without stutter or pause, the memory apparently etched in his mind. Perhaps he'd told the same story a number of times before. His date made almost no remark on this narrative, however, either to one-up him or to make any philosophical observations; she didn't even show any signs of being especially impressed by such masculine pursuits. She just went on with her own pursuits --- diet and personal training.

I wondered whether this was a commonplace occurrence on dates. How many time does he have to tell the story before his date would give a more relevant response? Does he notice or care? Does it matter?

A First Date

They were the only ones sitting at the bar. Around they were straggles of diners on the Wednesday evening. He was quite tall with gym-honed muscles. Curly dark hair and olive skin. High cheekbones. In the dim lighting the face could be anywhere between 35 and 45. She had straight hair, dyed blond, and was meticulously made up and accessorized. She was wearing a creamy thin sweater, beige pencil skirt, and tall tan boots, all of which emphasized her well-toned slim shape. She was professionally tanned, in November, from face to legs.

She said she got married with someone she met in second year of college. He asked how long she was married. "Five years," she replied. "Divorced by 27." Then she claimed that the years from 28 to 30 were really good. He said early marriage was not in his family tradition. His father married late. He always saw himself walking the same road. "If you asked me in my twenties where I'd be when I'm forty, I'd have told you I would be single, enjoying life," he said with a smile, bearing his white and slightly misaligned teeth.

He went on to recount the story of he and friends participating in the bull running in Spain. "It was seven in the morning and I was sleepy, wet, and hungover." They got drunk the night before upon arriving in Pamplona. "People all around us were chatting and joking. There was an old guy in his 60s. Steve said look, if he can do it we can too." When the bulls charged down the cobblestone alleys, he was swept up in the crowd.

"It was the most exciting thing, by far, I have ever done in my life," he said. "After it was over we went to have breakfast. Steve asked me if I wanted a drink but I didn't."

She didn't come up any story to match his. Instead she went on with her diet and personal training regimens. Her diet "really works" and cured her of cravings for starch. "The first two weeks can be tough, but now I don't even miss bread any more," she said. She had a raspy, strong voice that projected all the way to the front door. He was almost as loud.

He started to chime in with some workout tips, but not too enthusiastically. At one point the bartender, a guy with beard, younger and stockier than the date, inserted himself into the discussion about various physical training and dieting methodologies. Neither the man nor the woman seemed to be bothered by his intrusion into their conversation, so that for a moment it looked like three buddies chatting over drinks. The man had his face turned to the woman, but his arms were firmly placed on the bar table, drawing a line between her body and his. She, on the other hand, turned her entire body toward him.

On our way out of the restaurant I said to S, "He may not refuse to shag her, but I don't think they'll go farther than that."

Affable Young Men

I have had two jobs in which the boss was a domineering bitch. Coincidentally, each of these bitches had a young man as her assistant to push around from time to time. The young men are so affable that they routinely obeyed the bitches idiotic and impulsive whims without complaint, running around wasting time and energy trying to fulfill their wishes. They are universally liked by everyone, me included, for their niceness and mild manners, especially their tenderness and lack of domination or aggression toward women. They inspire female colleagues' motherly instinct, yet they always run back to the domineering bitches and obeyed their orders. I often wondered why they are so willing to take so much crap, even more than us culturally brain-washed women. The similarity is striking, which convinces me again that there are only a limited number of personality types and people are not as unique as they'd like to believe --- but that's another story. These young men, it turned out, both had very domineering mothers. Hahahaha. How predictable we all are!

The Demise of Bill Evans

I swear I had no idea before hearing about Bill Evans' addiction and death. It was shocking. Why? Because I would never have thought a man so thoughtful, rational (as much as an artist can be), introverted, and gentle of nature, and smart, would fall victim to impulses and destroy his life in this way. Like Bix Biederbacke, it was a way of self-destruction, perhaps in order to escape psychological pain, but before their deaths they coped with music.

His father was an alcoholic. How much that contributed to his own depression and addiction I don't know, but it had to have some effect. Evans was enormously successful after he was hired by Miles Davis into his band. They were very different in personality but understood and appreciated each other. America's racial conflicts in the 50s was one of the main factors that split them up. Evans went on to become the preeminent jazz pianists of all time.

He was very intellectual, and that also made his addiction a surprise. He was not one of those instinct-driven, impulsive artists who operate on pure emotions. I have seen some videos of his interviews and he talked about jazz music like an academic, minus the snobbery. So analytical. So cool and articulate. So ... normal and sane.

It's heartbreaking. This biography recounts how, when he was addicted to heroin in the 1960s and broke and starving, he regularly called his friends begging for money. When he later got a big advance on a contract, he meticulously paid each one back. A man like this shouldn't be an addict. What contradiction. What nonsense.

He eventually quit heroin for a while, but then his wife committed suicide, and he went back on dope. Then he got himself into methadone treatment and stayed clean and productive for another decade. Then in 1980 he got hooked on cocaine and died quickly. It was over, just like that.

The Receptionist

Rene looked to be in her early 30s and impeccably courteous. It did not occur to me until now that her greetings and smiles, delivered with affectation and theatricality, might have been the result of acting classes. I also could not determine whether the big strawberry blonde bob with a tint of pink was a wig or her own hair. That, the heavy makeup, the false eyelashes, and the mole on her right cheek always led me to mistaken her as a French aristocrat at Louis XIV's court.

Once we chatted about what to do in the City (New York City, there is none else) that weekend --- stranded as I was in Paramus, New Jersey for two weeks. I mentioned Broadway, and she immediately rattled off all the current shows on and gave a brief assessment of each. I barely kept up, thanks to the theater reviews in recent issues of The New Yorker.

"You've got great theaters down in DC, too," she said. "I visit my brother who lives in the area sometimes. You have a Shakespeare theater. Very nice. Very sophisticated. And Arena Stage." She nodded rhythmically.

I mentioned I now lived next door to Signature. It's small and in the suburbs, I said, but it's serviceable.

"I've been to Signature as well," her head bobbed appreciatively. "It's very nice."

I asked her about great performances she had seen.

"I saw a play with Vanessa Redgrave in London," she said. "It's kind of a comedy, you know. She plays a woman visited by her old flame. She was amazing. So good, Jun, the Brits really know how to do it."

As I am writing this, now comfortably sitting at home, the New Jersey project finished and over, it suddenly occurred to me that she could be one of those struggling actors who pay their bills with a menial day job. I'm kicking myself for not having asked her whether she's ever been on Law and Order.

The Zookeeper

Chris is 36, but looks no more than 28, with pink cheeks that couldn't be aged by a two-day stubble and grey eyes are prone to open wide with innocent surprise. After a couple of routine exchanges, he mentioned he worked as a zookeeper for 3 years after he dropped out of college.

"It was so much fun, it was great." He said fondly. "Giving tours to kids. Putting on shows. It was a party all the time."

"How was the pay?" His cruel boss, who constantly ordered him around for menial tasks, asked with a malicious grin.

"Aw, that's the thing," he ran a hand over his short sandy hair. "It paid hardly anything. All my coworkers either lived with four roommates or with their parents, or had a couple of other jobs. Nobody can live on the wage." 

"There's a price to pay for fun." I mused. "What was your favorite animal?"

"Pigs," he replied right away.

"Why?" I didn't expect the response.

"I don't know. They're just so ... smart, fun, and totally happy."

"So you enjoyed rolling around in the mud with them?"

"Yeah! Although they are kind of disgusting," he made a face. "They would eat anything."

"What animals didn't you like?" A colleague sitting next to me, a soft-spoken statistician with a Chinese accent with a round face, asked. We were all engrossed by the zoo stories and temporarily forgot our kebabs and roasted lamb and hummus.

"Monkeys. I thought I'd enjoy them, but it turned out to be the opposite."

"Why? Aren't they smart?"

Chris scratched his chin and reflected for a moment. "Well, yeah, they're smart all right. They are sort of like really evil and perverted humans."

"Are they that bad?" We all chuckled.

"Really. I can't even tell you the stuff they did ..." He shook his head. "Too disturbing."

"My grandfather had a monkey," the statistician said with deadpan seriousness. "He peed on me when I was four. It was totally intentional."

Chris slapped the table laughing. "Yeah, that sounds totally like the kind of things they would do. He was probably jealous of you."

"I'm sure of it," the statistician agreed.

"They can hold a grudge, too, and take it out later. Yuck." Chris said. 

"I guess it's more disturbing because they are so like us," I commented. "Do you miss it, the zoo?"

He shrugged. "I also like money ..."

The Tyrant

There is a reason he is loved and hated by many. He's 87 and runs 8 companies, flying around the world in his private jet. He is the worst kind of workaholic. Power has accentuated his temper. Tell him something he does not want to hear, and watch his face turns the color of raw pork liver. He is prone to angry rants made scarier than it really is had he not been rich and powerful.

His wife is 35 years his junior, just young enough to barely keep up with his manic tendencies. He had married half and dozen times, being easily bored and distracted. His moods can shift rapidly. He is able to pat someone on the back minutes after yelling at them. Many find his charisma and dominence irrisistible.

He struck up with a driver and car service owner who happened to pick him up one day at a hotel. The man's humility and workaholic spirit touched him. He gave the driver buisness, referred his rich friends to the service, and even gave gifts to the driver's kids around holidays. Charity is one of his many jobs, as he enjoyed the sense of power and superiority it brings.

Fake It Till You Make It

I met a medical writing manager in pharma recently. An interesting specimen. Occasionally something she says would make me wonder whether she knows what the hell she's doing. One particular incongruous observation is rather subtle: She seems to pay little attention to details such as grammar or spelling when she writes e-mails, and some of her decisions suggest a lack of forethought. I wonder whether a person can pass for a medical writer for over a decade in the industry without having these qualities dissolved in your blood. I suppose it is not impossible.

I'm not saying I write perfectly with nary a mistake, either. In fact I often make mistakes if I don't go back and re-read my e-mails and postings. My errors are most often related to jumping thoughts --- as in missing words or even phrases --- and stupid errors like "garbage words" left in a sentence, incomplete train of thoughts, and inconsistent verbs and nouns near each other, because I mentally go back and forth to edit myself while writing. I have the terrible habit of nonlinear thinking and editing myself while typing. My mind literally hops around all the time. Perhaps my nature is closer to an editor than a writer, and when both instincts mix I end up with a mess.

However, in this particular person's case, her errors and omissions are typical of people who are not writers. Writers' errors look different in some ways from nonwriters' errors, although I can't quite put my finger on it. Her spelling errors are clearly from someone who can't be bothered to google a word, yet a professional editor or writer cannot bear to type a word that looks "off" without looking it up. The grammar is sloppy, more like the way people talk.

So I looked her up on LinkedIn. Her job history lists several titles as a manager or director of medical writing in some company. Most interesting is a period of nearly 10 years at an organization with a name that's suspiciously generic. I googled it and found nothing. Of course that does not prove this organization does not exist. Still, the smell of rotten fish hangs in the air. 

What if she has faked her resume? Her current employer appears to be a company in chaos. I suspect it is not hard to fake your way into such a place. She also appears to have taken some steps to protect herself by hiring remote contractors who are unable to observe her closely or share their thoughts with others in the company. I wonder how long she will last without exposing herself. Faking a medical writer is not as difficult as faking a surgeon, I presume. On the other hand, the more specialized the role you're faking, the fewer people can spot you.

Death

There is no other word for the title. Just heard today that someone I knew died a week ago. I didn't know her very well. It was no more than casual acquaintance. Perhaps what bothers me so much is how similar we are --- about the same age, both Chinese women, similar background and education. We read similar books and went to the same Web sites and talked about the same subjects. And now she's dead. So sudden. So unexpected. So utterly senseless. The footsteps of Death have never sounded so near and loud.

The Doctor

Motioning me to sit down, he picked up a pair of hearing aid from the desk and put them in his ears. "When you get old, your hearing goes," he smiled apologetically. "This way I can hear you better." His hair and beard were mostly white and both needed a trim, but he had obviously reached an age and place in life that allowed him to completely ignore appearances. On the bookshelf sat several Freud dolls, one porcelain and one cloth. Both had the characteristic white beard too.

When he talked, his blue eyes, magnified behind the thick glasses, were fixed on an invisible spot behind my left ear, as if to concentrate his thoughts or to recall something important. They would flick back to my face every minute or two, and then went back to that spot.

"I am toxo positive, but I have not developed schizophrenia. My sister is also toxo positive and she has schizophrenia. Presumably we were both exposed in childhood. So why is it that she is affected but I'm not?" He said it matter-of-factly, but my mind immediately romanticized this detail. Did he become a psychiatrist and devote all his life to the research of the cause and cure of this disease to save his sister? A psychiatrist might scoff at such simplistic deduction. Still, I imagine that it made for as good a mission as any.

For decades almost no one believed him. Contagious madness? What a crazy idea! It didn't make sense intuitively. A lone voice in the wilderness, making do with whatever funding he could scrape together, he continued to make noise about his cause and made small but steady progress, not unlike Captain Ahab's pursuit of the great white whale. Near the end of his career he was finally heard, and people began to convert to his ideas, after other, more glamorous and fashionable theories failed. Vindication was so close he could taste it. But he was too old and weak to slay the whale with his own hands and might have to hand over the pursuit to others. Yet for the moment he was still hanging on, lingering for another day, another year, even if just to witness the kill, which, perhaps, would be as sweet as revenge.

Pharma Drama

Met up with a former colleague today and chatted about merger drama that exploded after I left so-and-so company. I have heard of similar stories playing out again and again for two decades. Mergers are one of the most wasteful, inefficient, and pointless activity in the pharmaceutical industry. I doubt Pfizer had done any real work at all in the past quarter century besides the endless, exhausting of reorganization. Yet they all keep doing it like lab rats running in the wheel, for no better reason than keeping Wall Street stock analysts happy. Wall Street, who doesn't know the first thing about R&D, is running the show. No wonder productivity and success rate have been dropping like an airplane with both engines blown out.

A few years ago, when mega company bought medium company, everyone was soothed with comforting announcements: We will let you run it as you've always run it. We don't want to disrupt your operation. We want you to run like a well-oiled machine just like before, that's why we spent so much money to buy you.

Before the sound of the microphone dissipated, the backstabbing had already begun. The head cashed out and made his exit. A few others near the top saw the writing on the wall and bailed. Like a boat with a few holes in the bottom, water began to leak in. The vacuum left on the top layer ignited the ambition and hunger among the middle managers like honey on flypaper. A great jostle began.

To make things worse, the mega company gave the medium company a couple of smaller companies to absorb into its structure. Here, they said, you guys get together and figure it out yourselves. This was like throwing a couple of alligators into an already frenzied snake pit. I wonder whether the mega company did this intentionally, just to see who would survive the snake pit and become the last man or woman standing. For the next five years, departments were broken up and shuffled, territories were consolidated and re-shaped, the org chart --- oh the infamous org chart --- was drawn and redrawn and drawn and redrawn again. Bosses came and went. Today you reported to Ms A, tomorrow you might be reporting to Mr B, and the day after? Both.

It is no surprise, then, people at the bottom of the totem pole were overworked, confused, and exhausted, but nothing got done.

The Manipulator

Not everyone bought the image she created for herself, although I suspect she has bought it herself. "With my big heart, I always believe the best of other people," she likes to say, oblivious to the contradictions in her words and action. Sure, some of the lies must have been conscious and intentional, but she might have been convinced of her own good intention or the absolute necessity of these lies. "I have to omit some of the truth because ..." The reasons can range from protecting others from anxiety and panic, to preserving a perfectly viable future, to "I have the right to do anything I want the company is mine alone." Never underestimate the power of self-deception.

The cult personality can manifest in a range of effects. At the top are religious and political leaders with thousands or millions of fervent followers. On a smaller scale are people whom others trust despite evidence to the contrary. Why? I can't speak for men, but in many (not all) women I observe a tendency to let emotional and personal bonds to overtake other considerations.

She loved to proclaim that her employees are "family" and call them "peanuts," and created an illusion of interpersonal closeness beyond the ordinary labor relationship. She engaged in small talks involving personal lives --- her own and others' --- and suggested work and pay as trading personal favors with each other instead of fundamentally economic transactions. Lines were blurred. She invited certain employees to stay at her house and trade personal favors for pay raises. She put her housekeeper on the company payroll by having her clean the office twice a week. She made implied demands of loyalty on employees in the form of friendship or at least the expression of friendship.

Again I doubt all her actions were derived from calculated, deliberate, and fully conscious decisions. Rather she showed a kind of emotional neediness that some women respond to. These women find emotional reward in taking care of childish people, perhaps because taking care of children and child-like adults gives them a sense of intimacy. "Please, use me." They seem to say. By using and being used, a closeness is achieved.

Also helped to brainwash people was the small, close-knit environment. I don't remember who said it --- It is easier to fool a bunch of people together than to fool an individual. When people coalesce, peer pressure works subtly and subconsciously to lead everyone into unreality. Again I don't know much about men, but if you put a group of women in the same room, they can convince each other black is white, night is day, and the sun sets in the east. Perhaps because we are so desperately trying to feel connected as one. There were company traditions that ranged from unprofessional to borderline bizarre, like employees contributed money, voluntarily, to birthday gifts to the owner in expensive handbags and loaded gift cards.

The Brothers

Eric is the elder. He enjoyed a few years of undivided attention until Patrick came along. Eric was more introverted than Patrick. Father favored the younger son, while mother gave more attention to the first-born. They fought, but no more than other siblings. Then the family emigrated to the states. Father was a doctor, and mother stayed home. Patrick fit into school right away, despite the language barrier. Eric took longer to adjust, but his grades were acceptable and he never got in trouble. Life was smooth sailing.

At 10, without any previous signs, Patrick had a brain aneurysm the nearly killed him. During a school field trip, he complained of headache and passed out. The teachers took him to a local hospital, where the surgeon drilled a hole in his skull to relieve the intracranial pressure. He was then transported to a large university and had three more brain surgeries to repair the blood vessels that burst, possibly because of congenital defects.

He lived. The aneurysm left him paralyzed on the entire left side. With rehab and physical therapy, he recovered some function in the leg, but the arm remained useless. He was teased at school. He went to a college near home and commuted.

Just when things were looking up, father died suddenly of a heart attack before turning 60, leaving a frightened wife and two sons. Mother clung onto the boys who had just entered adulthood. She never felt truly at home in the country that remained foreign, but there was no way of turning back. She grew up with the belief that women must depend on men to survive the world, and for nearly three decades her husband was as dependent as any man can be. After he was gone she moved next door to her older brother and depended on him.

Patrick graduated from college and found a job and lived at home with mother. With the help of a few added gadgets, he learned to drive. On the weekend he drove mother to supermarkets and bought groceries and had lunch and dinner with her. He earned a paycheck and enjoyed his colleagues' company. His disability made it difficult to drive more than 20 miles each way to the office, but his colleagues offered him carpool. By all appearances, he was a sweet, easygoing, and well adjusted young man no different from other Asian youths of his age.

His able-bodied brother Eric, however, followed a path that baffled everyone. He got into college all right, but barely passed his classes with all-night computer games and videos. Once graduated, he couldn't keep a job and moved back home. It was hard to say whether it was a blessing or a curse that father left enough money for the three of them to live on. Mother had enough to buy a house with three bedrooms. Eric's share was not enough to allow him to move out and live on his own, but enough so that he did not have to find a job. He hid in his room all night and slept through the day, refusing to socialize with anyone, especially his mother's relatives who lived nearby. His relationship with mother had deteriorated to the point that the two of them could not finish a conversation without yelling at each other. Now he talked only to his brother, who had also begun to lose patience with his seething anger and resentment.

The Bride

Among the dozens of photographs shot on the wedding day, only two showed the bride with a tight little smile on her face. In all the other photos, she looked as grave and serious as the day she had taken the university entry exams, unlike the spontaneous, glowing smile on her graduation photo.

The groom was but slightly taller than the petite bride: a square-faced, confident young man. He had recently received his license to practice medicine and been accepted to a prestigious American hospital for his residency. The girl had only met him on three previous occasions and had only a few days to consider his proposal.

"What's to consider? He and his family came with excellent references." Her parents urged her. "He's a doctor and is going to America to make big money. He is well educated and went to the best university. It's a perfect match." 

Indeed it was, as her father and brother were dentists and she grew up surrounded by the smell of disinfectant. She wished he had been taller and more handsome, like the lead actor in the movie she had seen last week, but his square jaw and self-assured manner smile seemed to suggest professional success and familial prosperity. He did not drink, smoke, or gamble. He had a clean romantic history and did not have an ex-wife, mistress, or bastard. Go to America with him, live in a skyscraper, raise a few beautiful children, and have a charmed life. The prospect was irresistible.

It all happened so fast. Before she knew it, they were engaged. Family parties were held at restaurants and hotels. Gifts were exchanged between parents. She was not without ambivalence, but neither did she have any specific objections. No, she had no objection besides "I have not had much time to know him well" or "Is this going to be the rest of my life?" Neither was sufficient to slow down the inevitable train of events arranged by both families. Time could not be wasted, for the girl was soon to be 25, almost too old to find a good match, and the fiance would depart for America in a month. The plane tickets were bought, which caused a stir as no one in the two families had taken a plane trip before.

Yet she was not entirely convinced. Doubts trickled in the back of her mind. A part of her could not quite grasp the concept of becoming a doctor's wife or living in another country or not being able to walk up the street and talk to Mom and Dad whenever she wanted. It felt like a dream, even on the day of her wedding. A big party for the families, that's what it was. She was not sure why she was going through the motions in a clumsy white dress with a lace veil pinned to her hair, but surely no polite young woman from a decent family would make a ruckus in such an occasion and cause her elders to lose face. So she played along and followed orders --- It was easy enough, as someone was telling her where to go and what to do every step of the way.

Indeed she had doubts, but she hardly had time to acknowledge or contemplate them. There was simply no time. The union must go on. 

Forty some years later, when she looked at her photos of the wedding and the grave young face that was once herself, she would remember how odd it all was, the day that began the rest of her life.

Alcoholic parents

I have no first-hand experience or knowledge about alcoholic parents, and reading accounts of family members of alcoholics cannot help me imagine or understand their rage and resentment. Oddly enough, a light bulb went on in a recent analogy through a weak and incompetent employer. It is someone in a position of considerable authority over employees, but struggling with a series of failings. She has let her staff down again and again, each time with tearful apologies and promises for improvement. Granted, the failings are not entirely within her control, but then neither is addiction entirely in the control of the addicts. She would always announce bad news via teleconference and never in person, even though she lives no more than 15 minutes away from the office. For the last few months she has ceased to come to the office altogether, as if too ashamed to face her staff. Over time, the tone of these teleconferences descended into weirdness. She was at times suspiciously cheerful and other times frantically gloomy. Promises were made and broken, made and broken, and made and broken. As hope disappeared gradually like the Cheshire Cat, people began to whisper in their offices, roll their eyes, shake their heads, and sigh and shrug.

Then today I read a feature story on vulture.com about Whitney Cummings who grew up in a dysfunctional household. Suddenly it all clicked. So that is what it's like (sort of) to have one or two alcoholic parents. It's a cycle of promise, hope, disappointment over and over, until finally one has no choice but to detach oneself from the afflicted with resignation. Everyone has failings, but somehow some people seem to have a cyclic and pathetic pattern of failings that require the finality of emotional separation, which is closer to death than anger, contempt, or rejection. (I wonder if, 5 years from now, I would find the above written a bit too sentimental or ... whiny.)