ornoth

I renounced my citizenship in the State of Maine twenty-eight years ago, when I moved away after college. Locals will tell you I’m not a real Mainer anyways; I was still “from away”, having lived there only 24 of my first 25 years.

When I left, I was eager to leave the land of poverty, ignorance, and racism behind me and start a new, adult life in Boston. I did my best to sever all ties with the land of my youth; but there was always one obligation that kept pulling me back: my parents.

For more than two dozen years, I continued making regular trips north to visit. Going back to Maine was always uncomfortable for me, like perpetually picking at the scab covering the many reasons why I’d left; it never fully healed.

That obligation to keep returning came to an end in January, when my mother passed away. My only remaining duty was last week’s interment ceremony, and the brief family gathering in her memory.

So now I can turn my back and leave Augusta for what might well be the very last time, and say perhaps my final farewell to the State of Maine.

I suppose it’s a major life passage. I left three decades ago, but this is truly the final severance of my ties to Maine. It’s the cause for a little bit of melancholy, but a much larger sense of closure, relief, and joy.

Don’t get me wrong; I don’t really hate Maine… I carry treasured memories of some of the people and places and experiences of my childhood. But that chapter ended thirty years ago, and there’s no point in lingering in the vicinity of long-past adventures.

It’s futile to cling to people and places that have already undergone three or four decades of change; what’s truly important are the memories I have of them, not the present reality. And unlike the present reality, I can carry those treasured memories with me, no matter where I go.

It’s also ironic that my trip home from Maine involved driving to Boston and flying out of Logan airport. You see, my mother’s death also removed my biggest reason for coming back to pass through Boston.

So this trip was a farewell to Boston, as well. Unlike Maine, Boston is a place I dearly love, where I feel at home, and have lots of recent history that I chose to create. So I’m hoping there will be reasons to visit that bring me back in the future; I just won’t have the convenient opportunity provided by flying in on the way up to Maine.

But even in Boston, a lot of what I loved here is history, and many of the people have moved on. I guess it’s one of those lessons that only comes when one has lived long enough: that clinging to people and places from the past is futile, and the part that matters most—your memories of them—can be taken with you, wherever you choose to live.

Even if you were never to return again.

Although it’s a completely arbitrary marker, this is the time of year when people look back and take stock, with the aspiration that things might be different from this point forward.

I am entertaining that same hope this year, because the past 18 months have been pretty brutal. There have been a number of really great things, but also a hell of a lot of adversity to overcome.

I’ve already described much of it in the pages of this journal, so I don’t need to get into the details. Instead, I just wanted to list them out in bullet points… To preserve the big picture, and to share this impression of all the challenges, failures, and victories I’ve faced.

With that as introduction, here’s a list of the major stressors and changes that have come about for me in the past 18 months. They’re color coded: green is good, red is bad, and yellow is something in-between.

Had a bike crash trying to avoid a car that ignored a stop sign. Ensuing physical recuperation, plus medical expenses and bike repair costs.
Surpassed $100,000 in lifetime fundraising for the PMC, earning a lifetime achievement award.
My job ended quietly after my employer being bought out. Although I did get to have another year-long sabbatical.
Grew my hair out to normal length after 10 years clean-shaven.
Turned 50 years old.
Spent that birthday on a tiny Caribbean island I’d long dreamed of visiting. Some stress from the tiny eight-person commuter flight from San Juan, and a bit of loneliness that I had no one to share it with.
Had a big misunderstanding with a friend that caused a lasting rift between me and my Kalyana Mitta spiritual friends group.
Very emotionally intense 10-day meditation retreat at IMS, including having someone barge into my room while I was sleeping the night after they announced that a thief had broken into people’s rooms.
Started a promising friendship and potential relationship only to have it explode in flames in my face.
Lost my mentor, benefactor, and hero Bobby Mac to cancer.
Stopped a ten-year hobby of tracking my spending at Where’s George.
Committed to trying to make a relationship work with my best friend Inna.
Survived a frigid 51st New England winter. Working on number 52 now.
Committed to moving south, out of New England, where I’ve lived my entire life.
Started an expensive new hobby in kyūdō, traditional Japanese archery martial art.
Celebrated ten years of meditation practice.
Put a lot of energy into a big project to reach out to others socially, with limited results.
Another bike crash resulting in a mild concussion, plus another round of medical expenses and bike repair costs.
The ER nurse botched an IV insertion so badly that a hematoma covered my entire arm, and I was unable to move it or ride for six weeks thereafter.
Participated in my final Pan-Mass Challenge ride.
Left my Kalyana Mitta spiritual friends support group with significantly mixed feelings.
Pretty much ended all involvement at my meditation center, including the longstanding Experienced Practitioners group, the annual Sandwich Retreat, and my volunteering to MC the regular Wednesday night dhamma talks.
Put my meditation practice on long-term hold.
Took my beloved cat for vaccinations which he had a severe reaction to. Just as he seemed to be recovering, the hospital called and I was forced to tell them to let him die.
I developed abdominal pain which took a long time and considerable expense to diagnose and treat, resulting in gall bladder removal: the first surgery of my life.
Began renovating my condo with a goal of putting it on the market, finally undertaking several repairs I’d put off for years.
While doing renovation, discovered that the living room drywall needed to be replaced, and there was a gaping 12-inch diameter hole from the bedroom to the outside that should have been bricked up and insulated.
Major financial issues as a result of unemployment, mortgage, medical bills, and home renovations.
Raided my 401k in order to fund renovations and medical bills.
The usual self-questioning during my job hunt.
Started a new job at Buildium, which will require me to learn quickly and prove myself again without any direct mentoring.
Discovered that gall bladder removal didn’t address my abdominal symptoms, so will begin 2015 back on the restrictive diet and undergoing further diagnostic work, while hoping it’s not something serious.

So as you can see, I’ve had a lot to deal with, including quite a bit of negative stuff, which is happily atypical for me. It’s definitely taxed my energy, morale, and coping resources.

While my health problem is front and center, and there are more big challenges to come in the next couple years, I’m hoping that things will start going a little more smoothly. Although I don’t believe that changing the calendar has any meaningful impact, it would be nice if things started getting back on track again.

After all, I’m not used to life being quite this difficult and exhausting.

If you’ve spent much time with me, you probably discovered that I mark my paper money and track where it goes using the Where’s George? website. And you’ve probably asked yourself, “Why?”

There’s no good answer actually, other than boredom and curiosity.

In 2004 I was between jobs and had nothing better to do, and I remembered having seen one of the very first Where’s George? marked bills at work back in 1998. I thought it might be interesting to see where my cash went, so I registered and started entering the serial numbers of all the currency that passed through my hands.

However, I quickly learned that doing it ad hoc would be a huge pain. I found it much easier to make one trip to the bank every month or so, pulling out $200 in $1 bills and another $200 in $5s. In order to get more bills into circulation, I tended to avoid using $10s and $20s, but I did drop a fair number of $100 bills off at casinos!

Whenever I traveled, I’d spend the bills I’d entered in Boston, so that someone who found my bill in Las Vegas or Pittsburgh or St. Thomas could see where it had come from. Then I’d pick up more cash to bring home, since it would be equally interesting for people in New England to receive bills from faraway places.

Over the past ten years, I entered 17,600 bills, 95 percent of them $1s and $5s, totaling about $64,500 worth of currency. Most of those were entered in Boston or Maine or Pittsburgh, but I’ve entered bills in many other locations, including Las Vegas, St. Thomas, the Caymans, Puerto Rico, Korea, Scranton, and Boise!

Out of all those bills, 1,450 of them have been subsequently entered (1,600 times) by someone else, which is about a 9 percent hit rate. On average, I get a hit every other day. Since I don’t mark my bills very conspicuously, few of my bills get hit multiple times; only 14 of them have been entered by three different people after my initial entry.

My bills have been hit in every county in Connecticut and Rhode Island, but I still haven’t gotten the needed Martha’s Vineyard hit to complete my home state, or the one remaining (Coos) county in New Hampshire.

My bills have been hit in every US state except five obscure ones: Alaska, Arkansas, Montana, Wyoming, and North Dakota.

Beyond our borders, my bills have been re-entered in Canada, Puerto Rico, the US and British Virgin Islands, Anguila, Bermuda, England, Ireland, France, Germany, the Philippines, Cambodia, and Australia (my farthest traveler went 10,500 miles to Melbourne).

My longest “sleeper”—a bill that resurfaces after a long time with no activity—was spent at a restaurant in Scranton in 2006 and showed up at a grocery store in the same town around Christmas 2013, more than seven and a half years later!

If you really want to know more, here’s a link to my Where's George? profile.

While all this was going on, I discovered that the most active Where’s George? users get together in regional “gatherings”. I attended a number of local meet-ups in the early years, and got to know Hank, the site’s irascible creator. But there haven’t been any gatherings in Boston for years.

Over the past six months, I’ve been looking critically at where I invest all my time, energy, and attention, and I decided to stop entering new bills into Where’s George? on March 25th, my tenth “Georgeaversary”. The date was convenient, and the decision pretty inevitable.

Why inevitable? Well, it’s like this… When you first start “Georging”, all kind of interesting things happen. The first time one of your bills gets “hit” (entered) by another person. Your first out-of-state hit. Your first hit in another country. Getting a hit in every county in a state. And so forth. But over time, those milestones become less and less frequent. And as I said, it no longer offers the social opportunities it once did.

Plus it’s a bit silly. It’s not the kind of hobby that would impress a girlfriend or your co-workers; yet it can be a rather difficult one to hide from them, if you ever go out to lunch together!

Ultimately, it came down to whether I was getting enough entertainment out of the hobby to make it worth the investment of time spent entering and marking bills… And in the end, that answer was unequivocal.

So now it’s on to other things.

Herakleitos of Ephesus might have been a bright feller, but when he asserted that “Change alone is unchanging,” he was dead wrong.

Most Westerners are at least familiar with the idea that change is inevitable. We do go through our lives with the idea that every so often something about our world is going to change. Although we only tend to remember that fact when it smacks us up side the face.

Us Buddhistical types also take pride in our ability to anticipate and accept manifestations of Anicca (impermanence), which our list-loving patron categorized as one of the three characteristics of existence.

“All conditioned things are impermanent. Their nature is to arise and pass away. To be in harmony with this truth brings true happiness.”

However, the very language we use to remind ourselves about change masks an incredibly important point. When we say that “change is constant”, “change is unchanging”, or “change is permanent”, we obscure this basic and incredibly important fact: change is often lumpy as hell!

For the past couple years, my life has had only minor changes, most of which were easily prepared for. Let’s call that “normal change”. In contrast, 2013 has been a year where many long-lasting things I thought I could count on simply vanished. Not just one or two times, but in a comically long string of unexpected jolts.

What do I mean? Lemme walk you through a couple examples.

At work, we were abruptly informed that our 15 year-old company had been sold and the founder was outta here. In the next eight weeks, several of my coworkers departed, including half of my team.

Some time later, it was announced that the whole company was being moved to Las Vegas, and that those who chose not to relocate—including myself—would be out of work when the Boston office eventually closed. Ohai, job market!

Meanwhile, at my meditation center, two of the three founding teachers (the two who were married) are getting divorced. While that doesn’t impact me directly, at the same time the woman who had been the center’s executive director for 15 years is resigning, as is the guy who for many years has run the office and website.

The private “spiritual friends” meditation group I’ve been a part of is undergoing similar trauma. Three of our eleven members recently left the group to move across country, including our two primary founding leaders, who also provided our meeting space. A fourth member moved, but only across town and thankfully will be staying with us. And getting married.

Meanwhile, another member of the group has been unable to attend our meetings after having her first child, and I fear the same will happen with two other members who are also expectant parents.

So now we’re struggling with who will lead the group, where we meet, what constitutes a minimum acceptable level of attendance, and how we decide on and integrate a potentially significant number of new members.

Beyond my own circle, Boston’s been having its own upheavals. The local alternative newspaper, the Phoenix, abruptly stopped publication after a 40-year run. My neighborhood pizza joint—Newbury Pizza—closed after 34 years (plus a brief but ill-conceived stint as “Bostone Pizza”). JP Licks closed their 20 year-old Newbury Street ice cream shop. And the iconic Crossroads Irish pub has been shuttered, too, after lasting 35 years. All these places were the sites of important memories for me.

Then just this week, the organization that runs Boston’s First Night—the nation’s original First Night, founded in 1975—threw in the towel, as well.

And, of course, the topper for my city was the shocking bombing of the Boston Marathon.

These major changes don’t seem to be limited to the Commonwealth, either. Two good friends recently lost their jobs, including my big “angel sponsor” for my annual Pan-Mass Challenge charity ride. And one of my favorite places in Pittsburgh—Klavon’s, an original 1920s ice cream parlor—also closed.

The final straw was when I came home and received notice that the cat-sitting service that I regularly use has closed after seven years in business. Even my cat-sitters!

So yeah. 2013 is the year of excessive change. For me, it’s been more like carnage than change, actually. It’s like what Berenger must have felt like after seeing everyone else turn into rhinoceroses in Eugene Ionesco’s play.

All this, and we’re not even halfway through the year yet!

So don’t ever let them tell you that change is constant; it sure isn’t! Change is lumpy as hell. Expect the lumps!

PS! I completely forgot to mention the failure and/or replacement of my water heater, faucet, and disposall. Big lumps of impermanence, people!

I figured I’d spare you the long version, and only post this very abbreviated version of this year’s DargonZine Writers’ Summit travelogue.

Thursday I flew Boston to Denver to Portland, Oregon for this year’s DargonZine Summit. Neither flight was very pleasant, nor was the cab ride to the hotel.

Although I was in by midafternoon, this year’s host, Jim, wasn’t going to pick me up until the following morning, so I had the evening to kill. I opted for a Thai place that was within walking distance, but had to ad lib when I discovered that it was closed for renovations. Fortunately, my new phone (Sprint’s Samsung Instinct) has a GPS function which allowed me to find the next nearest Thai place and get directions.

The food was tremendous. It really capped the day. On the way back to the hotel, I picked up some goodies at Safeway and was harassed by the cashier to pick up one of their store discount cards. Never mind that the nearest Safeway is 400 miles from home…

Friday morning Dafydd swung by to chat, and then Jim and his wife Naomi showed up with their car. We promptly stopped at 7-Eleven (on 7/11) to get our free Slurpees, which sucked. We stopped at a sushi place for lunch, where I had a decent pork schnitzel, carefully relabelled “tonkatsu” by the Japanese.

Then came the two hour drive to the B&B in Seaside, where we met Rena, Jon, Liam, and his wife Mayellen. Then we carpooled down the coast to Cannon Beach to eat, stroll the beach, and view the famous Haystack Rock monolith.

Back home, the power was out, but fortunately it came back on before sunset could interrupt our marathon four-hour session of land-grab game Carcassone, which I almost won.

Saturday working sessions included some administrative items from the guys who are running the show, now that I’ve bowed out. Then Jim sprang an unplanned 90-minute writing exercise on everyone, which kinda mucked up the schedule. While the group strategized about their next story arc, I grabbed Jim’s car for a quick bank run.

Lunch involved searching for a rumored but non-existant Thai place, then finding a Thai place downtown and turning away at the last second in favor of a really mediocre American family restaurant.

Then we rented two four-person surrey-style quadracycles and headed down the coast to the rocky edge of the beach, where I took the opportunity to wade in the Pacific Ocean. Then back to town to return the surreys and wander around at random, including some disappointing stores, bumper cars, and mini-golf.

We played crazy card game Fluxx until it was time for the lengthy drive to our dinner spot. Four of us grabbed a car and hopped to it, stopping only long enough to rouse the napping others, who wouldn’t get out of the house for fifteen more minutes.

Dinner was at a huge log cabin style restaurant called Camp 18 (not Latitude 18, which was a restaurant down in St. Thomas). The theme was an old logging camp, which felt to me like a huge YMCA camp lodge. We were seated as a private party in one of the two lofts under the rafters, overlooking the rest of the dining room, which was pretty cool.

Back home, we organized a poker game using the chips Dafydd had purchased for the Las Vegas Summit. I wound up losing $8, which is tolerable.

Sunday’s working session was nothing major, and then we hit the road up to Astoria, where we went up to the Astoria Column, a big column (surprise!) set atop one of the hills surrounding the town and overlooking the mouth of the Columbia River.

Having some time left over, we decided to hike about two thirds of a mile to the Cathedral Spruce, which is basically a big tree with a small hollow at the base. We got there, took a few pictures, and headed back.

Then it was down to the riverfront for a two-hour river tour on a stinky working fishing boat. We went upriver along the shore, then turned back into the wind and toward the estuary. The whole way back, the forty-foot boat was tossed up and down by four- to five-foot swells and bigger. We all got quite wet, but my pocket camera survived, unlike the two I brought Waverunning in St. Thomas.

Ashore, we found food at the unprepossessing wharfside Wet Dog Brewpub, where I indulged myself a bit with a milkshake, lemonade, and a burger with jalapeno and Canadian bacon.

Back to the house for an evening of Carcassone. I passed on it, and passed out on the couch.

Monday morning four of us were out of the house by 6:30am for the trip back to the Portland airport. Goodbyes all around, which were more difficult for me, since I may never see some of these people again.

One of the things I wanted to do on this trip was to let people adjust to the idea that I won’t be very involved in DargonZine anymore and achieve some closure for everyone. I’ve also made it clear that I will not be writing any more fiction, nor will I be attending any more Summit gatherings. It’s been two years since I announced my intention to step down, and I think everyone’s ready for it: myself, the project leadership, and the other writers.

I’ve already talked a little bit about how big a change this is for me. It’s letting go of one of my greatest creations, and closing the book on something that has been a large part of my life for nearly all of the past 24 years. There’s an awful lot that I’ll miss about it: the Summits, the people, the praise, the recognition, and the creative outlet. And I really don’t know what is going to arise to take its place in my life. But leaving DargonZine is one of several major transitions I’m going through right now, and I just have to do it and find out what’s next for me.

It might be a bit melodramatic to compare it to life as a whole, but DargonZine has been a long, wonderful ride, and I’ve been blessed to share the journey with dozens of people, many of whom have become very dear to me and important parts of my life. I really hope to retain those connections, even though I will not be participating in the project anymore.

It was a year ago today that I bought my condo. It really doesn't seem like it's been that long, although I suppose part of that could be the fact that I didn't actually move into the new place until six weeks later.

One of the big changes that resulted is that I now have a big ol' hunk of debt, for the first time in about eight years. Certainly, my net worth is still very much positive (since the condo is very definitely an asset), but I'm committed to coming up with a mortgage payment every month, most of which is money flushed down the shitter. Consider that to date I've paid off about $1600 worth of principal on my mortgage, and closer to $12000 in interest. And over the life of my loan, I will have given my mortgageholder two and a half times the amount that I borrowed. And I was lucky in that I got a good interest rate and didn't have to pay mortgage insurance, which would have been even more money down the tubes! Anyone who tells you that having a mortgage is a good way to force yourself to save is talking out of their ass, because you're paying someone more than twice whatever you save, just for the priviledge of forcing you to save.

Of course, I can't complain. My house was my justification for selling my Sapient stock when I did, and it's already proven a much, much wiser place to keep my money. Not to mention, I'm really thoroughly pleased with the place. It is a substantial improvement over my old place, and I could see myself staying here for several, perhaps many years.

It also appears to have been the vanguard of another major transition in my life. Every so often I go through a sea-change, where everything in my life is thrown up in the air and comes down differently, but almost always for the better. One example was graduating high school, my relationship with Ailsa, and starting college. Another was when Linda and I got married, I graduated from college, moved to Shrewsbury, gave up DargonZine, and got a job at MediQual. Another was when Linda and I separated, I moved into Natick, regained control of DargonZine, grew my hair out, started nightclubbing in Boston, Ailsa moved in, I finally got my teeth fixed, and I got involved with the polyamorous and BDSM communities. The most recent was back in 1995, when Puggle and I moved into my Boston apartment in the West Fens, I sold my car and my television, started working for Sapient, and became a fixture in the nightclub and BDSM scenes.

But that was seven years ago now, and another wholesale change is well under way. I was fortunate enough to make a comfortable amount on Sapient stock, and wisely exchanged that for a down payment on my new condo in a fabulous location in Boston's Back Bay. I made the transition from a hardcore programmer/analyst to a World-Wide Web and user interface designer, and entered a formal program at the New England School of Art and Design in order to bolster my creative, artistic, and design skills. I was laid off from my job at Sapient, forcing me into my next career move. I cut my hair short. And, in the only substantial disappointment of recent times, Inna ended our three and a half year relationship.

The funny thing is that the times when I've been happiest in my life have always been right after I've gone through those periods of dramatic change, because I've found a place that is more suited to the person I've become since the last change. I find that odd because I am, by nature, a creature of routine and habit; though I probably stay in my well-worn paths longer than necessary, and welcome the opportunity for change when it comes.

And as I said above, as well as in a private journal entry entitled "¡Que Linda!", I certainly appear to be on the cusp of another such sea-change. Whether I'll wind up being in a better place than I've been in for the past seven years, I don't know, and I have no guarantee. But between my savings, my Sapient severance, and unemployment insurance, I have the luxury of both enjoying the coming summer, free from the stresses of work and relationship, but also of taking the time to visualize and then craft the life that I want to lead in the years to come.

As I see it, there are three main elements of life that are of primary importance in my happiness, and which need to be optimized during times of wholesale change: career, housing, and social life/relationships. But even though career and social life and relationships are still TBD, I'm extremely happy with the job I've already done in terms of securing my "next generation" housing arrangements, and that's ample cause to celebrate. Happy House Closing Day!

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2008 DargonZine Writers’ Summit

Nothing of him that doth fade, but doth suffer a sea-change into something rich and strange

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