So I'm sitting here listening to Billie Holiday and letting the ideas from Outliers sift through my brain. It has been a most interesting beginning to the season. I started shorthanded on Saturday by choice and with the permission of my crew, who both rock if anyone wants to know. Thinking about Outliers and about success and the origins of success and how no one succeeds in a vacuum which is something I've always known but still there's something in my cultural and personal upbringing that says a person Can fight their way to the top... but really, even that is likely just a choice of turning a horrible situation, point for point into advantages and then of course, like in the case of immigrant's children raised by parents doing useful work in the garment district and sure they couldn't do anything else, but then that's why when they did what they chose to do, they did it so Well...

Yeah. Gladwell has a way of saying things I thought I knew, but in a way that makes me pretty sure I never really did. Meaningful work, work that has a direct consequence, a verifiable effect, the more effort, the more success, the more rewards... it's why I've always liked selling. Not only do my sales change how much money I make, but I can see the transformation in a customer when suddenly they go from jeans and t-shirt drab to seeing themselves, being seen by those around them, as briefly, momentarily someone inherently interesting. I love that moment when they look in the mirror and they slouch a little less or maybe their chin goes up a fraction when I remind them to take off the baseball cap and nothing will ever beat that instant when a woman who was already beautiful and in love and married to an apparently fantastic guy and still she walked out of the dressing room and when she looked, she gasped... Yeah. There are reasons for what I do, no matter what else gets in the way or how some days are nothing but trouble and mud.

To borrow from Mister Tim Minchin for a moment, "It's not perfect, but it's mine."

When I finish a story, close the cover and can't keep the details out of my head, when the world in the story seems so full and yet I know only a tiny slice of it and I wonder what happened after, who Were those people, what all do I Not know about what happened, that to me is the mark of a truly good story. I just finished The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. That is the feeling I have now.


I suppose it's a mark of where I am in my life that I would rather enjoy that slight ache of a good story ended than have someone try and come back and tell me all the rest. I don't Want it explained. It ended where it should with uncountable new adventures possible, with so much that neither I nor Bod really Know about how it all works and that's as it should be.

Thanks, Neil, for another rich, dark fairy tale that any kid I might actually like can read and enjoy and one that leaves me with that delicious sadness at the story being over. I'll reread it, I'm sure, and read it to other people if they'll sit still long enough.

Pattern recognition

It amazes me how well the human brain can identify something as complex as the identity of a person with minimal information. The back of a head, a profile and a beard, and there it is, John... Fingers sitting in his stylish, black VW Jetta (96? it sure Looks like mine, just with less rust and dents) in front of me on 12th as I was headed to work.

Really, I've never seen the car before, and all I had was his profile, partially in silhouette, and his, admittedly somewhat unique, beard.

I have at least one friend who would identify this very differently, having to do with energy recognition and other strangeness. I have to admit that even noticing John, being someone I never really see outside of faire, seems odd to me.

The mind is terrible and interesting.

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