A Potpourri Featuring: Complaints About Excessive Words, Depression, Administrators and Over-Hyped Blockbusters

The Love That Remains

Friend: If you ever say something which confuses me I promise to tell you that I don’t know what you mean. Therefore, you no longer have to insert: “ya know what I mean?” into our conversations. Thank you. By the way, while I have your attention, please omit “ya know” from any chats we have. Also the vast majority of the times that you say “sort of” it is completely unnecessary. Why not dispense with it. Also, as a time saver, please say: “right now” as opposed to “at this point in time.” (I have no idea who came up with “at this point in time” but it needs to leave the vernacular). One more thing, let’s be careful with the use of “particular.” Can anyone explain to me the difference between “this particular house” and “this house”? I thought not. I thought it worth pointing out in this particular blog post — excuse me, I mean, this blog post.

Can I tell you something really nasty about depression. I can? Thanks! It tells you to be wary of happiness, it actually suggests that feeling good is not all it’s cracked up to be and more than that it’s not something you should experience. Depression tries to convince you that your natural state is one of sadness. Then when you are feeling good you’ll often sense it lurking there telling you it’s coming back. The worst part of that is that you know it’s right. What a bastard it is.

Administrators and bosses. I’ve concluded it’s unnatural for humans to be in a supervisory position over other people. My evidence is how bad people are at it. I first started working fifty-seven years ago. Do you realize how many bosses I’ve had? I’m not going to count. The sad thing is I could easily count how many bosses I’ve had who were really good at managing people. The number who were competent isn’t a whole lot more. The number who sucked in one way or another is legion. It’s amazing how often people you work for will tell you bald-faced lies. Not little white ones, not innocent ones, but ones that directly contradict known facts and negatively impact you. There’s bending the truth then there’s breaking it into little pieces. They will lie to your face, they will lie in emails, letters, smoke signals, any form of communication known to humankind. Mostly they lie to protect their own asses which is the priority of administrators. My bosses have always had bosses that they’ve been answerable to. Their priority is to please those higher ups, you can fuck all the way off. Many administrators are spineless worms. To get to their exalted middle management position they have their backbones removed. They’d no sooner stand up to their superiors than fight a hurricane. They have absolutely no loyalty to you, the hard working drone who makes them look good. Another characteristic of administrators is incompetence. Many of them suck at their jobs while they’re trying to tell you yours. Their inability to make two and two add up to four directly effects you — not that they gave two shits. Having been in education for nearly forty years I’m speaking mostly of school administrators. And I’m speaking of both public schools and the international language schools owned by corporations. Talk about depression, there’s one big fat cause.

The Odyssey is bloody well everywhere. I can’t remember a film that has been so hyped, so analyzed, so thorough dissected. The New York Times has had something about it everyday since before it hit theaters. It’s dominating the culture in a way that is bizarre. Our culture loves the next big thing and when that thing is especially BIG and when it’s universally praised and makes tons of money, well, brother, you’re not going to hear the end of it. It’s a shame that so many terrific films go way, way, way under the radar and barely get a mention while one damn movie dominates the discourse. Of course the question is: did you Mr. Blogger, see it? Yes I did. Last Monday the missus and I joined the hordes. Here’s my experience: It was the scene where Odysseus and his men are trapped in a cave with a giant cyclops. There was a medium shot of the cyclops sitting looking at his captives when I wondered: “What the hell am I doing watching this movie? This is not my thing.” I love films like Winter Light, L’Eclisse and the Last Picture Show. It reminded me of when someone convinced me to see Iron Man in 2008, what a stupid waste of time that was. However The Odyssey was not a stupid, waste of time. It kept me engaged for the entire eleven hour running time and I was impressed by certain aspects of it. That is until the big fight scene at the end. Every blockbuster fight scene cliche was in it which is to say it was badly overdone. No, seeing The Odyssey was not a waste of time. But I’ll tell you what,  I saw a new Icelandic film called The Love That Remains (2025) Pálmason, via the Criterion Channel the other night. That was a great film worthy of at least ten percent of the hype being given Nolan’s epic. As if….

Waging War With Depression, A Powerful Foe

“Because wherever I sat—on the deck of a ship or at a street café in Paris or Bangkok—I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air.”  ― Sylvia Plath from The Bell Jar

The pain is acute today. Depression has been my steady companion for weeks and is of a particularly punishing variety.

I get occasional respites from it like if I’m watching a compelling World Cup match or a movie that I love. A cup of coffee will take me out of it for a bit as will a trip to the gym. But the depression lays in wait —  patient. I’ve mostly been able to write through it, but not always. I haven’t always been able to get to the gym either.

There is no specific cause for this depression nor are there non-specific causes. It just is. I’m achingly sad about everything. That’s a terrible place to be. I have my first grandchild arriving in October. I’m looking forward to that. But in depression it doesn’t make me happy. It’s just a thought.

I have a lot of thoughts that are pleasant. They float around. They are powerless against depression. 

My wife does her best. She’s a remarkable woman. Kind and understanding. She looks after me. I couldn’t ask for more from her. But the depression persists. It’s unrelenting. Cruel.

I’m managing to write this. It’s honest. It hurts. It’s all bad. Oh, oh the pain. The seeming uselessness of my being here, trying anything.

No, suicide is not an option. I have walls between me and it. The first wall is my immediate family. The second is extended family. Another is the coming grandchild. Yet another is friends, my rich inner life, films, books, music, my writing. A lot of walls. So at least that awful step is not a concern.

I have to assume that the depression will eventually lose its grip. Brighter days have to be coming. It’s a real struggle to fight this level of despair and to conjure hope. I want to keep this short and I want to end with a message of hope….I’m not finding it. 

I will add that if you’re reading this and you experience depression try to be proactive. Go for a walk. Hit the gym. Meditate. Reach out to people you trust. See a professional. Watch a favorite movie or TV show. Don’t yield to the temptation to give up. There are people out there who would be happy to help. I’ve been reaching out to people and they’ve all responded. It’s helped make this bearable. Do the next thing in front of you, don’t stop. I know this is all comes under the category of “easier said than done” but it’s what you’ve got.  

Depression wants you to give up. Don’t play its game. Fight back with all you’ve got. That’s what I’ve got to try to do now.

I’ve managed to write this and I’m going to get myself to the gym. It’s the next thing to do.

There's Always Another Day -- I Take Another Plunge Into the Murky Waters of Therapy

Did my intake at the Wright Institute. I’m going to be talking to a therapist regularly again. Spent most of the ninety minutes talking about my life. Mentally ill mother, great dad, sports, addiction, happy marriage, children, depression, anxiety, panic attacks, writing, film, books, big mistakes, big laughs, friends who died, pain and joy and confusion and certainty. 

I don’t mind yakking about myself. I’ve been seeing shrinks of various kinds since high school so I’m quite used to it. Good for me. Good for anybody — assuming you’re honest about it. No use bullshitting someone who’s trying to help you. Imagine going to a doctor because of severe pain then omitting information or embellishing. Maybe I’m on the wrong track, maybe 99% of people are perfectly honest with therapists. How the hell would I know? First of all you’ve got to be honest with yourself. Failure to do so will negatively effect the ability of anyone to help you and badly curb your ability to help yourself.

It’s weird recounting my childhood again. I mean the parts about my mother yelling, cursing, stomping her foot, angry at people who aren’t there. Raving like a loon. Okay so weird was the wrong word, it’s exhausting. You live through something like that then you have to spend the rest of your life recounting it. You can never shake the memory and worst of all you can never forget how it made you feel or in some respects how it DIDN’T make you feel. In some ways I was anesthetized to what was going on. It was at once horrifying but also part of the white noise of my misery. It was ever present.

The worst part was coming home. Just before opening the front door Id be wondering if mom was going to be like a regulation mother or a raving lunatic. And if she was doing the whole June Cleaver bit, how long would it last? You never knew when she was going to go off into the deep end again and swim in the murky waters of batshit crazy.

No kid should go through that feeling. For crying out loud this was happening when I was five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, a teenager. 

So I was the ultimate helpless victim. That’s a messed up thing to realize that you had no power in the situation, helpless, like being in the jaws of a huge and powerful beast. 

To my credit I carried on. I made the most of my childhood despite the secret horror that I lived with. Plenty of friends, a loving dad, a vivid imagination (boy did I do a lot of hiding in that) great extended family. Running like hell through fields, being enthralled by books, laughing at stupid TV shows, making up games with my friends. Marveling at sports and the exploits of athletes. Later there were The Beatles and music and girls (what an amazing discovery!). Life was so rich. There was so much to do, so many experiences to have, so much to learn. School actually seemed to get in the way of my education. Feeding me what they wanted me to learn rather than what I craved, what I needed. But school was a great place to meet friends, to get to know people, to understand my fellow travelers. Sometimes teachers would expose us to things worth knowing. They mostly had good hearts. 

But the pain of my childhood followed me when I went off to college. But boy did I have a way to cope. Booze and drugs cured all. The pain was gone and I was sociable and giddy. Yes, of course the cure became nearly as bad as the disease. Problems, complications. My life ended up going in a wide array of destinations all at once. I didn’t know what I had when I had it and I didn’t know where to go, where I’d been or where I was. 

Mental illness, the consequence of my childhood or a nasty combination of both?

Anyway I’ve struggled through. Loving wife, AA, great children. Good friends. Medical professionals. 

Still have nasty scars and horrible reminders of what was but I’ve spent a lifetime drowning that pain in good times, worthy endeavors and exploring the endless variety of fascinating questions and mysteries that make up our world.

Depression is still an unwelcome companion, as are obsessive thoughts that do me no good. I’m hoping another stab at therapy will help me feel better. There’s always the next day.

A Medical "Procedure" Sniffles, Knee Pain, Depression, Movies and the Brothers Marx All in One Short Post

Duck Soup

I had an endoscopy on Wednesday. (An endoscopy is a procedure used in medicine to look inside the body. The endoscopy procedure uses an endoscope to examine the interior of a hollow organ or cavity of the body. Unlike many other medical imaging techniques, endoscopes are inserted directly into the organ.) They put me to sleep then stuck a tube down my throat which took photos and did biopsies. That it can do a biopsy blows my mind. Modern medicine. The procedure took about twenty minutes. I was at the medical enter for a little bit over two hours. The first thirty minutes of which I was occupied with filling out forms and yakking with my wife who’d kindly accompanied me. She’s aces.

With insurance the visit and procedure set me back $100. That’s with medical insurance. Without insurance the cost would have been prohibitive and I’d have had to taken my chances that nothing was amiss.

Thursday was Juneteenth so I had an extra day to relax. It wasn’t the happiest day of my life. I’ve had a horrible case of the sniffles with constant sneezing and a nose running like the Colorado River after a monsoon. No other symptoms. I was also wracked with depression, a particularly bad case. Depression can be like a terrible pain that has no discernible source, it’s just there beating the hell out of you. On top of the sniffles and the blues I have a pain in my right leg that seems centered around my knee. I don’t know what it is or where it came from. It’s been around for a few days but yesterday was the first time it really bothered me. Calling the doctor later.

I wiled the day away with movies, reading and naps. Wednesday after I got home from the “procedure” was the same. I watched Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) Lean. I hadn’t seen it in I’ve no idea how long but I know I’ve seen it a lot because throughout the movie in addition to knowing what was about to happen I knew what lines were about to be said — verbatim. It’s quite a remarkable film in many ways. I remember as a kid I thought it had the coolest ending ever. Oh the irony! (I was precocious when it came to irony.) But the key to the film is William Holden. He can turn a good movie into a great one. No one has ever been a better or more affable cynic. 

In the evening the missus and I finished Dept. Q on Netflix. What a terrific show. Matthew Goode played against type starring as the angry, troubled but brilliant detective.

Thursday I watched The Big Trail (1930) Walsh. Much of the acting is wooden and uninteresting, especially from the lead, one John Wayne in his first starring role, but it is an otherwise amazing film shot in widescreen (yes, in 1930!) on location. It looks nothing like other films of the era. It surely gives you a feel for what life on a real wagon train must have looked like. It’s got everything but the smells. A remarkable achievement well ahead of its time.

With the depression weighing on me in the evening I did the best I could to withstand it by watching the greatest comedy of all time Duck Soup (1933) McCarey. To suggest that they don’t make comedies like that anymore is a massive understatement. It’s only a shame that I’ve watched it so many times that I know the gags by heart. Imagine watching the mirror scene for the first time! I remember that when I did watch it for the first time as a child I thought it was magical, surreal and hilarious and utterly wonderful. Same with the stateroom scene in A Night at the Opera. Duck Soup was the last film the brothers Marx made before Irving Thalberg Hollywoodized them by adding sappy songs and boring love stories. The first of those films was the afore-mentioned Night at the Opera which ranks right behind Duck Soup, Horsefeathers, Monkey Business and Animal Crackers as among their best work. The subsequent films pale in comparison.

Okay so I started this Friday morning before heading off to work and I finish it now on Saturday morning. The sniffles persist but are not nearly so bad, the knee pain has also abated somewhat but clearly I need to have it checked out. I’m assuming that the doctor’s office will return my call sometime Monday. I guess they’re too understaffed to return patients’ calls. God forbid I had an emergency. The depression is gone — for now — but it lurks and one never knows when it will next strike. It’s a right bastard.

Going for a long walk in a bit. May accidentally swing by a bookstore. These things happen.

From Dark Thoughts About Eternity I Segue Into a Bit About Teaching

I’m fine. That’s what I’m supposed to say, anyway. It’s not easy work trudging through life when depression is likely to smack you down any second. But existence beats the alternative. Or so I’ve been told. I’ve never heard from anyone who has clear memories of not existing. Then how could you? How to comprehend the void? The endless abyss. Eternal darkness. Actually it wouldn’t even be dark, because it wouldn’t be.

There are times that I hold out hope for some sort of after life. I like to think you get a second chance at it all. That would be grand. Maybe you get to live your life several times until you get it right. If so I’m in still in the early stages. So many mistakes I’ve made. But maybe I’m too hard on myself. Maybe I focus on all that I’ve done wrong and haven’t reflected enough on life’s blessings and all the happiness I’ve enjoyed and my good choices. 

So some form of reincarnation might be in the cards. It makes more sense than the stereotypical Christian belief of a heaven where God sits on a throne. That all seems rather silly.

Maybe we become angels. Angels are often depicted in literature as being eternally frustrated because they can’t effect events on Earth, they merely get to look on. That’s the wonderful thing about being a living human: all the choices you get to make. It’s constant. Like moments ago I decided to write. Before that I checked my email and various websites I frequent. Later I might choose to start to read a new book having just finished one. 

There’s a lot of instances in which I’m not making decisions, or not new ones anyway. On work days I wake up at the same time. Get out of bed. Turn on the kitchen light. Enter the bathroom, answer mother nature’s call, shower, moisturize, dress, turn on more lights, get my tea ready, empty the dishwasher, eat breakfast, move to the easy chair etc. Pretty much the same everyday. I don’t wear the same clothes everyday, of course, so I choose my outfit for the day. I walk the same route to work and do a lot of the same things once I arrive.

Teaching is a constant whirl of making decisions. At least in teaching English to foreigners as I do. To follow a script everyday is madness. You’ve got to constantly be improvising based on what’s working, what’s not, what’s needed, what’s not. Sometimes students need you to spend more time on one topic, sometimes less. Sometimes they need to be shaken out of a rut with an activity. You call audibles.

There’s great variety on a teaching day because you’re dealing very directly with your fellow human beings. In my case anywhere from seven to eighteen (currently fifteen). In my current situation these students — though mostly in their late teens and early twenties — are of all ages. I currently have a sixty-five year old Taiwanese woman along with people less than a third her age. I have students from Peru, China, Saudi Arabia, France, South Korea, Japan, Italy, Spain, Switzerland and the aforementioned Taiwan. The overwhelming majority of my students are darlings. At the same time most have a serious addiction to their cell phones but that’s the way of the world and there’s no use pretending otherwise.

My students are depending on me. Though I don’t really feel it, I’m under a lot of pressure. They’re paying a fair amount of money to improve their English. I’ve got to deliver. I need to provide engaging, interesting lessons that will move their English forward. I have to tend to their individual needs and simultaneously those of the class as a whole. I also feel duty bound to be entertaining. People respond better to a teacher with a personality and sense of humor who is conscious of not boring people.

I don’t really feel the weight of my job and its inherent responsibilities. I know the drill. I’ve been at this for 38 years in one form or another. There’s no need to be philosophical about it. You just show up everyday and give a hundred percent. You know at the end of the day if you’ve done a good job or stunk the place up. I’m consistent because I care about my students and take pride in my work.

Ya know what I’ve always hated? Those signs that say: “teaching is my superpower.” Horseshit. It’s just a fucking job. My father never walked around saying: “carpentry is my superpower.” He went to work everyday and did a good job. That’s all there is to it. That teaching is my superpower nonsense grows out of a culture that feels guilty for paying teachers shit wages. It’s supposed to make us feel better that we get paid crap relative to other white collar professions. We also get national teacher’s day and sometimes we’re asked to stand and accept a round of applause at sports event. Fuck that. Pay us.

Teaching is a noble profession but so is custodial work, accounting, journalism, and bagging groceries. We’re all contributing to society. Save your applause until the end.

Am I bitter? Not at all. I’m privileged. I’ve been able to perform a job I’ve loved for a long time. I’ll be seventy-one in a month and I’m still going strong. I may be staring eternity in the face but at least I have a pretty cool job.

Writers Block, Musings on Death, Two Films and Loved Ones Gone

His Three Daughters

My latest struggles with writing cause me to wonder if it’s all over. Is my mind starting to fade? Is this the beginning of the end? I used to be able to put a thousand words on paper with ease. I could conjure a piece of fiction upon request. I could sit down for hours and write only stopping occasionally to stretch. Is that gone? Forever?

Here I search for a topic. Many flit through my brain through the course of a normal day. But they don’t alight and I can’t grasp them. 

Grasp.

Why do people say, exempli gratia, I’m going to grab lunch instead of I’m going to grasp lunch? It makes as much sense.

(There has been — unnoticeable to the reader — a long pause sense the preceding sentence. The writer again is unable to find the next line, or any line, the next thought, or any thought.)

Finally…..

I am preoccupied with death, specifically my own. (This, by the way, is no way to go through life, better to enjoy each day, one day at a time and all that.) In any event the last four movies I've seen have dealt with death to one degree or another, in fact two of them were specifically about coping with the death(s) of others. These two films were All of Us Strangers (Haigh)and His Three Daughters (Jacobs). Strangers I saw initially in January during its theatrical run and again Saturday via Hulu. Daughters is a brand spanking new release now on Netflix. Strangers is a difficult film to capsulize but suffice it to say it is the story of a man dealing with the death of his parents which occurred many years before when he was twelve. There’s another critical element to the story but discussing that would be a major spoiler. Mourning periods can last a few days, months, years or a lifetime. People process the deaths of loved ones in myriad ways. All of Us Strangers explores one person’s delayed means of coping and gaining a sense of closure. It's an unusual film in the best possible sense and is highlighted by a great performance by the brilliant Andrew Scott.

His Three Daughters is about a father at home in hospice surrounded by his three grown daughters who are ostensibly there to aid in his transition from the living. While Dad is the raison d'etre for their presence there is much more to the story than that. The sisters are not terribly close, there are old wounds, resentments and misunderstandings — a dying parent adds another layer of stress. The film has been -- aptly -- called a chamber piece. Most of it is set in a New York apartment and most of the screen time is occupied by the three daughters wonderfully realized by Carrie Coon, Elizabeth Olsen and Natasha Lyonne. None of them are acting, they are embodying characters in such a powerful way as to make a potentially depressing story enthralling.

When my mother died I was nonplussed. I’d had very little contact with her for the previous twenty-five years. She was a paranoid schizophrenic who’d made my childhood….not perfect. I shed no tears upon her passing.In the years that followed  I posthumously forgave her and grieved not her death but her life. God how I wish fate had been kinder to her and thus to me.

My father’s death was a different matter. It was slow and we had plenty of time to prepare. Sixteen years later I’m still processing it and dealing with feelings about him. I’ve written a lot about him and he will be the topic of a talk I’m giving at a Finnish Independence Day celebration in December. He is something of a hero to me though I recognize his flaws all too well. 

I’ve had to suffer the premature losses of most of my close friends, two of whom died within a few months of each other, both unexpectedly. It was not long after my only brother had died too.

I miss them all and it’s interesting to note how frequently they and my father appear in my dreams, always alive and well. It’s impossible to accept the permanence of the death of a loved one. It’s natural that we talk and hope of seeing them on the other side.

A former student of mine, who I see from time to time because he’s best friends with one of my nephews, suffered the death of his son last Christmas Day. The day before the boy was to turn six-years-old. That’s an unimaginable type of pain, probably the worst there is. Life is so cruel that the internal question why most constantly be asked, if never answered. 

But we the living owe it to ourselves to cherish everyday as best we can. That’s quite simple in principle but for someone such as myself who suffers from occasional bouts of horrid depression it’s not manageable. I guess one has to do the best they can.

Well I’ve at least given lie to the notion that my writing is dead. I’ve completed this later in the day after starting in the morning but it still constitutes a decent bit of writing, particularly given that I taught a class, graded papers and planned a lesson in the interim. I’ve also been wracked by depression. Completing this helps. Thanks to anyone who read this far.

A Kind Act at a Bookstore Proves a Cure For My Depression

Pegasus in Downton Berkeley

As regular readers of this blog (I’m looking at you Norbury Doppelganger of Putney, Vermont) know, I am prone to bouts of melancholia. One such period of gloom visited me yesterday during which I found myself making a careful study of the floor while emitting deep sighs and awaiting death’s sweet release. The missus suggested that I get out of the house, perhaps for a walk. This seemed a gargantuan task for someone immobilized by the blues. However when I recalled that it was the last of the month and that I had a twenty per cent off coupon for a beloved local bookstore — Pegasus by name — I had a raison d'etre to leave the premises. I even took a bit of cheer at the notion of finding a book I might like (as if I can walk into a bookstore WITHOUT finding a book I might like). Furthermore I hated the idea of a discount coupon going to waste.

I put on my tuxedo and headed for the door (that’s a lie, I merely changed from track pants to slacks and put on shoes). Into my back pocket I stuck the aforementioned coupon, plus my frequent buyer card and a ten dollar credit I’d earned by frequently buying. 

The weather was a bit warmer than I like but given that Berkeley is not on full boil like so much of the rest of the world, I couldn’t complain. The morbidity of my previous thinking was gone and I enjoyed the ensuing stroll, my mind flitting from one mostly unimportant topic to the next.

When I got to Shattuck Avenue, which is what I guess passes for Berkeley’s main drag, I noted three women standing outside of a car. Their backs were to me as they brushed one another’s hair. I also could not help but observe that their skirts were very and I do mean very short and that a surprising amount of their buttock’s were on display. Certainly more than one is used to seeing in public. When the trio turned around it was evident that whatever their exact sexual identities they’d all likely been born with male genitalia. Somehow this made their risqué outfits seem less surprising though I don’t know why and don’t care to explore the topic at this time. I will say that I grew up with and have always  maintained a very liberal attitude towards how people want to dress, how they identify themselves and who they sleep with or more to the point, fuck. I wear three rubber wristbands (Suomi, Finland for my people, Black Lives Matter for my African-American brothers and sisters and the rainbow for my LGBTQ brothers and sisters). 

I carried on.

In the bookstore — Pegasus is an excellent bookstore, independent and staffed by knowledgable, charming people (as will become clearer anon) — I proceeded to browse. I am nothing if not a world class bookstore browser. I could give a seminar on the topic. There’s something special about browsing when you have nothing in mind to buy. You are open to discovery. I tingle to think of it even now. What book will I take home and what world will it open up to me?

Eventually I settled upon two books by the same author, Russell Banks. They were The Sweet Hereafter and The Darling (I have previously read three other books by Banks). Happy day, I’d found two books. Take that depression. I was in fine mettle now. As I strode to the counter with my selections I reached into my back pocket for the discount coupon, the frequent buyer card and the card with my $10 credit.

Gone.

I immediately searched the store in hopes that they had fallen out while I was in mid-browse. No such luck. I was gutted but determined to not give up the search.

I explained my dilemma to the gentleman behind the counter and asked if he’d hold the books while I re-traced my steps in hopes of finding the missing papers. I then walked all the way back home searching the ground the whole way like a latter day Lewis or Clark or for that matter Sacagawea. I did not find the Northwest Passage and I did not find the lost papers.

When I got home my lovely wife said that she remembered seeing me put the papers in my pocket. I took a much-needed sip of water and re-traced my steps back to Pegasus. I’m a persistent son of a bitch and not prone to giving up easily, if at all. I saw neither hide nor hair of any of the lost papers. Melancholia descended and wrapped its tentacles around me. It wasn’t the loss of the discount, or the loss of the $10 in store credit, it was the idea that I couldn’t manage to hold on to three lousy pieces of paper and this sad fact had ruined my outing, my day, my life. To quote the Bard: "When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions." I was again besieged by an army of woes.

Back at the bookstore I resigned myself to paying full price. I told the gent behind the counter my sad tale. In retrospect I’m not sure why, although one can often  take comfort in sharing a misfortune with another human being. He listened. 

Yes the clouds had descended around my brain but moments later the sun broke through them.

The kindly bookstore clerk (actually he looked more the proprietor or manager, surely a person of great influence) said he’d give me the twenty per cent off just the same and the ten dollars off to boot. I was dumbstruck. It was to me at the time an act of great kindness. Never mind the money saved, that was never the point, it was his trust in me that my story was genuine and that my pain was real. He could have listened sympathetically, offered a platitude and charged me the regular prices for the two books and I’d have no complaints and thought nothing of it. He was not saving me money, he was saving my spirits. I walked home feeling like the world was not such an awful place, people could be kind and understanding to strangers and this was no time for me to be wracked with depression. I also contemplated the wonders of independent business that are not ruled by corporate dictates but by the hearts of the people who work there. 

The rest of my day was perfectly fine and the good feeling has carried over into today.

Ya know what? People can be pretty damn cool.