alexpgp | Entries tagged with ljixb

Writing this now, two decades and some months after the fact, the only other things I remember about that Thursday was how the California weather was bright and sunny, and I had about a million things on my to-do list when I was called into my boss's office.

“Alex,” my boss said once I sat down in the chair across the desk from him, “I'm sorry, but we're going to have to let you go. Your position is being eliminated, effective today.”

I may have said something intelligent, such as “Um...,” or I may have said nothing at all in immediate response to the news. But once that crushing “I-don't-believe-this-is-happening-to-me” wave of feeling had ebbed, I stood up, turned away from my now-former boss, went to the window, and spat out a pithy, Anglo-Saxon expletive or six, directed at nothing and nobody in particular.

I did not stop to catalog my reactions at that moment, but I recall feeling a range of emotions that included rage, betrayal, and helplessness. Then I took a deep breath and felt a kind of calm come over me, despite the nagging little voice in my head urging me into all-out panic mode with taunts along the lines of "Oh, man, you're so screwed!” and “You're toast!”

As the calm intensified, my self-talk changed, to simply an urgent “Okay, calm down and figure out what you're going to do!" In retrospect, I figure the calm I felt was that odd sort of high that hits when the adrenaline kicks in. Fight or flight, dude. It's wired into our DNA, and makes an ancient, reptilian part of our brain tick.

I was no stranger to layoffs. I had worked as an engineer for nearly 15 years prior to coming to work in Silicon Valley and I had emerged unscathed because I always had a full helping of work on my plate—or at least that's how I figured it.

Humbug, as it turns out. In the end, having something to work on may keep you from getting laid off, or it may not. Security is, at best, a mirage; at worst, a superstition. The idea that your job can be somehow "secure" is as goofy as the idea that a college degree can somehow "guarantee" a good job upon graduation.

A little while later, after the formalities of the layoff had been completed, I realized, as I walked back to my office, that I was actually experiencing a feeling of liberation, my mind having gravitated to the idea that what I was now facing was an opportunity, even if it had crashed the party wearing a keenly unhip set of threads.

* * *Other employees who lost their jobs that day took the news in various ways, and I sometimes wonder: What it was that caused me to react the way I did? Was it because that's “just the way I am”? Or was it the result of a lot of previous decisions I'd made to react in certain ways to that sequence of stimuli that is more commonly referred to as "life"?

Are there “naturally optimistic” (and by extension, “naturally pessimistic”) people out there? I don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were true. But I also know that people can and do change—optimists can become pessimists; and pessimists, optimists.

This convinces me that whichever way you may “naturally” start out, it is the choices you make—consciously or otherwise—in response to life's laurels, slings, and arrows that will either help you maintain your attitude, or impel your attitude to change. In other words, your past choices determine how you'll react in the future.

Said another way:

You don't smile because you're happy; you're happy because you smile.

* * *When I got back to my office, there was a telephone message waiting for me, from my now-former employer's biggest competitor. Would I be interested in flying up for an interview?

“Impeccable timing,” I thought to myself, "but it can wait," and picked up the phone to call my wife with the news.

Current Location: Seabrook, Texas

I can think of no better tonic for the nerves than to spend an afternoon rummaging through other people's mail. That said, you'll probably be surprised to learn that I'm not engaged in some criminal enterprise, but rather, I'm a stamp collector—more precisely, a collector of “covers,” or envelopes with their stamps still stuck to them—and call me crazy, but I enjoy picking my way through large boxes of envelopes that had passed through the post, especially those that did so long before I was born.

The most interesting thing I had found during one memorable visit to a stamp dealer's shop last year was an envelope addressed to John D. Rockefeller and sent to him from Paris around 1885. While certainly not as valuable as would be an envelope addressed in Rockefeller's own hand, it had a certain “curiosity” value, so I had set it aside as I continued to go through the box at the dealer's shop. Envelopes, you see, always have a story to tell, even if most of the time, you have to make one up yourself. Who had written Rockefeller a letter, and about what? Was it to ask for money? to propose some kind of investment? Did Rockefeller actually read the letter, or was it handled by his secretary? Who knows?

A few minutes later, though, I caught sight of an unusual-looking cover, with a handful of Imperial Russian stamps—compact, bearing the two-headed eagle—whose appearance (new values printed in black on the front) strongly suggested they had been used during the bloody Civil War that had broken out after the Bolshevik Revolution and the end of The Great War. Besides the stamps—carrying a January 1919 postmark from Vladivostok—there was also a censor's mark and what appeared to be a “postage due” notation on the envelope, which had been addressed to a town in Czechoslovakia, in what is today Slovakia.

So I got to wondering, “What was someone from Slovakia doing at the east end of Siberia in 1919?” And so that cover was set aside, too.

Upon returning home with my purchases, I discovered the envelope still contained a letter, written in a precise and legible hand, for the most part. And though I'm not very conversant in Slovak, and the language has changed somewhat since the time the letter was written, between visits to several translation sites to make sense of the text, and a little research to find out more about the role of Slovakian forces in the Russian Civil War, I managed to squeeze some snippets of information out of the letter, and make a few educated guesses as to its writer.

And think a little about life... and love.

As far as I can tell, the author was a young lieutenant serving with the Slovak Legion in Siberia. He began his letter on a light note, not really talking about anything at all, and not complaining much about how things are going. According to the history books, however, the part of Siberia he was in at that time was suffering a horrendously severe winter, with week-long blizzards, short rations for the entire army, and temperatures cold enough to freeze locomotives to the tracks they stood on. It was too cold to engage with the enemy, most days, but not cold enough to keep the influenza at bay, and the bodies of the flu's victims were stacked in piles because the ground was frozen solid. At first, I had a little trouble reconciling that reality with what this young officer was writing to his wife at home far away, telling her that things were fine (though not exactly his situation as a picnic in the park), and that she should not worry, and so on and so forth along those lines. I could only conclude this was written so as not cause undue distress back home.

But then, one third of the way down the second gossamer-thin page, both the penmanship and tone of the letter changed abruptly. Here's my translation, warts and all:

“The cause in which we are now engaged is just. I pray hostilities will end soon. I will do my duty as I see it, and if it be God's will that I die—that I give everything of myself I possibly can—then so be it. And should that come to pass, know only that my love for you is true and full and eternal, and that only my love of God and country is greater.

My love for you is like... the universe—without end—and my recollection of our happy moments together are and will always be the source of my greatest happiness. And should it be fated for me to die here, far from my homeland and my own true love, surely I will whisper your name with my last breath.

Forgive my faults, and the many pains I have caused you. It stings me now to think of how thoughtless and foolish I have often been! How gladly would I wash out with my tears every little spot upon your happiness, and staunchly stand between you and all the misfortune of this world.

Ana, my darling! If the dead can come back and stand unseen around those they loved, I shall always be near you; in winter and in summer—amid your happiest and saddest hours—always, always... Anichka! If there be a soft breeze upon your cheek, it shall be my breath; or if a cool stream of air caresses your shoulder, know that it shall be my spirit passing by.”

It was past midnight when I finally rose from my desk, and as I picked up the letter to put it away I wondered, "I wonder if this fellow made it home okay?" And then, as I looked closer at the paper the letter was written on, I could see the many, many little mottled spots that attested to the teardrops shed by whoever read the letter—shed, and quickly blotted, lest they wash away those precious words. Since then, I find myself sometimes wondering what happened to cause the tone of the lieutenant's letter to change from chatty and carefree to serious and foreboding. I guess I'll never know.

As it turns out, that cover—with its stamps issued by Kolchak's White Army—is not worth much from a collector's point of view. The letter, on the other hand, makes this cover a very precious thing!

Week 1. Intersection!
I am "intersecting" this week with that inimitable world-traveler and apiarist extraordinaire,

emo_snal!

Current Location: Seabrook, Texas

I had my phone to my ear and was just leaning back in my chair when Sam picked up at his end.

"Hey, Sam! You there?" I asked, after a second or two of silence.

"Don't shout," he croaked, and there followed the scrape of a match being lit. A moment later came the sound of a long exhalation, after which he said "I was on a stakeout all night. You woke me up. What can I do you for?"

"I just called to talk," I said. I tried to sound casual.

"Better watch it, sonny," he said, "you're starting to sound like that Gutman character, with his 'I'm a man who likes talking to a man who likes to talk' gobbledygook. Spit it out! You in a jam?"

"Sort of," I said.

"Get to the point, then. What's the deal?"

I took a deep breath. "Well, I'm supposed to introduce someone I don't know and have never met to a bunch of other people I mostly don't know and haven't met."

"Aha. Why am I not surprised? And you're supposed to do this with this computer thing you keep telling me about?"

"Yeah," I said. A moment passed. Another exhalation.

"That's the screwiest thing I ever heard of," he said.

"Screwier than having an imaginary phone conversation with a character from detective fiction?" I asked.

"Point taken," he said. "So, do you know anything about this person you're supposed to introduce? Like, maybe, a name?"

"The LiveJournal name's

kf4vkp, but her real name is Jessica," I said.

"A pretty enough name, but that first mouthful sounds like..." he paused, as if trying to remember something. "Like one of those call signs amateur radio operators use," he said.

"It is and in fact, she holds a General Class license," I said.

"That doesn't mean much to me, but since you mentioned it, I guess it's significant," he said. Before I could explain, he asked "What else do you know about her?"

"Raised in Georgia, went to public schools in Jasper. She's got a degree in biochemistry. She lists about as many interests on LiveJournal as I do, but only three of them mesh with mine."

"How fortunate for her," he laughed a little. "You got anything else?"

"She was born on the same date as Mother Teresa and Macaulay Culkin."

"Well, since it's always 1930 here at my end, you'll understand when I say those names don't mean anything to me." Another pause, another exhalation. "So far, all you've told me that makes sense is that Jessica is from a small Southern town and is technically inclined. I take it she's a working stiff?"

"Yeah. How'd you know that?"

"I'm a trained investigator. Now tell me more."

"Jessica's a chemist. Seems to do pretty routine stuff for a company in the calcium carbonate industry, and says she wants to do more on the research side. In her personal life, Jessica seems to have a lot of plates spinning, if you know what I mean."

"Knowing you, that could mean anything," he said, "but I can guess. So she's also in this 'idol' thing you keep blabbing about?"

"Yeah, it's a shortened version, but it's still the same guy in charge, so it's bound to be a pretty wild ride."

"You can say the same thing about life in general," said Sam. "Which means that if you, or me, or Jessica, or whoever wants to do something—and I mean really wants to get something done—you're almost certainly going to have to make the time to do it." I could hear Sam mash out his cigarette. "You getting this all right, sonny, or am I going too fast for you?"

"I got it, Sam," I said, "but I still don't know how to do the introduction."

A match scraped, followed by another exhalation.

"The best I can offer is to just set it out the way you set it out for me. The result might be excellent or it might be crummy, but Mrs. Spade didn't raise any children dippy enough to give out advice on how to write. What I can say—and I got this from a guy you might've heard of, named Hammett—is that writing's something you can't do judiciously, unless you keep in practice. And that's true for more than writing—trust me on that."

"Okay," I said. "Thanks for the advice, and sorry to have awakened you."

"Any time," said Sam, "and it was time I got up anyway. I'll have plenty of time to sleep when I'm dead." A moment later, he hung up.