The Last Straw

I have good news and bad news.

The bad news is that you have now been abducted by a captor witnesses described as “a white male in his early fifties, wearing a baseball hat and reading glasses” who had “crazy eyes” and looked at them “with a creepy, spaced-out look like he was looking right through [them].”

Yes, I know. That’s not necessarily the best. It is what it is though.

You have now been thrown in the backseat of the Camry of the Damned and we’re going for a ride. I’d suggest fastening your seatbelts. I’m batshit loco at this point and I’m driving.

“Wh-why are you doing this?” you ask, a little scared. “You’re… kind of scaring me, Mike. Are you o—"

“Because I don’t have a place to write. That’s why.“ I say. And then my voice gets all low like I’m talking to myself or maybe to someone imaginary who only I can see. “Oh, you will see.“

And then it gets really quiet and uncomfortable in the car and I turn up the volume on the radio even though it isn’t turned on and you think maybe you better try to break the tension, so you say all softly “I’m sorry you don’t have a place to write… Maybe you could go to Panera or something.”

“PANERA.” I say back with a sudden sharpness that is a little jarring. “Panera killed Ernie Hems.” I say. “Oh, yes, we’re going to Panera. We. Are. Going. To. Panera.”

And you reflexively blurt out “Ernie Hems? Who is Ernie… Hems?” and instantly regret it.

“The Sun Also Rises?! For Whom the Bell Tolls?! Who is Ernie Hems?!?” I say, shaking my head, incredulous, eyes never looking up from the road.

“Hemingway? Is he talking about Hemingway?” you think to yourself. “Did he just say Panera killed Ernest Hemingway? That’s nuts.”

And you sooooooo want to say back “Actually, Ernest Hemingway died in 1961 at the age of 61. While the specific role of the multiple factors that led to his death may never be fully understood, it has been well documented that he suffered from an array of injuries and ailments which included 1) a debilitating blood disorder; and 2) the lingering effects from two near-fatal plane crashes – each of which was at least contributory to his death... Further, Panera, which was originally incorporated as the St. Louis Bread Company, was not founded until 1987 - 26 years after Hemingway’s death – so your allegation is facially specious.” But you resist.

And then I laugh all manic like Chevy Chase in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation at the moment when it has become clear to all but him that the Venn diagram of the holiday he had imagined and the one currently taking place in his home were two circles never to meet.

“Oh, let’s not be such Frowny Frans! This will be fun, kids!”

And then I fire up the Camry of the Damned and up on the screen, instead of that warning you’ve never actually read and find mildly annoying, appears this message:

“He doesn’t have a place to write. He has neither a place at home nor a place to go conducive to writing. Instead, he has either a cacophonous din of endless dog-barking and environmental noise or an array of public alternatives which, while sometimes accommodating, have recently provided an unceasing torment of interruptions. And that’s why he’s kinda crazy right now. Just accept all of that as true for the purposes of this story because to explain it in detail would be both long and boring. He doesn’t have a place to write. It’s true. Just take his word for it on this.”

And as you finish reading all of that, you look up at the rear view mirror to see my crazy eyes looking back at you to make sure you have.

“Done? Good. Buckle up. You wanted to go to Panera. We’re going to Panera.”

The Cursed Journey Begins

These past couple weeks have been an absolute shit-show. A maddening sequence of serial paper cuts which individually were not particularly lacerating but which, in aggregate, have diced me finer than minced onions.

I wrote well over 10,000 words across four separate pieces this week. A grand total of none of them were delivered to you. Not one word. Not one piece. A goose egg. And that has left me wanting to smother someone with a down pillow.

(See what I did there? Goose… down… At least I still have my sense of humor.)

The cause of my repeated failures to launch this past week has been the same each and every time:

There is a Conspiracy of Obstacles Afoot to Drive Me to Madness

A conspiracy of obstacles. Not a bunch of obstructions. Not an array of impediments. Not unfortunate happenstance absent some underlying malevolent engineering. No, I’m talking about a conspiracy of sinister and unabated puppeteering by some unseen de Sade bent on making my unraveling his marquee feature.

See, here is where I could just tell you all about that. Just go right ahead and describe it. The telling might meander a bit but it would flow. Oh, how it would flow. I could exhaust a solid several-thousand words without batting an eyelash above the set of hazel eyes witnesses to your abduction noted “never blinked… like he was crazy… or a robot… or something. A crazy robot.”

But that would be ‘telling’ and writing is the art of ‘showing’; and even while swerving dangerously through traffic with you in the backseat as an abductee, I am nothing if not devoted to my craft. So, no, I shall not just tell.

I will not just explain how I have come to know that a malignant force is somehow Muppeteering me toward insanity. I will instead show.

My unfortunate passenger, you are now riding along with me on just today’s frantic drive. Just this one single day amid nearly two weeks of this.

A Race Against Time

I have a three-hour window of time to write today. I may get a smaller chunk of time later in the day. I may also get a smattering of 15- and 20-minute fragments in between; but even if I do, they will be in a parked car and any “writing” done during them would be pecked out on a phone or dictated.

This is it. This is my best and only block.

If I am going to get anything to the finish line today, it will have to be by stomping on the gas and running red lights much like Keanu Reeves in the movie Speed - but if he had actually been trying to rev up the bus rather than bring it to a stop.

Getting something written today will be a race against the clock.

That clock starts now.

Elapsed Time (HH:MM:SS): 00:00:00

(Technically, it started fourteen minutes ago when I started typing but let’s just keep it simple and ignore that.)

Now, as I sit here typing these words - and as you eventually sit there reading them - we each know something the other didn’t at the time.

You, by virtue of reading this at all know that it did, in fact, find completion and was published. Yet, I, as I sit here writing it, do not know that will prove to be the case. Instead, if this session goes anything like every other attempt to write something of late, it will advance to only somewhere short of completion and then fester on my desktop both unfinished and unpublished.

Conversely, while you don’t know the date and time when this writing began, I do. I know when the stopwatch above started.

Until this careening clown car pulls to a stop and lets you out – if it ever does - you will know only 1) I only have three hours to get to the finish line today; and 2) how much time has elapsed toward that deadline.

It’s like an episode of the show “24” but about someone who is a little stabby right now and just wants to post something on his Substack.

That shared predicament of each having to wait until the end to know the outcome puts us in the same predicament… A state of tense unknowing. You get to enjoy the dramatic tension right along with me. I don’t know if this will ever get finished. You don’t know if I’ll finish it on time.

We shall suffer in the anxiety of not knowing together.

I’m sorry to have to do that to you; but, such are the dictates of ‘showing’.

While I can’t tell you the date and time when I started the stopwatch above, I can share this: where I was.

I was at a suburban Panera – a chain I have come to become agonizingly expert in – specifically, at the farthest table tucked all the way in the back behind the soda machine and the urns of iced coffee, unsweetened iced tea, and strawberry mint lemonade - which is actually quite refreshing.

Seated at the table next to me was a young woman quietly working on a combination of a tablet and a laptop. She had her phone out on the table. I had weighed the risk that she might intend to use it on some long and loud conference call but after weighed it against the alternatives, I opted to take the seat next to her anyway.

It is not that the risk was favorable. It’s that the alternatives were few. As any seasoned business traveler knows, one of the most critical decision-making factors in selecting a public workspace is the availability of an outlet. When you travel a lot, you get so used to needing to find a place to plug-in, you just come to have a whole subconscious understanding of typical outlet distributions.

Play enough frantic games of Find the Socket while your laptop’s low-battery light blinks, you come to instantly anticipate where the outlets will be in a place like they were safety exits on a plane.

[Pointing with two fingers on each hand] “Exits can be found fore, aft, and mid-cabin. If the cabin loses pressure, put on your own mask before assisting others.”

You just come to know the common socket landscapes. You’ve got your Socket Wastelands; your Sockets for the Vacuums places; your Sockets as Musical Chairs venues (where there are several outlets but not remotely enough for all the patrons who thus all jump as soon as one is vacated); and you have the golden unicorn of public power supply: the Socket at Every Seat. Those are magical places. Most, however, fall into one of the first three of those classic Outlet Availability Archetypes. There are very few unicorns.

Now, Panera - the overall Panera - the chain as a whole run by what I imagine is the Big Panera in the Sky – apparently finds an adherence to literally any of those common patterns to be somehow contrary to some opaque corporate goal of theirs – which I can therefore only assume is to fuck with me personally. That is the only reasonable conclusion that can be drawn.

The locations of outlets in Paneras are so randomized, it’s like an electrician played pin the tail on the donkey while drunk. Thus, regardless of which location I go to, every single visit begins with a visual audit of that particular store’s unique and demented flavor of power-access bullshit.

Look hard enough, you will find an outlet. However, it’s location will make absolutely no fucking sense - and it will likely already be surrounded by other adults who, startlingly, also possess devices which require occasional power.

Today, though… today… fortune appeared to have smiled upon me.

Not only was there an available outlet, it was in the very back of a place with 27 tables - I counted them out of spite - which were nearly all unoccupied. Given that scenario, it appeared I had at least a theoretic fighting chance of the immediate vicinity remaining quiet and uncrowded for as many as 15 minutes.

Then – literally before my little buzzery thing had buzzed to tell me my everything bagel with cream cheese was at the pickup window - two patrons came in; took the table right next to me and my fellow Laptopian; and pulled out… a deck of cards.

Playing cards. A deck of cards. The implements required for the loud, talky card game they were moments from commencing… once the other two players arrived.

Who the fuck hosts a bridge club at Panera? Agents. Operatives sent to molest my sanity. That’s who. I have never seen people just randomly show up at a restaurant to play a long, loud game of cards. By having only three hours to write, I had apparently manifested it from the universe’s dark ether.

So, I got up, moved, set up again, and was ready to write.

And by then we are already at…

Elapsed Time: 00:14:12

And then a person a few tables away started playing videos loudly on their phone.

I had on the noise cancel-iest of noise canceling headphones. I was playing Jazz in the Background so loud, it was very much in the foreground.

It was no match for Johnny Dumbass’ random Facebook videos.

In my fleeting three hour window, he would be the first but not last person I would wish to stab in the eye with one of the insipidly water-soluble paper straws Panera now foists upon even allegedly esteemed Sip Club members like myself. I hadn’t wanted to give the ol’ eye-straw to the card players. They seemed nice enough. Johnny Facebook should count himself lucky he managed to exit with vision that was still binocular.

With no hope the videos might cease or the dumbass might develop some vague facsimile of consideration for others, I got up and moved again. And then set up again. And then started typing again.

And then a group of two teachers and their eight students came in and chose of all of the available tables, the one right next to mine. Not the one over in the area with the big booths unpopulated by a single soul. No. That would have in no way infringed on my failing effort to concentrate and they were clearly dispatched by someone averse to that. So, they chose the table right next to me: a person now twitching and crazy-eyed with jazz blaring from his AirPods.

So, I packed up again and left.

Elapsed Time: 00:47:12

So, now I had a decision to make:

Do I roll the dice on some other Panera (or the like) or drive a bit farther to a large hotel with a lobby and lounge which can often be quiet but aren’t always?

The upside: if it was indeed quiet, I’d have a solid two hours to write there.

The downside: if it wasn’t, I would have wasted at least 15 minutes and would then have to waste another 20 going somewhere else.

And now I’m already salty from the triple-relo at Panera forced by loud people.

This was not a decision to be made lightly. Eyes could be strawed.

“Dude, you do indeed sound crazy. It ain’t that serious. Take a deep breath. And just drive to the hotel; and if it’s busy go somewhere else.”

Oh, you sweet summer child. I cherish your innocence.

But you make some sense. Yes, the taking of a deep breath would not be a bad idea. Nor would heading over to the aforementioned hotel.

So, I set off and then remember there’s a secret little oasis on the way which I can stop at to breathe in the sweet calming perfume of nature at her springtime best. It’s a pond tucked behind a swim club findable only via a little trail.

Why, yes. That WOULD be a good way to reset. A quick stop. A few deep, meditative breaths to cleanse myself of the Malady of Panerafication. A refocusing on this beloved work of mine: the fashioning of grand stories from words.

So, I drive over; park my car in a gloriously empty lot; scoot back into the woods; and wend my way down the short path to the water’s edge.

Behold, a zen to quiet even the foulest winds internal which storm with life’s fury.

And it was at the exact moment of me snapping this picture with my phone when, through the woods, I heard what sounded like the Village People being played at 100 decibels through a subway platform loud speaker.

“What. The. Fuck. Is that?” I unzenly thought to myself.

The meditation now broken, back up the path toward the car, I went.

Past the little stream swollen with rain.

Over the standing pools of rainwater still finding their way to the pond after a long deluge of days.

Now, had I not been interrupted and instead been allowed to reach an adequate level of zen, it is at this point in our careening ride when I would interject with something poignant and poetic about the subtle path carved by water after a rain and how nature handles its own impermanence better than we flawed mortals who live in constant conflict with the reality that change is not destruction of a state of being but is instead actually THE state of being. It is change which is life’s only constant. See, I would have thought all that and then written it and it would have been deep as shit but nooooooooo, there was some tinny music blaring through the trees and I didn’t have the time.

It turns out, the very-far-from-opening-for-the-season pool club behind which I had walked was not entirely shuttered. There were two men allegedly working over in its farthest corner and, rather than, say, utilizing some form of portable entertainment capable of accurately reproducing sound for the enjoyment of people proximate to it, they were instead blasting staticky radio over the pool’s megaphones.

Because, of course they were.

Elapsed Time: 01:05:12

So, off I went to the hotel unzenned but not undelayed. It was quiet. The restaurant wasn’t serving but the seating area was open for use. Each booth had an outlet. They were all empty.

My friends, I had found my sweet unicorn.

And so I began, again, to write.

And then words fell from my fingers like flower petals from a spring dogwood.

Down, down, onto the page, they gently fluttered without effort or sound.

After discord, I had found harmony.

Soon, this piece would be finished; and we, its humble captives, would be liberated.

And then the people attending one or more of three conferences began arriving - each hell bent on talking at exactly the volume necessary to be heard by the one guy in the empty restaurant 40 yards away.

And down, down, crashed the brief dogwood of my focus. Its blooms, so beautiful, so brief, now withered to black. Its trunk, a rotting husk.

So, I packed up and left.

Elapsed Time: 01:48:13

[Continued in Part II]