The Week In Brief

The last couple of days have been really great. I get on these rolls sometimes when I’m SUPER productive for several days in a row without needing much sleep or food or anything really. It’s an old habit that dates back to my time as a student when I was the world’s worst (best?) procrastinator. I took Latin for 2 year in high school and all I have to show for it is the knowledge that procrastinator comes from the preposition ‘pro’ meaning for and the word ‘cras’ meaning tomorrow, which would make me a for-tomorrow-er. Anyhow, I had this uncanny knack to wait and wait until the last possible moment when I could kick it into overdrive and still turn the thing in at the exact moment it was due. It was quite common for folks to see me running full tilt down the hall or across campus, papers flapping in the wind, still warm from the printer.

While deadlines and due dates don’t really apply to me these days, the instinct to cram rears its head from time to time. It’s exhilarating. Life is probably more analogous to a marathon, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I am sprinter at heart. I enjoy feeling the wind press against my chest. I love to see the world slip beside me, tumbling backward through time in relative slow motion.

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I’m capping my productive day off with some blog time at the coffee shop. I like coffee shops at night; they’re more social. Right now, I’m sitting at a bar that looks out onto the street. People stop in front of me to read the menu. I feel like I am in a zoo. How come no one will feed me?

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Yesterday, I went walking in the woods with my dog. On our way back, we ran into one of my neighbors, a mid-50’s fellow, who works in computers, and who was also walking his dog. He asked if I wanted to walk with him. Although I was on my way back, I was happy to oblige, because I realized a few weeks ago that if I’m going to get anywhere with my “Manual for Life,” I’ll have to recruit the help of some older, wiser people. Rather than ask him something like, “What is the key to happiness?” or “If you could impart one piece of wisdom to someone, what would it be?” or “Tell me one thing that you absolutely know to be true.” or whatever, I decided to let him lead the conversation.

After getting over his initial disgust that I was the money-hungry New Yorker that was trying to make a buck in his dear neighborhood, he asked me why the heck I named my dog Sartre. I gave him the stock reply, “It’s after one of my favorite writers, Jean Paul Sartre.” To which he replied, “But why Sartre?” When most people ask me why I named my dog Sartre, I assume that they mean either ‘that’s an odd name for a dog– what’s up with that?’ or ‘does that have meaning in your native tongue?’ I can only assume that my stock answer satisfies such curiosity, because up to this point, there had never been a follow up question, or, as it were, a repetition of the original question. What is this guy, the canine name-police? But then I realized that his tone was incredulous only on the word Sartre, so as to suggest, ‘why would someone, after reading the work of Jean Paul Sartre, choose to name their dog after him?’ This is another matter entirely. I somehow resisted launching into some diatribe on existential freedom and responsibility and returned the conversation back to him.

That is when he told me his story. A long time ago, when he was closer to me in age, he studied at Pomona College in California. Rather than do something practical, like his dad, who was a scientist, he decided to major in philosophy. He gravitated toward the existentialists, particularly Camus and Nietzsche. He admitted, with seeming regret, I might add, that their words shook his Faith. It is at this point that practical concerns overtook theoretical ones and he went and got his doctorate in something useful. He picked up the books sometime later, but it all sounded like crap then. The words stayed the same and so did the world maybe; it was him that was different. He still has dreams of going back West, but his wife prefers it here, and the bay area is so expensive, so he finds himself in Chapel Hill, North Carolina a continent away from the Pacific Coast Highway, a lifetime removed from his youth, on the same walking trail which he’s walked for 26 years, telling this very story to the creek, to the trees and to the rhododendron, to the mild Carolina Winter, to an opportunistic Yankee and his existential dog.

Five minutes prior, I did not know this man from Adam. And in five minutes, he taught me his story, shared with me his regrets, and showed me what he would do differently if he had it again.

We’re at his home now. He points out the remnants of trees that fell during the hurricanes, painting a picture of what this place would have looked like before I looked at it. He tells me a story about Bill Hunt, whom I know as William Lanier Hunt, world famous Botanist and developer of our neighborhood. He said he hopes the person that moves in after me will stay awhile. He’d like that. He reminds me to note of the daffodil patch to the left of the pipe at the clearing. He asks me if I would knock on his door next time I’m passing by, if I feel up for it, and we can walk again and bring the dogs, too, because, he says, they would enjoy the company.