QNTNs.com Podcast

 They emailed us. Bittersweet was the word they chose.

And doesn't that tell it all? Bittersweet was the word my friend used when leaving his hometown. It was the word my parents used when selling their first house. It will be the word I use when the day comes for me to leave.

Our cherished memories are what we leave behind. And oh, how bitter nostalgia can be. We also leave behind the lives and routines that helped us grow and that so fondly filled our hearts. The trouble is that anything stagnant sours over time. That bitter taste at the end is what tells us to go.

The sweetness, then, is twofold. I find it funny how celebratory we are when a team member leaves. It reminds me of a prisoner completing their sentence. “You're free,” we cheer in applause, wrapping the bars of our cells. If leaving a more perfect place, we might be more surprised, and not so habitually happy for those who “escape.” For this we assume the first sweetness, that you are headed towards a new horizon that will respect your talents and time more than this stepping stone.

However, I am also sending you a note to honor the second sweetness, which is every original sweetness you created in this role when this job was still sweet. For this job is sweet, I can only imagine the amount of content, studio time, creative agency, authority, and praise you have created and received.

Think how many doctors, team members, and business owners your work has inspired and the countless thousands of patients who received those lessons in action. It was, and always will be, a team effort. But may we sit with the sound of an impact player leaving. … That silence from the void is the testimony to the irreplaceable value you created.

We will survive you, tending to the legacy you have built. We only hope the reasons why you left are for the betterment of you and not, as we surmise, are reasons that, if left unaddressed, will be the downfall of us. Bitter. Sweet.

My pleasure to have met you, and may we continue to meet. From QNTN.

Help me at every moment of my life be good to others.

I woke up this morning, and for some reason, my brain was drafting letters to you and your ensemble, preparing the letter I would send after seeing your show. Too bad it was all in my head because I thought I was making my best point ever about why the performing arts is the highest art form. It ends with this idea that I will send now, knowing the other thoughts are lost to the ether of my pillowcase:

Meditation is the only way for the soul to know itself as an individual ray of the cosmic source of God. The yogi, a soul of any religion who achieves that union, knows of their attainment when the meditation, object of meditation, and meditator become one. They reunite their soul with the soul’s source, their Cosmic Beloved.

Similarly, only the performing arts allows the same transcendence, for only as the performing artist can the art, the object of the art, and the artist become one.

They reunite their art form when the triune of palette, painter, and canvas coalesce as the same. In theatre, your body is the palette, you are the actor, and your character is the canvas. Every other art form is what religion calls secular: separate from the whole and unable to transcend its individuality. As the writer, I cannot become these words having written them, and I am most certainly not the page or HTML from which these words are read.

Add to this the emergent properties of the ensemble, and you have yourself not only an enlightened actor but an entire pit, crew, production, and house uniting in those climactic moments to create the perfect play. The end is unattainable except in that culminating instant, never to be seen again except in a new way at the next showing.

Finally, the smoking gun to my argument is that this heavenly process of the arts happens not just on occasion or upon the artist’s sudden afflatus, but on cue, like a timeless clock, eight shows a week for fifty-two and more weeks. No other artist is even as pro.

So that, Burke, and to Burke’s actor friends, is why the performing arts, especially theatre, is the highest art form. No other expression makes as close an analogy to the true Self’s story back to the infinite, what in Sanskrit is called Lila, or Divine Play.

It is that,

Understand how long these feet have withstood themselves underneath the weight of this body, squished into the shells of these dress shoes, the black leather quarters digging into the instep of my heal and lower ankle. For so long has it been, my tightly knit socks caused pitting edema: the fiber’s weave is now an indented tapestry upon my foot, ankle, and lower calf. My tibial arteries are in a roiled state of distention, having swelled to twice their normal diameter, wheezing blood through walls like water passing through a cinched hose.

My toes are not blue, though I would forgive you if your mind’s eye concluded as much. Instead, the skin beneath my toenails is larva white, gummy, and unresponsive: a medical condition called maceration that occurs when the sweat build-up inside my breathless shoe breaks through the skin of my feet, unbinding the cells and trapping the water within. This process also results in the more common “pruning” of the skin. While not ignorant of this phenomenon, my mind does not think about it, not for one in one trillion thoughts.

I have described my feet to illustrate a larger example of my bodily state after a training: weathered, fatigued, dehydrated, burdened, pained, exhausted, but also fuming — fuming as in high, as in huffing fumes, hallucinating, tripping on the endorphins that flow when the stress concludes upon the relief of a hard day done. You might reminisce on your last hatha yoga class when, after those shaky poses, your teacher names the last asana, Savanasa, corpse pose, and your body crashes in a beatific state of relaxation; how I imagine death will feel once we’re free of breath’s burden.

Now, in this state of ecstatic dysphoria, my brain and body do not feel themselves but are numb and austere, a mere bubble passing through on this locomotive of life, guided only by my intuition and duty as defined by the events on my Outlook calendar. Next up: DL 2738 to Atlanta; back home, my body coasting through the airport with an air of invincibility reserved for a corpse.

The O’Hare airport is unkind to the confused. Most airports are. Government-mandated signs, carefully designed to meet the most conservative accessibility needs, are grossly overwhelmed by the volume and noise of free market signs: priority lanes, advertisements, and flashing LCD panels propagating beautiful women sipping cocktails at dreamy destinations.

Distraction is everywhere. Worse, the airlines have abandoned their help desks and kiosks in favor of digital check-ins and call center services. Help is on its way … out. We resort to our handhelds, but the same screens we require for our boarding pass are the same screens we wrestle with every day, losing our attention and time to thoughtless media, pop-culture videos, music, and shopping.

The walkers-by use only their peripheral vision to look where they’re going. Their foveal vision is shallowly engrossed in a distant world, their minds in a virtual reality.

I weave my way as best I can through the zombie throngs who walk in sporadic zig-zags as digital drunkards. Still, I catch their human words, and my compassion returns; I am just as vulnerable to their woes and pleas. They ask, “Is this where we go? What terminal are we? What is Clear? Are we Pre-Check? Are M gates in Terminal Four or Five? Did we get off at the wrong train stop?” Some languages are languages I do not know, and we can offer only our prayers for those familial imports.

This,” she mouthed in pejorative tones, “is the Preeee-Check line.” What her delusion showed her were none by nincompoops loitering like cattle in a feedlot. We, the herd to be slaughtered, were showing our bunk anxiety, peeved by the haptics from our smart wrists that reminded us further of our lateness to our varied gates.

“If you are not Pree-Check,” she said again, “then take your person and move them back up and out this line to the gen-er-uhl line. Capisce? Ah-huh. That’s what I said. Don’t be thinking you can cut everyone else just because you didn’t pay enough attention to read the sign.”

“Say it with me. Pree-Check. Pree-Check. Pree-Check.”

I did not move my lips but checked my own scowl at this harassment, careful not to multiply the miasma spewing from these violent words. I feigned a distressed smile, more of a puckered smirk, and tried my best not to make eye contact.

The elders in front of me were chattering amongst themselves. The wife confirmed with her spouse that they did indeed have pre-check and would not be subjected to the same verbal blows as the businessman who sulked upstream through the premier line. More tedious moments would pass. My eyes perused the people. Then they fell upon the businessman and his bloodshot eyes, poisoned by shock, shame, and rage as he stood immured by unending stanchions in the perdition that is General Security.

The elder couple did have pre-check — I saw the symbol on their sweat-palmed boarding pass. However, upon their call, the paper boarding tickets refused to scan. “You must go back to your ticket agent,” came the harrowing words from the TSA officer.

(Oh, how words fail me at this moment to describe the exasperation and terror that spread across the elder wife’s face at the thought of caning their way across the literal half-mile of terrazzo, back through the lines to the ticketing counters. Worse, the line not privy to the technical shortcomings of their paper will suspect that their elder dotage has also misunderstood that this is the “Pree-check” line.)

A prayer, my Lord, that these elders find safe passage. Then, the savior. “No, no,” said a more reasonable attendant who appeared from seemingly no where, out from the Versare partition. “Are you pre-check?” They were. “Then all I need is your IDs.”

Finally passing through the security checkpoint, I collected my thoughts and wondered how I could be vulnerable to such meanness.

“Humans,” I reminded myself, “must not divorce themselves from each other.” A quote from a saint, “Do what you want with others, but never put them out of your heart.”

Only moments would pass again before a Delta attendant would scream with impertinent rage against throngs rushing the gate ahead of their boarding zone. She turned to her fellow gate agent and talked aloud about her hapless subjects as if we pigs for slaughter could not hear nor comprehend the gravity of her wise rebukes. Ashamed, her gate agents pretended to ignore the meltdown afflicting her.

She exclaimed heedless admonitions with the contempt most hold for bureaucracy, not their fellow human. Checking in, I checked myself again: smile. Calm. Love. It will be okay. The stress of the day has had its way on all of us. Peace. Calm. Love. It will be okay. Amen.

There in suburbia,

Do what the trainer doeth

Darrel had never concerned advertising, nor its effect on the subconscious mind. He had no opinion on adverts except for the one occasion in a sports bar when he responded to a drinking John who at that moment was cursing a football broadcast.

Darrel sat beside John, accidentally victim to John’s fury.

“Commercial break. Commercial break. Another commercial break. **** They used to not play so many **** commercials. Let the boys play, God ****.” Are you with me on this?”

Darrel is mostly with not fussing. He is abiding. The blessing of his blackness has given him a saintly patience for injustice, the least of which is modernity’s deteriorating program to commercial ratio. To humor John, Darrel weighed his first and only opinion on advertising. “Some of them are funny, but I could do without the medicine ads.”

John agreed, especially acid reflux medicine that did little for bar food diets.

Darrel had remembered Booking.com, however. His mother taught him not to cuss, so he was especially tickled by their tagline, “Booking.yea,” a possible allusion to F*** yea!

When his mother needed two tickets to see her heart specialist in Boston, he planned their trip on Booking. The airline rates were nearly half the price of Delta’s website. He made no protests to why. Instead he made an unconscious congratulatory fist and mentally whispered, “Booking.yea!”

To compete with budget airlines, Delta now offers economy tickets that include only a ticket. The ticket has no guaranteed seat, no boarding priority, and no coverage for checked bags.

Companies like Booking will buy these economy seats months in advance when the ticket is at its lowest price. Then they lock the ticket and resell the seat at a margin when market prices rise.

Delta recoups the losses of their economy ticket by selling upgrades to economy passengers who want a guaranteed seat position. As such, Delta waits to assign economy seat positions until everyone has had the chance to upgrade. This opportunity times out when the boarding zone is called.

Darrel’s mother, Arielle, required wheelchair assistance. Despite their economy ticket, they boarded ahead of their zone at the suggestion of Delta’s boarding optimization consultants.

Freddy, this is not good,” Flora said in admonishing Cuban tones. “We are not seated together. How did this happen? We can’t have our daughter seated by herself. Don’t they know we have a daughter who is seven and cannot be seated by herself. How dare Delta. We should have flown United.”

Freddy recalled this decision. He opted to test his luck and save the hundred dollar “preferred seat” fee. Now, mere moments ahead of their boarding zone, Freddy upgraded their economy tickets, choosing three side-by-side seats, paying the doubled, two hundred dollar difference to appease his wife, Flora.

I am seated in row twenty-four, seat C. Behind me is Darrel and his mother Arielle, along with the other elders already situated. Ahead of me has begun general boarding and the single-filed throng breathlessly praying for over-head bins. “God, may I please find a space for my bag.”

Here comes Flora, Freddy, and their seven year old daughter riding on a scooter bag: a folding gizmo that is half suitcase, half scooter.

Flora’s assertiveness tells Darrel he is in her seat. She almost thinks to cross-check that Freddy had indeed not made another mistake, but she suppresses the feeling, evincing a boarding pass that shows 25D is most certainly hers.

Darrel assumes the fault and looks not to his printed boarding pass but to the FlyDelta app. Indeed, to his surprise and chagrin, his seat has changed.

“Oh. I am so sorry. You can see my boarding pass originally showed 25D. I don’t know what happened. Mom, mom, we have to move. Our seats changed … our seats changed. Yes, we’re up there. 17C. And you’re 17E. Yes, it’s not together. I don’t know what happened. I don’t know. I’m sorry. I’ll help you.”

The flight attendant called ahead to her peer to hold the flow of traffic. The crowd at the front of the fuselage asked why they weren’t moving. Some asked if they would be forced to check their bag.

The bins at row seventeen were already occupied by the overflow from business class. Darrel’s luggage would have to remain ten rows behind their new seats. Arielle, meanwhile, made lousy work escaping the hold of her seatbelt and scooting over the row’s armchair hurdles.

The shuffle had mostly ended by the time Arielle entered, again, the aisle.

Flora had gone scavenging with the flight attendant to find a compartment that spared enough space for the oddly shaped scooter bag.

Freddy and Darrel met in a near embrace as their two bodies occupied the aisle space intended for one. They’d mistakenly opted for a breast-to-breast approach versus the far more chivalrous butt-to-butt.

Arielle made yet more poor work navigating the remaining bodies remnant from before the traffic stop.

Everyone would find their way as everyone seems always to do, but only after a disruptive and clumsy five minutes of chaos.

Upon landing, Darrel would reverse this procedure, waiting for the rows behind them to deplane before retreating backwards to their original seats, to those bins where their bags remained.

On the jet bridge would await their wheelchair whose attendant would curse Arielle’s dotage for their delay. That attendant would also curse the dictates of their iPad’s time schedule, the iPad that was actually an Alcatel android tablet hanging in a rubber encasement from a sling across all bodies of such airport contractors. For what it’s worth, the faults of the tablet's makeup caused more delays than Arielle’s debilities.

I surmise Delta’s seat upgrades earned the company an extra thousand dollars on this flight, for this seat melee happened not only with Darrel but also with the seat to my left, the seat to my front, and two seats to my rear.

We would have missed our takeoff window had Delta not buffered the boarding and departure times to account for the chaos their capital gains cause.

I have no cash. My magnetic phone wallet affords me no charity with space for just two cards, or less if I carry my ID.

Homelessness affects even Rhode Island, even in this wintry sleet. What's sad is that I doubt the existence of what I cannot see, as if homelessness should end when the homeless take shelter from the streets. My radicalized self politically corrects me: "houselessness." As if this man has a home. He is alone with his roller bag, a book bag, a baseball cap, an excess fifty pounds of fat, and a pulpy sign that reads, “God Bless.”

He has lucid eyes and no shame eyeing me through my turn into the Stop & Shop, the northeastern grocer whose name belies itself. Men blow for dough at the Kum & Go while sophisticated inventory bots patrol the grounds of the Stop & Shop. Yet, their names are of the same cheap class.

I enter upon the produce where an elder is trapped by the autonomous inventory bot, towering over her, towering over me. Its plastered googly eyes are crossed just below its actual eyes, a miniaturized LiDAR scanner, furiously spinning.

“You can walk past it,” the grocer says. “It’s waiting for you.”

The elder does, and hurries past it, a freed hostage — her expression is an apocalyptic watercolor, a variegated palette of terror, mystery, and awe. Worse is how easily she carries on as if this were life now, dodging robots at the super store. This is life now.

I tear a banana from the stand and purchase my dinner: Baba Ghanouj, Triscuits, a Sumo Orange, a mushroom fortified protein shake, and this banana.

Just so you know, you cannot ask for cash back because our cash machine in the back is broken.” He says okay and pays with card.

“Just so you know, you cannot ask for cash back because our cash machine in the back is broken.” I say okay and tap to pay. Is she saying that to everyone? Who carries cash anymore?

“What’s your reward number?” I’m from out of town. “Where from?” Atlanta.

Mistaking her friendliness, I go on about my excitement for Baba Ghanouj, how Stop & Shop sells products Georgia doesn't carry. She responds with my receipt. “Thanks.”

I contort my torso to have dinner over the mid-console. I gorge myself with food I don't quite need. Some football fields away is still that man, but this time I'm eyeing him from across the liminal void that is this deserted shopping plaza. He fidgets with his pants, his luggage, shifts his weight from side to side as the overweight do when in pain, as we do when uneasy. He begs but makes no great effort at it, just stands there with his cardboard plea. The light cycles every two minutes, and till now I have watched at least a dozen cycles, at least fifty vehicles have stopped and passed him without stopping. I keep on, watching him as best I can through the rain drops on my Mazda’s windshield, shielding me from Rhode Island’s dreariness.

Next to me, a retired mother takes flak from her balding son who convulses about something important (to him). I do not know. She keeps making as if to drive away, her driver door ajar. But every time she makes progress toward getting in, he starts again, and she opens the door again, and I won't see how it ends because it is time to catch my flight.

My turn lane from the Stop & Shop is feet from him; I am the only car. I knew it would come to this, except I have no cash. I roll down my window. “I have no cash, but I have a banana and an apple,” a good organic apple.

“The banana,” he says. “The apple and the banana?” I confirm, offering both. “No, just the banana.” I am disheartened. That’s a good organic apple I'm too stuffed to eat. Why doesn’t he want the apple? They don’t grow apples like that down south.

The banana went into his book bag. “Good luck,” I say, and was thankful the light turned green.

Oh, when the bridle wire