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Sometime back in the early 80’s, a smiling, young and foolish version of myself would gather with his friends on New Year’s Day, where we would proceed to all make smiling, young and foolish New Year’s resolutions.  Whether or not anyone kept any of them, I don’t know.  It’s doubtful.  I don’t even remember any of them - with the exception of one.

Each year I would make the same bold statement that 19** (whatever the year) would be my year of Economic Recovery.  It seemed like such a hopeful resolution.  I could imagine the feeling of no longer chasing after the money, working two, sometimes three part-time jobs, going to school, and attempting to manage love.  Economic Recovery, it seemed to me back then, was the one key that would unlock any door.

The resolution was always made in jest.  Better to laugh and lose then grow serious and fail, I thought to myself.  But behind the years of stating that each and every year would be my year of Economic Recovery lived the tiny hope that the jest would become real.  Imagine what life would be like if resolutions came true.  Imagine how happy things could be.

I have always found ways to keep hope alive in my mind, and Economic Recovery was no exception.  The jestful resolution and multiple jobs were one way back then.  I wrote stories, where Economic Recovery personified into some mystical person, who somehow avoided all my searches.  I think I even imagined that time and age alone would take care of things.  Economic Recovery would ride into my life on the most mythical beasts of all - the American Dream, which I naturally assumed back in those smiling, young and foolish days was the logical end result of time and age. 

Of course, time and age, I have come to realize, have nothing to do with Economic Recovery.  Life is more like a storm then a straight line, with us in the center and life spinning all around us.  For me, the idea of Economic Recovery is just one of those things, twirling around, just out of reach.  I still keep an eye out from time to time, but I don’t think much about chasing after him.

Besides, only the fool dreams of writing and economics at the same time.  The writer, however much they deny it, likes to imagine their head as the center of the universe.  I have come to view my debt as just one of my many galaxies.

If I’d stuck with the original plan, this blog would have been born back around February or March of 2002.  That was just about the time I was being introduced to my wife’s new boyfriend and life was beginning to feel a little too tight.  But then, for me the words wife’s new boyfriend seem proof enough that original plans don’t always work out.

In hindsight, the original plan had its flaws.  For one, I would have had to actually do some thinking during a time that I seemed capable of only one thought.  Writing, at least good writing, usually requires the mind to breathe, and I don’t think my brain took a good deep breath of air until just a couple of months ago.  The only thing I can think of, is that my lungs must have taken pity on the poor, beaten up brain, slipping it a drop or two of oxygen when it wasn’t looking. 

Someone asked me once why I didn’t write it all down, all of that original plan gone awry stuff.  It was jodi I think, who seems to have that incredible talent of writing everything down.  I don’t know.  It just seemed too hard.  Or maybe I thought if I didn’t write it down I would be able to someday forget everything that happened.

But some of it made it down.  A tiny taste of that suffocating emotion and pain, and even some funny stuff, like the time I discovered I made a lousy detective.  For everyone’s information, in matters very little how many millions of minivans are on the roads, they’re just no good for sneaking around in.

I’m almost to the point where I should finally go and make that About Me page, where the idea is to capture the essence of your life in a tidy little list.  I have a hard time thinking of anything fitting into a list.  The plots always seem too big and unknowable.

But I’ll begin working on it, so that everyone with

other things to do but no desire to do them can feel like they’ve laid their ear against my head and listened to the memories of my life click by like the sound from an old movie projector.

But I would encourage patience on your part.  The list is fragile and worn.  The film of my life, like all of yours, has been spliced and patched many times.  Memory is the tape that holds it all together, and like old scotch tape, my memories are also faded, brittle, yellowed things. 

But I’ll make the list, and it’ll seem like a new film of an old thing.  Everyone can pull out their screens and we’ll watch the movie together.  If we’re lucky, it’ll make sense.  If we’re really lucky, it won’t be a three blanket movie.  And if we’re really, really lucky, no one will fall asleep the moment the lights dim.

Living with machines is much easier then living with people.  I’ve done it both ways.  I know.  I suppose it isn’t really any big secret, just something that nobody really cares to think about or admit.  I mean, can you imagine the tension here last night if I’d actually invited a living, breathing human over to share a meal, which ends up being what a DVD is to a DVD player.  Something to snack on.  So, for imagination’s sake, let’s just say that I’ve invited over a machine I met, who we’ll call D - short, of course, for DVD Player.

First, the night’s cinematic torture session would have been like sitting down to a meal that looks good but tastes wrong from the very first bite.  D and I would have sat across the table from each other, smiling politely each time our eyes met, pretending to enjoy the meal when in fact we both knew it was the most vile thing ever to cross our lips.  We would both chew as slowly as humanly possible (or in my date’s case - machinely possible), hoping somehow that our tastebuds would be tricked into thinking that our mouth’s were empty and their work done.

Politeness is the real enemy, you see.  It’s the thing that keeps us smiling and chewing, and gives us all that look of being graciously entertained.  I would have no way of knowing (having not dated in many, many years), that politeness, a real compass when it comes to navigating the human world, is of little use when dining with a machine.  And D, the poor thing, having just arrived in this country and new to dating herself, would have no way of knowing that politeness can be a tool that humans switch on and off on a whim.

It’s politeness that keeps us in our seats for half the movie, squirming all the time.  And politeness again when I pretend to look away as D turns and spits the half-chewed disk into her napkin.  It’s an awkward moment.  I wonder if I should reach out for her hand, but think, What about the napkin?  What if I grab that instead?  My politeness has me cornered. 

“How’s your meal?” It’s the only thing I can think to say.  “Everything okay?”
“Oh perfect.  Everything is just perfect,” she’d say, hiding the napkin in her lap.
“Oh good.  Then how about a little desert?”
“No, no, no, no.  I think you’ve done quite enough tonight already.”
“It’s O Brother, Where Art Thou?,”  I say in my best teasing voice.
“Oh really?  Well okay.  How can I resist that?”

I get up to get the desert and catch a glimpse of her emptying her napkin into the case.  Suddenly, everything is just fine.  I’ll worry about what to tell Blockbuster later.

You see, with machines, unlike with people, the night can always be saved.