Chapter 46. Light? Tunnel. Light? Tunnel.

Chapter 46

Light?  Tunnel?  Light?  Tunnel?

 

When I returned home from that highly disconcerting and disturbing visit to the skin doctor that afternoon, I found an unexpected greeting from opportunity on that old-fashioned messenger, the answering machine.  Expecting to find a voice mail from my doctor’s office confirming the date for cancer surgery, instead I had one from John saying that he had my resume, thought we should talk, and would I be available for a meeting next Monday.

 

Would I?  I don’t know, let me think about that for a moment.  I mean, how could I find time to go to a job interview, even though we hadn’t said the word job, I guess that it was.  What, between walking white dog, cooking for she who is too busy and would just eat another egg, hiking in the hills, watching SCTV reruns and meditating, I was overwhelmed with stuff to do. Could I find the time?  Fuck yeah!

 

I found the phone (couldn’t anyone ever put them back in their chargers? Ever?) called him back and he wasn’t there.  In my most it’s cool whatever don’t show that you are too interested be friendly job voice, I left a return message that Monday morning was good and to please call or email back with a time.  Then I hung up and yelled loud.  It felt good. Sure enough, an email came in an hour later while I was cooking dinner confirming Monday at 11 with an address and directions.

 

All of my manful meditation training and a healthy natural sense of paranoia of anything that sounded remotely like a job possibility put my expectations into full lockdown mode.  This insured that any excitement I felt stayed as dull as a 20 year-old butter knife.  But as I kept my self-imposed sense of cool, I had a good feeling about where this could go, knowing full well that my good feelings had been wrong before.

 

I broke the news on both developments that evening over dinner. She who remains gainfully employed reassured me that no matter what the outcome, it would be good for me to at least have an interview.  Good?  Was she kidding?  Like an air hose that appears to a drowning man out of nowhere good.  It had been over 18 months since this period of underemployment began.  YES, it would be a good thing to get out of the house.  YES it would be a good thing to work again.  I just smiled and yes deared.

 

Yet on the subject of the C that had taken up housekeeping in my nose, she was stoic, surprisingly so.  Once she got the facts, i.e. that it was not likely to spread and likely not fatal, she closed the subject down quick.  Her reaction was not dismissive but not emotional either, very matter of fact and we’ll get through it together.  If I was looking for a shoulder to cry on, it wasn’t being offered so I dropped the subject, holding it in reserve for later when I would need it.

 

March 2009 was ending and it had been a rainy one.  28 out of 30 days found the skies gray cloudy and moist.  The next weekend featured those two days that it did not.  They were glorious days, temperatures in the low 60’s, skies washed bright azure blue and buds everywhere in full smell and bloom.  Between the beginning of spring and newly found vague hope for a job, optimism began a long slow ascent from the depths of my soul.  It felt weird, somewhat out of place and dangerous, like looking at a woman with her blouse just a bit too undone for comfort but looking nonetheless.

 

On Monday morning at 8am I received confirmation that surgery would be on Wednesday unless the biopsy was negative.  They would let me for sure know on Tuesday.  It all seemed a bit fast but on the other hand, well, why wait?  I knew it was a long shot, but I hoped the biopsy would be negative.

 

Further instructions came by email the next morning. The biopsy showed the type of aggressive cancer they thought it was.  The instructions were not unusual, just show up at 9am and block out the day.  Surgery would be done under local anesthetic, but if I needed a pill to relax, someone would have to drive me home.  If I had question they encouraged me to call.  I couldn’t see any reason to do so.

 

Later that morning I headed out for my ‘interview’. On the drive down 880 to Oakland, where the coffee roasting plant was located, I felt detached.  Happy yet clearly keeping my distance. Prepared for any outcome, expecting only the worst and not allowing unreality to come creeping in.  After getting lost three times, I realized why I couldn’t find the place.  There was no address posted on the door of the factory.  No sign either.  Just a no solicitors warning and the smell of roasting coffee beans that led me to a bare metal front door.  No door bell either.  So I knocked.  Waited.  Knocked again.  A jet black dyed hair woman in her 50’s opened the door.  Yes?  (Yes, what happened to hello?)

 

I peered in. “Hi, my name is Jules and I have an appointment at 11 with John”.

 

At that point John emerged as the door swung open.  He looked to be in his early 40’s with a crew cut, about 5 feet 5.  “You must be Jules,” then he shook my hand vigorously, “Come on in, let’s go to the conference room. Do you want a cup of coffee?”

 

I did. We sat down and launched in.  Our meeting began, as most do when two people who are in the same industry, with an exchange of histories, who you know and what you know followed by coffee philosophy and a chat about quality.  The corporate equivalent of a dog pissing on a tree and then waiting for the other to smell it before he did the same.

 

Our discussion then turned to business. A family operation, he had recently fired his sales manager and was looking for someone to bring clarity to his brand, help reformulate his coffees, create new marketing material, design a sales plan and hit the field with their coffees. Just another typical entrepreneurial position.  Then he dropped a big one. “Oh, and yes, I hope this isn’t a deal breaker, but if you interested in pursuing discussions, you should know that we can’t afford to pay you until the sales turn around because we are losing money and have been funding the business out of our pockets this year.”

 

Nice.

 

There was only one reply for me. “Well would there be a commission?”

 

He smiled.  “Sorry, I should have mentioned that.  Yes, absolutely, and a good one, and we can cover your expenses.”

 

Just like I would have said it if I was on the other side of the desk.  He would have nothing to lose if I said yes.

 

“Would you like to see the building?”

 

“Sure.”  And why not?

 

The tour was short, it looked like no one had been working in the sales managers office for more than a few months.  It had the feel of a crypt in a tropical above ground cemetery. It smelled of dust and disappointment.   Samples from ancient sales efforts littered the desk like shattered sarcophagi. 6 of the 8 fluorescent bulbs in the ceiling fixtures were burnt out and spider webs filled the corners of the room.   No computer to be seen.

 

Nice.

 

Perhaps sensing my reaction John chimed in that they would get the place cleaned up.  Not a bad idea.

 

The rest of the tour was pretty much coffee ABC’s, bags of green coffee (not a whole but enough), a one-bag roaster (seemed like a bit much in terms of capacity) a commercial grinder and a few packaging machines.  What was most disconcerting was the lack of activity. So far I had just met two people.

 

Not want to lose momentum when we finished the walkabout and sat in John’s office I asked if we could have a follow up meeting next week to get into more details. Sure, he replied, and he pulled out a notebook.  How about Wednesday?  Without saying why, I replied that I was busy and how about a week from today?

 

“OK, same time”.

 

And we chatted a bit more about this and that (it became clear that he didn’t care about sports so that was out so we kept the discussion on family) and when that was done we shook hands and I left.

 

Everything about this situation should have been strange, but it wasn’t.  The office was quiet, even dead, but that didn’t bother me.  What I did like about it was that except for the tomb of the now departed sales manager, the plant was clean, the coffee was good and most importantly, John seemed honest.  If I had that this part right that alone would be a very big and refreshing change.  Maybe I would finally get to implement my decision not to work with creeps ever again.

 

As I pulled up to the house half an hour later and killed the engine on the Alfa I just sat for a moment and thought.  What had just happened?  Why should I even think about working for a company that is losing money?  They had no unusual products, no branding, no marketing.  Nothing except a really good cup of coffee.

Then the mediation training kicked in just as it should.  There was nothing I could do until next week.  No point in creating stress in myself over what I could not change until then.  I needed to get ready for surgery the next day not to worry about what might happen in the future.

 

I walked into the living room.  Big foot white dog could be seen leaving the room after barking hello and headed to the back yard.  Why she ran away whenever we came home remained a mystery.  Standing there with the usual junk mail, I decided that this was a good time to open up a calm one and start an MM session.

 

I entered the mancave for the who knows how manyeth time and looked around thinking about all of the time that I had spent there in the past year and a half.  How many changes had occurred in how I viewed life.  But the cave felt different somehow.  I couldn’t put my finger on why, but something was amiss.

 

Sitting down and closing my eyes, I felt as if I was in the presence of an old friend.  My breathing calmed and my mind opened to the clarity of a pure mediation moment.  It came to me easily.  In the simple pattern of repletion, the MM exercises had become familiar and so much easier.  For a long long time I glided along, feeling nothing but the purity of breaths in breaths out.  Thoughts moved easily in and out of my open mind as one merged into another and I floated in a relaxed dreamy state.  I laughed to myself, I never believed that this sort of relaxation could be achieved without the use of a drink or a smoke and now I could turn it on when I wanted and more importantly, feel better afterwards.

 

Eventually my thoughts turned back to today and work. I dug deep into my working life and the experiences that I had enjoyed over the years.  The intellectual challenges as well as the personal ones.  The eye opening experience of extensive international travel contrasted by the day-to-day ugliness of working in what could only described as a ghetto.  I saw faces and places of the past 20 years, people I had not thought about suddenly appeared and just a quickly faded.

 

In the end it came back to one subject.  The bosses, the jeffes, the patrons.  Oh the people I had worked for, what a rogues gallery they had been.  Ex –FBI Jesuit priests, con-artists that were going to rebuild the city of Rome before fleeing with the proceeds, iconoclasts, Pied Pipers and risk takers, I had always been attracted to them and they to me.   I wondered, why I had always managed to work in such unconventional settings?

 

Several answers emerged in the meditation.  I didn’t want to work in a typical business setting.  That I had accomplished.  The other reason was more subtle but the key.  Have you ever taken a personality assessment test and been surprised at how accurate the results were?  Mine had pegged me as a person who can be trusted and one who spans the creative and business sides of an enterprise.   Those traits made my career. They allowed me to work with people who were otherwise impossible even crazy, taking their visions, making them real and building them.  I had worked for them long enough.

 

At the end of the meditation I thought about today’s meeting and I wondered about how I got there.  Was it fate or networking?  Did it matter?  Can we ever truly understand the fates that guide us?  The moment you look up from the wheel and instead of hitting that car ahead of you, you have just enough time to hit the brakes?  Chance?  Fate? Hitting these imponderables I began the process of emerging back into the room.

 

Something was still amiss.  Rising from the cushun I saw and now smelled what had gone wrong.  Big foot white dog had left a big brown runny shit in the corner of the mancave.  No more salmon skin treats for her.

After cleaning up her mess and taking the trash out I hit the kitchen.  And I stood and stood there and then waited some more. Just what is a dinner for these transitional moments?  Nothing came to mind, so I went back to a tried and true favorite.  This was a time for comfort and stability, not one to cut new ground.

 

Yes mom, you were talking to me but I took some liberty with your favorite cure all.

 

Updated chicken soup in a hurry.

 

All soups are about the stock.  You can make it three ways, from scratch, from an aseptic box or from a bouillon cube.  Today was not a scratch day.  I am not a complete fan of the box, so I like to add some water and a bouillon cube, the combination seems to work.

 

In a large cast iron pot sauté an onion until translucent in olive oil.

Add 1 box of chicken stock, 1 cup water and one bouillon cube.  Stir.

Cook for 10 minutes.

Add ½ cup cooked rice and any other vegetables you think might work (they need to be already cooked).

Simmer and pretend you worked on it all day.

Garnish with parsley.

 

Songs for the working men (and women).

 

Big Boss Man, Jimmy Reed

Summertime Blues, Mose Allison or the Who.

Working In A Coal Mine.  Lee Dorsey.

I’ve Got Work To Do.  Isely Brothers.

Julie’s Been Working For the Drug Squad.  The Clash.

Working on Chain Gang.  Sam Cooke.

Mr. President, Have Pity on The Working Man.  Randy Newman.