I am not certain that those who speak of living in the moment literally mean from the perspective of one’s own timeline. I believe it’s more about enjoying each moment as fully as the human mind, body, and spirit can. Savoring each passing minute or hour and each sensory experience. Because once they pass, they are gone. It’s been spoken about enough that it is almost cliché, and of course, the marketers have beaten it to death.

This is a letter I might have written; to be dramatic, to convince, to try to accept, to try to change an outcome.  Way back in college when the melancholy was overwhelming and I didn’t understand how to deal with the loss of a relationship.  It has its roots in “I Can Let Go”, by Michael McDonald.

2022 is the fictitious year in which 1973’s Soylent Green is set and in 2022 all of the movies of its ilk look exceedingly outdated with marginal acting at best.   But the premises they hinged on are still themes in today’s movies and better special effects can further still drive home the point these movies are trying to make. Plus, they can still be used for thought experiments among friends.

The call out came by email. That was typical. I would get an email from a detective trying to get more evidence and needing video found that would possibly show the crime as it happened or at least something related to it. In this case, the crime had happened outside a local diner. It was a sex assault and apparently the three men who’d done it seemed not to like women very much. Maybe they were weak, maybe they were unsure of who they were when it came to women, or maybe they were just junkyard dogs. Mean and dark inside, deciding that night to take it out on someone…anyone…as long as it was a woman.

The locations from which video evidence has to be collected vary. A lot of the time it is motels, the seedy ones, where people let their guard down to shower, sleep, and eat; things required by the human body there’s no getting away from regardless of where you are in your life and the world. But there are other places, like fine restaurants. There was one restaurant where expensive steaks and lobster are served. A place where there are tables near the windows with spectacular views of the valley below, the skyline of the city in the distance; white table cloths, candles, carpeting, and a rich wood interior. They offered me a drink… Two fingers of whiskey. Neat.

One of the first times I went on a field call, Cortney went with me.  I was still in training for the most part and still needed introduction to the nuances of acquiring video evidence and the places I’d be going to do it.  On this particular occasion we needed a lot of video.  Days of it.  So, the plan was to pull the hard drive from the DVR and bring it back to the lab where I could process it.  The location was a particularly nasty motel along the strip and having the two of us there was better than being alone.   Oftentimes with places like this one, the protocol would be to call for “back”; the man or woman with a uniform and, more importantly, a gun.  Two people is good, but two people and a gun was better when you had meth-heads, heroin addicts, or whatever other…

The bag in my inbox was different than what I was used to seeing.  It wasn’t flat and it wasn’t a small manila envelope with tape around it.  This was a real piece of evidence in a bigger bag with red tape and marker over the tape to indicate tampering should it be opened.  There was a barcode label as well; official, clean, intimidating. As the new guy in the lab, there was still much that I needed to learn.  I knew the basics but I could sense daily that there were things I needed to know but didn’t yet.  It was unsettling but exciting at the same time.  A life-long learner, I never get tired of finding out something new.  Especially when I was interested in the subject from which that information flowed.  However, I felt tentative whenever handling something I wasn’t quite sure I should be handling; no…

This is a bit of a rant, so if you’re one of those who takes things personally, or gets all hot and bothered by things people write, well, maybe just pass on this one. I do a mental exercise every so often.  If  a commercial comes on while I’m watching TV, I try to put myself at a remove from it.   The goal here is to be more an observer than the passive participant that is often how we experience TV.  Doing this allows for evaluating the commercial more objectively and I can tease out the subtle message the marketers are trying to send.  Sometimes I do it for fun, sometimes to tell my kids so they understand that it is not reality, just marketing to separate people from their money. One group who has mastered the ability to manipulate us by preying on the phobias, inadequacies and especially desires…

“It’s ‘The Decade of Discontent’,” I said a few years ago during a conversation about being in your forties.  And it occurred to me this very well could be.   Professionally, people of this vintage are often on the cusp of deciding to chase the money, continue to chase it, stop chasing it or do something completely different in an effort to find that which fulfills them most.  The children are grown, but not all the way so there is still that dependence but independence has crept in so parents aren’t “needed” as much.  The body starts talking back too, asking “what exactly are you doing working me like this and why is coffee not involved?”  And then there’s the big stuff.  Shocking and unexpected news, friends divorcing, cancer and people who have life smoke a curveball they just weren’t expecting or didn’t really deserve. I had a former friend tell…

It happens every year. As we descend into shorter days and longer nights. As the earth’s axis tilts the northern hemisphere away from the sun and the light and radiant heat strike the U.S. at a more oblique angle, things change. The air cools, water condenses and when the temperature gets cold enough, it freezes and floats to the ground robbing the air of moisture and humidity. Dryer means more static electricity. And more static electricity means more getting lit up any time I touch a remotely conductive surface. Albert Einstein once posited that if we evolved properly we would eventually exist as pure energy. Imagine that, all of us just blobs of light or sparkling spheres floating around. The fashionistas would certainly figure out a way for us to change our colors and we wouldn’t need to drive any more, we’d just float to where we needed to go….

You’re watching TV. An attractive couple lies in a bed breathless and obviously happy. They hold each other and whisper sweet nothings. Planting a quick kiss on her lover’s cheek, the woman says she’ll be right back, pulls to comforter to cover her nakedness and slides out of bed. On the way out of the room the comforter slips revealing her bare backside. People are up in arms. Two performers are singing a song with subtle erotic intent. It is a song about a man desiring the woman and promising her they’ll be together before the song finishes. With the final assertion that he’ll have her naked by the end of it, he reaches over and strips away part of her bodice to reveal a bare breast, a star covers her nipple. People lose their freakin’ minds! A man is being chased by the evil doppleganger of a female character….

There are some things in life that you experience young but only fully understand when the wisdom of age has layered enough of it’s dust upon your heart. Over the past decade, there have been more than just a few times which, for me, bear this consideration out. One such instance has to do with newspapers, AT&T, a money changer and a 12-year-old, toe-headed boy who was just not aware enough because he just wasn’t old enough. From the time I sold newspapers at the old AT&T building in downtown Wayne, PA until now in my current self-employment and business ownership, I have only been fired once. And it was from that paper selling job (I wouldn’t call it a paper route because I just stood there and sold papers, no route to follow.) Of the 15-20 positions I have held, I have always kept myself to a standard of…