The past two weeks have been a whirlwind of driving, delivering technical lectures and demos, and managing aggravated customers. Not uncommon in my line of work, but where this haul has been constant, the baseline is sporadic. This gave me lots of time behind a windshield and that means a lot of time to think. What did I learn, you might ask?
I hate hotel rooms.
The trips themselves are always disruptive to the normal flow of life, but I always manage to waste away the time in these rooms either working or doomscrolling.
Currently reading: Hard Rain Falling, by Don Carpenter (US)
I picked this one up after I finished part one of The Brother’s Karamazov as a quick palette cleanser. It is far from that. Hard Rain Falling is all at once existential and tragic. Some of these passages are jarring:
He had always know he wanted freedom… and when he was ready, he escaped. That was all. Then he no longer wanted his freedom, because he had it.
The freedom, our narrator later goes on to tell us, to manuever within the system. A system that will swallow you whole if you exercise your freedom. Because the system knows that, when left with their freedom, humans, most humans, become the worst versions of themselves. “You are free as long as you don’t do these things.”
He had found their limits – they would not, could not, just take him out and shoot him, and they couldn’t let him run around loose, because he would not take any of their shit, so they had to lock him up and feed him… all because they had limits – limits that he did not have.
The anti-hero’s lack of restraint forces the system to exercise restraint.
Wrapped in grit and sordid on purpose, this book wrestles with some complex questions you’ll miss if you’re just reading for reading’s sake. Enjoying it.
Currently listening:
Currently working on: Getting everything done so I can be out of the office for 5 days.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Signal Intent 