Coffee Novelist

Don’t write trash, pick it up instead

Coffee Novelist

December 13, 2022

Don’t waste your time writing trash

Don’t waste your time writing that trash you write. Hey, I should know. I’ve written more than my share. It took four seconds to find an example from on old file. See below:

Mid-step brooding was halted for an instant though as Altonstreet realized that Philpatrick would have already been seated, sipping his coffee significantly.

Trash clipart Vector Art Stock Images | Depositphotos

One person’s trash is NOT another person’s treasure

I’m not going there with this post. What I am saying is that it may be a way better use of your time to pick up trash rather than write it. David Sedaris does it, though in the link below, it says he does his “thinking” when he’s doing it. But, he is writing.

I know this because I have seen it work over and over and over. I consciously step away from the keyboard to allow my subconscious mind to take over my writing. I then take my five senses and conscious, at the keyboard “writing” mind, and go do the dishes, feed the cat, grab more coffee. When I sit back down, boom, I’m writing. Or more accurately, filling in the blank page, acting as a conduit between minds, between the cluttered day to day world and the limitless subconscious mind.

It doesn’t have to be trash

I seen it work. I first saw this work on long drives. I was given the names of long forgotten baristas from a Starbucks I worked at 30 years ago. I would write early the morning of my drive and about 50 miles in, conscious mind and 5 senses engaged in the task of driving, the name I needed popped into my head. I wasn’t picking up trash, but all our minds work alike.

Since then, I “give it to my subconscious mind” instead of writing trash. Of course I’m not talking about line editing or proofreading here. It is more the realization that what you need is ALWAYS THERE. I believe that with patience, time and an intentional distraction, such a driving, taking shower, mowing the lawn, that the answers will be there.

For further evidence, I attached this list of the greatest books of all time. I can list the utilized distraction that helped make the book a great one:

Moby Dick – Melville stared at waves on the Pacific Ocean for months

War and Peace –Tolstoy watched snow fall and ice crack

Don Quixote – Cervantes rode a donkey around the arid plateau that is La Mancha

100 Years of Solitude – You think that he could have written a longer book

The trash picking up in the interview below is in the latter part. But the whole interview is a great look a writer, who still has doubts about his work, even after all his success.

David Sedaris on finding a story anywhere and everywhere – 60 Minutes – CBS News

The post is part serious, part funny. I hope you can tell which is which.

National Espresso Day

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November 23, 2022

Have an espresso today.

Today is National Espresso Day. I have a doppio everyday. If you don’t know what a doppio is, then its fair to say you won’t know what an espresso is. If you read the link above then you will get a good idea of what the drink is.

The most relevant point in the article for today is that espresso, in the form we celebrate today is a product of a process of brewing. The water in your home brewer or any drip format, is contacted with the grounds slowly and under no pressure. Well, there is always a little when you need that first cup. Joking aside, the water goes around the grounds on it’s way to the pot or decanter.

What is espresso ?

In creating espresso, the water is under true psi pressure and is forced through the coffee grounds. That is the difference between a cup of drip coffee and an espresso.

Back to my everyday doppio, which means two, or double. I have one everyone morning created on an old Krups espresso machine.

I sit with my doppio and make a few journal entries as a way of waking up the nerves and mind. In that five or ten minute span, I note the time of morning and quality of my doppio. Here are just a few entries.

Tuesday July 5 5:45 a.m. Strong ass doppio.
Tuesday August 2 4:43 a.m. Slightly better doppio
Friday September 9 6:16 a.m. Great doppio-rich, creamy, full flavored, damn good
Wednesday November 2 5:30 a.m. Fab doppio
Wednesday November 23 5:17 a.m. Good ass doppio

This is an espresso. There is no drink called expresso.

Don’t try this at home. I was a barista for many years. One can’t just fall out of bed and make sweet, full bodied espresso topped with golden crema. I’m the exception.

If you look around your local coffee house you may see an Espresso Roast, or be asked do want that ground for espresso? And any bearded roast master worth his out of season knit toboggan will have his own espresso blend. Confusing?

Not to worry. Just know that today is for the drink espresso. It will be served in a small cup, which should be warm, with a saucer. Prepared properly it will should fully flavored with a sweet finish. I would tell you what to expect to pay but have no idea since as you now know, I always make mine at home. Good luck!

The article in the link says espresso last an hour. It is best consumed moments after it is served. Why didn’t they just ask me?

Chicken fried pancakes

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October 6, 2022

Image result for cartoon chicken

I’m at the supermarket standing still and slack jawed in aisle 8. I’m staring at the shopping list that I have on a small clipboard clutched in my right hand. I started comprising this very list on Thursday night in preparation for the ritual Saturday morning shopping trip.

Thursday evening while in front of the TV, I’ll scan the weekly flyer for items to add to this list. If there were viable, applicable coupons they were paper clipped to the list. Each day is assigned a dinner, except Friday. No need to write in pizza. Some days, Saturday and Sunday the dinners would be drawn from a magazine recipe or cookbook. I add ingredients for those days to the lengthening list. Or, these days, take a photo of the recipe.

At one time, not so long ago, I was feeding four young adults from items on this detailed and carefully thought out grocery list. I took the responsibility of feeding them all good dinners very seriously. The list reflected that. The fact that money was tight was baked into the choices on the list.

Image result for cartoon pancake stack

In those years, I would hear, starting about Tuesday, “Dad, can you get pop tarts, Kleenex , pretzels, eggs etc.” The amount of possibilities was more a problem of physics than pencil and paper. I replied, “I’ll put it on the list”. Like any manuscript, the Kroger list wwas better after some editing.

Even today, with only my mouth to feed, I prepare a shorter version of the list. I still plan dinner for every day of the week, beginning the list Thursday night and hold the list sacred to my weekly life, my world view.

With all that said, one would think that I would take the time and intention to make every item written on the list easily read and legible. Then why the hell was I standing in the supermarket aisle 8 last Saturday morning looking for chicken fried pancakes?

I swear that is what I had written. It wasn’t. It couldn’t be. But that is what I wrote didn’t I? I wanted to go back in time and blame the kids. “Dad, could you put chicken fried pancakes on the list?” Sure, right next to vine ripened sponges.

But that excuse was not valid anymore. It was me. This was not the first time I had been unable to read something I had written on the sacred list. I have a long history of doing it. Why? It makes no sense to be in such a hurry to scribble something down when there was no time pressing, no need to hurry. Especially when you would need to, have to, must be able to read it later.

It is just amazing what we tell ourselves. Somewhere along the line, I must had told myself I needed to get something down on the list quickly. Or that I’ll know what it means later. I could forgive myself if I needed chicken fried pancakes when the list had items for 5 people. But this was a short list, made only for and by me.

To add to my shame I experienced in aisle 8, I have recently set an intention to write more legibly. I have a few bad habits I try to work on. Once recognized, I note them in my journal, set an intention to correct them and note my progress, if any.

This month’s goals are to write legibly, don’t overexplain yourself, and don’t look for things you’ve misplaced around the house. These are all easy ways to observe my mind in action. This post, however, is about the bad habits formed by trying to do something quickly and without intention, especially as I write . I make the same typos over and over, and over again. hte, jsut, and flet are some I almost always type too quickly. There are more. Whether it the Kroger list or a journal entry or a novel, the time spent recovering from trying to make a short cut while writing ends up, almost always, not being worth it.

I will never be able to pinpoint the time I decided it was beneficial to write a word or two so quickly that I would never be able to read it later. Of course, that is not what I was thinking at the time. I was thinking that I was in fact, saving some time. But the time passed anyway.

I have learned the hard way over the years that all thoughts are equal. One thought is not bigger than the other. The consequences that result from one thought can range from nearly meaningless to disastrous.

It was not a disaster to be temporarily blocking aisle 8 on Saturday morning. I stood there and for a fleeting moment actually hoped, like a child who desperately wanted to believe in Santa, that I would find a box chicken fried pancake mix and vindicate myself. Not to be.

In my own defense, chicken fried pancakes might be good.

I will keep trying to work on the handwriting as well as my other bad habits. Everything takes work. So, I am about ready to head to the store now after finishing this draft. At the very least, I will check the list to see that I can read every item before I leave.

Last thing. As I revised this post, I become curious about chicken fried pancakes. Found this if you are too.

Fried Pancakes (thestayathomechef.com)

Oregon Street coffee house

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October 1, 2022

The story of a coffee house

Tripio opens with a prologue, which was the suggestion of my editor. He felt the book needed something to grab the reader right away. My immediate reactionary, immature and arrogant thought was that Tripio is great and that its greatness demands patience! Those thoughts did not travel from my mind to my mouth and I mumbled a more agreeable and conciliatory response to my editor.

As it happened, just before that conversation I had been looking through my notes and old journals for the want ad I responded to for the job at Starbucks. I did not find it but knew I now wanted to use the original want ad for the prologue.

The prologue finds Jay working at the Oregon Street Coffee house in Dayton, Ohio. That coffee house was situated in the middle of a slowly gentrifying section of downtown Dayton called the Oregon District. The Oregon Street Coffee house had neighbors that were becoming upscale bars and restaurants.

Image result for a coffee trier used to roast coffee

A trier

It stayed opened for a while

The neighborhood could be described as up and coming, but that could not be said for a good deal of Oregon Street’s regulars. Oregon Street opened its doors at nine in the morning. The regulars would take their stools at the bar and spend hours there sipping their coffee, smoking cigarettes, and discussing their plans for the afternoon or evening. Those regulars were indeed sitting at a bar, because the Oregon Street coffee house was a real bar for many years before becoming a coffee house.

But in Jay’s time the drink they served there was warm and brown coffee supplied by Dayton’s one and only coffee roaster. The regulars and the history of the place were only a couple factors contributing to the character and unique vibe Jay found while employed at the Oregon Street coffee house. The coffee was not what Jay liked however. Later in Tripio Jay admits that “the Cosmodemonic does the coffee right’, after he tries a cup of coffee at a coffee house in Chicago that reminds him of Oregon Street’s brew.

Stayed opened

The visits Jay takes to his “coffee house under the tracks” show that Jay is homesick for his artsy coffee house in Dayton. At the same time, he acknowledges that his new employer has better coffee. Tripio is set in 1992 but Jay’s choice in where he finds his coffee fix has been repeated millions and millions of times by millions and millions of people. In the novel, Jay is simply going about his life making day to day decisions.

He wasn’t choosing sides in any debate over whether his employer was responsible for the closing of coffee house like Oregon Street. That is the subject for books to come. Jay is about to face life changing circumstances which will make him decide bigger things than where to get his coffee: his employer is growing and is offering opportunities, he is trying to sell his first novel and his new lover is expecting a baby.

It closed a long time ago

By the way, if you are ever in Dayton, don’t bother looking for the Oregon Street Coffee House, it closed a long time ago.

But is open again in my novel in progress

This is repost from back a couple years. Maybe this post was the first step in placing my next coffee novel in a coffee house called the Trier, clearly based on my time at the Oregon Street Coffee house. Stay plugged in for more on The Trier.

Happy International Coffee Day 2022

Who would read a Starbucks novel?

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September 29, 2022

“Who would read a novel Starbucks novel?” I asked the facilitator of my “Author Development” class. Her answer would be important to me. After all, I had just written one. She looked my way and made eye contact for a moment. She then looked out above my head towards the wall behind me in order to give herself a second to think.

Up until then, I have been getting a bunch of good info and intel in this class. Just to clarify a bit, this wasn’t a class on developing oneself as an actual writer. This class was directed towards creating a brand and finding an audience for one’s work. The facilitator, Darice of www.thepowercollective.net has been successful in building her own brand and business based upon a book she released some years ago. Granted, her title was non-fiction and Tripio is a work of fiction, set at a Starbucks in Chicago in the summer of 1992. However, the book market globally is worth $145 billion dollars. I took this three class course with that in mind, hoping I could get something from her wisdom. And maybe even some of that global book market money.

I discovered during the first two classes that there are a lot of people out there who want to help get your book published. A quick click or two reveals zillions of podcasts, books on selling books, websites, seminars, and blogs offering a dizzying variety of solutions on how to get your book placed in the right genre, at the right time, in the right place at the right price with the right cover.

Alas, I wrote Tripio with none of that in mind. I was also discovering that it would have been wiser to find a genre, a category, a searchable title, a clickable cover, a bannered headline for that cover and lots more before taking a book to market. My bad. It was even best to do all this before even writing said book. Double my bad. I felt like I had a lot of catching up to do.

COFFEE DRINKERS WOULD

Fortunately for me, Darice had spent considerable time and trouble navigating this 145 billion dollar ocean so I was all ears awaiting her response to my question. She returned her gaze from the wall to look me in the eyes to answer “Coffee drinkers.”

Eureka! Starbucks is a coffee company isn’t it? I had forgotten that even in my own book, the protagonist, Jay, responds to the want ad from Starbucks because.” About the only real qualification I have is that I’m a coffee lover.” Over the duration of these three weeks, I was beginning to feel that it would have been easier to write the novel everyone else was telling me I should be writing. I had the sinking feeling that I had written a book to write it, not to sell it. Triple, or better yet, Tripio- my bad. Darice’s response was a lifeline thrown to me, treading water in a vast ocean of advice, websites and SEO. I straightened my spine. A smile emerged on my face. The sack of goo left my gut and replied, ‘Thanks!”

In Tripio Jay does get the job at Starbucks partly because he loves coffee. I started Tripio partly because I love to write. Something worth reading must have come out of that combination, right?

As I mentioned earlier, this was not a class on developing oneself as a writer. Darice knew her brand building. I did get lots out of the classes. I did things backward but I took that to be good news. Because I have since come to believe that once a writer starts chasing all this wonderful advice and data, before sitting down to write their novel, that it is too easy to lost on the $145 Billion dollar ocean. Darice’s answer was the life jacket I had been looking for even if I hadn’t know I was asking for it.

This link may help you find a free cup of coffee today-https://www.today.com/food/free-coffee-national-coffee-day-2023-t264448

Be where your coffee is

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September 29, 2022

“Those who manage to be where their coffee is will grow, stretch and emerge stronger, smarter and more prepared as we find peace and gratitude in the pause after the sip”

This expert is from the above book and has been modified by me.

This morning, I am where my coffee is

I am thinking, between sips, about “what be where your feet are” means to me. It took a minute or two and more than two sips of coffee. Then it struck me. It means to me that we should live each and every moment with thoughtful intention, taking that moment for what it is while accepting that the time is going to pass anyway. I find it easy to do this on my front porch, on my laptop, so early in the morning that it is still dark and the crickets and gentle drops of rain are the only sounds. In the interest of transparency, I am in fact on my second up of coffee.” God help me, I do love it so’ George C. Scott as Patton.

But he was talking about war, I am referring to coffee. The energized calm it brings to my mind is, to me, priceless. It engenders a confidence in my being and by extension my writing. The rituals I cultivate and maintain based on when and where I have my coffee are sacred pillars of my daily routine. My hierarchy of values would crumble without coffee. Bring all of life’s distractions and troubles to me here and now. I got this.

Well, since life doesn’t work that way, we have to prepare to take part in it without getting overwhelmed, frustrated, depressed, anxious. I took and modified the above expert from the book, Be Where Your Feet Are by Scott M O’Neil. I haven’t read it, but if I plug it on my blog then I feel I bit better about altering the except. It’s National Coffee Day, 2021 today so I feel like it’s appropriate. Plus, we will all take something unique from the book, when reading it. So, why wait? I am already feeling confident, as I said. Therefore I am going to cheat and give you my takeaway with the coffee angle.

Leaving my coffee behind?

Be where your coffee is and you will not longer waste time looking for things you have lost. Sound too good to be true? Well, it’s not. I’ve have had lots of practice. What this modified wisdom means is that if we remain intentional with every thought, every moment, every cup of coffee we will never lose or misplace things of value to us. Impossible you say? Hell yes it is. Because, we cant’s stay on our pre-dawn porches sipping coffee an listening to it drizzle for the rest of our lives. But when we lose something, like a ball cap or pair of glasses, we can mentally remain or return there. We can return to the mentally calm yet energized place and wait for the glasses or ball cap to come back to us. Believe me, they will. I know because for me they just did. But I knew they would- and that is the secret. Intrinsic and internally generated thoughts are what are best observed and obeyed. Nothing is external. Or, more accurately, I’ll modify that also to nothing of truly gives us return on its value is external.

The losing of

On the very same day about three weeks ago, I realized I had “lost” my fourth pair of glasses and my Ohio State Buckeyes baseball hat. These items are useful to me. I have four spots in and around my house where I need and keep my glasses. The ball hat I use to keep the sun out of my eyes when I drive. I discovered that both were gone as I went about my Saturday machinations. For most of my adult life, I thought anger, frustration and withering self-criticism were the answers here. Losing something meant getting pissed and wasting a lot of time looking of it. Not any longer. I have spent the last several years practicing the understanding that misplacing something is an act of a distracted, unintentional mind.

Therefore, the resulting action is to not to look for the glasses or cap. But to to wait for them to come back to you when you need them to. That is, after you have relearned the lesson that in that moment when you misplaced them your mind was distracted by the external. It was was not in nor on that moment. Your mind was not on sitting calmly on your porch taking in the calm pre-dawn drizzle. Your mind, meaning you, was NOT where your coffee was.

The finding of

Last Saturday I was in Bloomington, IN taking a few things to my son who attends IU. I was taking a few thing out of the hatchback of my car. There was my Buckeye hat. The following day, I was at my writing table in the living room. I got up to heed the call of nature and when I returned to said table there seemed to be one more pair of glasses there than before. I stood at the table for a moment as I counted the pairs of glasses on the table among the books and old journals. Two. I looked on my spot in the house where I pay my bills and the usual pair was there. Lastly, I stepped quickly to this spot on the porch and saw pair number four. How the hell?

Always try to be where your coffee is

Both the hat and the glasses had found me. I had not wasted time looking for them. I had understood that I had been distracted and living a moment without intention when I misplaced them. That is the real value here, not the found external objects. Useful? Yes? Replaceable? Yes. The time I would have spent looking for them replaceable? Hell no! My feet were not where my coffee was. This is not the first example of me waiting for something I had lost to return to me, just the latest. We can not always be sitting calmly in the predawn drizzle with a nice Saturday morning cup of coffee in our hands. But with a lot of practice, intention and internal focus we can keep that mind moment with us, not to mention our glasses and favorite ball cap. Next time you misplace something, take a breath, find your mental coffee cup and do NOT look for it. It will be there ready and waiting-when you are.

Here’s a link to free coffee-https://www.today.com/food/free-coffee-national-coffee-day-2023-t264448

A quote on a quilt

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September 20, 2022

Kurt Vonnegut’s quote will warm the mind and body.

A few days ago I visited the Kurt Vonnegut Museum in my hometown of Indianapolis. I am not from here, Kurt Vonnegut was. I had never been there as close as I now live to it. And it required out of town visitors interested in seeing the museum to get me there.

A few weeks ago I published a post that I called ” Writing without a hook”

The quote on the quilt from Kurt Vonnegut expresses briefly, clearly and beautifully what I tried to say in my less brief, clear and beautiful post. Hey, I ain’t apologizing. No one’s going to my museum. But here’s the quote on the quilt in case you can’t make it to the museum.

writing without a hook

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August 30, 2022

A Practical Guide to Buddhist Meditation

Writing a book without a hook

I have always viewed my writing as a vital part of my self-care practice. The three most important, ongoing parts are my yoga and exercise practice, my mediation practice and my writing practice. I have found that the three working together can create a calm, intentional person who is grateful for all that he has been given. Over the years though, my writing practice and my meditation practice have become more alike.

No, I do not write while sitting in diamond throne position. I mean that the sense of energized calm, and mental clarity I experience after both is remarkably similar. Maybe that energized calm has always been there. Or maybe the experiencing of that state of mind, is the reward of the practices themselves.

I wonder if the fish are biting?

I recently found a book on meditation that views meditation in a way similar to how I view writing/meditation practice and explains and clarifies my own thoughts back to me.

In the book, A Practical Guide to Buddhist Meditation, the author tells the story of a Zen master who fished without a hook. It struck me then and there that that is what I do when I write! I go fishing without a hook.

You need one to open your book, but not to write it.

There is no goal in sight, nothing to catch, no best seller, no Oprah book club to cap it all off. That is finite, closed, heading the wrong direction. I see it as a place where you will find a hooked fish on the shore, gasping and dying.

Whereas the journey inward is infinite, never ending, renewed every day with every breath. In the book the author relates that we can find “a sense of expansion, a sense of opening up, rather than narrowing down’ of the mind as we deepen our meditations.” He is describing mediation here, but that is how I feel when I write. Yes, I am writing a book with pages and chapters and characters. That is what my eyes, fingers and five senses are doing when I flip open my laptop- cast my fishing line that has no hook.

As I write and rewrite, I head into my mind, not into the finite laptop screen. That is just where I leave the mile markers on the journey. Where the line without the hook hits the water is where the real writing is, the part where my mind expands, moves in the water, unbothered by the fish.

Does that makes sense? I’m not saying my books are stream of consciousness or experimental in the way that William S. Burroughs cut-up method was. I am not saying this is even a viable method or technique for writing a book as such. I’m talking something downstream from that (staying with fishing metaphors). This is more about creating a mind that can sustain a projects like writing a novel.

I have slept a few times since writing this post, as I always do. That allowed me the distance to see the post from a different viewpoint. I read it as saying that the end product, the actual book is not important to me.

But It is. I want the book (insert current project here) itself to be well written, fun to read and I hope it sells a bit. This is just putting it all in context. It’s why I like blogging, there is time and space to do that.

I would rather sit peacefully on the banks of a quiet lake at dawn, than spend the morning casting, reeling, baiting the hook, moving from spot to spot, and ultimately allowing a fish to decide whether I used my time wisely or not.

It also helps to simplify my life to view writing as a meditation almost entirely. I still practice meditation separately of course. In fact, I just bought a meditation cushion. I’m getting a little old to sit on the diamond throne without one.

And, of course, I will write. I’m writing now. But the Practical Guide to Buddhist Meditation has clarified my perspective and helped me view writing and meditation as a more unified practice. Now, I have one less thing to do in this world, which is always good. Still cant’ remember when I last had the time to go fishing though, with or without a hook.

DISCLAIMER ALERT- Something fishy about this post? No. This post has nothing to do with my YA fish story novella, Ironjaws, which is still due out by year’s end.

10 words I liked

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August 3, 2022

More than ten words on Dan Yack

I found these words in a book entitled Dan Yack, by Blaise Cendrars. The novel was published in 1927 and has been around the house for years. It is 144 pages and I picked it up for it’s length. I wanted a quick read over the weekend.

It was. I was quickly pulled into Dan Yack’s world. And some of that was accomplished via the words on the list below. I hope you like them.

As for the book itself, it would be dismissed by a lot folks today as it is not politically correct. Not even close. While there may be something to that, I found that the book was written without affectation or even a thought of having to defend it to anyone. Cendrars put something into every word in the novel and it is still there 100 years later. The world he builds is not one that is believable but he believes in every bit of it. That is all I, for one, am going to ask of any author.

The ten words

dottle – the plug of half smoked tobacco at the bottom of a pipe
flense – the strip the blubber or skin from a whale
ventricose – swollen, especially on one side
gimbal – a contrivance consisting of a base that allows something to tilt freely, such as a ship’s compass
arrack – distilled spirits from fermented palm sap
friable – easily crumbled or reduced to powder
scurf – the scales or small shreds of skin that are continually exfoliated from the skin
heteroclite – irregular or abnormal
automata – plural of automaton
matutinal – pertaining to or occurring early in the morning

“This novel is not a work of intelligence, or even of the sensibilities, but one of brute instinct”- B.C from the dedication

Active cruelty

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July 6, 2022

I smiled, comparing myself with other men, comparing my active goodwill with the lazy cruelty of their neglect…

The excerpt above comes from “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” I read the book several years ago. For the record, I liked it as more detective, who done it book, as opposed to a scary movie. Of course, books are books and movies are movies. I feel that comparing books to movies is a waste of time. It is like comparing lunch to dinner.

That expert made its way back to me several times recently in way that classic fiction will do. But you have to be paying attention. I was, but took my time in writing about it. In the end, I had to because it would not leave me alone. And because I was not happy with what it was trying to tell me.

The excerpt is so powerful, especially the last five words. They may capture so simply why so many people suffer in this world and have way before 1886 when Hyde was published. And continue to suffer today.

Someone called the police after seeing the "Homeless Jesus" statue outside a Cleveland-area church. Father Alex Martin hopes the statue will inspire people to talk about the issue.

I know and care deeply for someone who works with and for unhoused human beings. I have learned a good deal about the unhoused human beings when she and talk over the phone. They are called clients by the organization she works for. It surprised me to learn, though I don’t know why, that a great deal of the unhoused population suffers from mental illness.

I had just come across the above quote a few days before I got a call from my close friend who works with the unhoused. She was quite upset. I am close enough to this person that when I hear in her voice that she is hurting, it affects me. Over the course of our call, she told me that the day before, while not at work, she had witnessed something upsetting. That was what I could hear in her voice. As she told me what she had seen, she began to cry. That, in turn, upset me.

The day before, she had seen her client from across the street. The client is prone to talk loud to herself when at the shelter where my friend works. She also asks for pieces of paper and will spend hours scribbling things of them. The client in an older woman who no one knows much about. My friend has patiently tried to find out from the scribbling and talking anything she can about this older woman. There is not much to go on. No family. No way for sure to even identity who she is.

The reason my friend was so upset was that the day before she had seen her client being filmed with a camera phone by several young men who were laughing and pointing at her. I immediately though of the above quote. But with a small change. With device in hand, we can now practice the active cruelty of neglect.

While that is something to consider, it is not where this post ends.

As my dear friend gave the details of this display of active cruelty, my blood began to boil. My friend was hurting. In turn I was hurting. I then wanted to go get revenge on the perpetrators of the active cruelty. I would seek them out, find them and smash their phones. Or worse, I would get revenge, even if it meant inflicting physical pain on them.

I didn’t though. My friend and I talked a bit more that day and I stayed where I was.

As I said, it has been a while since this happened. I could leave the post now and still feel reasonably good about myself. The intention for writing this would be partly fulfilled in that it would possibly do a bit of good in world.

But I think the real lesson for me is in the rest of the except-

“At the very moment of that vain-glorious thought, a qualm came over me, a horrid nausea and the most dreadful shuddering…I looked down…I was once more Edward Hyde.”

That second part of the expert is what caused the delay in posting about the incident. It turned the whole thing back onto me. What good would another Hyde do in this world? I do accept some solace for recognizing the Hyde in me. It is not easy.

I would much rather turn the camera around and film myself, laugh, and walk away, forgetting and ignoring what I don’t like about myself. Which is what the guys were really doing that day. Sadly, that act of active cruelty is one they most likely will never chose to do anything about.

The 1941 movie version stars Spencer Tracy.