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Back in the days when I worked as a barista, I used to loathe the word “calibration.”

“Calibration” meant something had gone very, very wrong with our espresso machine.

Our shots would pull too long or too short, the grind would be too fine or too coarse, the water pressure would be too weak or too strong… essentially, something somewhere would be just intangibly (and annoyingly) “off.”

Then the “tech” would arrive to fix it an hour later — an hour of explaining to an endless lineup of caffeine-crazed people that, no, I’m sorry, no lattes or mochas, we’re… “down.”

And apparently? There was no worse down to be. My normally polite customers would turn into petulant children when denied their five-dollar drinks.

And the “tech”? He would spend an hour tightening screws, only to announce that he didn’t know what was wrong. Then he’d head out on another call, promising that he’d be back in a couple of hours to work on it again.

This is how I learned to fix espresso machines.

Desperation.

And soon, there was no force majeure of calibration that I could not fix. I learned to predict the impact of a particularly humid day or long rush of drinks on our temperamental La Marzocco, and head it off with a rinse of the groups or a draining or a long pour (or perhaps an ancient Celtic chant or cheap hockey check.)

Hell, I don’t even remember what worked.

But I knew then. Because no trick of mis-calibration was going to rob me of my sanity. Especially not at the hands of an unnaturally-tanned soccer mom who’d apparently been denied nothing in life… except her Caramel Macchiato.

But it’s hard to fix things when you don’t know what’s wrong.

When your calibration is off, and you can’t figure out quite why.

That’s really the biggest thing I learned — that mystery was the great enemy of solution. If you could solve the mystery, your life would be rolling in the doppios once more.

If you couldn’t, you’d have no choice but to put your green apron over your head and run for cover.

I think my calibration is off right now. And though I know why to some degree — to a large degree, really — all the things I’ve done to try and fix it have fallen flat. I have a lineup of my normal emotions and experiences waiting to be felt and lived out, and yet I have to keep saying to all of them…

“You know? Not today. Things are just a little off. But I’m working on it.”

I wish I could work it out quickly, but at the end of the day, I’m well aware that I’m far more of a challenge than even the most fractious espresso apparatus.

These days, I don’t know what will knock me off course. It could be hormones or illness or sadness or grieving or frustration… or the absence of any feeling at all.

Apathy. That’s a serious, serious mis-calibration for me.

I’m never one to feel nothing.

But sometimes, right now, that’s about all I have going on. It’s probably a defense mechanism, but that doesn’t feel like much of an excuse. It’s like refusing to look in a mirror because you don’t like what you see; how you look won’t change because you refuse to face yourself, but at least you don’t have to deal with it right then.

And it seems like not dealing is how I’m dealing.

I don’t like being unsettled.

I don’t like being unnerved.

I don’t like feeling weak.

I don’t like complaining.

I don’t like being sad.

I don’t like not knowing when things will change.

And I hate that I keep overreacting to things, I hate that I keep making stupid mistakes that I can’t explain or justify at work and at home, I hate that I keep not living up to my expectations and my potential, and especially — especially! — I hate that I keep losing track of how I’m supposed to feel… how I would normally deal with the simplest things.

I miss the days when the solution was a quick one, and I could get the lineup of drinks back underway in a matter of minutes.

Because it’s been months now. And I’m afraid that I’ll go so long like this that I won’t even remember normal anymore.

Granted, normal IS different now.

But calibration can’t elude me forever.

Because I wouldn’t even know what “tech” to call to get me out of this mess.

From an email at work floating amongst our little crop of folks, the worst video game title ever:

As Rob — at the next cube over — says:

“Hey, let’s go play video games at my house! I have Sticky Balls!”

• were a pastry, would you rather be filled with chocolate or creme?
• were a soda, would you contain caffeine?
• were a day, would the sun be shining?
• were a song, would it be something you could dance to?
• were a holiday, would it be one with ghosts or mistletoe?
• were a fruit, would you have a peel?
• were an illness, would there be a cure?

Yesterday was a DAY.

Believe you me.

I was so pathetic that I drew a happy emoticon on a yellow balloon and taped it to my desk so that SOMEONE would be smiling at me. You know you’re not doing too hot when you make the effort to create new friends with a black Sharpie.

I don’t think there was a single hour yesterday where I didn’t want to either throw up or throw up my hands in exasperation (or both, which — while challenging — might have been rather cleansing.)

I had crazy hormones making my body freak out. I had a migraine from the time I woke up. My coffee tasted bad. Everything I ate seemed stale. My clothes felt too big and too goofy. I bumped into walls and door frames. I crashed my computer four times. I couldn’t write anything useful to save my life. Even my cute bronze shoes gave me a hell of a blister and the zipper on my jeans broke.

And I was melancholic in the EXTREME. Which is not really like me. I’m generally more of a happy emoticon balloon. But I should probably apologize to a few people for some random texts, emails, phone calls, and squidgy faces I made during the course of the day.

(Sorry about those. I’m not actually going to kill anyone or toss myself off the balcony or throw my tea at the bus driver or eat my weight in SweetTarts, don’t worry.)

Poor Catherine even got a rant when she got home. Not directed at her, of course — we don’t fight about anything but Nancy Grace and Oprah — but MAN. I had a head of steam going.

I was going to delete my indulgent little post about wanting to delete all my entries when I woke up this morning and felt like a whiny brat, but I’m leaving it there to remind myself not to TAKE EVERYTHING SO BLOODY SERIOUSLY (although bleeding? I will continue to take that seriously.)

And I’m doing better today. My health stuff is still off-track, and I can feel my body is quite out of sorts, but my heart is back in the game and I know I can handle life again. These months have been a rough adjustment to a new way of being and a new future, but I really don’t want to face it with anything but hope and optimism and humour.

So, stay tuned.

I’m back.

It could fix itself in a minute, or it could take a week.

But I’ve officially turned into a complete bananacake. With chocolate chips.

I can’t write anything that doesn’t make me want to beat myself over the head with my own domain.

How do YOU actually manage to post anything without going back to obliterate it ten minutes later?

Despair is a near-silent thing.

It may lurk behind the noisy clatter of anger or the white-hot hum of rage or even the muted moans of grief, but it makes no sound of its own.

Despair is where hope does not go, where air and colour and light drain away, where crying seems futile because no one hears or sees or cares.

Despair is everywhere you look on any given day, but no one discusses it, because what would be the point? How do you describe what it means to be empty, when you don’t even have words?

I used to believe that anger was the catalyst behind much of the conflict in our world, but my opinion is beginning to shift. Anger certainly can and does breed discord, but it can also lead us toward positive action. Anger based on malevolence is destructive, but anger based on the right kind of indignation can save lives.

This used to cause me no end of confusion. How could any emotion go in such completely different directions under the same moniker? I held as much disdain for people with the right kind of furious conviction as I did for bullies and bastards, because I just couldn’t fathom how the two sides of the coin would manage to stay seperate forever.

Well, they can. The difference, however, is that righteous anger can only come from a place of love and justice, whereas virulent anger comes from fury and pain.

Both kinds of anger can be incredibly motivating.

But despair?

Despair is paralysis.

Not literally, of course. You can live a whole life with despair. You can work your job, raise your family, conduct your relationships, and grow to a ripe old age… it won’t stop you from living. It just fades and muddies the colour of life into an inexplicable sort of gray and makes it seem like you control nothing and have nothing and can reach for nothing and can hope for nothing.

And then it gives birth to conflict.

Maybe that seems ironic. It is, really. How could emptiness breed anything but emptiness?

But since nature abhors a vacuum, it must be filled with something. And thus we become empty and full all at once, in a hideously contradictory sort of way.

Despair lives well with anger. Despair lives well with hate. Despair lives well with sadness. Despair lives well with jealousy. Despair lives well with almost anything negative, because then all it has to do is provide the end of the rope. You know the rope — the thing that people get to the end of?

I’ve heard that phrase more times than I can count. “I just got to the end of my rope.”

People offer that rope end as the justification for everything from substance abuse to child abuse to petty crime to cold-blooded murder. And that’s what despair does. It makes you think that good is impossible. It makes you believe that your worst choices are inevitable. It numbs you to the consquences. It informs your conscience that you have absolutely nothing to lose.

And from nations right on down to neighbours, I believe that this is our enemy and our disease. Not anger, not desperation, not hate — though they bear their own casualties — but stone-cold despair.

You can see it in the faces of children beaten and forced to become murderers, from the child militia of Nepal to the youngest members of the Klu Klux Klan. You can see it in the bruised eyes of men in prison who went from bearing wounds to creating them, from tripping over bottles to draining them dry. You can see it in the grainy security-camera footage of suicide bombers, wide-eyed and faithful and already gone. You can see it in the bowed heads of the prisoners of war whose clothing is still stained with the blood of their foes. You can see it in the faces of mothers who are forced to mutilate their daughters according to traditions that victimized them first. You can see it in the hunger-sharpened cheekbones of Sudanese refugees, denied homes, food, dignity, and in the end, their lives. You could see it in the faces of Katrina victims, lined up in front of the SuperDome, being called poor and ignorant and violent by people who had the luxury of watching it happen on television.

Really, just turn on the news. Or go downtown. Or walk into a school. Or a mall.

It’s everywhere. People live and die by their despair on a daily basis.

And every time we turn our back on those faces, we allow it to root more deeply into our society. Every time we assume there is no solution, no effort big enough, we abandon more lives to the shadowy chasm. Every time we choose to let our fear define what we can give or do, we take a little of that despair into our own lives.

This is where I believe the most true, active, effective activism finds genesis: we have to see what is empty in people before we can recognize how to best care for them. We have to see the source of their emptiness. And we have to see what they have attempted to fill that space with themselves, no matter how ugly those contents might be.

Only then you can begin to nourish those spaces, instead of letting them lie fallow.

Or, of course, you can choose not to act, and grow a little more empty yourself.

I don’t know what will work in every circumstance. All I know is that we have to start trying to heal the roots of despair, rather than just playing cleanup with the aftermath.

Because evil flourishes when good people do nothing — and when people decide that there is nothing good they can do.

1. I love receiving emails a little more than I should, but I don’t send enough of them.
2. I should think before I speak about 100% more of the time.
3. I’m trying to make the worst case scenario unwelcome in my thoughts.
4. Grace is a tough, tough thing to maintain over time. About as difficult as respect.
5. Beauty is never fleeting in memory.
6. Falling in love is a profound act of optimism.
7. It’s not shameful to express sentiments that are not returned.
8. I don’t have a definition for failure anymore.
9. I’d still always rather hold a baby than not.
10. I’ve started avoiding political blogs because the rhetoric has become more despair than fire. And while that makes sense on a million levels, I don’t believe hope is something we’re ever meant to concede. Not when people in the depths of hell are buoying themselves up with less.

There is so much going on inside the average person.

It’s true — some days I can see it.

The bus driver wishing he was at home, sipping coffee and watching ESPN. Or the Food Network.

The barista wishing he was doing what he was doing in Italy, where people wouldn’t pester him to make everything “extra hot.”

The businessman on the corner staring enviously at the bike messenger.

The woman smoking outside my building and wishing she was inside. Or outside. In Madrid.

There are so many stories, so many dreams, so many hopes, so many disappointments… so many thoughts stealing minds away from the details of everyday life. Even the man in line ahead of me ordering a muffin — is he thinking about what it would be like if his band in college hadn’t broken up?

Would he be here, in a suit too tight for his frame, looking bored with a skim-milk latte in hand, or would he be in frayed jeans with frayed nerves from the reverb at sound check?

Is my bank teller working up the nerve to say that she’s in love?

Was that convenience store owner a doctor back in Iran? Did that old Irish man ever live in the old country? Is the woman who runs the crepe shop really from France? Is the guy in the elevator from Newfoundland missing the moody darkness of his native ocean shores?

Has that kid with the dog lived anything beyond life on the street?

Are they irritated by stereotypes and assumptions? Are their hearts speaking a language that contradicts their outsides?

Do they wish they could leave these jobs and roles and histories behind?

And can anyone see me dancing in my head and writing novels with every fresh cup of coffee that meets my lips? Do they know I see the world in shades of lemon and robin’s egg blue?

I wonder about interior lives every time I see someone with a faraway look.

And sometimes, I get that look and escape into mine.

That’s where I can write poems and sing arias and wrest the exotic from the ordinary. That’s where I stop mourning the disappointments and let dreaming take hold.

Where I can sleep, where things are easy, where life is simple.

And yet complicated in the most beautiful way.

New warm feet for the fall.

I’m in blue, Catherine’s in pink. I have exceptionally weird toes, but they look even more weird than usual here…

From the witty and wise Christina, who probably thinks more about Halloween than anyone else on the planet…

So Halloween is great for nerds. But for some nerds, the costume choices are less obvious than for others. Star Trek nerds? Well, they’ve got Halloween pretty much dealt with for the next 4,000 years. Computer nerds? They just get an excuse to bring out the wacky computer nerd t-shirts that might not be appropriate in public any other day of the year.

But book nerds? Well, BOOK nerds have a bit of a problem.

I mean, you can’t just dress up like your favourite (note the “u”) character from a book. First, no one is likely to have a clue who you are. Second, you probably just look like pretty much anybody from whatever time period your character is from. My favourite book character is Jake Barnes from The Sun Also Rises. But dressing up like him? Well, that would be a tough one.

And you can’t dress up like your favourite author, either. Well, I guess I COULD dress up like Hemingway, but somehow making Papa the subject of a Halloween costume just doesn’t seem a fitting tribute.

So what’s left?

Well, my personal favourite (U, U, U!!!!) is to create a costume based either on a play on words, or the ridiculous enactment of a famous saying or quotation.

Here’s the breakdown:

1. For the play on words option, you have to pick a word that sounds like another word — and that other word has to be something you can dress up as. My first attempt at this was the not completely original, yet totally awesome gang green. Yes, my coworkers and I all dressed as a green gang. But what word sounds like gang green? That’s right — gangrene. Whaa ha ha ha ha.

That’s me on the right, reveling in my own awesomeness:

Note the sheepish looks on the faces of the co-workers I talked into participating.

2. Another option is to pick a saying or expression and find some element of it you can dress up as, then make the saying more “obvious” by adding accessories. My costume that fit into this category was the cat that was let out of the bag. I started out with a basic cat costume, then added a bag to my leg that said “Contents: One cat.”

The thing you will find with costumes of this nature is that no matter how completely obvious they are to you, your friends will still not understand them.

This is the look of utter frustration you are sure to have after attempting to explain a costume like this for the 50th time:

Sayings are a pretty good category because there is usually some obvious piece you can start with — a sheep in wolf’s clothing, a red herring, the cat’s pyjamas, etc, etc.

3. You can also dress up as a famous quotation. Again, you have to start with something that has an element you can dress up as. The totally brilliant flash of inspiration that hit me this year is that many quotations contain the word “be.” Now, what can you dress up as to represent the word “be”? If you can’t figure that out, this kind of costume is not for you.

So, this year, my costume (which generally would remain a secret until the big day) is “To be or not to be.” I’ll simply dress as a bee, with a 2 on my front, and a 2 with a line through it on my back.

Two bee or not-two bee:

Awesome.

The best thing about this costume is that the bee part can be used over and over. Next year I might be Bee afraid — bee very afraid! Or maybe bee still, my beating heart. The possibilities are virtually limitless.

So that’s about it, folks. The key here is not to take yourself too seriously… because everyone else will think you are a complete nitwit. But what does that matter when you will be silently glowing with inner glee at your own brilliance throughout the entire day?

Rock on, book nerds… rock on.