When it comes to travel, I normally subscribe to one cardinal rule: stay as close to the ground as possible and situate myself a great, great distance from airplanes, even parked ones. It’s a simple guideline that leaves little room for interpretation, because I’m talking flush to the earth’s crust. Like, imagine a snake. Operating a steamroller. In a cave underground. And when this policy is violated, tossed aside like so many packets of peanuts, I may take issue. You may even know my thoughts on the matter.
It’s been nearly three glorious years since I’ve purchased air fare. Perhaps it was shrewd planning, or sheer stubbornness, or a generous stay of fortune’s hand, but I’ve never had to fly for corporate reasons. I need to recalibrate my expectations, obviously, to more realistic settings. The gravy train–a vehicle that sits at proper altitudes, by the way–had to stop sometime, but it sure was nice while it lasted.
I need to travel to Indianapolis in two weeks, and the better part of an hour tonight was spent on choosing tickets. One stop, nonstop, travel times, coach, business, every decision contributed to a slow-building headache that was further magnified by the memory of how airplanes smell. Normally I’d fly Southwest or JetBlue, but for this reservation I settled on Delta. Delta. The symbol of change. Poetic.
Gravity, to me, is more than a physical force. It’s a pact with nature that says, “We tight.” Now, breaking this pact doesn’t guarantee punishment, though the thought of potential consequences–mainly to the tune of nine-point-eight meters per second squared–is harrowing. I’m going to this conference, and then hopefully that will do it for the rest of this year. Firmament is simply one of my favorite things. Huge, huge fan.
Community service used to unfold over a bubbling cauldron of spaghetti sauce for me, once every few Saturdays, and in hindsight the trips to the shelter were enjoyable because of the immediate feedback. The industrial-sized pot was my domain. Empty in the morning, full around 11 AM, then empty again, and if my quest for the perfect ground beef texture just so happened to feed people, well, that was nice. But ever since the Professor left for the Midwest, ostensibly to the very place where all this beef originated, I haven’t returned in months. These were his church acquaintances, after all, and without him to absorb the small talk I’d be charged with commenting on work or the weather or baseball, my focus duly torn asunder, and not even the flesh of ten-thousand cows could compel me down this path.
I spent the better part of this Sunday volunteering, however, in a different manner. A business associate was in the thick of negotiating her comp for a new job, and the counteroffer letter needed some serious work. Five drafts and three hours later, it was still a hot mess, and around 9 PM I muttered “Fuck it!” and wrote it myself. At the time I was thinking about how those hours could’ve been spent differently, preferably on Mad Men, but finishing the letter turned out to be a rush. Why? Because on Monday, the employer responded with a better comp package. There it was again: immediate feedback, the marinara with the meat, and it was satisfying to know the letter had brought the cheddar. A terrible rhyme, too, apparently.
Indeed, the very nature of writing was placed under the microscope. Its capacities. Its possibilities. Some will call it a craft, a skill rewarding in and of itself, a kind of ritual inviolate to be honed in an honest country cabin. I like to think of it as a tool. Not like a douchebag, mind you, but more of a monkey wrench. It can entertain. It can give. It can acquire. Ours is my favorite dynamic. These posts are a way to collect my thoughts, on one hand, but they also act as a single-serving product for you, consumed in secret and probably under illicit conditions. It’s like I’m the dealer, except I’m the one getting the hits. Take right now, for instance. I imagine you’re at work, sneaking a read befor– Oh holy shit your boss is right around the corner! Better maximize Microsoft Calculator and start pounding on your keyboard with your fists. I’m kidding, of course. You can’t maximize Microsoft Calculator.
For the third time in two weeks, my mailbox played host today to a curious marketing campaign, a series of large postcards drawn in the style of Diary of a Wimpy Kid. It wasn’t children’s literature that was being pushed, however, so much as church, with “Diary of a Wimpy Christian” splayed across the front of the slickly produced ad. On the back, there was an exhortation to “find purpose and meaning in every moment” of my life, ostensibly if I acted now and decided to visit this particular church on Sunday.
The purpose and meaning I discovered immediately after reading the postcard was, well, to shred the postcard purposefully and meaningfully. It wasn’t addressed to Current Resident or The Potentially Lost, after all, but to me, and I began to wonder how my info even ended up on this mailing list. Then came the harder questions. Should church be advertised? Existentially speaking, could this ever be a hell of an ad campaign? How would marketers at this church measure performance? On number of souls acquired? Or, even more cynically, perhaps it was simply a matter of subtracting cost of mailing, snacks, and normal wear on pew fabric from incremental tithed revenue.
There is tension here, in other words, and at a certain juncture the lure of being hip and current ran the good ship sense aground, and suddenly the parishioners were praying to Our Lord and Savior and Chief Marketing Officer Jesus Christ. And when your campaign borrows from existing media so earnestly, is it still fair use? Could it be plagiarism? Stealing, which thou shalt not do? It’s, like, if you’re really compelled to market the Sabbath, get some fresh material at the very least. For unto you an original thought is given. Go forth and copy no more, all of your days!
Perhaps it’s a matter of waiting for the right creative to hit. Say there were a pamphlet devoid of graphical flourish and adorned with a single line of text:
Hey, shithead. If you’re not too busy this Sunday, you may want to make your bi-quarterly visit.
I would rejoice. And respond. But such collateral will never come to pass, which means I’ll have to settle for the inevitable postcard based on the Twilight series that sparkles in the sunlight just so.