Christmas in Boston

The familiar Charlottesville train station, December 23, 2012 5:00 AM

If you are new here, thanks for stopping by. About three years ago, it dawned on me that I was in my mid fifties, 66% of my children were out in the *real world*, and I was living in a five bed room house that has empty voices and empty rooms, and although paid for, requires constant maintenance...something that I really enjoyed for many decades, but now, not so much. As far as my business, well I started scooping Rocky Road ice cream at Baskin Robbins 40 YEARS AGO. Charlottesville is constantly on the top ten lists of cool places to go to college, play music in, move to, retire to etc. As a byproduct, there is a constant stream of new, talented, and young chefs jumping into the food game here. Evidently, Charlottesville has more restaurants per capita than anywhere in the USA (477 in a town of ~100,000). The recession, the farm to table movement and the immigration of new talent all mean more work for old me to stay in the game I don't want to be in any more. I decided that I could slowly and voluntarily (and eventually I would be forced to do so), begin to simplify my life and do cool things somewhere else. I don't even use the word 'retire' as it sounds like I am 'retiring' from managing a successful hedge fund and going sailing with my lovely wife of forty years. NOT. That meant a new life of very few possessions, kinda disappearing off the grid for a while and living as cheaply as possible until roll call up yonder.

I got on with the expensive process of shedding a wife, put feelers out to sell the business and house and started getting rid of shit. This kind of alarmed some family and friends, as they thought that getting rid of clutter meant I was getting ready to off myself.

And I started this blog/journal/diary. In the future, it will be a way to keep family and friends reasonably up to date on this simplifying process and future frugal adventures, as well as to whether or not I am likely to still be alive (oh, that is why you are supposed to have a Co2/propane warning sensor in your rig!). I would like to be writing to you that I am working in a Buddhist vegetable garden, but for now I am in sort of a holding pattern while I await the future to unfold as she sees fit. So I write about ancient long trips and recent short trips, as much to file them in the permanent record, as anything else. Let's face it, these older adventures were kindergarten in what is now an advanced graduate search, through wandering and a pondering, for the path to enlightenment. ANY BENEFIT OR ENTERTAINMENT VALUE TO STRANGERS IS A FUCKING BONUS.

Ponderin' Libertarian Harry Brown's Identity Trap Number 1, in the Amtrak club car, Manassas, Virginia.

Why you are not free:

There are two Identity Traps: (1) the belief that you should be someone other than yourself; and (2) the assumption that others will do things in the way you would.

1) In the first trap, you necessarily forfeit your freedom by requiring yourself to live in a stereotyped, predetermined way that doesn't consider your own desires, feelings and objectives.

2) The second trap is more subtle but just as harmful to your freedom. When you expect someone else to have the same ideas, attitudes and feelings you have and you expect them to act in ways that aren't keeping with their nature. As a result, you expect and hope people will do things that they are not capable of doing.

Uncle (once removed) Roger's House in Boston

Well, what does all this have to do with Christmas in Boston at my great uncle's house and his second new trophy wife's house which will include my brother and his girlfriend and my two grown children?

The Lion Kings circle of life and Libertarian philosophy

Old uncle Rodger works on Wall Street and commutes back to Boston on a train not unlike the one I am on now. As far as income is concerned he is a real one percenter.Due to my stage in Rafiki's circle of life, I am a real one percenter as well. Alas, the kind who, with no real savings, dreams of growing cabbages at a Buddhist retreat center as his *retirement*. As we are both one percenters on opposite ends of a spectrum and if we are truly free men, then we cannot expect each other to do things we are not capable of doing. I was never capable of working on Wall Street and Rodger is not capable of growing cabbages in exchange for a pallet in a tree house and free hummus. We can, however, still get drunk together.

   When my kids were young, we lied to them about a magic old man who lived at the North Pole who had watched their every move (my kids' real interest was what was in the boxes, not who brought them). Also lucky for my kids was that Santa doesn't seem to dole out justice very well... no one actually got a lump of coal....but how to explain how this wonderful, all knowing grandfather figure, who spends all year tracking who has been naughty and nice, gives the school bully a PlayStation 3 and my kids get the silly putty? I say this, because 23 years ago, my wife and I suffered the stress of endless shopping, the pressure to buy gifts for people just because they were going to buy one for us (guilt giving not gift giving), the colossal waste from wrapping paper and packaging materials, and of course having to figure out what to do with the inevitable stack of gifts that you received that you never needed nor wanted in the first place. I mean, there was no real suspense. Even if you didn't want anything you would still get lots of things. You told your parents what you wanted, they communicated with the North Pole, and voila, there it was, year after year on Christmas morning.

Good times at Mario Batali's Pizza Place in Boston.

 I mention Santa policy and gift giving policy from years ago with my own family and what we did because this Christmas, as the extended family created for little Sarah and little Roger exactly what I tried to do with the 23 and 25 year olds sitting on the couch next to me. But as a junior varsity on the bench observer in 2013, I was in a different space, a minimalist space...how not to get any gifts without offending the giver who only wanted joy for someone that they loved; but also as a free man, not expecting anyone to think as I do about the topic.

My son Giles and I having a Korean meal near Back Bay Station, Boston as we waited for our train back home.

Thanks for Stopping by