American Fez

What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up

In my late teens, I went through a big Franz Kafka phase. Many kids did, especially those living in Eastern Europe during the Cold War. However, I lived in rural England at the time, the friendly and welcoming village of Cutesy Wood to be specific, nestling in the quaint county of sunny Comfortshire. So a truly immersive Kafka experience was very difficult for me to maintain in such bucolic conditions. Obviously, I would have been better off going through a J. R. Tolkien phase, but I wasn't what the locals referred to as 'a total wanker.' There was absolutely no way someone as au-courant as me was going to prattle on about Hobbits and gnomes when I could be condemning the modern world with a single, withering glance.

But, bereft of dark alleys, ominous shadows and threatening presences in Cutesy Wood, my only Kafkaesque recourse was pretending to be refused entry to nearby Cutesy castle, even though most of its walls had been destroyed by Oliver Cromwell's cannons several centuries before, and anybody could freely wander in and out of what remained of the old castle keep whenever they pleased. Nevertheless, I regularly stalked the perimeter with my carefully cultivated paranoia and fake sense of foreboding, much to the consternation of the many families enjoying their picnics beside the crumbling ramparts. When at home, after enduring a roast chicken dinner and delicious dessert, I confined myself to The Sanatorium (what most people would call an average teenager's bedroom), writing tortured letters to my imaginary Felice Bauer: "Dear Felice, went with mother to buy that dark suit and tie I need for The Trial, but she bought me a bright blue v-neck sweater for school instead. Life is Hell here in Cutesy Wood." 

One disastrous October, I attended a Hallowe'en party disguised as the cockroach from Kafka's great story, The Metamorphosis. Unfortunately, none of the other guests had read the book so were unable to distinguish me from someone dressed in a normal, non-Kafkaesque cockroach costume. I'm Gregor Samsa, I told anyone who asked, but only received blank looks in return. Later, while loitering around the punch bowl, I mistakenly assumed an attractive girl in cowboy boots and stetson hat was going through her Zane Grey phase. Alas, it turned out she was just a fan of Honky Tonk music, completely unfamiliar with Zane Grey's bibliography, and thought I was being rude at best and lewdly suggestive at worst. I left the party early, walking home along leafy, moonlit lanes, pretending I was lost in a labyrinth of menacing Prague streets, being followed by grim-faced assassins sent by The Law. 

Ah, the amusingly adolescent world of make-believe existential anxiety: switching philosophical stances from Kafka to Camus and back again via Eugene Ionesco and Samuel Beckett; to be sad and beautiful while pronouncing pseudo-intellectual judgments on everything and everyone around you. Surely that's what youth is all about, provided youth grows out of such pretensions and quit the Gauloises. Nowadays, of course, we have young adults still stuck in the world of Harry Potter wizardry. But despite all the sparkly magic and vigorous horseplay, they really are existentially anxious instead of just pretending. Some are even suicidal. What is a society that has apparently decided to spurn serious European literature going to do about that? Personally, I swapped out my nephew's copy of The Chamber of Secrets for Le Grand Meaulnes when he wasn't looking. Think globally, act locally, I say. 

Coffee Break

I started drinking mushroom coffee to improve my focus and productivity. Three cups a day accompanied by a ginger and turmeric cookie. I'd seen Zak Spark pitch this mental diet on TikTok, and his personal and professional life looked amazing and enviable. At least, it seemed so for the five seconds of drink-my-coffee and kick-some-ass advice he dispensed in his daily video updates. According to muscle-rippling Zak, a triple dose of lion's mane mushroom coffee is Nature's version of a tractor-beam for your attention span and jet fuel for your body, combining to create a high-octane, destiny-changing super boost. The ginger and turmeric cookie is not only a treat for the taste buds, but a power pill packed with organic goodness and essential nutrition.

Alas, trying to enhance my own activities and processes with Zak's products turned my To-Do list into a sort of funhouse mirror. Simple tasks and assignments morphed into heroic quests and journeys of discovery before my dilated eyeballs. My color-coded calendar became more of a kaleidoscope than an organized day-planner. I found that there was so much to focus on that I didn't know where to begin. And so my productivity rapidly declined. Perhaps I shouldn't be polluting my mushroom coffee with a splash of cream and a spoonful of sugar? I left a message for Zak about this issue on one of his posts but he didn't reply.

The coffee I bought in bulk from Zak's website but the cookies I had to bake myself from ingredients sold by Zak and a recipe he recommended. Achieving the correct consistency and flavor profile was not easy for me, especially in an ancient gas oven, and obviously my attention switched at random intervals from the cookie recipe to the latest Wall Street stock reports, confusing the two. So, by mistake, I inadvertently invested in a turmeric farm and baked a batch of Nasdaq cookies. Why I dunked them in the mushroom coffee I watched the Nasdaq cookies crumble into coffee-soaked chunks that slowly sank to the bottom of my Zak Spark mug (free gift with initial purchase). It took so long to clean up the mess that I got nothing else done for the rest of the day.

I've returned to drinking normal Tuscan Roast coffee now, which I always enjoy with imported almond biscotti. I don't need to order either from the Internet, my favorite brands are always in stock at Giovanni's Little Italy store on Main Street. Giovanni doesn't have a TikTok, he just stands behind the counter looking gloomy, complaining that his costs go up each week so he must increase his prices. Fifty bucks is expensive for a month's supply of Arabica beans but it's still a lot cheaper than Zak Spark's mushroom regimen. Meanwhile, I just try to focus on the good things in my life, every day human interactions. I find it's easier to get things done that way. 

The Department of Public Works (Blitzkrieg)

Before its municipality approved removal, the Mill Street Obelisk kept the old neighborhood pinned in place, much like Benjamin Franklin's proverbial horseshoe nail preserved a kingdom before its negligent loss. Nobody much noticed the Mill Street Obelisk, either, but the old neighborhood's familiar geography feels misaligned now it's gone, as if an important river has been diverted into a foreign sea, the seven hills flattened and the sleepy hollows filled in and paved over. Now the obelisk has been toppled, Mill Street seems to windmill around the compass, clockwise then suddenly counterclockwise depending on the time of day. A sort of suburban Bermuda Triangle where GPS holds no dominion. I watch lines of lost cars follow Amazon trucks into one-way, cul-de-sac oblivion. The map isn't only not the territory, it's also not the map anymore, merely a confused cartographer's best guess of which direction to go. 

The Mill Street Obelisk wasn't a real 'obelisk,' of course. That's just what I called this vertical block of grey granite set in the sidewalk that served no apparent purpose as far as I could tell. In my daydreams, however, ancient hieroglyphics were once carved along its four sides, perhaps prophesying of God's chosen Mayor who would rise from his supernatural slumbers at the appointed hour to conquer town hall and herald a new Golden Age for Plainfield, USA. Alas, I told myself as I strolled down Mill Street each day, such messages had long since been eroded by unforgiving time and inclement New England weather, lost forever until some passing archeologist decodes their meaning with the latest hyper-spectral imaging technology.

But forget my idle whimsy. The truth is that even local vandals couldn't be bothered to cover the obelisk with their spray-can graffiti. Most of the nearby walls are tagged and disfigured by barely legible slogans but the obelisk remained untouched, just an upright stone stick beneath notice, a slightly inconvenient pedestrian obstacle. Surely the council should demolish the damned thing and replace it with a useful traffic sign instead, a philistine Selectman suggested. And so overall-clad workmen armed with sledgehammers and power tools arrived before I had chance to bid the obelisk farewell. Think of waking up to Rome without its Colosseum, Paris without the Eiffel Tower, London without Big Ben. That was the magnitude of the loss of the Mill Street Obelisk. To Hell with the mayoral candidates who whine about increasing commercial zones and lowering taxes on Main Street business, next election I'm voting for the bearded, hippy guy who's all about planting more trees and turning that former gas station into a dog park. After all, maybe that's what the secrets of the Mill Street Obelisk actually foretold?