I saw a news item in the paper
about a company that got a contract
to do what I had been doing. Not for an
intrusion detection system but for an underwater
testing range for submarine weapons. But I saw similarities in
the documentation that would be required. The deliverable items (DIs).
I knew how they were described in the Data Item Descriptions (DIDs).
I took a resume by the office and told the secretary they were going to need me.
Not now, but soon. And I was available now. I could get up to speed
on their nickel. Then, when they needed me, I would be there.
She asked me to take a seat and wait a minute.
She had the contract manager interview me.
He got the company president to sit in.
I talked a good game. I talked like
I knew what I was doing.
They hired me. They gave me
a desk and a typewriter. I ordered
a couple of ILS specs that told me how to do it.
But it was logistics. Stock numbers. Codes.
I don’t remember what the codes were for.
SM&R Codes. Source Maintenance and Recoverability.
Huh? I couldn’t get my brain around it. There were drawing specs.
Engineering drawing specifications. Numbers. Figures. Letters.
It made my head hurt. Write a book about not being able to get
your computer to work and having a nervous breakdown.
Call it magical realism, or magical surrealism.
When reality is surreal, surrealism is realism.
Hemingway shot himself because he couldn’t finish
A Moveable Feast. I am writing Cultural Operator
but not posting it at The Daily Bulletin.
So much pressure. So much pressure.
These novels will give way, by and by, to diaries or autobiographies.
Weblogs (blogs) and online journals (OLJs).
I’ve been doing this myself for ten years.
Surely I can figure out how to keep doing it.