Wittes Schlack - This all-at-onceness a memoir of hope and satellites

Contents

This All-at-Onceness

A Memoir of Hope and Satellites

Julie Wittes Schlack

Pact Press

Copyright 2019 Julie Wittes Schlack. All rights reserved.

Published by Pact Press

An imprint of

Regal House Publishing, LLC

Raleigh, NC 27612

All rights reserved

https://pactpress.com

ISBN -13 (paperback): 978-1-947548-51-0

ISBN -13 (epub): 978-1-947548-52-7

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019934824

All efforts were made to determine the copyright holders and obtain their permissions in any circumstance where copyrighted material was used. The publisher apologizes if any errors were made during this process, or if any omissions occurred. If noted, please contact the publisher and all efforts will be made to incorporate permissions in future editions.

Interior and cover design by Lafayette & Greene

lafayetteandgreene.com

Cover images by VT_Studio/Shutterstock

Regal House Publishing, LLC

https://regalhousepublishing.com

The following is a work of fiction created by the author. All names, individuals, characters, places, items, brands, events, etc. were either the product of the author or were used fictitiously. Any name, place, event, person, brand, or item, current or past, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Regal House Publishing.

Printed in the United States of America

Disclaimer

This book spans almost sixty years and touches on the shames and sorrows of real people. To save them from unsolicited attention, I have in some cases changed their names.

I have more systematically disguised the facts in one chapter in this collection, Beacons. Because I cannot definitively identify some of the people in it, let alone give them a chance to assess the accuracy of what Ive written, Ive chosen to fictionalize this account by making up the names of people and organizations, changing the sex of some key players, and occasionally putting words into peoples mouths that arent literal transcripts of what they said. So read this chapter as fictionnot absolutely factual, but fundamentally truthful.

To Mark

Prologue (1962)

In 1962, the city bus stopped directly in front of my house in Cote St. Luc, then a suburb, and now a neighborhood of Montreal. When I lived in that brand-new split level, with a patio and lilac bushes and crabapple trees in the back yard, I was still too young to venture more than six or seven blocks from home alone. But having proximity to a bus stop, such an essential gathering place, was a badge of honor. At the age of eight, I felt that it afforded me a certain prestige, as if the city and transportation commission had quite intentionally chosen my house to safeguard its vital property, a bus stop sign with detailed information about when the 161 ran and where the route ended.

Better still, it gave me the chance to watch others unobserved. A tall and narrow pane of ridged glass ran floor to ceiling next to our front door, and standing behind it, I could peer out at the sidewalk. Through the thick and wavy window, the commuterssome mothers, the very occasional father, but mostly bigger kids and cleaning ladieslooked as though they were under water, having silent but animated conversations as they waved their arms about. And when they leaned wearily, arms folded, against the black metal sign post, or methodically bounced a tennis ball on the sidewalk, I felt I was an invisible participant in something very private, as they stood exposed in their solitude.

That sidelight window illuminated the border between inside and outside. It was where I learned and liked to live.

W Dallas (2015)

What we have done over time with electronic media is to place our nervous system outside ourselves. This means that every private operator can own a piece of your nervous system as if it was a box or a hunk of bread, and he can stand on your nose, your heart, your head, and manipulate your inner being by these external means.

- Marshall McLuhan

Today I pored through the cell phone usage data of twenty-four male high school athletes who had given my company permission to passively monitor everything they did on their phones. Our clients hopeand every marketers fantasyis that theyll be able to predict consumers behavior based on the data that smart phones capture about where their owners are, how long they stay there, what they do when theyre at a given location, and in what proportion.

Not surprisingly, fourteen- to sixteen-year-old boys spend a lot of time on Instagram and ESPN. They use apps for tracking their workouts and performance. They listen to rap and heavy metal, play Angry Birds and Greedy Pigs. One apparently amuses himself and others with Fart Soundboard.

We cant read the words of their text messages or emails, cant eavesdrop on their phone calls, but we know what ball field or Burger King theyre at when theyre tapping and swiping.

My job is to bring people together in private online communities and get to know their needs, frustrations, passions, and opinionsall so that my largely Fortune 500 clients can better assess what consumers want, what theyre likely to buy, what theyre willing to pay for it, and why.

In my office, we spend our days hearing from tens of thousands of people around the world in chats and discussions, via Skype and surveys, in English and German and Mandarin translated in real time, through the videos they shoot on their smartphones and the collages they create, in the shopping receipts they scan and send us, in the voice mail messages they leave us.

We ask them questions, sometimes banal, sometimes profound; we text with them as they go bra shopping and show us what theyre seeing on the racks and what they overhear sales people saying to each other. Now and then we send them ten dollar Amazon gift certificates and, in exchange, they record their daily snacks, their children at play, the contents of the Valentines Day card they long to get. Thirteen-year-old girls take photographs of used sanitary pads so that the manufacturer can see the saturation patterns that will inform their next animated commercial. Newly diagnosed diabetics record their daily readings so that pharmaceutical companies can come up with the innovative insulin pump that will crush their competitors.

Over the years Ive learned that everyone likes strawberry yogurt, while passion fruit (and strangely, pineapple) are polarizing flavors. I know that while the sound of laughing babies brings the most joy to the most people, many find quiet happiness in the hum of a refrigerator, the regular thump of clothes tumbling in the dryer, the beeping of a garbage truck as it backs up to the dumpster. Ive seen the pictures that people upload to describe how they feel about their appearancedesolate women from Picassos blue period; fat, crumb-covered cats; and photographs of broken toys and abandoned caf tables in the rain.

My job is both mercenary and inspiring. Im supposed to care about my clients business success. What I actually care about are the people (referred to in my industry as consumers or shoppers) who go to such extraordinary lengths when they believe someone is actually listening. Everyone wants to be heard. To be known.

I was reminded of this at a recent meeting of market research providers for a major food company, held at the W Dallas hotel. Id arrived the night before. Loud trance music pulsed in the tiny lobby, and the check-in desk was barely visible in the dim light. In a black-lit room that I took to be the bar, chrome or platinum stalactites hung like fractured Mobius strips. Young men with moussed hair escorted bosom-boosted, spaghetti-strapped female colleagues in and out of the martini den; an occasional older woman whose fashion sense vastly exceeded mine strode past while speaking in urgent tones into her cell phone.