New 'Essays in Idleness' & Other Reviews from The Hard Flex Cafe

  22 November 2022   It wasn’t long after lunch when the teacher from across the hall burst into our classroom.  She was sobbing uncontrollably.   She rushed to her colleague, my own 1 st  Grade teacher, Mrs Dawson who immediately came to her side.  I watched her face turn ashen, aghast. Their horror faces was unmistakable, something a six-year old never forgets.   Mrs Dawson turned to the class and said, “President Kennedy has been shot.”  I knew who the President was.  I knew what shot meant from watching westerns and war movies on TV.  But I did not understand what  this  meant.  She instructed us to sit quietly and within a few minutes we were gathering our things, dismissed early from school.   I remember the walk home---we nearly all walked to school and it was at least 15 minutes door to door.  The weather was warm for November and most of my friends took our “l...

  Tuesday, November 1, 2022   When it comes to learning the ins and outs of the boots, jeans, jackets, and the rest that we love, m akers and retailers are undoubtedly our most important resources .  But in the end all of this stuff is personal.  How it works for  you  will count most.  What someone else thinks about something you dig really can help you figure it out for yourself.   For me, clothes tell stories, conjure memories, make associations.  Clothes are a vital part of a personal mythology and, after all, myths are the lies we tell to find our deeper truths.  I could wax on (wax off) more about how I became so obsessed with all of these made in Japan brands but that’s not today.   Today is about one pair of boots that are more like shoes, maybe more like sneakers or  even something else .  The Clinch Mast Trainer is a “trainer” though I’m still not sure what we are training for.  Cert...

Few of my very good friends or family share more than a passing interest in my passions.     I would worry about them if they did.     Or else I might be identifying with, say, a professional sports team and calling them “our” team.     Okay, no harm, no foul.     Maybe.     But what I’m talking about is personal stuff, the stuff that   you  want that makes up your tastes .     If you have any tastes then it’s likely you also have conflicts of interest with yourself. I made sure that my children did not follow in my career footsteps and both gratefully found life-partners more sane, sober, and unlike me than I could have imagined.  They’re all very good people.  Your children grow up, if you let their mistakes be their own and not yours, then they leave and will get on with being human without you having made the matter of living harder.  Don't make anyone else's life harder, not if you can h...

  Dōgen the Bootmaker and the Perils of Living in the Material World AS my favorite Beatle once sang,   I'm living in the material world Living in the material world Can't say what I'm doing here But I hope to see much clearer After living in the material world   George finally asks for salvation from the material world.  I sure hope he got what he wanted.  It’s no small matter dealing with one’s success and failure.  We all want a “better” life, including better things and better choices, and some even want honest values and know there is a deeper inner conflict that we don’t ever quite resolve.  Before what George called the “Big Ending” we might even ask ourselves what it means to live better with fewer, not less and if better  is  somehow better.   I take up this as a spiritual quandary because I like nice things.  Dare I say better things?     I am likely more vain than the next guy but w...

The OCBD is my first and last word in shirting.  Shirting is a great word, isn't it?  When the world is coming to an end (looks sooner than later, doesn’t it?)  or my house is burning down (this has actually happened), I want to be wearing a True OCBD.    A True OCBD has criteria that must be met in fabric, form, and details.  The fabric must be true Oxford and anything else makes the shirt a button down Oxford- like  shirt.  Brooks Brothers calls lots of shirts Oxford buttondowns that are not OCBD---and let's not even discuss what has happened the quality of their actual OCBDs.  That said, if the fabric is not Oxford, neither is the shirt.  Nothing wrong with them but not to be confused with the True OCBD.  It's fabric definition is crucial. (Not all buttondowns are OCBD anymore than Derbys are Oxfords.)  First, a True Oxford cloth is too informal a fabric and look to be worn with a proper suit. Yo...

I don't like sounding the curmudgeon.  It's insulting enough to have a body changing in ways that makes doing things you used to do that much harder, but it's never a good idea to take it out on anyone else.  You might start out looking for your humanity by pushing your boundaries and pressing your limits.  You might begin with the notion that no detail is too small, no effort too great to arrive at your goals.  But I tell you this turns around when you're ready for socialized medicine and the experiences of conditionality and limitation are far more important ways to reach honest self-assessments. One of the best take-aways of the great Bhagavadgita is Krishna's nearly-Jersey-esque admonition that we need to pay attention and stop complaining. If you are doing the former with any seriousness then you don't have time to be doing much of the latter.  So I hope this is not registered a complaint.  Rather, it is a rumin...

I am at my worst when filled with passionate intensity.  Aren't we all?  The world is afire, it burns---literally.  And what of all the other ways we can imagine? I say keep this cool, it's hot enough out here.  But then I can't help myself. This past weekend a rather proper woman whom I barely know asked me about my children. She said, "You have two daughters, is that right?" To which I replied, "Two. That I know of." While she considered my impertinence I cast eyes downward to take note of the fine Goodyear welt on my boots and enjoy, as any malapert would, her mild discomfort. *** For me a fit is a story I'm telling myself, it's not a certain look I'm trying to achieve.  I'm not often thinking about what other people will think of my appearance 'cause I'm blessed that way---I rarely need to follow attire-appropriate imperatives.  But I notice that some guys have a look or look to be aiming for their style. It's as if their ...