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poseur: noun

po· seur pō-ˈzər

Merriam-Webster: a person who pretends to be what they are not : an affected or insincere person.

Growing up Gen-X

the derogative term poseur was like, the lowest of the low. It was one word you never wanted to be on the receiving end of. A poseur was, well, a poser. A fraud. A pretender. In Christian-ese it was the opposite of the Jesus movement classic “walk your talk.”

Whether it was displaying a surfboard that never touched water, wearing a ‘Thrasher’ t-shirt but never actually skateboarding, riding a cool bmx bike but never hitting a jump, or the most common - wearing a concert shirt of a band you never saw live - nobody in my small Northern California town ever wanted to be known as a poseur.

In other words, I wore Vans, never Keds.

Looking back I realize we applied the term quite liberally, merging it with other social habits we deemed as posturing or fake - being a bandwagon fan, a conformist, or a late adapter, and yes we even let it affect harmless social gatherings like just going to a sporting event and doing the wave.

Ok maybe only I did.

I missed out on or was late to many popular bands, trends, and events that I should’ve enjoyed earlier; the things I should’ve been dismissive of were the totally baseless fears of over-conforming or finding myself on a bandwagon.. fears that never materialized anyway.

Thanks, Tom.

Examples?

How about some examples Alden, instead of all this jawing —

Ok fine. Here’s a few:

• Baseball games
• Shania Twain
• Air Conditioning
• Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Yeah I know what you’re saying.. BASEBALL? You’re CRAY bro.

And you’re right.

Look, of course I loved our Oakland A’s and San Francisco Giants, who wouldn’t during the moustached 70’s (A’s), and the hummm-baby late 80’s (Giants)? But around the time Barry Bonds was traded to the Giants, when invited to games I felt like I was just coming to see a gladiator, jumping on the bandwagon because of Bonds’ obvious talent.

Of course I realized later a baseball game was not something to overthink, and I became a regular at the ‘yard - learning one home run at a time how important shared experiences are to the social fabric.

*and yes I now know my disdain was basic resentment from not having a family, so doing things that families do was often painful to be reminded of. Add in the as-noted Gen-x worldview, and my hesitation makes total sense.

Shania

Shania dismissal was simple: my girlfriend at the time liked her and I was dismissive for no other reason than being a jackass.

She’s still the top-selling female country artist of all time.

For good reason.

Of course it took breaking up with said gf for me to discover Shania and realize.. DAMN those are some good songs. Sadly producer Mutt Lange is proof that talent and good husband material are incompatible for far too many dudes.

Air Conditioning

Avoiding air conditioning was likely due to being raised in a single-mother household and therefore being overly conscious of frivolous things like electricity, and that for our high-achieving family it was seen as more virtuous to go without things that weren’t totally necessary.

Also our air conditioner sucked.

Thankfully I’ve come full circle on this one, after living in Nashville for three summers, and flipping a house in Charlotte one July.

A/C is one of God’s gifts and who are we to refuse his blessings!

Zen The Book

You likely have guessed that was a setup to admit that I was seriously late in reading Robert Pirsig’s modern philosophy classic ‘Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.’

Because I was.

And for no good reason other than I had been told too often that “you gotta read it.” The latest by an English major at a summer camp in 2004 who may have had a crush on me.

If you’re unfamiliar with ‘Zen’ it’s popularity has not waned, in fact Pirsig’s motorcycle now has a spot in The Smithsonian in an exhibit titled ‘Zen and The Open Road.’

I was dismissive of ‘Zen’ when I would’ve benefitted from it, but in my defense I did respond when an inner nudge prompted me to ask for it at Dog Eared Books in San Francisco one spring day, and even the checker was shocked that a used copy of it was literally less than an arm’s length from him.

“Here you go,” he said, and handed it to me as if the entire interaction was preordained.

We shared a moment.

At the time I was heading on Pirsig’s basic route, albeit in the opposite direction.

Starting in San Francisco, up the coast through Oregon, Idaho, and Montana, briefly into Canada, then down via North Dakota and Minnesota to Chicago, eventually ending in Nashville.

I was returning to music city after discovering it the year before, having taken a very effective and soul-searching road trip of my own, though instead of combatting Phaedrus’ ghost (spoiler alert), I was on a mission to kill off my own nemesis - the ghost of John Olmsted.

And it worked.

Once the conservationist demon was exorcised I was free.

Pirsig’s book was the perfect companion.

Zen and The Art turned what could have been a lonely solo trip into a well-laid out journey of reflection - with a series of connections with friends along the way, from Bellingham to Spokane, from Saskatchewan to Chicago, complemented by huge and beautiful gaps of western landscape, upper plains, and newly visited rust belt cities.

It was grand.

Fast forward five years and I have returned home.

Motorcycle meet car

To say I’ll always need a second car to drive for pure enjoyment is like saying Elon Musk will always need to send rockets somewhere.

It’s obvious to everyone.

A carbureted and manual transmission sports car, especially in this automated age of low effort-everything, feels like a cold plunge into a Sierra river on a smokin’ hot July day.

And last summer I jumped in.

Just like I didn’t have the energy to fix what this little car’s previous owner had neglected (ie almost EVERYTHING), I barely have the energy to relive it even now in the telling.

The summary is:

• Four smog attempts and four months of frustration, stalled momentum, and delayed joy, trying to get it CA legal.
• $4,355 + in smog related parts, new exhaust, carburetor, and shop tuning visits to get it compliant.
• Late evening mechanic sessions that pushed my 6’4” frame to the limit, while holding down a full-time job and being a caregiver every other minute of the day - and night btw.
• Months of online searching for missing trim that strained even my usually generous supply of patience.

1 year later

For my efforts I’ve got a street legal and registered iconic BMW with new shocks and brakes all around, a perfectly vintage stereo; that starts right up, runs great, and gets thumbs ups and glances almost every time I take it out.

As anyone who’s completed a project knows, after the hands are washed and the laundry is going, there’s a stage of cleaning up that marks the end or at least the transition of the previous season of building, to the season of owning.

I was gladly tossing out some boxes and consolidating a few others when I came to the book box, and re-found my copy of Zen.

Just in time.

Our March 30th scare

Yep mom had a small stroke.

No it’s not serious or physically debilitating.

But it means less speech.

Less energy.

She’s now on hospice. More for me to have assistance than for any presumed date of departure.

I took a month off of work, entered yet another new chapter, and rediscovered ‘Zen.’

These past two months

I’ve re-read it from start to finish, and have a greater appreciation for both Pirsig’s clear writing on mechanical topics, as well as his journaling as a travel guide. Sure my BMW is a 1976 car and not a 66’ Honda motorcycle (it was Pirsig’s friend who rides a BMW, his Honda actually is never mentioned), but it’s a carbureted and manageable BMW engine, just like his motorcycle. I am no amazing mechanic but I can fix or at least diagnose most of the basic issues that this car will have, just as Pirsig claims curious and hands-on type people should.

The descriptions of working on the cycle’s engine, like the reusing of parts vs. buying new ones, the proximity to failure if a single bolt should strip, and the joy of running a motor that you yourself have kept alive, are true whether bike or car, and are now shared moments between the author and me.

Chris is another story

The moments with Pirsig’s son Chris are more painful on this read since I know the ending. They’re also at times stultifying to the greater story. They interrupt a good thread on quality or rhetoric with the realities of taking an 11 year old kid on an adventurous but taxing 2,500 mile trip from Minnesota to San Francisco. I guess I would possibly have acted similarly to Chris at that age, especially if it were my dad who I wasn’t close to early on, so I don’t write this as a dig. It’s tough to feel almost adult but yet to still be a child, subjected to their schedule and their choices.

Pirsig would return by himself on his cycle, after having no choice but to put Chris on a bus in SF for the trip back.

Thankfully mom is not Chris

Both Chris and mom will be sharing the same fate soon - though mom’s imminent passing will not be cruel and sad as Chris’s knife attack on Haight Street in 1979 - there is still a similarity I found while reading it through for the second time.

Pirsig’s genius in ‘Zen’ in my opinion - is that just when you tire of hearing about the trip, or the human squabbles and insecurities, he flips to philosophy and the reader is treated to a college course on rhetoric and quality and gumption traps.

And then when the mind begins to glaze over, or when one finds themselves having to go back a paragraph or two to fully grasp the differences in Socrates or Aristotelian philosophies, WHAM - we are transported back to the now, to an endearing road trip with beautiful descriptions of road conditions, western geography, impending weather, and hearty breakfasts.

The same contrasts are true in my life as mechanic and caregiver as well.

- Wake up is <6am.

I make my coffee, then shower and dress before waking up mom and helping her to the bathroom. I put her back to bed and whisk out the door, hoping the hospice staff shows up at 8am as scheduled.

Usually a calming text around 8:10 is received.

It’s not uncommon on my lunch break to call a BMW parts house with questions not answered online, or to place an order for a hard-to-find trim piece or ultra-specific German-made part.

Let’s just say I’ve used Google translate for English to Dutch more times than I planned.

Work is 10 hours including commute time - as a project manager in charge of $500K — $2 million underground construction projects.

- Leave work at 4pm

A quick stop on the way home for groceries is common, getting home I first catch up with mom, ask about her day and what she ate, and help her delete scammer voicemails from her phone.

- Dinner at 6pm

Dinners are quieter since the stroke. Her mind is mostly in tact I estimate, it’s just that finding the right words are often a challenge and her volume is barely above a loud whisper.

Last Thursday, as we sat at the dinner table with mostly empty plates, a deeper question came to mind, that I figured I’d better ask while I had the chance —

After dinner I get her settled on an episode of Frasier or sometimes a 60’s game show, make sure she has enough water, grab a Pilsner-style beer and open the garage. I back the BMW out for better access and see what tasks I can complete before dark, or before my energy fades.

- 8pm wash hands and hope to relax for an hour
- 9pm mom brush teeth and to bed

Of course this isn’t done every evening - I’d fall over dead if I tried - but it’s also not uncommon to find myself outside when most 54 year olds have their feet up and are re-watching Succession.

I fall asleep to audiobooks by Frederick Buechner, C.S. Lewis, and Robert M. Pirsig.

And so it goes.

Is it the wisest

thing to drive a fragile mom around in this little car, or even to tackle the restoration in the first place?

Likely no.

But while Pirsig sought quality above all, my highest goal
seems to be authenticity.

Some might call it heart.

The effort (heart) I had to put in to get it running was real.

To enjoyment.

To satisfaction.

And the effort I put in is precisely why the car finally feels like mine. There’s an authenticity in enjoyment that comes from true effort, as with raising a child.

I can say without any braggadocio, I earned this one. That at least when it comes to 50 year old BMW’s, I’m no poseur.

I can’t recommend

restoring an esoteric German car while caregiving - but because my subconscious goal is authenticity, I pretty much have no choice.

Mom knows that all too well.

That’s why she looks comfortable - I suppose about as comfortable as an 85 year old could be in a ‘76 BMW 2002 with no A/C, no power windows, and of course zero airbags.

It’s not perfect, but it’s real.

I'd say it’s got heart.

And that’s my definition of quality.