“To be alive at all is to have scars."

John Steinbeck born March 9, 1902.

The scars were fresh. While unconscious, my chest was cracked open, revealing my clogged heart, still beating. However constricted, it was soon to be remodelled with new arteries borrowed from deep within my chest cavity. If they need more, perhaps repurpose a few veins from the harvest leg pictured below.

To be factual, they were not borrowed, as borrowing implies they might one day be returned. No, this was a clear cut. A clean break. The stitches and staples that they left behind, like the yellow tape and orange cones pictured below, were there to warn the children. Stay away!

The triple-O bypass operation was five years ago. Today you barely can see them. On the harvest leg that is. On my chest, the scars are more noticeable. Slightly raised, you can see a line right down the middle. If you run your finger from neck to nipples, you can feel where they wired my sternum back together again. There is a small lump where the wires stick out.

Well, they don’t really stick out, but you can definitely feel them there. I have mused that while kids get tattoos, real men and women get scars.

What is a scar, but a reminder of an experience we endured? A life changing experience, like a rock thrown into a still pool.

The result is ripples. Reverberations. Revelations. The scars from my cancer are less visible to the eye; they are all on the inside. On the outside, no signs of trauma, only non-scars, like the hollows in my cheeks, or the loose skin that carbon dates my neck.

Colour is absent. The reds, the blues, the yellow greens are long gone. The scars are no longer vibrant, no longer inflamed. The vibrations are felt, only on the inside. They are less scary. These are the anonymous scars of memory.

“Memories, they haunt me always. Ghosts rewind down empty hallways.”

Scars are like notes to self. I can physically see the work done, the changes that surgically have extended my shelf life. Best before? I am happy with being. The concept of Best is a false judgement. At this age, it is best to be.

A big part of my life is working. I spend over 8 hours a day, even more with travel, so it is not unreasonable to wish for a satisfying work life. What I call work stuff. No one ever wants to talk about work stuff.

When I started working, I was barely an adult. Working has always been about making enough money to live, provide some stability for my family. A “career” was never planned. A career was not pursued. Yet, here we are. Looking back through the eyes of a long career.

That’s me in the corner. That’s me in the headlights, losing my badge in the crowd. Oh the stories I could tell. Badges hanging from lanyards, identifying my name, company, position. Badges hiding my big balls of worry, shaken ego, stirring past the prime of my work lives, steering a small boat on a rough sea, all the long gone garrulous gurus, the progression of professional people pleasers processed through filters of familial anger.

These are the cities where the crimes took place. Baltimore. Nuremburg, Anaheim. Boston, Seattle, Vancouver. Viva Las Vegas, the ultimate convention town. Baltimore had its orioles, and the best crab cakes were found in an Irish pub. Nuremburg was home to War Tribunals, Nazi Trials and little weiners. All the Cities of Germany were awarded their own branded whiners. At the Biofach, we got all Biofached up.

Down in Anaheim they have blistered peppers. I remember getting dressed for the tradeshow, putting on my black suit and lime green tie, while I watched on the hotel TV the footage of the tsunami in Indonesia. Or was it Thailand? I forget. Traumatic if you were there. You wouldn’t forget, but for me it was a sidebar, an unforgettable image on Fox News. Always Fox News. In those days we would flip between Fox News and Russia Today.

Back to Boston for the chowder. Seattle has the Space Needle, while Vancouver has safe spaces for needle exchanges.

Las Vegas has …..Las Vegas has…..lights and losers. In spades. Britney Spears Slots. Technicolour poodles with fur shaped like topiary. The Liberace museum. The city where stars go to die. The phone call from my daughter who was traveling by herself in Poland and had just forgot her backpack on a bus. I could only listen. I could not help, except to say I love you, and I know you will get through this. We always do. Get through it.

My loathing knows no end, sees no bottom, and provides little mystery. Fresh troops and traps arrive daily. Just get through the week, survive the months and years will accumulate into decades like dust.

Witness a fresh rabble of vegan zombies. Remember back to bakery days and Vegan Puff Dogs, a crazy name for a veggie weiner in puff pastry, aka sausage roll.

Working close in tight close quarters. Glengarry Glen Ross was not a single malt whiskey. ABC- always be closing, except when sleeping. Eyes Wide Shut.

Close your eyes —only if you dare. It’s just business. Taking anything personal is a rookie mistake—a different kind of servitude, it is all lip service to the art of the Deal. Business is the Devil’s Right Hand.

I could have been a chicken tender, seeking warmth in a deep fat fryer. Gold and crispy. Gold and crispy. Serve me up hot. Upright with a smile. Upright with a smile. Blood beach. Bleach beach.

Alfred J. Prufrock could have been a pair of ragged claws, but at least he got a love song. Those who can’t….teach. Those who can’t teach, teach PE. Those who can’t teach PE, go into sales, the last refuge of the high school graduate. Anybody can sell, right?

WRONG. It takes a village to raise an idiot. The same idiot who sells them back their own village. Subdivided into lots, plots, and impersonal spaces. Sold to the highest bidder.

Why must I cloak my emotions in poetry? The truth is too revealing. Am I a coward at heart? As the end of a working life beckons, I look back in anger, but with humour. Regrets? I’ve had a few too many.

That’s me in the corner.

That’s me, slumped in the spotlight.

That’s me. The deer of the year in the headlights.

I took the road not taken and that has made all the difference.

So many roads traveled, all the road mixtapes. Scars.

Some of them are visible.

Like the bald headed guy says, there’s lots of hair, except it’s on the inside.