The NY Times Anxiety blog, I can relate to.  Traumatized by certain aspects of college, yes, I abandoned the idea that life was all about being happy.  Academia, as much as I felt at home, I guess I could see that the way it was going, it wouldn't really work for me, and so, yes, by definition, my life would never really be all that happy.  I am not part of the stylish regime that took over the humanities, and nor am I disposed to fit in with the micro litmus tests of science.  Paint me as the palooka that I am. Can't keep up with the latest self promoters, and of course, to even say that is absolutely horrible, stone age, and a huge sign...  that I am not as bright and astute a cultural critic.  Relegate me to the Neanderthals.  I don't deny a common brotherhood with any thinking of any sort, but it just seems, wow, things are made pretty complicated right off the bat, if you enter into the modern dialectic of post deconstructionist so that we are to question our very sexual identity.

If you've had any experience dealing with people, not just telling them from on high what they should be doing, how they should think, you'll quickly discover an entire spectroscopy of human shades, quite as if each seed of humanity produced, indeed, an entirely different and unique individual, of course.  That goes without saying.

Well, my laboratory is a neighborhood restaurant bar.  Sort of like a duck blind, but of course the blind part is instantly gone.  Yes, quickly, very quickly, you are one person, dealing with other people.  This is the water in which we swim, and yes, swimming is what we do.  It is the root of community, the root of politics, the root of tribal belonging, of neighborhood, of basically the deepest friendships you are allowed finally.

Each night, then, resembles something of a performance, on all parts, on the part of all players.  If you are in the right sort of bar the relationships are far more on the real side, even if just in passing, then the artifice.  The performance, being live, takes a lot of energy, an engagement of six hours.

And so, that scholar, fallen from the academy, dives each time into the unknown, and people come, complete strangers, people you've known for years.  A light goes on, it's live 'TV', and life is shared, as people need to share.  I am touched by what my friends from the years share with me.  Breast cancer, a coming operation followed by chemotherapy.  And when people can share, though it might not help the  bottom line directly, though it does, I can sense I'm doing something right.