don't pretend you aren't confused

0:03He left, I said to Roland, who was working beside me, so he could hear the conversation, I said, "You know, Tamir is in that really sweet, really brief instant in time where he's got it figured out." Yeah. And I'm like, "I really envy him." But the thing is, we all had that space in our lives, for like six months or four months or two years, where we thought we could dictate the terms of our life, or we thought we got it all figured out. And then along comes the wrong girl, or along comes, you know, your mom gets sick or something. And I said, "He's got it, he's got it all figured out right now." But yeah. And it's just very interesting to hear you speaking now, and you've sort of realized you can do your half and then you cross your fingers for

0:50the rest. Yeah, that's how I look at it. Hello everyone, welcome to Nectar of Time. I'm your host, Tamir Barzilai, and today we're going to be speaking with Tyler Dorchester. Tyler has been a good friend of mine for seven years; he's also been my barber. Tyler is someone who has a deep well of knowledge when it comes to literature, when it comes to fiction. We are constantly discussing books of all sorts when I'm in his chair, and in a sense he is a therapist and teacher of sorts when it comes to these topics. And so today I sat down with him and we spoke about many beautiful vignettes of literature, how it's important to synthesize fiction with non-fiction, and how to deal with life's

1:39enigmas. So I hope you sit down, pour yourself a cup of tea or coffee or whatever you like, and enjoy the next hour and a half. Thank you so much. It's kind of a nice color, eh? Yeah, it is, a little amber. Well, oh, we should cheers. Welcome to the Nectar of Time. Thank you. Let's see if it tastes like the nectar of time: mysterious and inevitable. Actually, that's really good. Cool. Well, where do we begin? I mean, I think a lot of our conversations, in terms of all of the topics that I just

2:26mentioned, they go in a variety of directions. You know, I sit down in the chair, we talk. I mean, you've come over to my place a bunch of times. We know each other, we know what makes each other tick in terms of these novels, these books, these ideas, these vignettes, and we just share these little vignettes from time to time. And I think maybe I'll just turn the attention quickly to a gift that you gave me for my last birthday, I think. Was it a birthday? It was a birthday gift, right? Or Christmas? Or a Christmas gift? It was a birthday, it was a birthday gift, and it was last year. Yeah. Yeah. And so I'm just going to take this book out right here, and it's called Men, Women and Other Adventures. And there's this very— I mean, what would you, how would you

3:12describe this cover? Tell me a little bit about the cover. I think it's a fashion designer from the mid-'60s, right? And he's sort of Rico Suave, with these slinky, beautiful women sort of pressing up against him. But you're not— they're kind of surrounding him too. They could actually turn on him at any second, by the looks of it, right? Their eyes are a little bit ominous in some sense, and you don't know if they lead you back up to a room and then they have a dagger hidden, attached to their thigh, and they take it out and stab you in the back. Or a little poison pill in their ring. Or pill, yeah. These are potentially the sirens, the red sparrows, the, whatever you want to call them. And so this is both a— I guess, I mean, like, how did this connect to the

4:00book? And let me just say something quickly about the book. This is a book totally made by Tyler as an anthology or compilation, in every sense of the word, where he would physically take short stories from other anthologies and collections and then put the ones that he thought were most relevant for me inside, and then add little, like, I don't know, little photos and captions and things like that. I used to— yeah, the images, dusty. Yeah, I don't even, you know, I'm sitting here trying to think of where I got the idea to do this. But anyways, yeah, if I read a short story I like, I'll actually take the carpenter knife and take it off of the spine, and I'll bind the stories back together using onion paper, which, sorry God, but it's from the Bible, because it's very— onion paper, it's very bendy,

4:48right, but strong. So it'll act like book glue. And anyways, yeah, I think I made four different chap— four different sections for you. Right, like you divided it into segments. Yeah: My Favorite Authors, Dangerous Women, Best Non-Fiction Ever, Adventures in Mayhem, and Favorite Stories. And then part six is Jews and Barbers. Because I really need to get through more of it, because, like I was saying before we started recording, I just sort of fell off a bit with my reading for the last six months, man, managing my business and whatnot, traveling a little bit, you know, putting in work. But fiction is something that

5:37really grounds me, and I think the collection here is phenomenal. I need to work through them. But one of the stories— Or you want to go ahead? No, I just, I'm going to look at what stories the favorite stories are, but go ahead. Well, one thing that's interesting is that your story is here. Oh, yeah. And you are sort of published but also sort of not published. And you're published in your comics. Yes. But you're not published in your writing. No. But the comics were— I was very lucky. It ended up with a big swath of kind of Sunday funnies, where it was all color and tons of room. So I kind of did everything over the ten years I had. I wrote, I'd do poetry and then draw out the comic characters to that. It was script heavy, but it was really fun to try and fit it in with the

6:26illustrations, right? But yeah, if you consider a script being published, then yes. But no, the ghostly stallion is just for my own pleasure. For your pleasure, and also for my pleasure. Yes. Do you want to share a vignette of it, or you don't plan to publish that? Oh, that'd be great. Do you mean tell you the story behind it, or—? Well, I don't want to give the whole thing away, but maybe give me— You mean just a part? Maybe give me the version of— So just for reference to our listeners, Tyler wrote the story— what was the name of it again? "The Ghostly Blue Stallion of Dorchester Cabin." Yeah. So Tyler has this cabin in Alberta, and it's sort of in the middle of the woods,

7:14and an expansive field of view, right? It's the horror movie cabin, middle of nowhere, and isolated. Yeah, yeah. And there happened to be this, well, this ghost or this being or this horse that should not have been there. No. And not only that, it was a horse like I'd never seen before. I've seen— I grew up on a farm, I've seen thousands of horses, and this was a blue roan, which is basically— it was a stallion too, so it was this huge, gorgeous, muscular horse that was sort of the color of a blueberry. It's gray and blue. And it showed up on my property, and my property is completely fenced off. And yeah, as we tried to figure out where it was from, it

8:02had no markings or anything. And yeah, I won't give, yeah, I won't give too much away. But what actually ended up happening was my friends had to leave, so I saw them leave, go back to the city, and this horse, which had sort of come up to, running up to the cabin through this fog bank— I know it sounds dramatic, but it was pretty amazing— it then disappeared. And I followed its hoofprints right into the middle of a gloaming, and the footprints ended. Now, I'm sure it wasn't a ghost horse, but I tried to find it, I tried to find where the tracks picked up again. And I became quite worried in my head, in the middle of this empty cabin, thinking it was a harbinger of some sort. So bringing in some impending— Yes. Probably doom? Yes.

8:53I started picturing looking up at the window of the cabin and seeing its face pressed against the glass. And so I had to phone my friends that were driving back to Edmonton for some reassurance, because I had the hair on the back of my neck standing up. But it was the horse, like— I forget what it's called when a horse howls. Neigh. Neigh, yeah. Neigh. Did it neigh? Yeah, it was— we thought it was talking to, or communicating with, these other horses that were in a neighboring pasture. But the way it was challenging them, it makes a really aggressive noise. We realized that they weren't friends, that it wasn't with these horses, so it was being really aggressive with them. And it was just a very strange, very— everything was just a bit

9:40off. It was really kind of interesting and creepy. But yeah, it was— anyways, when this happened, I walked directly from the forest where I lost, couldn't find the horse, back to the cabin, and sat down and wrote for, I think, three hours. And I've never done that before, immediately. I just had to do it. And everything in the story is true except for the very last line. No, actually, it's all true. I didn't add anything. In the story, the horse doesn't show up; I just imagine it showing up with its face pressed to the glass. So yeah, it's kind of neat when that happens. I just got it all out, and I hardly change anything in the story. So there's a couple things there. One is, did this happen, did it not happen? People

10:28have to read the story and make up their minds for themselves, I guess. The other thing is just the fact that these enigmas, sometimes they pop up out of nowhere, like, and then they disappear in the same way that they popped up, and they just leave you with this imprint. Maybe it's like an itch that it is impossible to scratch. And I wouldn't change it for anything. Like, I actually do think we're all a little bit starved for something. So is that a facet of life, to experience these itches that we can't scratch and just accept them the way they are? Is there learning to come from it, or is it mystery for the sake of mystery? For me, the way you just said "mystery for the sake of mystery," I

11:17love that stuff. I think we've talked about it before: for me, if someone thinks they've got everything figured out, to my mind, that's where they're going to stop. You know, their brain calcifies. It's way more fun to be sort of scratching your head sometimes, because it keeps your brain— Right. —looking and listening. Right. And that. But I think that for the most part, people either ignore these mysteries as they arise in their life— Yes. —or they get paralyzed by them. And most people do have these events that take place in their lives. Sometimes they're tragic, sometimes they're just strictly enigmatic, and they're not necessarily joyful or sorrowful. But, and

12:07sometimes they are joyful, but then they become sorrowful the minute that they disappear. Because, I mean, the inherent part of it is that there's a beginning and end to this. I don't know too many perpetual mysteries that aren't just like the grand questions of life. And I mean, it's almost up to us to figure out what we want to make of it, right? So you can choose for mystery, but other people will go on a lifelong crusade to find the answer. You know what's funny too is, you know, the guys that sit in my chair, they'll be telling me these stories and I'll be blown away. You know, while they're saying the story out loud, they'll realize what a strange or interesting or profound story it is, especially when they see my reaction to it, right? You know, especially when, you

12:56know, when someone's telling you something, you're going to be interpreting it through your own lens. And what I like is we'll ping-pong things back and forth and get more out of it that way. I'm trying to think of an example, but I'll have to come back— Come back to me. Yeah. I mean, it happens so often that if you're— yeah, it's funny, some people just take that stuff and just push it away. I get it, like, you know, you have to if you want to maintain that day-to-day equilibrium. Yes. I was just— It's going to knock you off your feet. Yeah. And most people aren't— you know, we're pattern-seeking creatures, right? We want to see the reason or the pattern in everything. Right. At least for myself, I've had too

13:44many unexpected tough stuff or great stuff to sort of fool myself anymore that I have 100% control over my life. Yeah. So I kind of try to stay loose with the stuff that comes at me, you know, out of left field. Right. So, I mean, there's a bit of Stoicism involved in this: the things you can control, the things that you can't control. Your circumstances, I mean, your external world, you can't really control that. You can only control how you react to it, right? And this comes back to, like, the Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning, and so on and so forth. I think people generally— You read that? I've— yeah, I've read, like, parts of it. I actually haven't finished it, but I

14:31sort of just didn't continue after the concentration— Oh man, it's heavy. Yeah, it's— but I will never forget— yeah, I read that, I think it was in university, and you're right. I'm just thinking of what I took out of that. And he said basically, you know, if you're in circumstances where, you know, it's all out there and you have no say in it, sometimes the best you can do— if I'm remembering it, what I took out of it— the best you can do is see how well you can do with what just hit you upside the head. That was— yeah, that book was— So the problem with that is, you can take it and you can go as far back as Marcus Aurelius, and you can go even before Marcus Aurelius. You can go to, I mean, just drop any Greek philosopher, and someone has an opinion on how to deal with— Yeah, yeah.

15:20You know, circumstance. So the issue is not dealing with tragedy per se, or dealing with joy per se, knowing that both are fleeting. Like, we know that. And this is a poem that I often quote, but it's "If," Rudyard Kipling's "If": "If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two impostors just the same." So we know already, and from even books like the Bhagavad Gita, where it says, you know, you must remain the same in both pain and joy, and you have the right to do work, but you don't have the right to the outcome of your work, and things like that, where it's getting— yeah, it's getting you to play a game where you're playing the baseline game and not the "Oh my God, this is amazing," "Oh my God, this

16:09sucks." You're playing the middle game. Yeah. Right. The problem is, I don't know that there's really an answer for the enigma game, because an enigma is neither good nor bad. It's a why. It's like, why did this happen? What is the purpose of this? And I think that sometimes presents challenges to people that they don't really know what to do with. It's not a hooray and it's not an "oh no," it's just a "what the fuck." And the "what the fuck" brings you into a totally different class of philosophers now, because it's no longer just— Marcus Aurelius cannot give you the answer to that. There you have to go through more treacherous paths. What do you think—

16:58What do you think is— what would they have in common? Do you have any theory at all? What, people that can handle that or take it on as a challenge, rather than people that push it away? Well, I think the people that go deep into it, many of them go insane. Love it. Yeah, yeah. I mean, this is true. Yeah, no, we were talking on the phone earlier. The people that I know— and some of them are incredible people— but you can go down a rabbit hole. Mm. I would say there's people I know that have a good mix of common sense and kind of a philosopher's heart. But boy, I can think of cousins, and, well,

17:47myself at one point. You just, you eat yourself, you know? I know for myself, you know, thinking I've found some— I reached some plateau. Yeah. And it crumbles away from me, and then you question everything. That's what I don't miss about my 20s. That was what my 20s were for me. Yeah. So the question is, like, what to do about this? And there's a few different ways to go about it, and there's a few different fun quotes here. So one is, Alan Watts has this little story where he says, well, imagine that, you know, you could dream whatever dream you wanted to dream. And you first would be able to, you know, live for 10,000 years, and then after you live for 10,000 years, you want to go and see every single planet, and you want to

18:36have every single experience, and you want to, you know, marry the most beautiful woman and have the best job and make the most money and buy whatever car you want. And, you know, every time you go through one of these iterations, you're getting basically exactly what you want. You're putting together your Hollywood production, and then poof, there you have it. He says eventually you will start to tire from the certainty of controlling every aspect of these scenarios, and you'd probably end up in the exact life that you're in right now, where you don't know exactly what's going to happen. And I think what he's suggesting is that there's beauty in the unknown, but you have to have that discipline to know that you're dealing with the unknown, which is sort of like—

19:23you're fighting the unknown. It's trying to put up a fight against, like, the ocean or the sea. It's like, it doesn't matter how hard you punch it, nothing's going to change it. And if anything, it's a Gordian knot, where the more you try to unravel it, the deeper and deeper you drown. And so there's another line by Dante in his Divine Comedy, in Paradiso, which is the third book. And in Paradiso he enters, like, the final tier of heaven, and he's basically about to see God. And he does see God, but when he tries to describe it, he says, "This is a flight—

20:13my wings are not capable of this flight." Mm. And I just thought that's such a beautiful line, because at some point you do hit a limit. You hit a bottleneck in this life where you just don't know, and you have to come to terms with that frustration of "I don't know." Mm. And then I think that the only way to soothe yourself is through works of fiction, by seeing other people's enigmas. There was— just as an aside, but I think it applies to it— there was a study done not too long ago that suggested— what they found suggested that people that read fiction actually also score higher in empathy. And the theory was, because you're

21:00putting yourself in other people's shoes when you read, you're seeing them through those, so you actually get a little bit more practice in switching spots with other people. Yeah, you know what's funny, actually? Some of the tougher times in my life, I can think, I actually escaped into books, which is very soothing. But then you actually— You escaped by reading? Oh, you escaped. Just, it was a way to shut down. But at the same time, it was a balance, because I could either be shutting down, like just watching TV for 16 hours, or it would just take me to a better place than I was right then. And I would come back from a lot of those books with thoughts in my head that hadn't been there the previous day.

21:49Yeah, just, I think, just speaking for myself, when I'm not feeling great for whatever reason, my thoughts get very slow, you know, my energy gets really slow. And if you're reading a great story, it wakes you up again, you know? Either the ideas that are coming at you, or you're really getting into a character, you're cheering for a character or crossing your fingers for a character. And I've never actually thought of that until what you just said. I have primarily looked at escaping— through non-fiction, kind of— through fiction as a bad thing, right? Yeah, I've never really thought of that. That's interesting. Yeah, I mean, the empathy thing is real, because I know that for the first part of my 20s, maybe the first half of

22:36my 20s, I was addicted to non-fiction. I mean, I would frequently meet my entrepreneurial friends at the Indigo non-fiction section. Like, we'd bump into each other there. Adorable. That's— we wouldn't bump into each other in any other section; it would be that section. And it's good. Like, it serves a purpose. You need to get skilled in certain areas of your life. You need to know the faults of your brain and the way you think, and different habits that you should uproot, or just, honestly, get introduced to a lot of ideas. Yeah, you know, what hats you want to try on. Exactly. And most importantly, you know that you're this malleable being and you want to improve it, and it's important to get some sort of instruction, because they certainly don't give that instruction in high school. They probably give

23:24better education in elementary school than in high school when it comes to actually, like, the ability to formulate your own ideas. Yeah, yeah. Right? If you think about, like, imagination and creativity and problem solving, you're probably gaining more traction in elementary school than you are in high school, because high school is sort of force-feeding you, where elementary school, you might have more of this, like, innate curiosity that's being tapped into. And you're also less worried about what everyone else thinks of you, like you are in, you know, high school or junior high. Exactly. So you sort of need to supplement that after high school these days, you know, until there's a change in the system. So that actually kind of works. The problem is, if you continue down that trajectory, you become surrounded by groups of shit, right? Like, truly. Because you'll go to these, you know,

24:13motivational circle jerks or whatever they are, and everyone will just— everyone doesn't admit their flaws. They're reassuring each other how well they're doing. Exactly, exactly. I was at an event not too long ago. My friend runs, like, business masterminds and wellness for entrepreneurs. And actually, I'll give a shout-out to Ian Coll. He runs out in Squamish some really good meetups for entrepreneurs and people that want to prioritize their wellness and mental health, which I think is super important, because the entrepreneurial life has been infected by the hustle culture of "Don't sleep, don't eat properly, whatever, just go work, make money, grind, sell to people," etc. And

25:01there's a time and place for that, but there's also a time and place to make sure that your brain is functioning properly and you're not, you know, having just toxic thoughts. Right. Well, we only have so much mental real estate, right? And if you're putting it all in one plot of land, you know, like I've said to you before, you're not necessarily the person I want to be talking to at a house party. You know, the conversation's going to be pretty— Yeah, narrow. Exactly. So this wellness group, we had this meetup, and it was great, and everyone was talking about their morning routine. Excuse me. So when it came to my turn,

25:49and everyone before me was like, "I do this, I go for a morning dip in the river, and I eat this, and I drink that, and I go for a run, and I have all these non-negotiables." And I just said, "Fuck, everything is negotiable." Like, I don't have one. I used to have one, but I'm just at a stage right now where there's, like, too many options, where you don't necessarily do anything. And I just admitted that I didn't have that. It's not that I'm not going to improve it or fix it. Do you mind if I tell the story of when you first started sitting with me? That was seven years ago now. Okay. So you were still kind of a pup. But right away, I think the first time, you were telling me about the new translation of the Odyssey, and you were telling me your plans and stuff, which was pretty exciting to me, because I am not that person. I have a ton of ideas,

26:37and it's tough for me to follow through on them. But charming guy, exciting to listen to, enjoyed your company. But then when you left, I— a coworker, you know Roland, you've seen him, one of the smartest guys I've ever met, I really, really enjoy— Shout-out to Roland. My old coworker, one of the best coworkers I ever had. When he left, I said to Roland, who was working beside me, so he could hear the conversation, I said, "You know, Tamir's in that really sweet, really brief instant in time where he's got it figured out." Yeah. And I'm like, "I really envy him." But the thing is, we all had that space in our lives, for like six months or four months or two years, where we thought we could dictate the terms of our life, or we thought we got it all figured out. And

27:25then along comes the wrong girl, or along comes, you know, your mom gets sick or something. And I said, "He's got it, he's got it all figured out right now." But yeah. And it's just very interesting to hear you speaking now, and you've sort of realized— I'm not sure if this is— I'm kind of looking at it a different way, from my own personal experience— but sort of, you can do your half and then you cross your fingers for the rest. Yeah, that's how I look at it. Exactly. And I think it's very— like, the people with their morning routines, that really does create a sense of security. There's absolutely nothing wrong with it. I wish I had more of that. Yeah, it's just, in fact, you know, to continue to optimize yourself is a critical thing that we all have to do. The only

28:13issue is when you start lying to yourself. Ah, okay. Right. Yeah, yeah. Like, for all of those people, everything is going perfectly and you do this every day? Okay, give me a break. Like, you know, there's Navy SEALs, and then there's basically everyone else. Yeah, yeah. Okay. For a reason. For a reason, right? So, like, yeah, most days maybe you do it. And I think, like, routine helps a lot of people. Like, if you have kids and you say, "I take my kids to school every day," then I'm sure you take your kids to school. Like, there's obviously routine that's important. It's just, for me, I value truth over this "fake it till you make it." When you were saying— I remember you were saying, you know, sort of in some of the circles you move in— I've had customers that talk, they're in law or they're in banking, investment banking—

29:02they say that too. The culture is very much what you were just saying. And these other guys have talked, like, "I don't really know if I fit in with that," even if they could have a lot more in common with these guys than they think, but they don't get to that point. Yeah, you do have to play a certain role depending on the career that you're in. And I think the entrepreneurial career, you have, you know, Gary Vaynerchuk, who's the voice of hustle culture on social media, and he says, you know, "Between my— between 20 and 30 years old, I didn't take a single day off." And then it's like, why the fuck not? Like, what, do you think you can just exchange your fun coupons for time

29:49now, for your youthful 20s? I'm totally, 100% on board with dedicating yourself to a craft, but not because someone else told you to do it. If that is truly what you want to do, then by all means do it, and go climb Mount Everest, and make a name for yourself, and be great in that thing that you want to be great at, because we know to be great at something does require intense sacrifice, right? But the problem that I see is, a lot of people think that if they do all of those things and they just dump themselves into, you know, or jump off a cliff and build the plane as they're coming down— a lot of times they don't build the plane. Mm. And then they just crash. And so people should have an honest conversation with

30:38themselves to see what is actually important for you and how do you want to construct your life, but without the self-help non— not self-help, but self-love nonsense. Because here's the other side of that. The other side is you don't hustle at all and you just pamper yourself all day long, and you're like, "This is self-love." Maybe I have a version of that, except it's not pampering so much as wandering towards everything that interests me, and everything kind of interests me, right? So for me, I need to get more onto a routine so that I can actually go more deeply into the stuff that interests me, rather than skimming along. Right. I kind of— I'm kind of seeing what you're saying, though, with the role. Just picking up a book— I think all of us, when we get into our lives,

31:28whether you're type A, type B, Republican, hippie, whatever, other doors— not because you even willfully do it, but every choice you make, you know, steers you in one certain direction. When you sit down with a book, whether it's, you know, the Odyssey or Shopaholic, whatever that chick was— Confessions of a— Thank you. Yeah, yeah. But it's going to— even if you're no longer moving in those worlds, you're going to get either introduced to them or reminded of who you were. And even if you're on a certain track, you're going to continue to acquaint your brain with all these other worlds, right? It's kind of what you were saying earlier, right? Exactly. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, it's that. And that's the

32:15synthesizing of the yin and the yang, right? Okay, okay. Yeah, yeah. You know what's funny, Tamir? The last chapter in the book I made for you, Jews and Barbers. Yeah. Like, I've read Isaac Bashevis Singer. He actually wrote in Yiddish and it was translated to English, and all he wrote about was the pre-World War II Jewish communities in Russia or Czechoslovakia or Germany or wherever. It was just, probably, like, 17th century, 19th century. And I knew so much about traditional Jewish culture before I actually got to know Jewish people, because I grew up in rural Alberta. And that's the best example I can think of where actually I got immersed in a completely different culture, because I wasn't even raised, you

33:04know, in a church, any— But, you know, I felt like when I met you, or my neighbor Lisa, who's Jewish, I actually had a bit of a starting point. Like, I just had all these questions I could ask you guys, but they weren't, you know, they weren't dumb questions, they were clarification. I remember I was telling you all the Jewish words I knew from reading: schmuck, schmaltz. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Schlimazel, schlemiel. Yeah. Let's see. So we discussed a few things so far, and I think, like, the main point, just to recap, is there's a polarity here. You have fiction and you have non-fiction. You have the sublimated stories

33:54of the heart and the soul and life, with joyous and sorrowful threads sewn through them. And then you have the other side, which is non-fiction, which is how to actually take action, with tools that exist through science, you know, psychology, etc., to improve your life and whatnot. The problem is, if you just dedicate yourself to improving your life, you will quickly find out that you're just that Tamir seven years ago, sitting in the chair, thinking that he can control everything just because he says he can. And then if you lean too much into the fictional world, you might be paralyzed in another sense, because

34:41you're living in a fairy tale. Oh, very interesting. That's a really interesting combination, man, because that's— yeah, I would escape into fiction. You're right. You know, so, question for you. Yeah. What— you know, you can learn from non-fiction. What, if you can think of any, or clarify any, what has non-fiction taught you? Can you think of anything? Oh, so many things. I mean, some— well, a book that I frequently reference— there's two books, they sort of go hand in hand, and maybe we'll add a third one in there, but this is sort of like the trinity for me in terms of my early 20s, even from the age of 19 to, like, 21. I inhaled these books and read them multiple times over. So the first one is The Master Key System by Charles Haanel.

35:28This was written in 1912. This was a course that was then turned into a book, and the course was meant to teach you how to gain— there's a line, it says, "If you want health, then get the health consciousness. If you want love, then get the love consciousness. If you want wealth—" Sorry, sorry to interrupt. Did I say non-fiction? Yeah. Fuck. You meant fiction? Let me ask the question again. Okay. You can edit out the other one. So let me ask you a question: what has fiction taught you? Like, yeah, if you can think of some lessons. That's what I meant to say. I'm so sorry, man. The other one's easier. I don't think I'm even going to edit it out. Yeah. Okay. But just for— okay, so let me just finish the thought there and then we'll go back, because for the listeners, there are some interesting books, and I think those books actually led me to—

36:151907? 1912. 1912, wow. Yeah. So, okay, so Charles Haanel wrote The Master Key System in 1912, and that's a course on basically getting your mind right, first of all in alignment with how the world works, which is à la Emerson's law of compensation: you do something good, you get something good, etc., right? Because Emerson was very influenced by Eastern— Yeah. —philosophies and so on. See, Emerson did a great job at combining Western and Eastern together, just in terms of his curiosities. Which Emerson? Ralph Waldo? Ralph, okay. Yeah, yeah, gotcha. So, like, his essays on love and whatever, like, we can go on and on about that. But that sort of inspired the generation, like the

37:04first generation of self-help novels, which was Charles Haanel's Master Key System. And it was a book about meditation as well. At the end of every chapter— the chapters are meant to be read and studied once per week, and it said, "Do not skip to chapter two until the second week." And it would give you these meditation exercises that were very weird. Meditation was, like, sit in front of a wall and stare at the wall, and then that's week one. Especially for that time. Especially for that time. Then week two, imagine a square on the wall. Week three, identify all the thoughts in your head. Week four, try to isolate to one specific thought. Suffice to say it was difficult. Can't control my thoughts at 21 years of age, right? But that led me to Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. That was the next book, and I read that

37:52six, seven times over, that book. And I'm sort of going over this quickly, because I want to get to the actual question that you want the answer to. But Think and Grow Rich is one of the, I think, the best sellers, one of the top best sellers of all time for self-help and success and wealth creation and so on. And it's interesting because of this: it's the only self-help book that I know of that talks about money that has an entire chapter dedicated to sex. Potato, potato, sometimes, in this culture, right? North America. But it is so beautifully written that that chapter eclipses all the other chapters for me in that book. That chapter has a line that talks about past loves. It talks about how, don't worry if you

38:42ruminate on past loves, for each love has its own unique characteristics and leaves its own indelible trace upon the heart. And if you feel lonely in future times, just dwell in the warmth of those previous loves, and know that each of them are unique, and so on and so forth. And he just continues on. I can think of a couple non-fiction books that were so poetic that I was just folding over corner after corner, because I wanted— didn't want to write down the passage or keep the passage because of so much just the idea behind it, but how they put it was so beautiful. Yeah. Huh. Yeah, there are a few, especially in that era. Like, I think the writing was less bound by precedent of the times, so they could just do whatever

39:30they wanted. And that style was way more ornate too, until Hemingway came along. Sure, yeah. And so then he writes another book. He writes a book called Outwitting the Devil, which is another one of my favorite books, and that book had a huge impact on me. I've heard of that one. I think I maybe mentioned it to you. Yeah, maybe. And so Outwitting the Devil is him, in a very dark part of his life, locks himself in a hotel for two weeks. Anyways, he basically summons the Devil, and he says to the reader, "You can either believe that I interviewed the Devil, or you can choose not to believe that I interviewed the Devil, but for me these words were real." And the Devil— I listened to it as an audiobook as well— and the Devil, what's interesting— I've got to read this. Yeah, this is actually a fun one. The Devil has this, like, very deep, very deep, majestic voice. And in fact,

40:20he even asks Napoleon Hill— Napoleon Hill is the author— to refer to him as "Your Majesty." Okay. And when he says, "Oh, well, if you're Your Majesty, then what's God?" he says, "What you call God is what I call my opposition." Anyways, it's so beautifully written as well, and it's such an interesting interaction that it had a huge impact on me. But again, you could take the Devil and God aside, and it's— It's funny, though, Tamir, the non-fiction you read, the two— probably, well, no, three of them, all three that you've talked about— do sound also very poetic. Exactly. You know, metaphysical, for non-fiction. Those are the ones that stick with me. And if you want to add the fourth one, the fourth one is James Allen. He's an English philosopher, early 20th century, maybe late 19th century, and he was

41:11writing a book, or he wrote a book, called As a Man Thinketh. "As a man thinketh" is a line from, I think, either Psalms or Ecclesiastes— not Psalms— Ecclesiastes or Proverbs, by King Solomon, I can't remember which. And the full line is "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." Basically The Secret nowadays, which is, you know, whatever you think within, so is without. Whatever you want to manifest, think. It's all connected, right? And so he wrote beautiful poetic prose that uses the metaphor of the mind as a garden, and basically whatever you sow will, you know, cultivate whatever fruit, so on and so forth. So those are the non-fiction books that

41:59really, like, molded a lot of the, I guess, infrastructure and superhighways of my mind. And so what's interesting, if I could interrupt here: when you're talking about the non-fiction books, you were actually describing them as almost like they were works of fiction. And you didn't really— you were talking about them like I'd asked you to describe your favorite fiction books and why they were beautiful, right? And what's really interesting to me is, I didn't hear too many things of what they actually taught you, more of how— it's more how they were written that impacted your overall— So that's a really

42:47good observation. I think that's what grabbed me at the beginning. Okay. Of course there's the promise that there's going to be wealth, success, and all of this fun stuff, and of course there's a lot of, like— But you also hear— I mean, by the time you're 21, I'm sure you'd heard 101 different ways to accumulate wealth or to make your personality streamlined. But it was the putting it in a— putting it in a— jump in here— like an operating system for me. It had to be bespoke for me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because others wouldn't get the job. But once I had that infrastructure in place, then I could start, you know, building the rest

43:36of my city, right? And it sounds like, starting from there, with it giving you more of a more innate framework, you ended up in a slightly different place than the other people you were talking to at the entrepreneurs. Perhaps. Yeah, perhaps. It's hard for me, you know, obviously it's generalizing thought, but I do know that I did read very many books that were sterile in that sense, and they were strictly— yeah, they're strictly about this psychological principle, strictly about this method to hook someone in using sales tactics, and blah blah blah. You know what's interesting? The books I've flipped through, you know, How to Win Friends and Influence People and Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and, you know, the

44:23classics— but I didn't read a lot of non-fiction or self-help until I was probably in my 30s. And a lot of them, I was like, "I know this already, I know this already, I know this already." And not because I'm so wise, but I think because the more basic— it was not money at all. I didn't read anything like that, because it's not my jam. But I think a lot of the very simple stuff, if you get further on in life, you may have already, hopefully, learned it. Yeah. Not stuff that's not intuitive, like money and math. Yeah. But yeah, I think so. So, funny story: I gave my dad a translated copy of Marcus Aurelius's Meditations in Hebrew. It's just easier for him to read it in

45:11Hebrew. And I remember he read some, he read, like, a couple chapters, and he's like, "I already know all of this." Yeah, yeah. Isn't that funny? "Why are you telling— I already know all of it." I'm like, "How do you like it?" He's like, "I don't know, it's okay." What I have found is that— and definitely when I think of, like, I read Man's Search for Meaning, the Viktor Frankl, his concentration camp experiences, I think I was 20, 21, and that, holy cow, introduced a lot of ways of looking at the world that I hadn't thought of before. Very useful for me. But then it's interesting to read it 20 years later. I realized that the concepts weren't as new to me, just because— it's

46:00what your dad said. But what they did was— or my love of quotes— it clarifies or elaborates something you already know, but it clarifies it for you. Yeah. Are you ready to talk about— Think. Yeah, we sort of went through a little journey there. We're both ADD. Mm. Am I allowed to— Yeah, you're allowed to admit that to the world. Conversations are tangential. Let's fill this up before we get there. I wonder if it's still going to keep it warm. Cast iron is— I've cooked with it a lot at the cabin. It's very hard to heat up, but once it heats up, it keeps its heat forever. So it's— As far as cookware goes. So, you know what—

46:48Actually, you know what, Tamir, you should do is put boiling water in these teacups to warm them up first, and they'll retain a ton of heat, and then the tea will stay hot. Still warm. Interesting. Yeah. I might go— you know, maybe I'm just going to go refill the water. Give me one second. I'll do an ad. What's that? I'll do an ad. Yeah, do an ad, please, for BetterHelp.com. Okay. I'm not sure what that is, but if you want better help, if you hire people that grew up on a farm, such as myself, we have very good work ethic. We know— our help will be very specific. Like, I know how to pull a calf if the cow's having trouble. But in most cases, like finances and taxes, I would not be better help for that. But if civilization collapses, I would have a lot of skill sets you could use, like

47:37animal husbandry. Okay, Tamir's back. That's funny. I'm back for now, and then once the water is boiled, I'll do another quick stop. But all right, so where were we? We're talking about the fiction that has moved me. You want to re— I want, actually, I want to be more— just because it's just random curiosity— not "moved," because that's something— we were talking about self-help and non-fiction, right? People reading it for the purpose of gleaning information they can use to make their life, you know— What fiction has done that for you? Not in a— but something like, "Wow, that is a lesson that that character learned that I needed to learn," or "I needed to hear." Wow, that's a really good question, something that maybe I haven't thought about too much, because I feel that the learnings that come through

48:28are perhaps more unconscious. Huh, true. And I'm not necessarily, like, thinking about it, but just due to ruminating on the problems that they face within those stories, that helps me deal with my own problems. So as far as, like, a one-for-one character arc that lines up with me, it's hard to point to one particular instance. Although maybe I can. So there's this book by— you could probably guess my favorite author— Haruki Mur— covering up the name— Haruki Murakami. I panicked. I know the name. I panicked. Tyler knows the name. I do know the name. I've read a— Tamir actually gave me— Tamir, Jesus. Yeah. And

49:16I'm all rattled now. Tamir's given me two of his books, and, yeah, really interesting magic realism, to me. Yeah. So you read 1Q84? Yes. And you also read— No, you gave me his novel that I'm working my way through, of how to— how to write novels. Oh, the Novelist as a Vocation. Yeah. Okay. But you've read— I feel like you've read in the past— oh, you've read some short stories. Short stories, yes. "The Elephant Disappears," and a robbery one. Yeah, yeah. "The Second—" Bread, bread robbery— "Bakery Attack." "Bakery Attack," yeah. "The Second Bakery Attack," or something like that. So Murakami, Murakami is— as all of my friends know, as all the people in my life know— I think he's the GOAT, as far as authors are concerned. Obviously that's probably not true, and

50:03he probably wouldn't even agree to that, but for me he's the GOAT. He's the person where I picked up one of his books over the pandemic. And the pandemic, truly, in 2020, early 2020, is when things changed for me, because I joined a book club. And previously I was still— I was slowly getting into fiction. That's right. Yeah, I was slowly getting into fiction, because at the time I was still reading the Odyssey, I was still reading the Ramayana, was still reading Hermann Hesse, like Siddhartha, and little books like that. I was getting into it, but those are still philosophical classics, right? It's not something written in the last 20 years. It's beautiful, but it's heavy going. Exactly. And so I picked up a Murakami book because I joined this book club, specifically because I knew the people in the book club, but I

50:51knew these people are not reading these heavy, you know, philosophical books that I'm reading. I needed some lighter stuff. Excuse me. Because I knew that there was value in these so-called lighter books. They turn out to actually be heavier in many instances, but I knew there was value there, and I knew that the only way I'm going to be exposed to that is by joining a book club where I don't have control over the books that are being selected. And I think it was the second or third book where the name Haruki Murakami came up. And in fact, I actually read— by the way, one of my favorite writers in the world is Neil Strauss. I don't know if you're familiar with Neil Strauss. Neil Strauss is not a fiction writer. He writes for Rolling Stone, and he also wrote the book called The Game.

51:38And The Game is a book about the underground pickup world. Yep. And he also wrote a book years later called The Truth. And The Truth is a book that he wrote as an answer to The Game, which is what happens when you have a severe sex addiction and end up cheating on your girlfriend with her best friend. I want to read this guy. Yeah. Which is exactly what he did. And then he goes to sex addiction therapy, and the person that helps him out is Esther Perel, of renowned name, and she is phenomenal. And anyways— And again, you're also dipping your toe into worlds that you've, you know— Yeah. You know, you're coming out of that with maybe new insight into—

52:25Yeah. I mean, these are interesting books. But I would say that Neil Strauss recommended Haruki Murakami, because he had this, like, virtual book club during the pandemic, and he recommended a book called Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. Let me say that name again, because it's a very unique name for a book. That's one book? I thought you said two titles. That's one book. It's called Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, by Haruki Murakami. This book was written, I believe, in '89. I could be wrong, but it was around that time. And this book, actually, for Haruki Murakami, he states that this book is his favorite out of his books. And so I just recommended— hey guys, like— or someone else in the group recommended Murakami. I said, "Why don't we read this one?" because they weren't sure which of Murakami's books to read. I just saw Neil

53:13Strauss recommend it. I'm like, "Neil Strauss is great, he probably knows his stuff." We ended up reading it. I decided to read it using audio, because at that time, during the pandemic, you know, I wanted to get out of the house, going on these long walks, whatever. And the moment I finished the book, I remember just, like— when you listen to Audible audiobooks, it always ends like this, this, you know, old— what do you call, like, I think it's, like, what you call that Atlantic accent? Transatlantic accent. Okay, right. He's like, "Audible hopes you've enjoyed this message," or "Audible hopes you've enjoyed this program." And so that ended, and then I'm like— now it's silence. It's— everybody

54:03knows the silence after finishing an audiobook. And I thought to myself, "Holy shit, I did not know a book could do that to me." Nice. And this, sorry, this is Murakami? This is Murakami. One of my favorite feelings in the world is stumbling across a singer or an author and realizing they just knock you on your ass, and you realize they have a whole back catalog that you now get to dive into. That's the best feeling in the world. The best feeling. Yeah. I remember, like, I moved here— I spent a summer here when I was 21, and I walked into the only— it was a CD store, there was, it was secondhand CDs and cassette tapes, right? And I bought a cassette tape of Ella Fitzgerald, and the other

54:51one, a Billie Holiday. And I put them on my— this was 1993, people. So— but I just remember realizing, wow, I, you know, they have dozens of albums, I'm going to— you know. Yeah. And for an author— oh, so many, probably. Yeah, never mind. Lots. Yeah, it's a good feeling. Anyways, so that's a bit of a tangent on Murakami. But to answer your question, which book is a book that I looked to, or at least I was able to pull from it some lessons that could be useful because there's some parallel in my life? And I found that the book Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage— Another long one. Titles. Colorless. Oh, I guess, okay, the listeners probably want to know, because

55:38I just left them on a cliff of Hard-Boiled Wonderland. Yes. So just one sentence about Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. Hard-Boiled Wonderland is storyline one, the End of the World is storyline two. The chapters interchange, so you go from one storyline to the other, and as you continue through the book, they intertwine. Okay. And they escalate as you get closer and closer to the climax. And there's two protagonists. One of the protagonists is in what you could call IRL, which is the new way of saying, you know, in real life. Yeah. In that, he's, like, a computer programmer, and there's this whole thing going on where— anyways, I'm not going to get too much into it, but he's this computer programmer, things are going kind of in a

56:25messed-up way, and, yeah, he needs to fix it, people are after him, blah blah blah. Then you have the End of the World, which is an absolute batshit crazy world, totally surreal world, where you have a guy who goes to a library to decipher unicorn skulls. Nice. And he lives in a town that's, like, confined to a specific area, and there's just a bunch of unicorns, that they extract their shadows from the unicorns. This is Murakami? This is Murakami. Okay, I have to read this book. This is one of his most outlandish books. It just sounds— you know, even if for me it's not a nine out of nine, it would definitely be an experience. I would rather— I think I've told you this—

57:12I would rather experience something that I've never quite seen the like of before, even if it's like a six out of ten, than see another romantic comedy that's nine out of ten. But I'd rather be exposed to the new, interesting thing. That's just me. Yeah, something that tickles a part of your brain that doesn't normally get tickled. Yeah. You know, I was thinking, the reason I asked that question was, when you brought up Man's Search for Meaning, which I know is autobiographical, it's not fiction— but that book taught— even though it's non-fiction, it taught me the same lesson that a lot of fiction has. And a lot of fiction is dark, right? Right. And for me, I had a great childhood, really,

57:59really unique. Huge extended family. All my mom's side lived a 20-minute drive one direction, all my dad's side 20 minutes the other direction. Great parents. But I was a kid in the closet. And when I was a kid, like, there was no one out, you know, no one around, on TV, what have you. So I was also living a very dark dual life. And I remember reading, and just sort of as going through adulthood— I've always been too sentimental, not good with change, heart gets broken easily, by friends, whoever else— and reading something like— basically, I felt kind of locked into a fate that was going to be not good, you know? Because people like me, how are they going to end up? Like, you know, granted,

58:46this was the 1980s, but, you know, if you're a 16-year-old kid, it's not looking good. But also, with Frankl's book, it was basically someone who was locked into a horrific fate, but he found something redemptive in it, despite that, right? And a lot of fiction you read, it's the same thing, you know, because there has to be some kind of conflict. And some of those short story books, they get tough. But even if there's not a happy ending, there's always something that I could take out of it. Like, wow, they're not super happy, or they're in a tough spot, but they're still getting a kick out of a colorful— you know, just, there's— basically, I was taking lessons out of it of how to get through when the best I

59:35could do was just dog-paddle to keep my head above water. And it even actually just taught me, sometimes that's good enough. Yeah. Because sooner or later something's going to shift. It'll come around. Yeah. And it's funny to think. So those gave you the lessons, rather than someone telling you, "Hey, things will come around." You've got to learn that on your own, by proxy. Because, you know, who are you going to tell? Even as an adult, you know, like with your entrepreneur mixer, you know, you're presenting, everything's really great, fantastic. And, you know, it's a feeling of shame, even as an adult, to say, like, "I'm lonely," or, "I don't know where I'm going next," or, "I'm Johnny No Friends." But, you know, for me, fiction was always— like, even if it was a downer, in fiction the

1:00:24conflict has to be resolved to some point, and that's where I would draw my lessons from, right? You know, even if they're locked in, you know, a factory job and a single mother of seven, they would find some way at the end of the book— even if sometimes it ended badly— but they would find— the conflict, and the author resolving the conflict, usually there was something there I could take away from that. Yeah, that would be my answer to that. I know when I come across something in fiction that I really like, that there is, for me, an explicit lesson in it, I usually write that passage down in my journal. Yes, I keep a journal. That is— a diary is feelings, a journal is thoughts. So I'm not— my masculinity is not

1:01:12threatened by saying I keep a journal. Well, not at all. Journal is— I know I'm a different generation, but yeah, you're keeping a journal, not a diary. No, it's not, and it's very important that I stress this. Yes. But I was just thinking, you know, if I went back through there— I just write something down— if I wanted to think of what fiction has actually taught me, or made me look at the world in a different way, those passages I've written down are explicit lessons or explicit ideas of how to look at the world that would broaden my own life. Interesting. I should be writing this stuff down. Dude, you're doing great. Oh wait, we're recording it. You're doing great for the first podcast. This is awesome. Yeah, I eventually forgot. Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, so I guess,

1:02:02I mean, you sort of answered the question that you asked for yourself, or you asked me, which fiction book, but you're talking about how fiction books already have given you lessons. And yeah, I'm trying to think of explicit ones. That's kind of hard. It's different than a non-fiction lesson, which is, you know, "Always invest in 401(k)s," or, you know, "Do ten jumping jacks when you get out of bed." Or— yeah, exactly. That's exactly right. So just to, I guess, tie up the last thread, the one that you asked me with respect to which book. So, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage. So let's break down the name for a second. Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki. So Tsukuru Tazaki is the name of the protagonist. Yeah. They call him colorless because he has four friends, and they represent sort of, like, a palm.

1:02:54Okay. And actually the front cover of the book sort of uses that as a visual metaphor. Each one of his four friends is named after a color. Okay. His name, his translation of his name, means colorless. Okay. So colorless can sort of mean anything. It's sort of like this Zen Buddhist concept: nothing, or no. In our immediate culture, that's, you know, it's hard to take much out of that that's positive. Yeah, I mean, like, black is— white is— I was just thinking, I was thinking it's like beige, you know, it's bland. But in other cultures it would be— yeah, I think it's more like emptiness. But I think there's room for interpretation there, especially considering these books that I read, they're translations of the Japanese.

1:03:42So he's amazing. Like, he has these amazing friends, and each one of them fills a role in their friendship. And they live in this rural part of Japan. And Tsukuru Tazaki, he finds himself accepted to a top university in Tokyo. And so at 18 he goes to Tokyo, and none of his friends do. His friends stay for the local college and kind of, you know, poke fun at him for wanting to go to this bigger university and, you know, trying to make something of himself. Well, once a semester passes, he comes back. His friends are nowhere to be found. The phone numbers don't connect anymore. Nobody answers. When he does finally connect to someone, they say, "Oh,

1:04:29sorry, we can't talk right now." Out of nowhere. Over the course of three or four months, when he comes home— he leaves in the summer, he comes home at Christmas— and he no longer has these lifelong friends. Okay. He is obviously depressed by this. Now, have they disappeared, or they've ghosted him? They've ghosted him. Okay. They're there? Oh, okay. Test. Yeah, sorry. We're talking about how that's one of the things that books help me with, actually, you know, because that happens to everyone, in ghosting, the capital— You're like, what happened? The capital offense. Yeah. Like, what happened? Is it me? Are they crazy? Yeah. Okay. And especially, it's one thing within a romantic relationship, or situationship, or

1:05:16whatever, because they're more volatile. Yeah, it's more volatile. And it's also like, okay, well, you can almost rationalize it. You're like, "Oh, he used me for sex," or "She used me for sex," or "We both used each other," blah blah blah. It was, you know, you could sort of— But with friends, it's very difficult to rationalize it. With friends, yeah, it's supposed to be gentler. And plus, if I may, we're taught in Western culture— you know, we, the younger generations— you know, I think boomers and older bought into the soulmate thing. You know, we sort of are supposed to be generally savvy enough to no longer buy into the soulmate thing. But I think we're still taught, at least speaking for myself, we're still taught, and I completely bought into, at one level, the whole thing that kids' programs teach us, which is friends forever. You know, like, we still— I think people still believe that if you

1:06:04don't have the, you know, what you just said, the, you know, the five different friends that fill a role for each aspect of you— that's what you're supposed to have. And then what happens when you have it, then it disappears? Speaking personally: crushed. Yeah, yeah. Honestly, about three years ago— I mean, we talked about this, I don't talk about it anymore because I'm better, you know— but yeah, I had three of my nearest and dearest all do it, and it was very bewildering. I know, I've figured it out now, but at the time I was too hurt and confused to make any sense of it. So anyways, I want to hear how this ends up. Maybe I can— well, does he get revenge? Because then I'd learn how to get those guys. No, just

1:06:52kidding. He obviously— like anyone in that position, wants answers. Mm. And immediately he seeks, you know, in the acute situation, in the short term— that's when things are hottest, that's when you could probably get an answer. But as time goes on, the probability of getting an answer decreases more and more and more. The opening line of the book goes something along the lines of, "In his sophomore year of college, all Tsukuru Tazaki could think about was dying," because he was so depressed. And it starts in a very dark place, and then it, you know, it paints a picture for you. But, I mean,

1:07:40they fast-forward. He doesn't hear anything for, I think, till they're in their early 30s. So 20 years has— 20 years or ten years, something between ten and 20 years, I can't remember. And he then decides— he talks to someone, he then decides, "I need to go find these friends and figure out what the fuck happened," because it's eating him up inside. And see, that's tying back to what we talked about earlier, where you have these enigmas that happen to you. You either let it go, or— Interesting. Okay. —they start eating you. I was thinking more big picture, but you're just talking, like, the baffling aspects of everyday life too. Well, it could— yeah, yeah, absolutely.

1:08:29But that's— yeah, I never thought— big picture is whatever, like, okay, where are we relative to the Andromeda Galaxy? I didn't take it on all levels. Oh yeah, listen, what are you more attached to? Are you more attached to your friends, or are you more attached to the black hole in the center of our galaxy? Mm. Like, what makes more— That's abstract. These are, like, abstract enigmas. You know, why does the US only have a left- and right-wing party? Yeah. These are mysteries of the universe. You know what's so funny is, often— we were talking about Stoicism at the beginning, or things like that— I'm very Zen about things I don't have control over. Very Zen. You know, bad health news, things like that, I can roll with it. But if someone does something that I can't understand,

1:09:18as in, I would never do that— Yes. —those enigmas. Why would they act like that? Why are there so many— why do […] get ahead in the world? Things like that. That, yes, can spin someone out. So, absolutely. I'm going to finish the story, but before that, I'm going to quickly pour the last batch of water. I'm good. You're good? Oh, water? Yes, fresh water. Yes, absolutely. Oh, you want— Oh, fresh water. No, no, I thought you were getting me more tea. You don't want more tea? Okay, get a glass of water. Sure. Yeah, okay. I like to be hospitable on this show. Yep. As long as I don't have to go pee. I have to just pace myself. Let's see. Let's do another ad. No, I hit the wall. This is the other

1:10:06book I made, Tamir, the Horror Hall of Fame, and it's got a cat. Anyways— oh, I didn't make a— I lent this to him. Anyways, but you have to see it to actually see what the fuss is about, because it just looks like paper. Maybe we'll do, like, 15 more minutes and then call it. Sure. Like, we've done an hour 17 minutes so far. Wow, really? Huh. So that'll make it around an hour and a half, and I think that'll be solid. So, okay, we got our water, we're set. We are. So I want to hear what happens with these bastard friends. These bastard friends? Sorry, I'm projecting. But

1:10:56the thing is, everybody thinks they're right in these situations. Yes. Hence the enigma. Why are we talking about this? This literally was my life until about— until a year and a half, two years ago. It's very frustrating. It's very strange when you think clearly you're the victim, and the other person thinks so too. And that's— yeah, that's a tough skill to learn, to actually be able to get through that without being bitter, embittered, or something like that. Yeah, you have to decide. I mean, is this person a friend? Are they an ally, or are they an enemy? And I think there's this tendency

1:11:45nowadays to just write off people. Mm. And they think— and this is something that really troubles me— where people think they're making progress in their life because they're cutting people out of their life. This is not progress. That's interesting. This is taking problems and— this is the equivalent of Joe Pesci going and digging a hole in the desert and putting a body in there. It's the same thing. Yeah. You can't confront it, so you kill it, and then you go bury it somewhere. And if I may— And you hope the police don't follow. Yeah, yeah. And I'm just speaking from my own experience: when that happens in a relationship, not only does the other person not get any answers or closure, you're not really

1:12:33learning anything from it yourself. Like, at the very minimum— so many people, they'll deal with conflict by just cutting and running, but think that they're doing something right, because they feel they're the victim. Yeah. But you're also not learning how to deal with this tough stuff. And it's— I'm only saying, like, I know I have purposely tried, like, roommates— I learned from Roland, the coworker, to have roommate meetings once a month. And literally my purpose isn't to find out what color they want to paint the bedroom, but it's to practice getting this shit out and try to be good at it. Because I'm a typical Canadian. I'll be like, "It's fine, I can handle it, I can handle it," and then six months later I flip out on the

1:13:21person. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, I think people need to practice this more. I've made a personal pact with myself that I would never do that to someone. And we see this done egregiously with the closest of friends. We see it done egregiously with family members. And listen, there's a point where you've tried the conversation route, and the conversation route doesn't work. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about an entire bypass of the conversation to protect yourself, and calling it progress, and calling it improvement. You have to face the music at some point. Otherwise, as the Hindus say, you're going to face it in the next life. Yep. At some point in the future

1:14:08you're going to face it, and if it's not now, it'll be another time. So— And the thing is, if not now, this is going to— you know, say you're 20 or 30 and you're doing this, there's going to come a time where you've got kids, you've got a marriage, and if that's your habit— Yeah. —there's nowhere you can— you know, you can't keep doing that when the consequences get bigger, as your career goes forward, all that. Yeah. So that's why— I think I mentioned this to you— I have conversations with people sometimes, and they ask me, "What would be your superpower?" And a lot of people say, "Well, I want an invisibility cloak," and "I want to fly," and "I want infinite money," and blah blah blah. Did you say—? I said I want the power of an emperor to summon anyone that I wish from the kingdom.

1:14:57Oh, to end the enigmas. The equivalent of a subpoena. Yeah. The subpoena of the soul. You know, it's funny, though: a lot of answers to that question, why do— you know, like your character in that book, what happened to everyone— the simplest answer is the one that's obvious. They just— it might even be a big deal, but cutting and running is easier than having— Yeah. It's not that you did something horrific. No. Just, that's their response. Yeah. Just like a lot of people, if a relationship ends, they can't stay— can't stay— yeah, they can't stay friendly if you're an ex. Yeah, they're

1:15:43not even friendly if you're an ex. You are strictly a relationship. And yeah, well, and listen, I think, if there are— typically, in that, again, it's okay to cut people off after they've had their day in court. Yes. Big difference. But it's another thing to go and just execute someone willy-nilly. You know what's funny, though, is any quality taken too far is negative. I was the opposite, and it was also causing trouble. Growing up in a small community, you couldn't really cut people off. They were going to be at your cousin's wedding, they were going to be at school the next day, they were going to be everywhere. So I came into the wider world extremely loyal and extremely sentimental, and it slaughtered me, because I was not willing to cut

1:16:33anyone loose. Yeah. And so somewhere in the middle. Yeah, the middle way, wu wei, as the Daoists say. But about this book: you know, the second part is the pilgrimage. Okay. And the going to find the friends— Going to find the friends after so many years, and figuring out why. And it turns out— and each of them tell him their experience and their perception of how things went, and they all have an alibi. They all have something that you could justify. And everybody— Everybody has it. Everyone's life makes sense to them. That's the thing. Yeah, yeah. And even if they know that they screwed him over, in a sense it was justified. Mm. And it was okay. And the jealousy was there, and the

1:17:24blame was there, and, you know, he became a scapegoat. And that's— you know, we really need to understand the term scapegoat. It's attaching your problems onto someone else. Attaching your problems onto someone else, and then you go and you kill that fucking goat. They're the cause of it. Yeah. And that's from the Bible. Yeah, because you attach your sins onto this goat and then you'd kill it. And it's like, people don't realize that they're doing that day in, day out, and then they have the audacity to call it progress. And so when we're faced with these situations— of course, this podcast is not about teaching people how to take responsibility; there's many other podcasts about that. This podcast is about what to do when you're on the

1:18:13other end of it. And you have to make a decision, Tyler. You either have to go on the pilgrimage, or you ignore the pilgrimage and you just write it off as, "Hey, these people don't want to hang. I guess we're not going to hang." And you swallow that bitter pill and you move on. What's difficult is the decision of which pathway to take. Do you want to find the answer? Are you okay not having the answer? I'm not— I wasn't, and I'm not okay. But I found a way. Basically, I spent— as you can probably tell, I spent a lot of energy on that, because one of my biggest fears, especially when I found out I was ADD, is there's something about me that's too much. There's something about me that's causing people to act this way. So I kind of was, you know, like

1:19:02you said, I was circling around and around it. And finally, what we were just talking about is what smoothed me out: just realizing everybody has a justification. Anger is its own justification. It isn't necessarily something one person always did. It's just, unfortunately— and not how we're taught as kids— it's kind of how a lot of things go. Yeah. You know, even if the other person's reason doesn't make sense. So how much of this absurdity is related to— because you were mentioning Franz Kafka earlier. Yep. Is there some parallel between these topics and Kafka's view of absurdity? Oh, he—

1:19:51he descended into madness. I would say still functional, but barely. Yeah. I think the way— especially the letter he wrote to his father— his father crippled any ability for him to look at himself without wincing, because he'd been convinced that he was all these things, right? But he turned it— at least he turned it to his art. And he said one thing— he said that the one thing that people are puzzled about him is that when he is in his world, where he's writing out all this pain, it's his special species of happiness. And even though he looks sad and a thousand miles away, and people

1:20:39don't understand what's going on with him, that's actually as close as he comes to happiness: when he's turning his pain into art. I don't think he was really figuring— at least until the end of his life, he wasn't really figuring it out, but at least he was getting it out on paper, and luckily it was beautiful. If anything, the only thing that Kafka made me feel was extremely lucky that I stumbled upon being curious or hurt or intrigued enough to try to figure it out. I think Kafka got beat down and folded, but he also left some beautiful writing, because he had that in him, right? That's what it made me think. Yeah. So, and yeah, his pain was— it

1:21:28was beautiful, really dark, crazy stories. But yeah, that's my answer. I'll leave it right there. Interesting. Yeah, it's interesting how these dark stories give us the more profound lessons. It's weird. I find that when it comes to music, most songs— and I mentioned this on other platforms I've been on— but most songs are about love or heartbreak or sex. Yeah. It's like that trinity of partying. But partying with the— it's like a means to an end. And with these really good books, they're not necessarily about that, but they're about this, like, darkness, for one reason or another. And, like, a lot of the great books have this, like, darkness

1:22:17in them somehow. The ones that I find— drawn to darkness. But it's also, if you look for it, you can also see the really black humor, like, even Kafka. Sure. Which, for me, it taught— Well, that makes it palatable. Yeah, it taught me to kind of, like, laugh while my feet are on fire, which is really— you kind of have to, in my opinion. I have to say that as a barber. Yeah, it's my opinion. Like, if you can laugh— if, you know, the transition from comedy to— or tragedy to comedy. One thing I love about getting older is the transition time gets shorter and shorter. Something really shitty happens, and the next day, like, you've experienced— the next day I'm telling a customer and it's already a funny story. Whereas I think until I learned some of these lessons, it

1:23:05was, like, freaking a year or six months or two years before you could make a good story out of it. So that reminds me of Alan Watts's lecture on the joker, or the jester. Court jester, back in the day. We don't have court jesters anymore; we have stand-up comedians. But you have the king, and then you have the court jester. And people have asked, well, why was there a court jester in such a royal environment? And the reason was, the court jester was there to remind the king of his own mortality, and that things aren't necessarily as they seem. And so what you're suggesting is, potentially, as you get older, perhaps wiser, the jester and the king, our internal jester and king, start to become closer and closer into one. The people— the

1:23:53people I know— because, you know, you're drawn to certain experiences that I share with other people— that we found, that's a great survival strategy, you know, whether it's because of bad health or addiction or whatever. Yeah. I was going to say too, the— everyone has a reason for what they do, cutting people loose. That's also why I think— maybe that also parallels why anger is such a ready option these days. Because when you're angry, you don't have to think, and you don't have to admit fault, and you don't have to— you know, the self-righteousness is an easy exit off the highway. Yeah. "You're a dick, so, you know, I have to deal with you? Goodbye." Yep. Interesting. Well, I guess we should wrap, because we've gone through some

1:24:42really interesting, heavy, important subjects, and I think this is an amazing inaugural episode so far of the Nectar of Time. Yeah, that was interesting. I had no idea— it's interesting, because you're definitely an idea fellow. I more immediately default to my own experiences, just because I've had a weird life, you know? Well, sure, but that's part of you being a guest on the show. Yeah, well, thanks. But yeah, whereas you are, like— not, I do not mean this— but you're drinking everything in, because you're the kind of guy that is interested in everything. You want to look behind the curtain with almost everything, which is fantastic. And I still am, but often my experience

1:25:33hits first, and then the reflection of the idea. So it's interesting to see the difference. Yeah, it was an awesome conversation, Tyler. Really appreciate having you on. And I was going to say, is there anywhere— is there any place that people can follow you? But you're off social media. No. Oh, you're on social media? You know what, one day I have to get my website for my comic store back up, and it is very much wacky, interesting, dark stuff like this. It is a shame that it's not up right now, because it'd be— Listen, when it's ready, we'll just add a link, even retroactively. So, yes. And if I may say, Tamir has sat with me for seven years now. He's never bored me for a minute. This is an interesting cat. So, until today. Just kidding. So yeah, I

1:26:23think, if this is the first podcast for this, you guys could probably expect some food for thought. Oh, why did I use a cliché there? Yeah, how dare you. I better cut out while I'm still here. Anyways, yeah, I'm going to be listening to this. We'll do it again another time. Yeah, that's great. All right, thanks, Tyler. Thank you. See you, man. Yeah, good night.