In 2010 I managed a café in downtown Gardiner. We had a very small team, so during the summer I’d sometimes sweat out the entire day and evening preparing food, talking wine with customers, pulling espresso shots, running the register—whatever needed doing at a given moment.

One afternoon I stumbled home for a few hours, since I lived two minutes away from the café by foot. My idea that afternoon was to go home for a few hours and start laundry, which had piled up over the past week or so. You go through a lot of shirts when you spend the day running around in a steaming, sizzling kitchen.

I climbed the stairs, unlocked the door, and promptly sank into the couch.

Within minutes I found myself walking naked past store and restaurant windows downtown, the sidewalk’s red bricks pressed warm against the bottoms of my feet. I found my way back to the corner, where the café was bustling. An unexpected afternoon rush. I hurried to the back.

“Sorry about this, everyone,” I said. “I ran out of clothes, so we’ll make the best of it.”

Had anybody heard? Everyone was rushing from counter to cash register to deli case. E.’s back was turned to me; I watched as she scooped a shot of espresso.

“I’ll take the line,” I called into the air. I stepped up to the sandwich line and ran my eye over the order board. Operating of their own will, my hands grasped an onion and hurried through the ingrained motions of  slicing.

With the onion in ribbons, I reached for a tomato, found a plump one by touch, slid the serrated knife through its skin. I squinted at the order ticket.

Wait. What?

“Who wrote this ticket?” I called out.

The handwriting looked strange—like a foreign language. The letters were bent at strange angles. I couldn’t make out the words.

No reply to my question. Something was off.

I looked down at my own legs. They seemed normal. At my chest. It seemed normal. But sunbeams and shadows played on the floor and ceiling in patterns that felt wrong for the time of day.

The cash register rang. The espresso machine frothed and buzzed. A sense of dread crept through my capillaries.

I looked down at the halved tomato on the cutting board. The knife in my right hand—something was weird about that too. I turned and tilted it. Light played over the surface in a way that felt crude and somehow inauthentic.

Something was wrong with the light. Something was wrong with light itself—it wasn’t behaving the way it should.

What’s going on here?

I’d been wearing a shirt. A gray shirt. What’d happened to it? Where had it gone?

Something was wrong with my memory, too. I reached backward in time, found nothing. What did I do today? Nothing. The physical action of thinking back yielded absolutely no memory—like the puppet strings controlling my cognitive functions were snipped off and hanging slack.

The knife in my hand winked and glinted in a way that defied physics. The light was wrong. The shadow was wrong. I’d lost the ability to read. I was naked; I’d somehow… lost my clothes?

Vertigo. Fear. I shrank away from the sandwich line as the whole scene dissolved and I fell through to the more familiar, convincing illusion that is my living room, my sofa. By then it was time to get back to work.

I don’t know how or when it happened, but at some point she decided it is her quest in life to find me dates.

In the past two weeks I’ve already been on the receiving end of at least 5 hours of intense dating coaching.

“Nick.”

“Yes, L.?”

“If you act like you always do, you’re never going to get a girlfriend.”

*     *     *

“Nick. Nick. Nick.”

“Hi L.!”

“Go to the mall. That’s where the cute girls always are.”

“Interesting idea. Hey, what’s that you’re painting there?”

(unfazed) “You need to go the mall and find a cute girl and name her ‘Emily’.”

I think she has the concepts of “girlfriend” and “house cat” slightly confused.

*     *     *

“Nick, when your girlfriend breaks up with you…”

“Hey, what makes you think she’d break up with me?”

“…when she breaks up with you, tell her ‘No! Don’t go!’ and get down on your knees and tell her ‘You’re cute!’ And then she’ll stay.”

*     *     *

(L. is crying)

“What’s the matter, L.?”

“My knee hurrrrts!”

“Which one?”

(sniffle) “I don’t remember.”

*      *      *

“Nick, do you have a suit?”

“Mm, not really, no.”

“Do you have a tuxedo?”

“No ma’am.”

“This is hopeless.”

The digital clock reads  4:43  ; the number casts a watery green glow on the plaster ceiling above my bed. I lie there listening—all I can hear is my own slow breath. Outside the window, the world looks black as the bottom of the ocean.

I rise to a kneeling position, opening a small trunk to pull out an undershirt, socks, shorts, a scuffed pair of jeans, a leather belt. The clasp clinks softly as I walk down the hallway and shut the bathroom door behind me. A tiny light in the socket gives off one tea candle’s worth of light.

I walk past the switches on the wall without touching them, going straight to the shower faucet. The lever turns easily; thick drops clatter from the metal showerhead like nickels. A faint mineral smell. The open shower door exhales chill air and raises goosebumps on my arms as I pull last-night’s t-shirt off and throw it to the corner.

At the shower’s threshold, three long seconds of trigger-finger hesitation. Then I step—left foot, right foot—onto the cold porcelain floor of the shower. Freezing nickels pelt my back, the nape of my neck. I clench my jaw and snarl instinctively. But what exactly are you doing, Tozier? You going to bite that water? Teach it a lesson?

Under the cold shocking rush of water, pupils constrict. Breath accelerates. Legs, arms, chest, stomach—everything tightens. The animal in me wants to flinch and hunch over, protecting sensitive body regions. Almost as though I’m standing outside myself, I order my own body to stand straight, to its full height, and let the chill set in everywhere: pale belly, chest, the undersides of the elbows. Within 30 seconds all the warmth of bed is blasted away, rinsing down the metal drain.

I slow my breath. Easy, tiger. Focus. Relax that jaw, relax those arms. Loosen the whole body. ‘attaboy.

Within three minutes I’m laughing, hair slicked back. Every sense is crisp and alert. The world looks sweet and razor-sharp. And the water is just as cold as ever, but it feels warmer and warmer.

Past all the windows—still blacked out—I climb creaking wooden stairs to the attic, walk to my desk, and hesitate. Starting anything worthwhile feels like standing at the threshold of a cold shower, willing yourself to press on.

A secret compartment in a table opened. There would be old letters or little statues inside.

A passageway in the closet led down to an entire underground floor of the house we didn’t know about. There were cramped, miniature kitchens, a dripping faucet, low-ceilinged rooms full of slumped bookshelves down there.

The dark corners of the attic led to a walkway in the rafters. My grandmother and I, walking carefully on the beams, stood over a vast pit of dirt and mud that tiny workers far below scurried to excavate.

I watched the shadows on the wall with horror as some behemoth from the cellar devoured my father.

I didn’t always realize it had been a dream. I talked about these spaces in enough detail that it spooked my parents.

I always tried to find my way back to these hidden stashes and spaces after waking. In dreams everything I look at writhes with deeply-rooted symbolism. I feel alive and at home there.

Once in awhile I still wake up with a sense of loss, like the act of waking severed an umbilicus connected to inner truths. The strange flesh of dreams pushes me back to the surface and knits shut beneath me and I wash up blinking in the sunlight of this world where so, so, so many things symbolize nothing.

surreal photo by muffinn

A Marine Combat Diver must find inner calm even while rough surf flips him upside down and twists him around in blind darkness, plucking the air hose from his mouth again and again until his lungs burn and primal panic sets in. He also must learn to take off his own oxygen equipment and troubleshoot it blind, by touch alone, while his pulse pounds and his oxygen-starved brain slips into unconsciousness.

Then there’s "drown-proofing", during which recruits must endure extended periods in the pool, fighting to stay above water with their wrists and ankles bound.

The ocean is a harsh place for a mammal. Instructors work hard to simulate the stress of combat, depriving their students of sleep, food, and even air. But none of this is cruel, none of it is meant to break recruits. Every drill carefully, methodically, and safely prepares the student to handle stress and survive against all odds.

Every coping mechanism is denied. Every comfort zone is shattered. Students are drilled, verbally damned, physically driven far past exhaustion.

At any point a diver can stop the pain and stop the panic with a simple signal followed by two words poolside: "I withdraw." Within minutes he’s out of the water, out of the program, breathing delicious air while his classmates fight on in hopes of completing these harsh (but carefully monitored and safe) training exercises. Quit, and you must start the program all over again if you still dream of being a combat diver.

The recruits who make the cut are rare individuals with zenlike toughness and complete technical mastery. The kinds of men and women who’ll happily dive naked into the mouth of Hell itself and swim back to you with the devil’s severed tail clenched between their teeth.

There’s no such training regimen for writers. No instructors to push you beyond the limit. Yet somehow we need to muster the same level of focus, and push on, and find ways to train ourselves.

displaced land mammal photo by ed bierman

The update’s crass, to say the least. Let’s unwrap this poisonous poinsettia.

(hopefully you wanted alliteration and hyperbole for Christmas)

Breakdown

0’01 A familiar, warm scene: a classy-looking Santa standing on the street ringing a bell.

1’00 Mariah Carey sells Black Friday deals with sex, interspersed with shots of Santa to maintain that element of trust. What’s he passing out there? Why, tickets to a midnight Macy’s sale, of course, with plenty of exaggerated facial expressions so we know what a WONDERFUL experience it is to be handed an advertisement on the street. It’s the first of several Macy’s placements in this video.

Who’s the bunny now?

1’20 Am I the only one who’s a bit creeped out by the alternation between Mariah Carey’s best stripper impression and the not-yet-legal Beiber? Reverse the genders; put Prince in Mariah’s place and a 16-year-old Taylor Swift in Beiber’s shoes.

How’s this age gap any less unnerving? Ah, but forbidden fruit helps sell just about anything.

2’00 Beiber sings “All I Want for Christmas is You” and points directly at the lens. My little teenaged heart, she’s all melted! Then the camera cuts to the giant stack of Nintendo DS machines that’s piled up right behind me. Oh. I thought he was singing to me, not a video game console.

2’05 Just in case you’re not craving a DS as much as you should, let’s get Beiber and a gaggle of teens to visibly salivate over it. Marketers call this social proof. If someone else wants it–especially someone we trust–we’ll want it too. Human beings are hardwired for this kind of herd behavior. Some marketers use it honestly and truthfully; others exploit it.

Look! these teens are all excited about the machine. Don’t you want to be part of this strangely well-dressed, stylish, grinning clique?

2’10 If you have any remaining doubts about what you must do, Beiber demonstrates your next action by impulsively stuffing several DS boxes into his already weighty shopping cart. It’s a visual call to action—a marketing term for the immediate action an advertisement asks, commands, or insinuates.

3’00 Jarring dissonance between the lyric “All I Want for Christmas is You” and imagery of grown adults freaking out and fondling presents, raising shiny wrapped boxes in the air like they just scored touchdowns.

3’13 Quick shot of Beiber doing something with his arms that I have no words for. Actually I shouldn’t be making fun of this because it’s how I dance too.

3’57 Some director knew they had to stir in a bit of sugar to sweeten those four minutes of hard selling. Can we get Petco on board for this?! No? Well, what the hell. Let’s throw an unsponsored puppy in there anyway. It’s Christmas. No closeup though–just stick a bow on it and hand it off to Mariah real quick. ‘attaboy.

See the guilty expression? That puppy knows he’s Nintendo’s whore.

4’09 Hug and smile big, everybody, so we’re clear that buying Nintendos at Macy’s always leads to puppies and physical affection. I’d watch that crowd carefully, though. Every year there are casualties. I don’t believe the season causes those casualties; holiday shopping doesn’t turn normal people into bloodthirsty lunatics–it’s just that the bloodthirsty lunatics make a better story for news media when juxtaposed with Christmas Muzak and reindeer.

Recap

• Santa’s passing out advertisements for a Macy’s sale.
• Mariah’s turned around and looking at us over her shoulder in a short Ms. Claus outfit, bracing her palms against the wall and caressing her thighs.
• Justin Beiber, sexually underage in most of the U.S., fondles a Nintendo DS. Meanwhile, Mariah writhes with something I can only describe as Christmas Joy.
• More reaction shots as Beiber ogles the DS machines and stuffs several in his cart.
• For yet more social proof, everybody surrounds Santa, Beiber and Mariah’s department store sleigh and jumps up and down with glee. Yay dignity!

What the hell is going on here? Is that even the real Santa?!

The slick new “All I Want For Christmas is You” video is a textbook case of in-your-face mass market advertising. It uses psychological hardwiring—things about us that we can’t change—to influence and persuade. It’s clearly targeting teens, linking sex and social acceptance with Macy’s department store and Nintendo DS. The token Santa adds trust.

After watching Mariah wriggle, squirm, and flirt, I can’t say I want video games any more than I did beforehand—but I’m not the demographic this clip targets, am I? Impressionable teens are the desired market here.

I did almost eat cookies for breakfast after that display, though. Clearly I am primed and ready for creature comforts. Quick! Somebody sell me something! Anything. Yes, that’s a wallet in my pocket, and yes, I am happy to see you.

Advertising is only evil when it’s dishonest. Is this music video evil? Depends on your perspective. If I’d written the storyboard or appeared in front of the lens for this one, I wouldn’t be sleeping very well.

There’s a big difference between honest marketing and blatant manipulation. If you’re hoping to trick people into buying your product, count me out. Just so we’re clear on this: I’m not that kind of copywriter.

I hate to bear bad news, but this morning I reflexively trashed about four different newsletters that I signed up to receive from businesses I love. I barely even noticed that I was deleting them.

What’s wrong here? I asked for these newsletters, and I’m sympathetic to the senders—but here I am deleting these dispatches without reading a single word of any of them.

All four of these trashed newsletters share something in common. Something you can avoid:

Subject: “Nov. 2011 Newsletter”

If you’re going to use a subject line that bland, you’re lucky if anyone opens that e-mail, even the people who adore your work.

The war for attention is fierce and ongoing—when somebody gives you their e-mail address, you’ve won the battle, not the war. If you want your newsletter to get read, don’t be boring.

Let’s say I’m one of your subscribers. When my inbox is full, and your subject line says “Here’s my newsletter and the current date,” you become just another demand on my time. Why are you telling me the date? I’ll look at that headline, make a split-second decision, and you’re gone. I won’t even begin to read the copy that you worked so hard on. And I’m more forgiving than most web readers.

If this scenario plays out again—boring subject line, deletion—it becomes more and more likely that I’m just going to unsubscribe.

That subject line is your chance to ask subscribers a compelling question, warn them of something they could be missing out on, or intrigue them with an offer. Your customers know what month it is, and from the “Sender” field they probably know whose newsletter it is.

Don’t be redundant. Don’t be boring. Use that subject line to lure us closer and tell us what you’ve got for us instead:

Subject: 7 Mouthwatering California Wines You Must Try

Much better.

It still needs to be tailored, but it’s certainly much more neat and legible than the old design.

One thing that’s still bothering me, though: that big red SUBMIT button under the e-mail form. Is there any word on an e-mail subscription button that could be worse than SUBMIT? Wouldn’t JOIN US or SUBSCRIBE be more appropriate? But apparently my e-mail delivery service decided SUBMIT best describes the action my readers want to take after reading my copy.

Dear Aweber e-mail form designers: I’m a songwriter, not a professional Dominator. My readers don’t want to SUBMIT to me; they want to SUBSCRIBE or SIGN UP or KEEP IN TOUCH.

It seems like a small thing, but I bet that button is a serious leak in my stream of new subscribers.

I’m experimenting with website designs for upcoming projects (possibly the resuscitation of old ones also)–so this page is going to be my semi-public dressing room for at least the next few days.

Please avert your eyes while I lumber about with my arms tangled in sweaters and my legs snagged in jeans and my wrist watch in entirely the wrong place and I’m pretty bad at trying on clothes, you guys.

Eh, let me try on a different comparison.

Blog designs are like guitars: different models draw different material out of you. Even the color of a guitar can incite you to play differently, to write different songs. You feel much different holding a Transitone than an Heirloom copper resonator. Different colors, different designs, different sounds… each guitar represents a different possible direction, a different possible self.

Web designs are like that too.

Expect to see weird changes (including broken features) around here for a while.