KEEP PLANNING – Eric Angal

1a - Tucson, AZ When you—when we talk about running, what are we really talking about? The physical act of ‘running?’ ‘Hoofing’ it? Or are we talking about running in the avoidant sense? Are we saying, when we talk about running, that the only way out is through, and that the only way around is to run—or rather, to outrun? And if the only way out is through, what would that look like? What would the through look like? What is it you’re even passing through, in this analogy? Some sort of filter? Obviously a crucible, some type of, uh, gauntlet. But what, physically, is it? Is it anything at all? Tell me: how often do you hear of those who never make it through the through? How much of a crucible can it be, then? And then there’s the question of the other side. Ehh. The purported finish line at the end of the through. What’s that about? You’re changed, then, is the implication. You’re no longer the same man as when you went in. Into the what? Good question: into the through. But you’re through, you’ve grown and have learned and now carry within yourself the austere deportment of sang-froid only ever donned by those whose wills have been tempered in the through. Do you—do you know what the fuck I’m saying? 2- Albany, NY He told me go gettit. I toldim, like: Go Fuck Yourself. Like, what do I look like. Some type of bitch you can just order around, you know—he dropped it, not me. And it went over the rail. Like everything he does, he fucked it up in the most spectacular way, it couldna just fallen onto the ground. No. All the way down to the water’s edge, down there by the retention tanks where the red algae grows. Bitch, I’m allergic! Mother fucker! And I guess that was, like, the straw that broke the. The camel’s back. Lemme get a cigarette. Thank you. Yeah, so I toldim: Go Fuck Yourself. Like, I don’t get paid to do that shit! And he’s all surprised and shit. And he gets right up in my face, and he says: Mitchell I swear to God if you don’t climb down that ladder and grab that shit right now we’re gonna have a problem. So I’m all like, I stand my ground, you know. I square up. Just like this, I’m gonna demonstrate—like, this is how fucking close to him I am, this is how close to him I am. And I’m not backing up. Cuz in my head, I’m just thinkin, you know, this is it. It’s now or never, like, like, I gotta put my foot down or else it’s gonna be like this every day for the rest of my fuckin time here. I gotta earn my respect. So how do you do that, y’know. It’s simple. It’s the same as when we were kids. As long as I can look him in the eyes, I win. As long as I keep his eye contact and I don’t for a second take a step backwards, he’s gonna lay off. Cuz that’s primal shit, man, this is monkeybrain shit. But it’s gotta be real. Or else the other man’ll just see right through you, and so you gotta put yourself in the headspace of bein like, I’m willing to die for this shit. And so I just stand there like this and I stare. Cuz I want him to think, like, this shit’s about to get real: do I really want to do this? And he got a lot more to lose than me, cuz he’s a foreman. He’s got a wife and kids at home, and stuff, and I’m younger than him and I think I can take him, and he senses that confidence, you know, he senses my confidence, my ability. What? I do, I think that. I’ve thrown hands before. You don’t even believe me, but I have. Nah, I’m not fuckin around, I’m just sayin right now that you’re thinkin I’m full of shit, it’s true, like don’t even deny it, I’m not even mad. But I’ve been in plenty of fights. Right hand on the Bible I never lost one of em. That’s real and that’s the goddamn truth. And I’m not afraid of some old motherfucker, some old cocksucker too old even to climb down a laddern pick up his shit. I’m not afraid of any man, least of all him. 3 - Seattle, WA Well, I told Paul we’d be there, that was, that was fifteen minutes ago. And I just don’t want him to be standing outside in the rain, John, I’m worried for him. John. John. Listen to me. We passed it, it’s back there. I’m telling you it’s back there. I don’t care what the phone says. He’s gonna get sick at this rate from standing outside in the rain. And that boy, you know he never wears any layers. 4 - Tacoma, WA You can make a lot of good money if that’s what you decide to do. It’s a lucrative opportunity. Between you and me, you’d be a perfect fit for it, and I’m willing to sign a letter of recommendation if this is an avenue you’re interested in pursuing. I don’t want to give you a spiel if you don’t want to hear it, but, just so you understand: it’s a good job. We got a solid union. We have solid wages. We have guaranteed raises, every year. Great PTO, great benefits, good pension, good healthcare. The dental is just okay. If you’re interested, you just send the union an application and then when your application is accepted someone will reach out to schedule your exam. How it works is you pass that entrance exam, which should be easy for you. It’s just basic electrical theory, simple physics, simple thermodynamics, no calculus. Then, depending on your exam performance, you’re entered into a registry. The registry is our name for the pool of applicants who get selected or denied by the Board, which I’m on. I’m on the Board. There’s a waitlist on the registry which can last up to two, up to three years, but sometimes people on the Board can speed that process up. I could probably get you in as an apprentice within a year-and-a-half. Then you go to technical school for about six months, where you’ll learn all the basics of the trade. They’ve got labs there where they teach you some of the hands-on stuff. After that they’ll probably put you in construction unless you’re really lucky. I’d say about ninety to ninety-five percent of new apprentices go to construction. You’ll be working construction for about—I want to say three to four years. Now, construction is no cakewalk, nossir. Anyone will tell you that. It’s a hell of a lotta manual labor. Nothing you’re not used to, I know, but it’s a lot, and you’ll probably be working mostly swing shifts, and sometimes you’ll have to work graves. That’s just the way it is, there’s no changing that. By the time you ‘graduate’ from construction, you’ll be a journeyman, and what they’ll do is they’ll assign you to a senior tech in the field. Then you’ll be service-side. So you’ll have all that construction experience, and then, when you switch to working service-side, you’ll have a journeyman’s designation, and a journeyman’s wages, but you’ll be acting as an apprentice again. Clark, that guy who was with me today, he’s my apprentice, but he’s been with the company for six years. He did the tech school, then he was in construction for four-and-a-half years, now he’s a journeyman, now he’s with me. You learn about all the service-side stuff, you work on a lot of troubleshooting. Different troubleshooting from the commissioning-type stuff you do in construction. The troubleshooting we do here in service is opaque, it’s a lot harder to understand, and our customers, they want you to be able to diagnose things in a day, sometimes faster. It’s a hell of a lot of pressure. It’s a hell of a lot of responsibility. So you’d be a service apprentice for about three years before you’re ‘promoted’ out to do service stuff on your own. That’s ten years. So, ten years from now, you could be me. 5 - heard through a crowd, Cedar Point, OH …do you not understand…well he was…at you…someone…to me…not…going to just stand around and let it happen. I’ll…cker’s ass if I catch…at you. And you certainly weren’t helping…for it. No, that’s not what I’m saying, but…I don’t know! You tell me. Oh, well I…not gonna dress you up…tell you what to wear. That’s for you to decide. Well, you wouldn’t like it…running around dressed in…you wear. …ing idiot. How? 6 - Port Orchard, WA Laney? Yeah, no she’s a pig. Yeah. No, it was really bad. Oh you have no idea. Yeah no she like. She was just getting takeout every night. Every night. No because that sounds like hyperbole, but she was. And she never did the dishes. I don’t think she ever changed her sheets…well, she said that after her boyfriend broke up with her she was like having a hard time. Or something. But it was, like, seven months had passed, and it didn’t stop. She’d leave the door to her room open and Marie and I would peek in sometimes and it was like—it was so bad, I mean, just clothes everywhere, and—oh, and she’d just never throw away her takeout boxes. Like pizza boxes and stuff. She always had the blinds drawn. And oh my God the smell. It was actually alarming, I wanted to say something to her. And people are always like—people are always like this girl’s a bitch, you know, to me, like they think I’m being mean or something when I tell this story, unless they’ve had a roommate like that. Then they’re generally sympathetic. Because you just gotta live around that, you know. You don’t understand until you know. What happened? We hired maids for like, a day. Just for the one job. Laney was gone for a work thing and we just called these, like, maids to come in and take care of it. Me and Marie. She called a maid service, like, she was like, hey, weird question, but can we rent y’all for just one day. I think they were Airbnb maids. She just paid them like two hundred bucks to just come in and clean out all of Laney’s stuff. We were gonna make sure they didn’t throw anything important away, but we looked in her room before they got there and Laney didn’t have anything important. Which sounds weird, right. But no, she really didn’t. No, she had: a few framed pictures…her phone charger…her TV. She had some stuff boxed up in her closet that we didn’t touch. Besides that her room was all just trash, dirty clothes. Like, some of the clothes, man, the smell, ugh, don’t get me started. So yeah. We just brought the maids in and they stripped the sheets. They threw out everything. It was, like, I’m not kidding it was like ten big garbage bags full of just junk and trash. Then we did loads of laundry like all day, like we washed all her clothes—all the ones we could spare. The rest of them, they went in the trash. I remember Marie and I, we were just watching the maids make trips to the trashcan with these big bags, like Santa-sized garbage bags, back and forth, back and forth, and then they were like: it’s not all gonna fit in your trash. So we had to drive them to the dumpster with the trash in my trunk. How’d she react? She actually didn’t, not really. She came back from her trip and she didn’t get to see any of it. I guess that’s the funniest part. Because that was when Marie was dating that guy, that barista. Did I tell you about him? I didn’t? Okay. Well, he actually set our house on fire. Yeah, no, not kidding. No, I don’t know, I wasn’t there when it happened, I’m not sure if it was malicious. I don’t think it was, but I don’t know. I mean she broke up with him immediately afterwards, but she didn’t, like, press any charges, or whatever. And they were both super weird about explaining it—their story was weird, like, they admitted to getting into an argument while he was cooking bacon on our flat top and it lit in the pan and somehow that was enough, and it caught on the wall, and then our house was on fire, and that was that. Yeah, the whole thing burned down, like, the day after we did all that stuff. The maid stuff. I wonder how he’s doing. Marie’s ex. I wonder how he is. He was actually really sweet, just a really sweet guy. 7 - a mother feeding her baby, Moncks Corner, SC A little one, from me to you From me to you, a little one. 1b - Tucson, AZ It’s just that I don’t believe in that sort of thing. Catharsis, as an—uh. Springboard. As something that foments True Change. Like, there’s no permanent change that comes of it. Talking here about positive change. No, I gotta specify, because negative change, that’s very much a thing—people get worse all the time. Positive change, though. Tchh. Maybe in movies, and stuff like that. Maybe in movies, and maybe in certain people, very special people. The rest of us, we don’t change. We’re pretty much leaden, fixed in our ways. I don’t think that there’s a ‘through’ so transformative in nature that its effects wouldn’t just be, uh, forgotten, in like. Two weeks. You know what I mean? Most people, they don’t change. People will actually kill themselves before they voluntarily commit to any sort of change. Any meaningful change, or ethical change. I think the people that don’t kill themselves, they adapt, adapt to their new lives, or maybe they get more resilient. It’s just that everyone optimistically looks at the through as a sort of, you know, Personal Narrative Device. Like: look at what I can become when I’m on the other side of this thing. Like there’ll be some sort of caterpillar-to-butterfly moment that happens while you’re in there. The through as chrysalis. People see who they want to be, they even take the steps to get there, but they’re all still the same. Because whatever feeds your thoughts to you, that hasn’t changed. That’s still very much the same. 8 - Des Moines, WA They had the Marines swabbing decks on the ship when they weren’t training. That was the USS Calhoun. APD-2. It was a reconfigured battleship. They had those Marines doing all sorts of crank work aboard her. This was 1942, the USA’s first offensive foray into the war. We were steaming All Ahead Full most of the time, and the engineroom was eager to answer the bell. Spirits were high. Everyone had a nervous excitement to them. But those Marines, they were dumb as a box of rocks. It was true then, it’s true now. Part of the crank work the ship’s force had them doing was treating the drinking water. Well, God blessum, they were treating the drinking water with the same stuff they were putting in their mopbuckets. All from a simple misunderstanding, an order lost in translation. ‘Strue, it’s all true. That’s why I can’t eat anything with citrus in it to this day. It stripped all our stomach linings right off, the very water we drank. And that was before any of us had ever fired a single round in combat. Then they raided the captain’s stores during a Field Day. Some dumb son of a gun actually had the gall to sneak right in under the captain’s nose in his wardroom and rake the lock to his personal safe. There was a fifth of Glenlivet in there, very nicely aged. They’d drunk it right where they’d found it and then replaced the contents with apple juice. When the Captain found out, the senior enlisted rallied every NCO and lower and stood us at attention for what must’ve been twelve hours. And we each got it, each and every one of us, until finally someone fessed. Well, it was Captain’s Mast for them, them and everyone involved, and I don’t believe those men ever saw combat, no. I believe they were stripped of their rank and they didn’t ever go ashore, not with us, no. Not with us. 9 - Ketchikan, AK …not the way I love you. I love you with all of me. It doesn’t fade with time or waver as people enter my life or leave it—not even you. It’s as natural to me as breathing. I wish I had some sort of say about it, but I don’t, and I’m glad I don’t, because why would I want it any different. And I don’t question it anymore. How do you question a feeling—how do you know what you feel. You just feel it.

*** Eric Angal is a writer from Seattle. October 26 2025