Chapter 15 - The Current
The Hollow Bell — A serialized memoir, published chapter by chapter
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Hope was a clearing.
A small thaw after a long winter.
But clarity didn’t return through insight or willpower.
It returned through something quieter—
the simple, familiar joy of building.
I had left computers behind more than a decade earlier.
Left behind the lunar lander simulations,
the green terminals,
the satisfying click of solving a puzzle no one else could touch.
But now—after art had lost its spark,
after business no longer held meaning,
after every old source of momentum had gone quiet—
the thread returned.
It began with a visit to Mike in San Diego. He was building a guest house and asked if I could help. While we worked, the old rhythm between us resurfaced easily—ideas, jokes, the quiet familiarity of someone whose humor matched mine beat for beat. And around him was the pulse of a new era taking shape—the early internet, the heady energy of pre-bubble startups, that subtle charge you feel when a new age is beginning.
Something in me stirred. Not excitement. Not ambition. Just recognition.
A thread I had lost track of began to hum again, faint but unmistakable.
Before I left, he handed me an old computer.
“Take it,” he said, like a man offering a tool, or a key.
Back in Massachusetts, I turned it on.
The screen flickered to life.
Lines of code.
Graphics.
Logic.
The architecture of digital form.
And something clicked.
The same joy I once found in the moment before carving—
when the idea took shape,
when the form revealed itself in my mind—
now arrived faster.
Cleaner.
Alive.
I built a simple website for Andrew.
It lasted twenty years.
Then came a contract job—hourly staff-augmentation work for a faceless corporation.
Endless file migrations.
Rename this.
Reformat that.
The work felt hollow, like the opposite of creation.
So I offered a different approach: instead of spending weeks doing it by hand, I could build a tool to automate the whole thing. I didn’t yet know how—I just trusted I could figure it out. And because the tool would save them time long after I was gone, I proposed a rate that reflected that value. They agreed.
I built the tool.
It worked.
And something in me worked, too.
Not long after, I built a small search engine of my own—in the days before Google, when the internet was still scattered across a dozen portals. I created a single page that pulled their results together. Simple. Clear. Useful. And for the first time since the canyon, I felt something true move through me—less like a wave beneath me, more like a tone beginning to sound from inside.
It wasn’t just functional.
It was beautiful in its simplicity—
presence, shaped in logic.
That’s when I knew.
Coding wasn’t a job.
It was contact.
Not manic.
Not euphoric.
Just clear.
It echoed the same spark I once felt in sculpture—
not in the chiseling, but in the moment a form revealed itself in my mind—
now arriving faster, cleaner, more elegant.
A stillness expressed through alignment.
A quiet resonance rising from within.
I flew back to San Diego, interviewed at three startups, and received three offers.
I moved back for good.
What followed wasn’t a moment.
It was the next twenty years.
I stayed close to the code.
Year after year, I built things—small tools, libraries, systems, platforms.
What began as simple scripts grew into full products and solutions.
I built several businesses along the way.
Hundreds of clients came and went.
There were countless late nights of quiet focus, and just as many energized days helping teams build technology that revealed patterns—
the kind that helped them see problems coming and find solutions sooner.
Speaking at industry events became part of the rhythm too—simply sharing what I’d learned along the way.
The work supported us with ease.
At some point I realized I wasn’t driven by money.
I was driven by the work itself—by being part of something that felt real and worthwhile to make.
I didn’t recognize it then—only that the work felt different.
Surfing had taught me about flow, but flow in the ocean depended on everything lining up:
the swell,
the wind,
the tide,
the moment.
Coding wasn’t like that.
There were a hundred ways to enter a problem,
a dozen angles to ride the line,
always another wave to catch.
The conditions were whatever I brought to the keyboard—
a mind,
a question,
the quiet before the next idea appeared.
No rush.
No crash.
Just a continuous kind of movement I’d never known before.
I didn’t have a name for it.
I just knew it felt real—
like the first gentle pull of a current I hadn’t realized was carrying me home.
Many readers have told me they set aside time for each chapter, letting it echo into their own lives. If the bell rings in you, consider passing it on—someone else may be listening for the same tone. And if you’d like, leave your reflections below; your voice adds another note to the resonance.