We're hanging out with Dave. Not DFW, the world famous suicide artist, but 'Big Dave,' who surpasses all other Daves in importance, you know, he's really the most crucial Dave in the whole scheme of Daves. He has a job, he has a house, he has a cat, he has a social media presence with over 30k followers - so he's not the most followed Dave but follows don't necessarily correlate to Dave-value. Real Dave-value can only be esimated by knowing what makes Dave "Dave" and while a lot of those attributes might be considered subjective, the Daves all understand it objectively and intuitively. Being the main Dave doesn't impute him with any measurable authority or status, other than the honorific, and we can't even really call him the Perfect Dave because another Dave might come about that more acutely aligns with Daveness. Dave is giving us a run-down of Dave's World, which is what he calls his long-form riffs on how things ought to be, according to Dave. The important thing to know about Daves is that they're all just shy of being interesting, but they have a natural charisma that fools you into thinking they must be interesting. When you're with Dave you're certain that Dave's World has to be some sort of platonic ideal and that if we all just conformed to Dave's World things would actually be better. Lines wouldn't be as long, traffic wouldn't exist, sneakers less ugly, newspapers would still be in print and plentiful, supermarket magazine and book content would be more substantive, and politicians would put aside division and focus on measurable and fact-based governance. Dave's house meticulously follows model home guides to decoration, Dave, Dave, Dave, Dave, Dave. I sip a cup of his coffee and it's just measurably better than average. We're looking at his cat, a big whispy long-haired domestic, and we're talking about what a great cat it is. Great cat. Dave's happy with his cat and the cat is reasonably well-kept - maybe a bit overweight but only modestly so. He shows us a book he wrote and it did pretty well among his friends, colleagues, family and extended family, and of course it was titled Dave's World, as most books Daves write choose that as the title, and it's one of those books that finds release but you never actually see it on shelves. You might see a write-up on it in the newspaper but only if you're attuned to finding Dave-related content, if you don't know Dave or think about Daves the article will never appear to you. Dave went to University in his home state and had a career in engineering and retired early: you know, like most Daves. He lives in a state of semi-vacation and takes on just enough work to complain about work. I think if Dave gave up work altogether it would be too isolating for him and Daves need to be part of society. I've never met a Dave who wasn't firmly installed in the socioeconomic network. I can't even imagine a homeless Dave, or really anything other than a totally ordinary Dave. Dave's talk is coming to a close, and when you're with Dave he's the one doing all the talking, and his method of letting you know his talk is coming to an end is really something special. A Dave can run a monologue just past the point of your patience, but then he releases you so naturally and poignantly that as annoyed as you were you also feel somewhat disadvantaged that he's stemming the flow. It's like losing a game of checkers you didn't know you were playing. That's Dave. Perhaps that's even the Essence of Dave, Dave wins all the small games and the games are often so obscure that you never even knew a game was taking place in the first place. I leave Dave's house and it's an ordinary dutch-colonial house with a white picket fence and as I frequent a glimpse back it recedes into the New England fog. Was it a dream? Are Daves even real? Can we confirm a Dave is anything more than an illusion or a repeating pattern that nature prefers to return to? I know what Dave would say. It's Dave's World, and we're just living in it.