The night bled into the late morning, coagulating into a state of confusion as I went from unrestful sleep to restless wakefulness. It's difficult to descrie the sense of dread as you remember that time neither stops nor slows down when you fall asleep but slowly ticks away. Like a terroristic bomb, you're one step closer to indiscriminate destruction, but unaware of the exactly when or how fierce the hurt will come. I'm five years old again, I just broke my mother's favorite vase, and I'm waiting for the sound of the garage door opening to signal that she's come home.
My boss dangled the carrot of upward mobility in my face again today. Movement that was strongly hinted six months ago and was supposed to come to fruition halfway between then and now. I feel as if I might have insulted her, or in the least, worried her when I showed a complete lack of emotion. But how can I be expected to feign excitement when the reality of it is that the position itself may not even materialize for months? Why would I want to be promoted upwards in a job that was originally only supposed to last the better end of the holidays and pays just enough to afford me extra sprinkles on my dollar-menu sundae at the end of the month? For fuck's sake, without coming off sounding high and mighty, I'm better than this....this....situation. I swear to God if I get promoted, I'm going to kill myself. I'm going to pour myself a shot of concentrated sulfuric acid from my newly bought car battery that I could hardly afford, toast it to my new position, and bottoms up to the consequent future it entails. Chase it with a lemon wedge, both to mask the taste and add insult to injury. Sit back, relax, and wonder why the burning sensation doesn't secede while dreaming of the days when the fruits of happiness were not so hard to come by.
Floating back to a steadily loosening grasp of my-so-called reality, there were fortunately two glimmers of dark tunnelled light casting shadows on my otherwise cold and rainy fri.....day.
3:21PM - During the tail end of my lunchbreak, I was outside puffing on a square and a small old lady, you know the kind with the big overly curled white old lady hair walked out the door. She must have been at least 70 or 80, and was on her way to the car with her friend, also of similar age and stature. As she got closer, I could see the deep, deep wrinkles on her face, signs of the long road she was walked down. I assumed she would walk right past me, ignoring me because of her disposition towards young hooligans, loitering around, smoking cigarettes and looking for trouble. Instead, she looked at me from her weathered face with a pair of striking crystal blue eyes, said in a quiet old lady voice "Hello.", and cracked the the nicest, most sincere smile that I have seen in a while. It was one of those fancy full face smiles, enhanced by the lines on her skin and you could tell that she was really feeling it, not just being a passing courtesy. It was all I could do to blurt out a weak "Hi." as she passed by, going about her old lady business.
9:36 PM - Duckie called me while I was studying at Borders. There was a lot of noise in the background and I assumed she was at a club or something. She said she was doing sound setup for some big 3-day rock concert going on in Nashville. She was standing just offstage and was totally stoked because at that very moment John Mayer was performing his set on stage. She then held the phone out and let me listen to a live rendition, complete with screaming audience, of "Your Body is a Wonderland". The quality of cell-to-cell reception was horrendous and I could only just make out the tune, let alone the words, but I would say that being at a concert "almost-firsthand" is "almost as good" as being there in person. The novelty of it is, at least. Fangs again Duckie.
My boss dangled the carrot of upward mobility in my face again today. Movement that was strongly hinted six months ago and was supposed to come to fruition halfway between then and now. I feel as if I might have insulted her, or in the least, worried her when I showed a complete lack of emotion. But how can I be expected to feign excitement when the reality of it is that the position itself may not even materialize for months? Why would I want to be promoted upwards in a job that was originally only supposed to last the better end of the holidays and pays just enough to afford me extra sprinkles on my dollar-menu sundae at the end of the month? For fuck's sake, without coming off sounding high and mighty, I'm better than this....this....situation. I swear to God if I get promoted, I'm going to kill myself. I'm going to pour myself a shot of concentrated sulfuric acid from my newly bought car battery that I could hardly afford, toast it to my new position, and bottoms up to the consequent future it entails. Chase it with a lemon wedge, both to mask the taste and add insult to injury. Sit back, relax, and wonder why the burning sensation doesn't secede while dreaming of the days when the fruits of happiness were not so hard to come by.
Floating back to a steadily loosening grasp of my-so-called reality, there were fortunately two glimmers of dark tunnelled light casting shadows on my otherwise cold and rainy fri.....day.
3:21PM - During the tail end of my lunchbreak, I was outside puffing on a square and a small old lady, you know the kind with the big overly curled white old lady hair walked out the door. She must have been at least 70 or 80, and was on her way to the car with her friend, also of similar age and stature. As she got closer, I could see the deep, deep wrinkles on her face, signs of the long road she was walked down. I assumed she would walk right past me, ignoring me because of her disposition towards young hooligans, loitering around, smoking cigarettes and looking for trouble. Instead, she looked at me from her weathered face with a pair of striking crystal blue eyes, said in a quiet old lady voice "Hello.", and cracked the the nicest, most sincere smile that I have seen in a while. It was one of those fancy full face smiles, enhanced by the lines on her skin and you could tell that she was really feeling it, not just being a passing courtesy. It was all I could do to blurt out a weak "Hi." as she passed by, going about her old lady business.
9:36 PM - Duckie called me while I was studying at Borders. There was a lot of noise in the background and I assumed she was at a club or something. She said she was doing sound setup for some big 3-day rock concert going on in Nashville. She was standing just offstage and was totally stoked because at that very moment John Mayer was performing his set on stage. She then held the phone out and let me listen to a live rendition, complete with screaming audience, of "Your Body is a Wonderland". The quality of cell-to-cell reception was horrendous and I could only just make out the tune, let alone the words, but I would say that being at a concert "almost-firsthand" is "almost as good" as being there in person. The novelty of it is, at least. Fangs again Duckie.
posted by J at
4:09:00 PM
