Since last week I've been working at the same place I worked at in high school, only in instrument repair. I'm only the office bitch, really, because there's no time to train me for the important stuff before I have to leave for Boulder again, but I have to say I'd rather be the office bitch in repair than as counter staff, even with the added caveat that I have to dip my hands in acid all day. It's so much more interesting back there, and I don't have to deal with the inevitable fuck-ups that customers have because of sub-par service (and I know who's been giving it, but can't say that to them) or slow turnover (I know who's lost the orders, but can't say that to them either, out of store solidarity). I'm finding myself really enjoying my role as warehouse observer, especially since where I'm working is so absurd it's nearly a parody of itself; down-and-out but brilliant jazz musicians in transit from one stage to another, and repairmen who've been repairing so long their fingers meld metal almost by themselves, who've been dipping instruments in acid so long their hands have formed a protective layer.
Ted, who trained me in what little training there was, is dangerous and brilliant. He looks exactly like the Unabomber (and I'm not using a pseudonym) and is reported to have a basement full of odds and ends, bass saxes, and experimental explosives. He stays very quiet, but is always listening. One is not advised to cross him. (Being his trainee, I am unfirable.) Craig is amiable and jolly, looks like a bug-eyed frog, and has an unshakable stomach for grossness. Yesterday he cleaned a trumpet and a fucking nightcrawler of snot, dirt, and unidentifiable scunge came oozing out of the valve cap right onto his ungloved left hand. Instead of vomiting, as I was trying not to do from twenty feet away, he yelled for Paul to get his camera and take a picture.
Billy is an angry Texan with a penchant for pinup girls and firearms. He is also the funniest man I know. But he hates customers. 'He can come in, but tell him not to talk to me,' said Billy when I asked him if a kid could go back into repair and watch him play saxophone. 'Tell him I'm mean.'
Jason never talks, but the gorgeous flute music emanating from the corner always comes from him. Yesterday he found a bansuri and taught it to himself in three seconds flat.
Mitch is from the deep South, and reminds me of a small, paranoid animal. He has changed his name twice since we've known him and scurries around peeping at people from around corners, jumping at sudden noises. When he gets angry he doesn't talk in complete thoughts, just a string of incomprehensible Southern syllables. 'Flutin' Nawrthwasstern gray-ad stood'nts,' Mitch ranted from the center of the warehouse awhile back, everyone else trying to pretend they didn't notice him.
Because of this, we try to route calls to specific repair people, so we don't get Mitch, Albert, and Craig standing around the phone: 'Waaahhhh!' 'Grunt!' 'Urf?' (Very accurate mental picturing in this section comes from Paul...) and Lorrie can never route calls, she'll just pick up the intercom: 'Um... ooooh? can someone.... from repair pick up..line 1? uh... ohhhh. oooh? ohh. never mind." :click:.
01:12 - June 25, 2003 four addressees, none sent, all posted, late at night, will regret later
dear ____,
i don't know if you've got e-mail or not where you are, but i thought i'd write anyway. it's quick becoming a strange summer for me. lately i've been reading more than is probably healthy, and socializing less than is probably normal. i keep getting the urge to stop talking to people completely and see if that makes it any easier to keep my head straight. the more radical tracts and articles and websites and novels i read, the more ridiculous everything seems, like nothing can break from the flow, or enough things do already that there isn't really a clearly defined 'flow' to break from.
dear ____,
although, as time goes by, i am less and less able to put it in simple terms, i thought you would appreciate some of the things i�ve been reading, in lieu of the last conversation we had especially. i�m not here to lecture, though, or pass on a doctrine or dogma that
dear ______,
even your kind haziness can't bridge it for me anymore, even your stumbling charm. you're the one who said you don't, didn't, miss anyone. until you saw the pictures. but you when you hadn't, now i understand. with everyone there is around to know and to share with, how can you miss anyone, really? how can anyone rise above the smudge on the radar enough to be missed? (how can they not?) this is my headspace. i underestimated you.
dear ____,
i underestimated you, too. all year. everything you took in and everything you spat out and everything i laughed at later. all the time i secretly wondered whether you weren't actually missing some vital part of your brain. (oh, i still wonder that.) 'people only don't want to be touched by the people they don't want to be touched.' drone, drone, drone. it's so true, though. it's
dear ____,
i envy your escape into the wilderness, as it were. as the summer goes on, getting warmer and yet still not even halfway through, i just read more and more, i think more and more, and the less i am able to reason, the cloudier i get, the grumpier. whenever we would talk about a break from civilisation, i would scoff because i would, traitorously, think only about the people i would leave behind. how bourgeousie of me! (i hope the heavy sarcasm�s apparent there..) but honestly, i wish i were back at that train of thought, where people mattered enough, concretely, for me to not be able to bear the thought of leaving them. now when i think about a break from civilisation i am elated. and then i betray that elation (based on independence, and freedom, and self-reliance, of course) by the thought of taking you with me. it�s fading in and out though, and that�s what scares me. if you can�t still capture me, then, what can?
dead ______,
that �dead� was a typo, i hope.
dear ____,
i feel like you're what's going to tip me over one edge or another, and you're who i'm ignoring the most studiously so i don't have to face it. ripping in one direction so i have to face the other. i don't want
dear ______,
it is impossible to know where to start now, but, then, it always was after a break like this, wasn�t it?.. and we always managed fine... perfectly.. in fact, perfectly. so you should catch me, quickly, you should turn up, quietly, you should do everything i never expected you to do... again. (i flinch every time i say �everything�. the one [countless] time[s] you outsmarted me; i never thought you would have the courage to completely disappear.) but let�s talk about you. we made perfect friends, you once said, laughing (i could almost hear your laughter, almost, like a skinny shell to my ear) because we only talked about ourselves all the time but neither of us noticed because we were too busy talking about ourselves. i. loved. your. circular. logic.
dear ______,
the strangest things pertain to you only because nothing does. nothing connects, so i have a challenge for you, mr. elusive. find the link between jealousy and anarchy, between loneliness and political satire, between anger and cartooning, and tears and music, and muggy weather and an empty, empty bed.
23:07 - June 24, 2003 truthfully
I will not be passive aggressive, I will not be passive aggressive, I will not be passive aggressive. (Write it on the chalkboard 100 fucking times and it doesn't make a bit of difference... my stomach still hurts from the strain of keeping it in.) I will not let anything out until it is justifiable in prose more than worthy of the feeling it stems from. And it will never be justifiable, so it will stay right here until it ferments and churns and loosens and passes.
Before all of this I was driving home thinking, I miss you so much on hot nights like this, nights when it's been dark for hours and the heat lingers and falls apart into sweat under your brows, dripping into your eyes, even at 30 mph. Now it doesn't seem to matter as much. Truthfully, I am raging. Truthfully, I am hiding.
01:35 - June 24, 2003 e ver y thin g
The gap between premises and their various conclusions amazes me sometimes, like when I'm reading a branch of the KKK's website and find, to my utter astonishment, and, I guess, horror too, that a couple of their layers of logic coincide with mine almost perfectly, or, at least, if I were to think it through carefully I might come up with the same reasoning. Governmental interference, for one, and how it should be severely limited, and the right to learn what one will in school without the forced separation of church and state. It's just odd, and unexpected, that when one person thinks of these things, they end up with theories about liberal infiltration of schools and bans on interracial marriages and homosexuality, and lighting of the cross ceremonies, and when another person thinks of the exact same things, they think, ideally, of everyone being free to do and think what they feel is right, to the extent only of never infringing on anyone else's right to do what THEY want. (All impossibility aside... it works.) I jump from site to site, all of them homepages of organizations I never thought I'd identify with on anything; I do this on purpose, to see, to learn, and I cannot find a one that completely abuses common sense to the point that I can't relate enough to at least understand where they're coming from, ever if I don't agree. Nambla, Alabama White Knights, Buchanan.org, etc. Can't find one. It's strange. And a little liberating, but a little scary... a little hopeful for the oneness of all humanity, or something... but a little foreboding about the prospect of a colourless slate.
Most of all, it makes me want to read. I go downstairs to watch Dr. Strangelove wanting to read everything, everything. Everything I've never considered being interested in, everything I haven't paid attention to because I thought it didn't pertain to me, everything I thought I couldn't get through without falling asleep, every viewpoint about every occurrence that I've never considered. And then a strange thing happens at the foot of the stairs. This wave of apathy like I've never ever felt before sweeps over me and literally stops me cold in the doorway. From all these thoughts floating around, from the sheafs of books people have poured their hearts into, for the causes people have poured their lives into... really.. life just goes on the way it wants to go on and everyone has to just deal with it. There in the dark doorway at 11:30 pm, if I had had a gun, and I could never have said this before and meant it, I would have put it to my head and pulled the trigger, and I would not have given it a second thought before it was done with. Not out of any overwhelming sadness, or horror, or loneliness or depression, but from sheer apathy, sheer instinct even, spontaneity, from my index finger having nothing better to do. I was stopped there for over a minute, thinking, a humongous cloud of apathy and this quiet, but urgent sense of 'snap out of it' horror lurking underneath, getting louder and louder until I took a hesitant step forward into the light of the kitchen and it broke..
And I never want to feel that again.
I watched Dr. Strangelove and it was wonderful. I waited for the apathy to come back so I could quash it with logic, and it didn't, only the memory of it, lurking, in the back of my mind, like my mind always pictures guns, lurking, at my window.
But I still want to read everything, even though I'm fucking terrified now, terrified of what I might figure out and what it might do to me. but I still want to. I want to quit talking and start absorbing, start forming, become someone with something, make a case in my mind for the importance of something, anything. this is all there is. Importance. Life is either everything or it is nothing. no in between. I want it to be everything, especially now, I want it to be everything.
23:40 - June 22, 2003 faaplalritng
Nobody else has it any easier. Nobody else has it any easier. Nobody else has it any easier. Nobody else has it any easier. Nobody else has it any easier. Nobody else has it any easier. Nobody else has it any easier. Nobody else has it any easier. It just seems that way. It just seems that way. It just seems that way. It just seems that way. It just seems that way..
"i see light.
must be you.
watch and learn.
burning it blue."
Everything works in circles. But sometimes circles break. Sometimes circles break. Sometimes circles break. Circles break. Circles break. Break.
"blood boiling.
in slow motion.
(omissions).
distortion.
don't be afraid....."
I will never be at peace with anything. And I don't want to. I don't want to. I want motion, I want motion, I want motion, I want motion, want motion, motion, motion...
"what.... are you surprised? i'm stayin' alive, i spit in your eye, drive a stake in you... take me away, take me away....
but i'm sick and tired of wasting time. i want mine. take me away, take me away..."
It will get better, I will get better, it will get easier, it will get effortless, it will never get effortless, I will appreciate it when it comes, when what comes, I fear I won't even recognize it. I fear I will fall apart before the chance comes. I am already mostly apart. already mostly apart, mostly apart, apart..
"we'll die, tryin' to live so long.
i can't wait.
and i should.
leave the phone off the hook.
don't be afraid. don't be afraid. don't be afraid....."
