A Piece of Land - Part II

I was in the bathtub with a red candle flickering by my foot somewhere in the mist. The phone ringing somewhere behind the door. It's my mother. The bull dowzers have returned to my grandmothers property, they have knocked down a stone wall and are now shoveling so close to her little house it has become a health hazard. The family have once again called the lawyers who had initally instructed the family to stand down and not block the bulldowzers, so that they could prove the apposing party at fault , however, now, seeing how how much they have shoveled the lawyers apparently believe we have enough proof and have encouraged my family to take their own bulldowzer to block the entrance. It seems most of the bulldowzers on the island are reserved for construction or there owners are on vacation. My family plans to use their cars until a bulldowzer attained.

I have no heard news back since yesterday.

I have prayed a rosary. Is this how it's said? It feels like I am a very tiny thing knocking on a very large imposing door asking for help and not sure anyone can hear me.

Who am I

I mimic you and dress like you. I don't think i fool you. You are a foreign culture and i am a small bird from another land posing as one of yours so that I can live amoungst you. But at times, regardless of all your effort I am unsure who you are and what you want from me. I attempt to assume a competent comprehending gaze in your direction but wonder if you see through it. I hope by not saying too much or too little, or being too fidgety or too stiff to avoid your curiosity and eventually your analysis and your judgement of who it is I am. But I wonder as your gaze recedes what do you think of me?

Adieu, good bye

You wish the best for me
But the room is now cold
You did not mean to hurt me
Yet I sit in the dark room
You tell me it will be ok
To stop my tears from falling
You kiss me on the head
Wishing me goodbye
You tell me it’s not my fault
Then you walk to the door
You look back before you leave

I only have the footprints
You left in the snow
I think about putting my feet in them
To see how they would feel
I did not think I would keep using them
But yet here I am at your door
I offer you my heart to keep
Because I won’t use it anymore

friend or foe

So this friend, who is not much of a friend, who i sort of got into an argument with during the mini-NY blackout yesterday, ims me as usual. She tells me all of her problems and her solutions and her happiness and i realize suddenly that I don't really care. It's like a cord that has been cut that once linked her to me that seems to be irrevocably beyond repair. This is not about the argument, this is about what she talks about, her attitude, and her ever consuming self absorption. I am not only bored but I am annoyed by her childishly whining ims, overly emotional conversations. I feel bombarded and overwhelmed, almost suffocated. Her personalty now seems brittle, hollow and slightly obnoxious. I now can't help but see her like a void, being nothing, but sucking everything in, and namely my energy and time.

She contacts me this morning. I send her a few well meaning ims in response, but really I know I am just trying to be polite. In a way, I suppose i was a little elated after are argument. I never really thought about how I was enjoying our friendship less, it seems my discontent has grown like an internal symtomless disease only to show its dreadful face upon this situation.

I have just recently stopped stopped making lunch plans with her, not realizing that i no longer enjoyed her company, but just thinking i needed some time to myself. I suppose it won't be much longer. Au revoir.

Black Out

We experienced a mini black out in NY today. It tested my friendship. As I informed my friend from a nearby office and looked for alternative routes to go home and as our office were all anxiously seeking more info from an overburdened subway website that adamantly refused to load for us so we can view it, my friend informed me she didn't care. According to her, her side of Manhattan wasn't effected and it was too bad for the other side. The Eastern side, my office's side, my side. I argued how rude and callous her attitude was, gently at first and perhaps firmer later (as with the case with arguments). But after her stoically stating we would just have to deal with it. I asked her if I could use that line when she came to me with her problems. (as in just this morning...hours of boring and repetitive arguments between her and her lover). We ended the argument with exclamations, and bitter intonations. I told her not to come crying on my shoulder about her endless arguments which inexorable always solved themselves but which left me bored and tired from listening to. She shouted she wouldn't. Not to worry. Then she said Ciao. I was like yup, ciao, for I am not one who feels the need to maintain burndensome companionships that don't provide some level of solace. She will have to do better if she plans to stick around.

Things you should never do drunk

Write blogs,
Write comments in other peoples blogs,
call ex-boyfriends
declare your love to someone (especially to an ex-someone)
show up at work
show up anywhere near a co-worker
perm or color your own hair
get a tatoo
fall asleep on a subway
shop online with your credit card
or shop online with yhour boy friend's credit card
oh I fear my list is too long
please feel free to contact me for the full list should you require it.

Memories

The smell of autumn
Memories of past failures that endlessly swirl around blotting out the future
The far away sound ducks make crossing the winter sky
The way cats carefully evaluate me with their long stares
Reading Harry Potter books under the cover
The soft cushioned sound things make after a snowfall
A silver subway roaring under a grid as I stand above
An English accent
vibrations of thunder
The sensation of a breeze gently moving across my skin
A cross-country train ride in a foreign country
The smell of the sea after a long winter indoors
A turtle letting itself fall into a pond
My moms smile
The sound of a horses gallop
A lover wispering into my ear
A deep fog which shrouds the familiar with magical quality
The kindness of strangers
Building snowmen
Gulping down oysters with a good beer
Swimming in a luminously bright green waterfall after a long difficult hike

how quickly we regress

It's Friday and we are compactly packed into the first subway car so that once we arrive at our destination which is the same destination we are all destined to, we can file out first and not have to fight are way around a mob of people to get to the elevator from the overly filled platform clearly not designed to accommodate the number it receives daily. We all know the consequences of being in the this car because it is the same every morning. We know we will be pushed, and stepped on, and have to fight for a little spot in which we can hopefully grab on to something so as not to be jostled by the conductors heavy foot. We all know it's a bit unbearable and there are always some remarks, or some one who gives someone a look or someone who is so closely wedged beside you you are certain you know his/her face better then the persons significant other. Yet occasionally we get people who do not know all these things or who refuse" to comply to the first car inconvenience in order to get to work early and avoid the painfully slow moving mob on the extremely narrow platform. For just this Friday, there were these 2 woman who just don't understand these very basic ideas. Instead, they decided this subway condition we were all enduring was cause to fight over.

"you're stepping on my foot"

i said i was sorry

i don't like your attitude and it took you too long to get off my foot

get over it

and on and on this very circular conversation went in a loop as most arguments do

when thinking it would evaporate, i close my eyes to hear yells and everyone is looking at the two woman pushing each other on a subway car that is so compact i can barley turn my body around. They are forced apart by other passengers and one woman is told to get out at the next stop. The man holding the other woman is patting her back. How patient he is i think.

How can this be? That people are so willing to fight and demean themselves like children over a broken toy neither of them wants. Why don't they fight for a better life so they wont have to take the subway. No, they risk broken teeth, black eyes and humiliation over nothing. For their is absolutely nothing to gain. And even if they don't know how to behave in public, they must at least know that everyone had a good laugh at their expense.

Come Closer Please

Come closer please. He says.

I move imperceptibly a bare cm closer.

He smiles slowly. I don't bite.

There are lots of other things you could do.

There are a lot of other things i could do that don't require proximity.

I am mostly concerned about the ones that do.

But think of all you will miss.

And all I can lose...

What if I leave you no choice.

It wouldn't be the same.

You are right, an empty victory it would be.

Surely you can manage just a little bit closer in this obscurity.

You are wrong if you think this obscurity is a comfort.

But we cannot remain like this.

For now, this is all that can be.

Rendez Vous

I tell my friend lets hang out Friday and get a massage at the place in the East Village we always go to. It has several separate message rooms with low walls that finish a about a foot or 2 from the ceiling to provide ventilation. I like these rooms because i can have the seclusion I need but still know my friend is close by sharing the same experiences.

Anyway...she says she thinks she has plans and will let me know. On Friday, she gets back to me about Friday, not that we haven't spoken Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. We have. she asks if we are going out but i have already envisioned taking the express train which only runs early and is refreshingly empty as compared to the other trains and taking a warm shower, eating and retiring to bed early with the book I am defiantly reading. (defiantly because I am not really enjoying it but continuing to read because it has earned recognition so I feel if I wander down the entire path and see it to the end I may better understand and consequently better appreciate it. Not that I don't comprehend the story, I do, but perhaps I will better understand it's finer points. The points that the author intends for his reader to realize and enjoy.

Anyway, as my friend was taking her time to make plans I had already made plans with myself. As strange as this may sound, it happens to be the truth. More so, when i make plans I usually look forward to them, whether they be with man, a woman, or myself, and as I look forward to my future plans, I have of course no desire to change them. There is also the idea of why I might want to cancel plans with myself to be with someone who didn't get back to me until she was certain she didn't have better plans. Right? Besides, if truth be told, even though she is a great person, a neat friend, and plenty of fun to have around, I tend to enjoy my own company more after having worked an entire week with people and having my space encroached upon for such periods of time, thought this too, I cannot tell her.

Come back

I came back. The door opens and the knob hits the wall making a hollow echo sound of an empty flat. I drop the keys on the little table by the door as i look ahead and they drop to the ground for the table is gone. Here and there are holes which were once filled by things, and moments and warmth but now lie gaping and empty. I call your name expecting but not accepting to hear the silence which answers me. I walk around and think I need something to grab onto something, a story, possibly the truth, because there are too many questions which swim angrily and fearfully in my mind. It is a warm summer day but i feel a cold spread in my stomach like a heavy stone. I turn into the bathroom to find a sellotape letter taped to the wall but what does it mean? I search in vain for an answer, a hint, a foothold. There is no address and the letter is so angrily written I feel the deep imprints of your writing with my fingers as if the answer lies in the touch and not in this scribble. I read it over and over sitting on the bathroom floor but the words bounce off of me like little pellets of ice in a grail storm. I write to you this letter which I have sent to every place we have ever been and every place we had planned to go in hopes that you might hear me. And remember and turn around.

Copy, Paste, Im my friend, Copy, Paste, Im my friend, etc....

Yes, i think my boss is slightly concerned about my lack of work. Or lack of work at my disposal. You see when ever he comes behind my desk to pick up something he printed from his computer, the printer is, conveniently for him, behind my desk and he notices my personal google searches or or me im-ing my friend, M.... He has recently attempted to rectify this problem. He has found work for me to do. We sit in a long meeting concerning how I would update the company brochure importing text from a power point presentation and our company website. He gives me meticulous notes written on the pages of the print out, some on yellow post-its. Insert this paragraph A here, delete page 7 and 8, integrate text from website, etc. A nice, neat, and precise package. It seems fool proof.

I try to nod and scribble notes on my copy of documents along side. I try to suppress my yawn. I try not to put my head down on my desk or close my eyes. I try to make reassuring noise....hmmm, yes, ok like this, at the right moments. He seems pleased, thanks me and the meeting is over. It seems as if everything should move along quickly now. I nod.

We believe by July it should be settled. It's all a matter of copy, paste and maintaining formatting. Problem is, I don't know quark and when i paste parts of the text it disappears off the page and my formatting tool bars are unresponsive to my needs and the Quark books is much too big and boring to learn in so short a segment of time for a one small project.

Uh, excuse me Mr. Supervisor, we have run into a problem.

Putting the Pieces Together

I am trying to put the pieces together. I don't know if i should try to get my bachelors in IT (my English one does't have much zing) or try to become a programmer or buy a new apartment in manhattan or move back to the carribean. BUT I feel something has to change because I have been in this chapter for much too long. And it has become a repetitive loop. Sure I have another job, but it's another job which I don't like same as my last job. But i had left that job thinking this was the all important change that was going to change everything. I had even changed my sector. But yet here I am again at exactly the same place almost a year later and so out of indecision I am running around in a loop. And I am becoming despondent and sulky. I go to work because i have too, i buy clothes because i have to, i eat because i have to, and sleep because i have to and round and round it plays.

I have to make a change.

Inevitable Actions - Acknowledging Gravity

She calls me as soon as I sit down at work. "i need some good advice"

"well i can give you advice, but good advice might cost you."

She has travel vouchers offered at about 1/5 of their commercial value. The person is getting rid of them because he can't use them. Now they are sitting enticingly on Craig's List - Buy me.

what do you know about the seller...oh I have everything, his phone number, a copy of a green card, school transcript from MIT.

uhhhh...you have a copy of a green card and a copy of someones transcript. That doesn't mean they are real and that doesn't they are even his. He doesn't even want to use PayPal but Greenpoint in which you buy money vouchers and can't refute charges like you would be able to do on a credit card if here were to use Paypal.

ok but i talked to him and we exchanged emails and i know he is legitimate.

How do you know this?

I can tell.

how?

He wrote me back.

Well he would, wouldn't he. He still doesn't have your money. And all the documents he provided, he provided without your requesting...so it only means he has access to some fake id or or possibly stolen ID. If you are really going to do this anyway, at least ask him to send an email from work stating what he will send you in detail prior to you sending any money. At least you have the domain of a company.

Some time later she calls back to tell me he refused claiming his work privacy is an issue and tells her to search for deals on eBay in which she can feel safer...

she takes this as proof of his sincerity and honesty.

She sends him the money.

She calls me again.

I've been scammed.

What can i do? (........she's asking for more advice)

Nothing, put it down to learning a lesson and move on.

I can't move, on I lost 350 amount of money. And this is not just about the money.

No, it was a worth while lesson. it wasn't a loss of money.

I can't let this go.

Do you really think you are going to catch him, this is how he makes his living...he knows all the tricks and you will just end up more frustrated at having wasted more time and energy on it.

(We argue back and forth for much longer then i care to bore you or admit to myself)

Ultimate result of argument: she decided she is going to look for him and teach him a lesson.

But all this time was not wasted, I am becoming aware of the fact that when most
people ask for advice, what they really are asking for is confirmation that what they really want and plan to do, is the best and possibly only correct course of action.

Poor Little Blog

Blogging is tougher then it looks. My poor little blog keeps slipping into oblivion and can't be found using Google and the few times in it which it can be found under Google....it is usually so far down on the page or pages no one will see it. Just as bad, is when it does appear occasionally with apparent reluctance, it doesn't show may latest post but some old post from another era as if I am not a conscientious blogger but some couch potatoe who is too lazy to pop open their laptop and feed it. This is a very unfair portrayal of my situation as i do care and i do try to blog at least once a week and am pretty successful in my attempts at frequency.

If any one can see me and is reading this please help. Any suggested advice or website concerning this issue would by very appreciated and will be followed up with visits and comments of your blog should you have one!