The Liar

I am not getting enough sleep. I am an 8 hour sleeper. I can even push 9 if convenient or sometimes even when not convenient but much needed. In any case I seem to be getting to bed later and later, most unfortunately the time I must awaken to make my train has not changed. And it is always too early and apparently getting earlier as I am sleeping later. Now you think that a reasonable person with fine analytical skills would go to sleep earlier in order to escape this painful routine. And in the morning, as my alarm rings and I tap the snooze button thinking about how I will make up the time, to catch said train on time, I promise myself in the most sincere manner that tonight I will sleep earlier. I promise this to myself like a gift. I look forward to it and placate my desire to remain in bed with it. I fool myself, I trick myself, I lie to myself, because as the hours tick away at night, I become involved in mundane web searches, listening to music, or reading. The hours tick away without my notice. And then in the morning as the sun rises and the alarm rings the deceit recommences once again.

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

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.

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.

Ants

I am being quietly invaded by carpenter ants. It is war. They come out when they feel it is safe, when i am typing at my computer and they do not see much movement...they think i am busy and then they make a run for this corner or that corner and I have to grab what ever is near by, hopefully a napkin or something appropriate and smush it. At first I was squeamish gently pressing them with much disgust and a turned face but apparently their bodies are surprisingly resistance to this pressure or perhaps the amount of paper used cushions them....but as with all distasteful experience repetition makes us more resilient and perhaps crueler and I now press harder and look directly at the offending perpetrator.

And now because it is hot outside they are suddenly coming out in record number. I am not sure if they have some form of communication but they seem warier and quicker. It feels like like some sort of bad LSD experience and I jump at every black spot on the ground, or wist of hair which touches my neck.

I am going to buy poison.

This is war.

A Small Doodle Really

I have only been at my job for a month when i think I have already made a little error, which I am sure they will believe is a lot bigger then just little, but as it is their company, they of course have the final judgement call, so I suppose we can just call the error a big error. I was putting together a boardroom booklet with minutes and it was the first time i saw such ridiculously mindless documents. Which all began to look the same but which never the less had to be placed in a precise order. This seemed fine and all except I do not what basis they use to decide the sequence of the order. So when my manager with very limited time sat down with me and shuffled the pages until he found this order which he understood but did not share the logic of with I. I thought it was very clever of me to number said pages with a #2 yellow pencil as these documents were still being worked on and the fear was that they could unintentionally become disordered again. Mind you I had an eraser handy at my desk I planned to use on them before sending them out.

It was quite a shock to me when I was binding these documents and noticed my little number marks on the ends of these very official but terribly boring documents like a child's disobedient scribble on a perfectly pristine wall. Increasing my misfortune was the fact that though they were written in such a light pencil marks as to be barley noticeable, they were were now made much darker by our evil and terribly disloyal copier machine. Of course this was only noticed by myself when I was putting together the last book and my manger was waiting with an outstretched hand to gather the booklets to make his London flight.

I don't touch my pencils at my desk they stare at me guiltily.

Caught!

Because I speak French I can eavesdrop on them, which is easy to do because they believe they are the only ones in the area to understand the language and so they speak freely, intimately, and without reserve. It was because of this that I once shared an elevator with a a young couple who were discussing how they could cheat on their taxes. Surprised, I turn around to get a closer look at them but my face must of seemed too alert for the casual glance i had thought I was mastering, their eyes widened in response like scared owls and they whispered for the remaining floors.

Ladybug

I came out of my air conditioned tower of lifeless air, lifeless thought, lifeless work. The ice resides in my bones and it take minutes for the sun to seep in. I sat down on the warm steps and watch hoards of people move through the tight sidewalks. After having finished my lunch hour i put my bag to my shoulder and collect my jacket to notice a small lady bug vanishing up one of the sleeves. "oh no my friend, where I go you will not survive" and i gently remove her by allowing her to climb up my finger and place her on the leaf of a near by plant. Freedom awaits at least one of us.

My Path

I am experiencing a pissy blogger moment. I just spent over 2 hours trying to find out how to add links and then slowly it dawned on me that the lack of information concerning this seemingly complicated process is probably due to the fact that the new templates have user friendly link option. And guess what, after spending all that time and aggravation trying to simulate computer code in order to add a link i found my efforts were not necessary at all. In fact they were an easy option in the new templates. Just a few clicks!

This only makes me worry what other time I am seemly wasting doing things the long complicated way when there is a simple shortcut staring me in the face. This fear is the reason why i am procrastinating investing all my mind attaining "full time employment". I believe there must a more fulfilling, promising and lucrative options. But where does that path lie? How many mountains must I climb before I find my way?