We need so many things to keep our stupid lives going
My shoes are cracked and worn, fucked with years of overexposure to manmade concrete surfaces covering everything. The laces have disappeared from the left shoe, and I never bothered to replace them, opting instead to walk around with the tongue absurdly flapping about. The other shoe is equally destroyed and has worn away at the front, where my toe is beginning to show through. Paired together they represent an incongruous mess of the falling apart, making the mad dash in unison toward total disintegration (a day which will show by with my shoes and clothing disintegrating off of me completely, leaving me naked and barefoot as I stride out into the new day). Additionally, the bottoms have begun wearing away in different sections, making them not particularly choice footwear for rainy days. Today the melted ice from the sidewalk accumulates and makes its way easily into the bottom of my shoes, saturating much of my socks and feet. I register this with the slight pulsating sting that occurs at the foot-level when the human skin comes in contact with cold wet substances and causes small curse words to come out of my mouth. Later, at work, my shoes have begun to dry and smell, much to the chagrin of my unfortunate coworkers, who have to sit within my immediate proximity all day. These same coworkers will later gather in the hallway, circling around and talking in hushed tones about the faint aroma coming from under my desk—a fear instilled in me years ago at a temp job, where a fellow-temp actually did receive a call from his agency, telling him to clean up his act. It was not the aroma of body funk, another coworker diligently explained, so much as it was the lurid reek of feet which did him in. All of which has rendered a lifelong fear in me, and which is made one hundred percent tangible moments ago when a coworker turns and asks, what is that smell, mang?? There is a moment of conjecture before Joy produces, with her Sauerkraut lunch, ready to eat.

I really probably should buy a new pair of shoes, soon. Because you never can underestimate of good footwear.

Some things last a long time
Recently I have gained access to an email account which was previously made inaccessible to me for a long period of time. Opening this account was like opening some sort of sad tomb which probably shouldn’t have been tampered with. Contained inside were emails to people and references to jobs which had been half-forgotten about, discarded from long-term memory, outside of overt references to how much worse things were, then. After college, I had—as perhaps so many “young adults” do— (a demographic I find myself slowly slipping away from), experienced a period of crisis both wide and sweeping. Among many of the jobs I had then, I worked in a mailroom for a state agency in New York, where my main area of employ involved reading a lot of books and interacting with my insane coworkers. One of my coworkers was a mentally handicapped woman named Suzie, whose head I rescued from the clenching jaws of an elevator door, and who had subsequently invited me over her house for dinner (which, strangely, out of lack for things to do and people to interact with, I accepted). I met some other cooler people there, too, when I wasn’t being too hopeless and grim. Sometimes I wrote emails to them.
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hi, leah: i don't have aim, but i do have email and, sadly, a whole lot of time on my hands, seeing as I work, well, here in this office, doing god-knows-what. And because of all that, I’m a pretty dedicated emailist, I guess. And so that's something, at least. In the movie You Can Count On Me, Mark Ruffalo's character asks Rudy if he will write him back, and then proceeds to say, "Well, it'll be a pretty kick-ass deal for you, because i write one hell of a letter." But you have to promise to write me back, though, and give me constant affirmations of my genius or all deals are off.

merry christmas,

ryan*

I am at work right now, listening to a telephone conversation. Jerry is talking to his wife, indignantly affirming, You've got to come up with a schedule, THAT'S WHAT I KEEP TELLING EVERYONE!" He says this over and over, asserting this to his wife who presumably disagrees. It's amazing, really: they could be talking about anything at all--that rocks are lighter than air--and still he would maintain this conviction, that he is right, rocks are lighter than air. It’s ego, in its bare naked form, and he will not be wrong: "rocks are lighter than air"; "we've got to come up with a schedule," et cetra.

I've got to make a note, I keep telling myself, to capitalize on all of the awesomeness which happens in this environment. I keep thinking of bringing a tape recorder in, almost liking the idea of hearing my own voice and how it functions in this environment. Have I been totally subverted? Or am I, like i hope, completely transcendent? It's all so hard to say.
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another day, mail processing, 101. otherwise referred to in my secret mental file as carefully conscripted torture for people who have done horrible things in prior lifetimes. the radio blasts lionel richie, "everybody needs a little time away/ i heard her say," over and over and over, drilling it into you, three times a day. i can identify with that: everybody needs a little time away. with no vacation time on the schedule, however, and no where to go anyway, here i am, hiding in a corner, and writing maniacal emails to people who will never talk to me again as a result.

i hope all is well with you, though, glenna roach. sorry i have yet to make good on my promise to come visit you. this is just another item on the increasing to-do list of ryan kemp, including (though not limited to): tucking in my shirt and combing my hair, and working out a "plan" for future survival, although not quite as mundane as any of those things, i guess. i had better get going, though. 99.5 is lining up another music block, my hair is as frazzled as ever, and i'm not even half way through my to-do list.
see you,

ryan*


back to work. this is, apparently, the part in my day where kristen drinks some curious blend of met amphetamines mixed in her coffee, and then proceeds to berate the hell out of me with her latest tales of woe, even though i make every effort to display that i am in fact wearing headphones and reading a book, not listening. what is wrong with these people i don't know?
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hey, i'm sitting at my desk, at work. when i inherited this desk, a few months ago, it came with one of those desk calendars which looks a lot like a gigantic placemat, allowing both form and function. i eat lunch on it everyday, invariably dropping the remnants of whatever it is i'm eating all over it, so that the month of January is totally fucked, smeared with the chaff of weeks'-worth of peanut butter & jelly sandwiches, and the droppings of whatever else it is i indulge in with the kind of wreckless abandon i tend to reserve for specifically these moments. i'm looking at it a few moments ago, remarking to myself even as i survey the damage, there really was just no way around this. and it's hard not to notice, sitting here now, the damage done. at least, i reason, it's almost over (rounding up another month which i'll methodically destroy).

-ryan*

hi, hot chocolate (don't ask). i wanted to write you one last time before you disappeared into the depths of whatever despotic third-world jungle you're venturing into, to roam around, because i would imagine you won't be having any internet access there, but who knows, really? they have roadside stands at truck stops in rural Iowa, where you can access anything you might be needing to check out while stopping at a roadside stand in rural iowa, if it's only a few lonely blurbs from some vestigial boyfriend alone in a house in Albany. but maybe Iowa is not so comparable, who knows?

Either way, i saw this program on abnormally large people last night, and i wanted to tell you about it, because it was especially profound, i thought, in a way which is not unspecific to, well, what i think is really specific and important, which is, uh, all pretty sketchy, i would imagine. in any case, it was kind of a winding delineation of how people grow, and especially the process of how people standing 8'9 get to be that way. in your head, there's something called a pituitary glad which secretes some sort of enzyme or another, all of which elicits the overall growth process, starting around the time of maturity, which is gender specific, occurring at different ages in males and females, etc. in some people, however, namely people standing really fucking tall, a tumor forms, causing the pituitary gland to secrete massive amounts of said enzyme, eliciting massive growth spurts, and in some cases, results in death. i was thinking that, in a way, we're attempting and avoiding. I hope you have a fun time.

ryan*


a letter from a., amid all of the junk mail and fodder. that's nice. and a bowl of Life cereal to boot. the breakfast experience just doesn't get much better than this. you have to pretend, at least, once you've thrown away all of your vices. and besides, i reason, you mine as well at least pretend you enjoy Life.
in any case, everything's happy and healthy. i got invited to go to norway this summer by my grandmother, but then realized you just can't get in on the whole international experience when you have your grandmother in tow, no matter how much she offers to pay for. but who knows? i have all of these vices to pick up on again. And what with the party atmosphere which seems to pervade my uncle's house ("we decided to just be friends," he tells me of his live-in wife. "you know, just do our own thing."), you can't be going wrong.

i'm going to XXXXXXXXXXXX this weekend, though, to see if that's somewhere more in line with my worldview, and better suits my criteria for long-term survival. mostly, i just wanted to check out if there are places in the universe where you can walk down the street and not have people circling back to get a closer look at you. although, to be fair, with the current proliferation of rock culture, i guess i've just been feeling a lot more mtv2 lately. i'm more at liberty to walk into any random establishment preceded by the imagery of the strokes, and then have some retardedly drunk asshole stagger up to me when i'm trying to get the high score on miss packman, telling me how atavistic i look (although, i guess when you're really rocking it on miss packman, what else do you expect?). fortunately for me, however, girls really seem to favor that whole m2 thing; there's probably a whole ten more mintues now until i'm just rendered totally passe.

i'll call you, though. i've got to get back to my cereal.

love, ryan*

Everybody loves a good red scare
An interoffice feud has occurred. I entered on it the other day, the cacophony of voices which got louder as I approached, and then walked silently through its center and to my desk, taking my seat as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. Today we are experiencing the silent nuclear arms race of the aftermath. The lines in the sand have been drawn, and I am being asked to choose sides. It’s all horrible craziness to me, though: everybody seems marginally insane from my vantage point, and I don’t even know what the argument was about. My coworkers have begun creating all new reasons for interacting with me, so as to get a feel for where I stand in the matter, attempting to tip the scales to one side or the other. Joy corners me in the break room and begins questioning me about drug paraphernalia, which she found in her grandson’s room. “Oh, I wouldn’t really know anything about that,” I tell her, so as to not implicate myself. “Oh, well I just thought you might know,” she says. We stare awkwardly at each other for the ensuing few seconds before parting ways. Meanwhile, back in the office, my other coworkers have taken to talking in hushed tones, reveling in the office scuttlebutt which is their raison d’etre. I can’t believe this is actually my life, I find myself thinking for the one-millionth time. I keep waiting for some obscure European relative to die, leaving me an inheritance which will absolve me from this petty existence, so I can carry out my ultimate dream of doing Nothing. But I just keep waiting and waiting.

It has become obvious to me that whatever minute semantic issue is at hand, everybody is against Joy because she hates her job and says so, which hasn’t particularly ingratiated her among the other people who work here. Nowhere else in the free world could get away with watching Montel and distaining your job between fistfuls of popcorn than in the public sector. But whatever your feelings about her predilections for daytime TV you really just have to appreciate the sheer bravado with which she conducts herself around here, a sight to be seen. I try and sympathize with the other people, the vitriol which produces in gallons and buckets’ full. You can feel them trying to win you over, the bad vibes permeating the common airspace like some kind of mold spores. But like William Shatner said, “I can’t get behind that.”

I end up finding Joy in the hallway, roaming up and down, her newest refuge in an increasingly uneasy refuge. “Hey,” I say, walking over to her. “Don’t worry about it. Those guys are fucked up.” She looks at me incredulously. “You’re on my side?” she asks. It feels kind of weird to admit, but I guess if righteously subverting the man is the task work at hand, I actually am. “Yes,” I say to her, “I AM on your side. Now let’s get back to work.” And then, side by side, we walk back into the office, through two sets of doors that snakes right into the seething hot center of the lair, which is a bay of pigs or otherwise.

You ought to kick it to me and bite off my head
Last night, in the throes of inexplicable terribleness, I went to the liquor store and purchased a sizable bottle of red wine, which I then got home and proceeded to discover I had nothing to open it with. It seemed like some kind of hi-jinx performed by the gods above, who seem periodically bent on messing with my head. I turned the apartment over, looking for an opener, before giving up and sitting down, staring blankly at the bottle before me, as though by sheer will alone I could pop the top off. The very existence of the bottle, I conjectured, is the result of my ever crumbling girl situation, unraveling like a ball of twine that seems destined to just keep unraveling, forever. Small patterns disappear and are subsumed by bigger patterns, the singer sings. And that's the way it is with me. I remember when I was dating X., I became a particularly sordid brand of variety drunk, showing up to her house wrecked beyond belief. She would find me sitting on her porch, petting her cat, either too confused or apathetic to ring the bell, which may just pose the question, was it the drinking which crumbled the situation for me, or was it the situation itself which had me turning into a drunk? And further, if history repeats itself in the here and now, will I just continue to get worse, moving on to other balls of twine which will inevitably unravel? I was vacillating heavily on the larger implications when the sounds of the downstairs bell shook me from my reverie. Standing there, on the landing, was the downstairs neighbor's dude, stone-faced and hollowed out-looking, brandishing a plate of cookies. We were going through the greetings when the downstairs door flew open, where standing on the thershold was the ye old neighbor herself, with a face equally as grim. No sooner did this occur then I realized that I had found myself sandwiched in a particularly fiery brand of domestic dispute, and so I excused myself, promptly, and retreated back upstairs again. Poor guy, I thought: he had been experiencing his own brand of domestic dispute, probably, demonstrating any number of nervous tics which had presented--the kind which seemed innocuous and easily ignored at first but which over time sprouted into some ignoble bonsai of the nervous tic, and which, once discovered, could never be ignored fully and totally again, resulting in one thousand cold looks and sordid disputes and god knows what. Who could say what went wrong? It seemed like something, though, surely.

Romantic interpretation is a particularly sordid lot. Every once in a while two people will defy the odds in lieu of the urge to endlessly swap bodily fluids, working it all out in the end. And it is this triumph of the will which erroneously goads the rest of us on, resulting in the creation of one million romantic dramas of theatric proportions, both real and imagined. That's just my take on the subject matter. But you probably shouldn't listen to me; my record is not that great, and I can't even open a bottle of wine.

On my way out to buy an opener, I notice on the ground the batch of cookies sitting precariously by the door. The weight of this discovery crushes me. I look at the sad little pile of fresh baked goods, pathetically sitting there on the ground. Somewhere, out in the world, is this sorry sufferer and baker of homemade items. I feel like Sartre's narrator in Nausea, the only one able to sufficiently understand the Self-Taught Man. But ah, well: it's too late. He's probably already en route to the liquor store by now, in pursuit of the balm which will soothe his suffering soul. I stand there for one moment more, contemplating the cookies. It really does seem like such a waste, I think. And then, pulling back the cover, I reach inside and purloin one the sweet delicacies off of the plate, popping one in my mouth before striding off into the night. Not too bad, I think. Not too bad at all.

My baby served me love on a plate (paper)
An injured leg on the Lady Trainer (sic) at the gym is causing me to limp around all day. What did you do to your leg? People want to know. Oh, you know, I stammer: I fell down the stairs. One time in high school, I broke my leg during a rad sleigh-riding trick and the questions which subsequently followed were answered in all manner of creative ways. But the truth, as is the lesson of US foreign policy, was avoided at all costs. And here I find myself slipping up. But sometimes you just can’t help yourself, as is the case with most social boners (a sentence which, even as I write it, seems problematic and so terribly rife with sordid sub-textual ribaldry that I probably won’t sleep tonight. Which also—actually, never mind).

The root of my entire problem today acutely broils down to the fact that somebody brought in sticky bun pastries, which has me bouncing off the walls of my cubicle. There’s something so delectably sweet about them that when your coworker who brought them eyes you suspiciously on your third trip for more, you cannot help but ice that same person out, with the tacit suggestion of, get-the-fuck-out-of-my-face. But now that I think of it, the whole messy equation really probably will relate back to obsessively riding the lady trainer tonight, for an endless succession of pulled muscles and second rate excuses and social boners. Or however you say.

You've got your big cheese/ I've got my hash pipe
The day seems impossibly long after only a few hours. I called in late to work today, after a late night out. “Joy,” I say into the phone before she shouts back my name. “Ryy!” she says into the receiver, “HOW ARE YOU DOING??” And then, before I have time to answer, she’s off about how nobody’s on time today, and can I come in quickly? It’s not there’s a lot of work to do, or anything that actually necessitates my being there. No, the root of the problem is that she’s just really lonely. “I’ll do my best,” I tell her, before hanging up the phone and hastily falling back asleep.

H.’s wedding turned out not to be a total fiasco, although we did manage to alienate ourselves right off by admitting that we’re not fans of the rock group Phish. This was, strangely, one of the first questions posed to us, which, once unsatisfactorily answered, excluded us from the more illicit proceedings taking place out back all night. The moral being, if you want to smoke weed with the ex-hippies seated at your table, you have got to read between the lines and at least pretend that their musical predilections are not startlingly inferior to your own.

On the way out, I am practically sprinting to the car, when KD tells me to slow down. And it’s true, I think: why am I walking so fast? My whole life, I’ve recently conjectured, is a series of events that I’m ploughing through joylessly. Somebody else recently asked me if I was in a hurry to get going, and I realized, no sooner did I arrive at the bar the other night then I immediately began worrying about how I was going to get home again, the logistics involved, and sundry other concerns. What the hell is wrong with me, I don’t know. There’s so much getting through the things I need to get through, to get to the all of the other things which need getting through. And rarely is anything ever accomplished, when the work is never done. I am stressing out over the details in the car ride on the way home, when I realize: I really probably should check in on some of those jam bands.

Let's drink a toast to all those who arrived alive
Mario S. walking through the shoppers’ mall, like an anchor of familiarity in a sea of the terrible unknown. “Oh, hey what’s up,” he greets me, recognizing my face. It’s always funny seeing Mario, because he’s fairly ubiquitous within the greater upstate area, and I always do end up seeing him in the most bizarre places imaginable, while doing nothing particular at all. The whole anchor-of-familiarity paradigm is probably lost on Mario, however, given that he seems to know everybody, and it’s probably more of a testament to his imagined magnetism which always tricks you into thinking you’re the anchor. We talk things over a bit and I tell him that I’m going to a wedding this weekend, and how I need something to wear. “Wedding’s are the worst,” he says, “I always tell my friends: ‘listen, motherfuckers: you know where I work, I can’t afford no present.’” We have a laugh at that, and then he continues to explain to me that weddings are akin to receiving a speeding ticket, an expense which you can’t afford. I misconstrue the original statement by adding that it would be more like a speeding ticket that comes with dinner and dancing, but Mario insists that it’s a speeding ticket all the same. And it’s weird how one of the most important days in two people’s lives becomes little more than an overwhelming chink in your well-constructed plans for the weekend. My formalwear situation is little less than happening, and the whole fact that two people younger than me are getting married elicits in me some kind of existential panic which just won't go. But ah, well: what can you do? Some people have to have lives which suggest that things are OK, and that it’s not all horrible and grim. And the food will be really good, probably. So that’s something, at least.

I walk out of the mall with Mario, past the pesky miscreant factions which seems to assemble by the entryways, which is somehow very logical hanging out corridors for 15-year-olds nationwide. I point out my car to Mario, which resides in a very choice spot, close to the entryway. He has no idea where his own car is in the interminable sea of similar-looking cars and then tries to remember if it’s even in this lot at all. We both shrug, and then say goodbye, until the next time. On the service road out, I see that Mario has found his own car, as he whips by me at impossible speeds, with his inimitable afro poking up above the driver’s seat, in full view of passersby.

All my heroes are weirdos
Howard S. sits across from me at dinner, clean cut and well groomed. I first met Howard as a flunky in the grade school of some statewide test scoring concern, which was just one in a number of unending temp positions I have worked in my life. I remember talking to Howard then, and the unending vacillation over whether or not he should cut his hair, the symbolism of the event, and what it would all mean. Then he had intricate dreadlocks, which were creatively tied back into a large bunch. He was the type of individual you would imagine hanging around and listening to Kruder & Dorfmeister albums while high on pot. But today he is some dusted off version of his prior self, sparkling clean, with a mortage, fiancé, and a fenced in yard. It’s weird, hanging out with someone who has graduated from the trenches. Howard’s life stands in startling contrast to my own, which is haphazard and grim-seeming. My mom gave me the number for food stamps the other day and I copied it down enthusiastically. When did Howard rejoin? I wonder. And what turn did I miss, I find myself thinking, which put me on the collision course with impasse and total failure, like a train car rushing full force ahead into an implacable brick wall, destined to crash over and over again?

Howard invokes memories of the cast of characters we used to work with. “I hated all of those people,” I find myself telling him. “All of those pedantic fuckers,” I say, “destined for better things. –So completely obnoxious.” I find myself alarmed by the conviction in my voice, about seeming to care about something so vigorously. Howard laughs it off. “It’s pretty much true, though.” he confirms. We laugh at those same people, and wonder what they’re doing now. “I think you either become disillusioned by the process," I say of the temp world, “or you transcend it all together, figuring everything out in the end.” Howe has joined the ranks of the transcendent, apparently. And meanwhile I’m a train wreck, a wreck of all wrecks, destined for collisions, and references to arcane song lyrics which validate all of this behavior. When the check finally comes, I wonder if they take food stamps here.

I was formed in the shopper's eye
It is just some random day, which could be any day. Have I written that sentence before? I’ll write it again. The weather itself is perplexing, clouding over long enough to trick you into thinking it’s going to be a crappy day, shortly before the sun bursts through again and you think, how manic the weather is. I actually find myself thinking about Tim Drawbridge again, and am then creeped out by my same obsession with this human being: is Tim Drawbridge married with children? Or is he some hanger on— the creep at the end of the bar who women, no matter his bizarre manifestations, latch onto the intangible charm beyond? These are the things I’m thinking about, I actually find myself thinking. And then I change the subject, the television channels of the mind, when the thinking about thinking becomes the thinking itself, so far removed.

I am listening to a punk rock song right now and experiencing the placebo of context. I remember this song, and my experience with it is transporting me five years or more, which mine as well be a century ago (which, at least in the currency of song form, actually is a century ago. Although, I guess you might make the argument that if a song means something, it might actually transcend the value of commodity, but that’s an argument better saved for a different time and place and author, who may not be me). I’m thinking about what my life was like then, walking around the art school campus and taking it all in. It seems, sadly, like I have not changed at all. Did I just hit the wall? I wonder—like when your body has matured to a point where it’s not going to mature any further. Or do you just begin to disintegrate, falling apart completely? Or are the changes more subtle and I’ve just forgotten completely, with the inability to compare? The only way to know, I guess, is if you write everything down, and unfortunately I do write things down. The blog itself is some paltry reflection of this, and there it is, laid out before me, to observe with no lack of chagrin. It could be worse, I guess. But the song at least, is still the same; it couldn't sound better.

Wine in the moring and some breakfast at night
The window washers outside of my window meticulously wash in the morning light. They’re kind of a motley-looking duo, one of them sporting a decidedly Kid Rock-style moustache and the other wears a ratty ponytail that sticks absurdly out of the back of a baseball cap. The Kid Rock guy uses some sort of makeshift watering device, while the other guy goes behind him and cleans away the dirt. It’s kind of a nice, baggage-free profession, I find myself thinking—the kind which you’re amazed technology hasn’t made obsolete in some way already. Hey, what do you do for a living? someone wants to know. Oh, I wash windows. The clarity is refreshing (nix).

I’m experiencing my own moment of clarity right now, wrapped up in the whole seasonal miasma of figuring out exactly how things work. I had this same epiphany last year at this time, as I walked around downtown in a pouring rain. I’m not sure exactly what I figured out, although I’m not sure it was particularly earth shattering. But it’s kind of amazing how life works sometimes, when everything comes together and seems so well choreographed. You can’t help but be moved in some small way, and then be moved by that same movement, like ancient glaciers shifting within. It’s a long life, but you can’t help but be touched by the irrefutable glints of beauty produced around the edges.

Outside the Kid Rock guy has come back around again to inspect the windows and realizes he has missed a spot. There seems to be some flaw in one of the windows, and he goes to clean it again. It’s funny, watching him look directly in. The windows are tinted and I realize he can’t see anything but his own reflection as I look right into his eyes, not five feet from my own. I catch myself wondering what his life is like. Maybe he’s having his own epiphanies, I think, cashing in on the whole seasonal vortex of beauty and shine. Who could say what he’s thinking? The possibilities really are endless. When he’s satisfied with the window, he picks up his supplies and moves along to clean the next window for somebody to look out of with equal parts astonishment and wonder.

Kaiser get in here right now
Ostensibly having lunch with my grandmother. Actually, I have no food or money and so I show up to her house unexpected to make a peanut butter sandwich, deciding to sit for a few moments before leaving. It seems like the couth thing to do, not just showing up to get some food and then leave again. She calls my motive, though, and on going to leave she asks me what's up. "Are you feeling alright?" she wants to know (it's always the inquiries with me, which only leads me to believe that my public persona needs some polishing. --A friend has recently spotted me standing against a wall at a show, totally lifeless and grim, later telling me how pathetic I looked. Thank you, L. Trela: you're always one for words. Although I guess I'll just chalk that one up to the proverbial touche--yeah, i know you read this blog, and may be refering to any number of incendiary things I may have said about you). "I guess I feel OK," I tell my grandmother, simultaneously amazed that she's asking about my well being. "Well you sure are acting strange," she says. I have no defense for acting strange, however, having given that up a long time ago. In the end we must be who we are, the singer sings, and there it is creeping up out of me, like some kind of insane bonsai. There is no hiding it. On my way to the door she holds up some grapes to give to me. I snatch them from her hand and pop one into my mouth, feeling as the sugary sweet tartness from the grape rushes over my tongue, like a piece of candy.

We got old but we got good
Birthday extravaganza ’07 ensues with no casualties. That’s a good thing. Although I guess it depends who you ask: the compulsive drug abuser might actually prefer to die in the heightened state, where the meth-induced state reveals, with startling clarity, the essence of living. But for better or worse (pointing me out to be the first class weenie I am, on a myriad of levels), the only drug I’ve been abusing is my asthma inhaler. All other aspects of life fade away in the desperate morning, lips pursed as you gasp for air, dizziness ensuing as the oxygen in your blood dissipates and then seemingly disappears altogether. That’s the state I found myself in Saturday morning. And that’s the way it is these days. Oh, dear god, I think to myself silently, what did I do to deserve this, with the newly formed panic attack of the inoxygenated lung. But there are few answers in the life of the uninsured, and sometimes you just have to deal. “It’s OK,” I tell a concerned friend, keeling over and gasping for air. I’m actually getting used to living life on the verge of death. “Well, Happy Birthday,” she says tells me derisively. Happy 29th.

This job is killing me
In what is apparently my ongoing attempt to reference 2001: A Space Odyssey as often as humanly possible, I’ve recently begun conceptualizing my brain as the HAL computer as it’s shutting down, pleading with no one in particular to stop the process. Please, I hear myself saying (in some kind of interior monologue, which is a voice not unlike that of the actual H-A-L computer, although slightly more suave if I don’t say so myself), don’t do it. The Walkmen sing, this job is killing me, and here I find myself with the bloody shirt stain wound and the dying. It’s just another day in Info Systems. All systems go.

Trust your needs to feed you
Morning time at L. Trela’s. I cannot sleep and L. Trela is the only other person I know who may be awake at this hour. I dial her number to find out that she is in fact sleeping, but she invites me over anyway. I know there’s at least an 80 percent chance of receiving breakfast when I get there, and so I arrive moments later, jumping as she emerges from some bizarre entryway I’ve never noticed before and scares the shit out of me. What’s up, she says. What’s going on? Trela’s a funny one to pin down, because she’s one of two or three people I know over the age of 40 who righteously holds on to the ideal that she’s actually 17 years-old. That’s all well and good, but that worldview seems to come particularly unraveled when she’s hustling down Lark Street at 2:00 am, threatening to drive herself home after a night of heavy drinking. And that’s kind of the thing you tend to notice about L. Trela: it’s less that she’s in active pursuit of the imagined lifestyle of an adolescent and more that she seems to be holding onto some kind of death wish. All of her stories, you tend to notice, end in horrible disaster, and it’s not difficult to see through the active lifestyle veneer, which presents in crystal three dimensional clarity, a life out of control. Mostly though, she’s into it if you eat the pizzas she always making, and I can adequately fulfill that roll, looking up between bites, as I pretend to be listening to what she’s saying. But today I arrive to little fanfare. She looks at me blankly before asking what I’ve been up to. Oh, nothing, I tell her. I went on vacation to Cape Cod. The details are not very thrilling. We have no idea what to say to each other and the effect is unnerving. Gone today are Trela’s horrible anecdotes and misadventures. Even the things she’s telling me are benign and lightweight-seeming. What's going on here? I want to know. What the fuck? It’s no use, though, and so I leave after a short visit, feeling somehow defeated and grim, cast out into the day with a bad feeling. Thanks a lot, L. Trela; thanks for nothing.

Friendships are weird thing, situated as they are on so much precarious footing. Move one rock and the whole arrangement comes crumbling down. It’s easy to get swept up in the romanticism of a world built around good intentions, structured perfectly with people who care. But mostly it’s not like that. Mostly, it’s cruel and unusual. Although, mostly unusual. Back in the car, I realize why I’m feeling so strange: I’m starving.

Goodbye stranger/ it’s been nice
I get phrases from movies and song lyrics stuck in my head. Short blips which correspond to nothing particular. My father was plagued by the same disorder: you hear something on the radio and the next thing you know it’s rattling around the cranium, bouncing around for days on end. My father’s problem was a lot more abstract, primarily intrigued by television commercials and Saturday Night Live skits. Often I would wonder if he was experiencing the onset of some sort of dementia, watching as he would spontaneously bust into song in front of my friends. Said friends would look at each other bemused, as I reeled in horror, often having no idea what he was talking about. Car rides to the mall were marked by the bad humor of my dad and the accompanying jokes which followed. It was a particularly sordid time, perplexed as I was by my dad’s precarious mental state. But here I find myself, impossibly enough, on a chance listen to the classic rock radio station, with Supertramp lyrics trapped in my head. Goodbye Stranger/ it’s been nice/ hope you find your paradise. The words and music cascade around my head, over and over. I whistle this in the office, the falsetto part sticking in your tar trap brain and eradicating all other contents. It seems weird whistling a song about a one night stand in the office, but soon others are plagued by its infectiousness, and everybody begins singing along. Which is unimaginable, even to me.

It is casual Friday, and the common people have brought out their duds, complete with white sneakers and general accessory. I have forgotten about this and am left looking not-so-casual, but that’s OK. My general affectation has already gone the distance of freaking out my coworkers, and I’m sure they have no desire to see my sneakers. But things are OK today: it’s enough to be stoked about the weekend, with its unlimited potential for nightlife and god knows what. The workaday mats you down; days and months accumulate, and your paycheck tells you 900 hours worked, which you look at questionably. Could I really have worked all of those hours, you think, seated at this desk? But all of that fades away. In three more hours the limitations will have been thrust off, and you will be impossibly seated at the blue collar bar. The next-day responsibility will have evaporated, and you will find yourself liberated totally and completely, ushering in the unlimited potential for who knows what. I see a coworker on her way out the door and she stops to talk. “Doing anything good this weekend?” she wants to know. “--Oh, I don’t know,” I say, perplexed by those same limitations being thrust off—the possibility of anything. “I’ll probably just,” I say trailing off, not knowing what to say. She looks back at me derisively, the disappointment of my complete lack of an answer. “Well, see you around,” she says. And then, a few paces away, at the threshold, she turns and tells me, “Goodbye stranger.” To which I can only shake my head. Hope you find your paradise.

Color me in

Summer '07: it’s in effect. Outside of my window the clouds burst in the nebulous blue. An eagle coasts lazily in the sky, and the world seems perfectly colored in and alive today. So far advanced does it seem in its trajectory towards aliveness that it could not go any further. I see a bumper sticker that reads Life is Good, and I actually believe its message. It seems precarious and short-lived to me, but it actually seems true, today.

I am in my cubicle, hunkered down in the cube. It’s difficult to come to any other conclusion than you have lived wrong, to have ended up in a circumstance such as this one, watching as the perfect day goes by. At least with a window like this one. Although, that’s kind of funny, too—to always come to the same conclusion. Going over the pathways in your mind, and the decisions made: were they all the wrong ones? Is that a possibility: that the sum total of all of those decisions has lead me here, within four walls? I distract myself by doing work and come accross a license with the dog name Freedom. I can’t help but laugh at the inexplicable horribleness of that name, and the hilarious hi-jinx provided by the gods above. Didn’t they have anything better to do today, I wonder, than to send me over the edge. It doesn’t really seem that way. I put it out of my head, but I always come back to its terribleness, with all of its angles and points of light.

The Blues Are Still Blue
If life replicates art, and art is some tedious movie (as has been explained by our dethroned hero), then this is the segue, with the flipping calendar pages (or Rolodex, depending on your bad movie montage of choice). The days roll by, and more significantly, the weeks and months. Constants during this period may include any one of the following, and often several at once: walking around in an un-induced trancelike state, being in continuous possession of a Belle & Sebastian album, and adult onset ADD. Some things never change, and here I find myself in the same office chair, with fellow coworkers floating lazily by my window, like pollen. Spring is also experiencing the delayed onset, and so maybe the whole movie segue/ pollen analogy is a bad one. It’s a passage, but one that often lends itself to nothing in particular. Tim Drawbridge, the tragically named weather person on the local station, animates this on the morning news, the flickering ghost images flashing on my walls in the early AM. I love this person because he’s a boring human in charge of making a boring subject matter entertaining, therein revealing its entertainingness to me. The other anchorperson has no idea how to deal with him, awkwardly passing the minute segment of time they have to fill together until the next spot. “It seems like we’re just going to have to put up with this frosty weather for a while longer,” he says dogmatically, as I laugh out loud.

At work they have reduced my computers’ functions to the space of a barely adequate hard drive, comprised of two fully functioning programs. I drink black coffee and clack ferverishly at the keyboard. It seems to create the perfectly lined vacuum which blocks out all outside stimulus. What exactly is accomplished in this state, I don’t know, but I can’t quite endorse it as therapeutic. “I just seem to be getting dumber,” I’ve recently explained to a friend. “I used to read the newspaper and things, but now I just sit listlessly in the corner.” “Well it seems to be working out pretty well for you,” he tells me, and I have to admit that seems at least somewhat true. No longer will you catch me standing on street corners speaking about the fascist tendencies of reality programming, choosing instead to take in the latest episode of Cheaters. Some tectonic plate seems shifted, within.
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Interoffice fashion critique with a coworker. “Boy, here comes your girlfriend,” she says. Coming up the way is the elusive girl, walking by my window everyday. Today she is wearing a peculiar aqua-colored dress which does not go unnoticed by my coworker. “Man, she’s wearing her Easter-edition getup,” she says. And it’s true: her outfit does seem unglaringly funny. Augmenting the aqua dress is a similar colored blouse, which only adds to the overall effect. All we can do is shake our heads at one another, the razor-sharp fashion critics, having missed our calling, and ended up here instead.

I try and examine exactly what it is that makes this so hilarious to me. The girl likely purchased this dress from the store, and possibly even stood before the dressing room mirror, before making the executive decision that this garment is perfectly acceptable for presentation to the outside world. At some point in time, she may have even checked the price tag, and determined that it was a worthwhile purchase. Meanwhile, it’s the most hilarious outfit Kalish and I could even imagine. It’s not so much the outfit itself but the dichotomy of perception which makes it so funny to me— the almost unfathomable outfit choice which seems to the espouser perfectly acceptable, while to me it denotes that the wearer may inhabit a reality completely unlike my own (which may also make some amount of sense, because I’m not a 23-year-old woman. But still, it’s invariably gut busting and funny.

I’m trying to become a ‘better person,’ I keep telling people, although that’s a concept which may just be shrouded in ambiguity and meaninglessness, even to me. A better description might describe changing without having finite terms in mind. I like that better; although that, too, is misleading. I try to imagine the movements which actual change might imply, and all I can come up with is an automobile routed firmly in tracks. For years I’ve been confused by the destination that change ultimately implies, conceptually or geographically. It all just seems like landscape and broken promises to me. But thinking in these terms hasn’t gotten me very far. And so I’ve decided that it’s probably better to place the emphasis on the act of change, and transit, without having such finite terms in mind. Whatever that may mean, which in my case is fairly complex and difficult to articulate to you.

Dina, the chef at Mezzo and apparent PR person, sits down next to me at a bar recently. “I’m just going to eat here,” she explains to me. “There’s no other tables available.” “—Oh. OK,” I say to her. A friend of hers arrives momentarily, and it’s not long before I find myself not knowing what to talk to them about, and so end up mercilessly making fun of their suntans instead (suntans which, here in the frozen tundra of Spring, seem inordinately vain and funny to me. Although, it occurs to me that maybe I’m just jealous that my own pasty and office-imbued complexion falls short of the invigorated skin of my sanguine-faced table dwellers). Shortly they are taking offense to this. “Are you making fun of us?” Dina wants to know. It does seem like particularly bad form, openly making fun of strangers like this, but I’ve had too much to drink and what can you do? “You shouldn’t do that,” she admonishes. “You shouldn’t prejudge. –She’s Italian, and it’s hot in here.” The way she says this to me, calmly, it’s clear that she’s not actually mad or upset, but sincerely instructing me on the dangers of making fun of humans with red faces. I try to imply the good-natured-ness inherent in my fun-making but before long the band has launched into some incredible assault of their Hootie and the Blowfish cover, and there is just no way to explain. And so there we sit, people of all varieties, red and white-faced, wildly coifed and inarticulate.

Sitting there, in the dim-lit bar, it’s hard not to realize that a band like this could only really exist in Albany, New York. Albany is, as anyone whose paid a visit, a vacuum unto itself, channeling in strickly vapid influence and hackneyed pop culture reference. Next to Cleveland, Ohio, it’s probably one of the most notoriously losingist cities on the map. And you can’t help but feel, listening to music in a place like this, the crushing weight of it all. It seems the perfect music for the hideous bar, within the confines of a hideous city, the layers of horribleness accumulating like the spackle on a wall that is crumbling beneath, and which can only be appreciated for the eyesore that it is. I can only shake my head at myself. It seems almost inconceivable to be so disconnected from an environment you’ve spent an eternity in, shambling amongst its inhabitants like an actual alien. There were people out there like me somewhere, I find myself thinking, even if I never found them.

Before leaving, Dina turns and thanks me for letting them sit with me, and that it was, actually, a good time. “I’ll see you around,” she says to me, as she cheerfully clinks my glass. It seems weird, but I can’t help but think something good has come from the encounter, and that some innate connection was made, even if she does have a real bad suntan. Maybe the whole personal evolution thing is not lost on me, after all, I find myself thinking; Maybe there’s hope for me, yet.
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Easter Sunday: what a day. Tim Drawbridge is probably pointing out the unseasonably terrible weather somewhere. I am meeting my parents for brunch on short sleep. I saunter over to the the mirror to find sleep-depraved eyes staring back at me, the maniacal visage of someone whose life is out of control. It’s embarrassing, really—not quite a look conducive to entering the public arena, with its dramatic angles and bad lighting. I realize I cannot present myself to my parents looking like this, and so a trip to the store is in order, to buy eye drops.

The Colvin Avenue Hannaford stands stark in the midmorning sunlight, the architecture itself issuing forth the magnetic hum which has vagrants of all sorts producing forth to hang out lazily in the morning sun. This has been my favorite place in Albany for some time now, if only because you cannot leave the premises without some variety of dull anecdote to relate to someone. And as if on cue, en route to the eye care aisle, I see Dina, the girl from the bar, walking straight towards me. She looks right into my eyes, and then through me. I almost cannot believe and so I say, “Hey, what’s up?” She fixes on me, and then all at once my face must prompt the imagery of the person she was sitting next to at the bar the other night. We exchange a lackluster greeting, and then depart, her through shadowy monolith of the grocery mart and me to my battered car, shaking my head once more at my own sense of transparence.

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At my parents’, I am early for once. The TV plays the meaningless banter of the national news people. It’s funny how much more urban these people seem by comparison to the square-seeming newscasters on the local station, whose lives, you imagine, are so much less exciting. They’re featuring a segment where they corner pedestrians and ask them about the significance of the Easter holiday. The masses seem perpetually confused, and totally unable to define why Easter is celebrated with any degree of correctness. And it seems unreal for people to be so dumb, from even a totally secular perspective. Neitche famously declared God is Dead, but here in the blinding light of the new dark age, he seems deader than dead, without even the mere suggestion of anything but more deadness. Although, that adds up, too, and I find myself hard pressed to defend things from any high moral grounds. It just seems kind of strange to be so disconnected--so dumb. But then, I've never experienced this variety of solidarity. I'll probably just get worse. It feels OK.

You've got a right/ but I've got a right tonight
Excessive interneting has lead to an apparent zero tolerance policy on behalf of the ye old workplace. The leering “Know Your Employers’ Internet Policy” poster hanging by my desk for months went unnoticed, and so did the literature placed strategically around the break room. Now they have blocked my computer in what can only be viewed as some harsh Draconian consideration, clicking on a favorite website and receiving the message, in harshly defined block print. Meanwhile I have taken to pencil and paper, feverishly scrawling on a notepad; let them lock away my supplies and then what?? (You cannot take away my pencil and paper! I want to shout obnoxiously in earshot of the internet patrol team—a division that I have yet to pinpoint, but when I do will be met with swift action and icy looks). It’s weird, though, writing by hand, which is limited primarily to correspondence with a pen pal who never writes back. It’s like some kind of technological artifact from the dark ages. Your hand isn’t accustomed to this variety of strenuous activity, developing a dull ache between your thumb and forefinger. It’s kind of nice, though, too, at the same time, like unearthing your bicycle from a garbage strewn crawl space and realizing you can still pedal like a motherfucker. Sitting before a computer for hours on end has a dull, pacifying effect which has you mouth-breathing and on the verge of entirely differnet platitudes. Just today KJ was choking on a piece of food, and I watched on as though I were dreaming an unreal dreamw while various coworkers tried their hand at some variety of the Heimlich. At least four different people came up from behind her as pandemonium broke out in the office, people scattering everywhere. And all I could do was sit there, watching on as the translucent line which separates living and dying became boldened, and then perfectly defined, like the scrawling of somebody with a CAD variety number 2 pencil.

I don’t smoke so I poke around
Coworker watch ’07: while nobody knows exactly who the four foot miscreant eating Mr. Subb in the break room is, or precisely what he does here, numerous people have seen him washing his face in the same break room sink, tiny hand towel particles stuck all over the countertop. Often times on getting coffee you will perchance to spy his particularly grime stricken countenance as he proceeds to scrub away with nonchalance, as though he’s not actually using the break room as his own personal grub shoppe. One might be moved to wonder if the pygmy hut he resides in does not contain the accompanying outhouse, with washroom amenities. Or if whatever back breaking nine to five schedule he works here does not allow the more traditional home-based personal hygiene measures. But whatever the case, it is freaking me and KJ out. An additional item on his agenda, apparently, is eating all of the Pop Tarts in the thrifty vend, as he seems always to have a half-eaten pop tart in his hands, which may just explain the incessant hand washing. Often times on looking in there, I ask myself just who eats this stuff, and the answer lies front and center, in the groveling hands of the four foot beholder. Although, sometimes the table he’s sitting at may include any number of items from the machine, and often times several at once. One more pastime and affront to the general sensibilities includes almost continuously hanging out with the jerry curled woman, and incessantly hanging around in the bathroom, as nearly 75% of the time I go in there, I will see him lazily hanging around in the corner (in some admirable late day appropriation of the Fonz--office portal as unofficial business/ rec-room). While many facts remain uncertain, one thing’s for sure and that is that there’s a lot of information to be ascertained, a lot of work to be done. And the weird thing is, I’m pretty much sure that we’re representing the same temp agency. Which could just be conversational fodder, and introductions to entire worlds unknown.

I look through transparent things and I feel OK
I have reached the end of the walkway this morning when I hear my oft-appearing neighbor David calling from the doorway of his home. “Hey!!” I hear someone saying, as I look around to see. “Over here!!!” I turn back and am astonished to see him on the porch in full sleepwear regalia, telling me to have a good day. His voice resonates for everyone within a five mile radius to hear. It’s some curious mélange of Kermit the Frog and someone with a severe case of dementia, and there really just is no way to sufficiently respond. I raise my hand firmly aloft, signaling to him from the street, a gesture which is intended to imply that I have received his transmission, and am returning that same well wishing, with earnest and sincerity. And then in one swift motion he disappears behind closed doors again, vanishing within the entryway of the home, to do who knows what.

I am at work, having arrived this morning with the over exuberance of someone whose eaten a large breakfast. The sugar of Cap’n Crunch cereal coagulates somewhere in the intestine and disperses to more or less obnoxious behavior patterns. Already today I have discussed the program Wifeswap with a coworker, talked over the perils of drinking exorbitant amounts the night before a coworker’s liver exam, and have been told that I’m stupid for the one hundredth time by one KJ, who resides in a neighboring cubicle. More and more now, she does this, and I never can tell if she’s being serious. It seems at once to denote endearment and derision, and confusing things further is that she’s never consistent. Just a while ago, for instance, I was telling her how to maximize free time away from work, which has something to do with doing the exact opposite of what you normally be doing at work, which is sitting under neon lighting and sitting before a computer. It’s particularly liberating, I explained, because we process dog licenses, and what could be more demoralizing than that? She processed this information, thinking it over a moment before having no apparent idea what I was talking about, and then issued forth, predictably, “Boy: you’re so STUPID.” And either way, really.