So this week I've had a temp job, doing data entry for a bank between the hours of 12 midnight and 8 AM. It's been unforgiveably greuling on me, because since I left my job and lost the other one, I've been switching my body clock to get used to operating during the day. So, today, I took my break from 3am - 4am. I decided around 3:30 to take a nap for the remainder, setting my alarm on my defunct cell phone so I'd wake up. When I woke up, it was nearly 7 am. So, at a loss for what to do and not really feeling like telling my pseudo boss, "hey, uh, oops?" I decided to go home. So that's what I did.

I can't even really muster up the energy to be upset, even though it's likely that I will not be working the remainder of the assignment. But I don't care anymore.

I'm just so fucking tired.

31 October 2003 at 7:08 am | No Comments »
the daily things

…One day, in late February, he noticed the snow on the ground, thought it a wonder, thought a walk would do him good. He wrapped himself warmly and went out to spend the afternoon with the world. Behind his building the red brick gave way to a gentle slope and a wood. Bare branches stretched in long, crinkled arcs above his head. The air smelled of pine. He walked slowly. A light snow was falling. A simple mistake led him to believe he couldn't get lost in his own backyard, but the fresh flakes smoothed his tracks and after an hour the trees all looked the same.

He came upon a pale stream, the water clear and slow beneath a patina of ice. The trees bent far over, leaning in, listening. A puzzle of branches blocked the light. Below, Isosceles stood on cracking ice, lightless, listening to his weight fracture the world. It was then that he knew he was right about the field equation, right about the Cantor sets, but that he would not come closer to the solution, that he would forever remain outside of the bigger mysteries. He shed his shoes and socks and began walking in the creek. The ice cracked beneath his feet, reaching up with a sharp tongue, drawing blood. The skin on his toes went white then pink then blue. He ignored the pain and kept walking. Wind crept up his back. The stream wrapped a curved path, a downsloped question mark that suddenly ended, curving underground, and Isosceles looked up to find himself directly behind the physics building.

Inside, he found a bucket in a janitor's closet and filled it with hot water from the bathroom sink. Stopped at his workstation on the third floor to pick up a book. No one was around. He carried the book and the bucket to a stool in the back labs. They were empty rooms mainly with big oaken counters and the occasional abandoned piece of equipment. Microscopes from the eighteenth century, oscilloscopes with broken screens, a lens from an abandoned telescope, now cracked and awaiting the trash, textbooks that are out of date and out of print piled into Precambrian shapes in corners of thick dust. Isosceles plucked an oversized Bunsen burner from a pile, still full of fuel, lit it. The flame ran at three inches and Isosceles turned it down to one and a half. After putting the burner in front of a stool and the bucket on the floor, he took his pants off and hung them across the inverted hook of a disconnected lab sink. He sat in tight white briefs, with his feet in a bucket of warm water and his hands held close to the flame of the burner, reading about Newton. His legs looked bleached white and his knees like elbows. The pain in his toes was unbearable, he thought he would have to call for help or get himself to a hospital and was not certain he could put his trousers back on and just then Jesus walked in the room.

Maybe Isosceles had fallen asleep or maybe he had lost his mind or maybe he was outside, still hobbling through a frozen stream. Maybe it was all three. There was no longer any way to be certain.

Jesus was wearing a thin loincloth and sandals, in his left hand he carried Isosceles' shoes, socks tucked neatly beneath the laces, and in his right was a knurled ash walking stick. His hair hung long and brown and had begun to form thick, nappy dreadlocks. He stopped, facing Isosceles, and spoke in a rough, archaic Latin. Isosceles had to listen hard to understand.

"Two thousand years ago, while hung from the cross, I had a vision. I was in a wintry wood. It was morning, a morning like today. A barefoot young man walked along a frozen stream toward me. I watched him come. I had never seen this man before, but looking at him I would know, know that this is the man I was supposed to teach all my secrets to. Since that day I have been coming to those woods every winter waiting to meet the man who walks barefoot along the stream. Today I was certain that you were that man, but now, looking closely at your face, I can see you are not he, that I am mistaken. Anyway here are your shoes. Maybe I have the wrong woods, I'm not sure." With that Jesus walked out of the lab.

- Steven Kotler

If that's not the story of my life. I don't know what is.

30 October 2003 at 5:58 pm | No Comments »
in a category all its own

The Josh has unfortunately fallen upon dark times lately, involving not only the demise of his laptop, but also his roommates' computer as well, which forced him to make once-weekly pilgramiges to Times Square in order to make use of cheap and cost-effective internet cafes. But now he is back, ready for action and such with his hand-me-down, mismatched patchwork quilt of a 1995 Apple computer that barely runs AOL and AIM at the same time.

Ahem.

So let me preface this story by explaining that I, once again, am no longer employed. I don't recall the last thing I wrote online because I am currently put-put-puttering away on my tiny Mac keyboard whilst disconnected from the internet, so I will explain (perhaps redundantly) that towards the beginning of Octobre (I think, cos at this point everything is running through my head with less coherency than an ink-blot test done with magic marker) I was suspended from my job. It was no big deal, and I took the week off from work to start searching for other jobs, as my displeasure of the situation was growing exponentially.

This search brought me face to face with my current plight. One of the jobs I had contacted and faxed a resume called me back, started an interview, sparked my hope that perhaps I wasn't destined to plug away in horrible jobs that make my stomach spin. The interview went well, I was hopeful that I got the job. It turned out that I was right, but not entirely how I thought.

After I went back for the second interview, approximately a week later, and got the job, I knew it was time to celebrate. I went into work and quit on the spot, because according to the bosses of my new job, I was to start at the end of the week. Very quickly, so it was almost as if I was making a seemless transition. Well. The end of the week came and passed and no paycheque. According to the aforementioned bosses, "something" had come up which forced them to move up my start date by a week. Well, that was okay, I'd have to scrunch for bills but since I was already making nearly three dollars more than what I'd received at the bowling alley, all was well.

Until they started avoiding my calls, or playing Voicemail-Pit-of-Doom. I'll admit I started to become a little perturbed, but I still had faith. Until the second week passed and I was still no closer to beginning my new position as a receptionist in a funky art gallery.

So I went down in person, determined to put them on the spot (however, Rico Suave-ly) and get a definite answer.

When I arrived, the boss told me, with no hint of apology or remorse or anything, "Sorry, but we really don't have any work for you right now. However, we have your resume on file, so we'll contact you and you'll be considered if anything opens up."

Let me reiterate: two weeks previous to this, at the second interview, the boss had used this phrase specifically: "You've got the job." None of this bullshit about being considered or no work.

So I lost my mind. I told them that they had done something appauling, that they had wasted my time and instead of being straightforward immediately they had led me on and then avoided me. I imagine they were hoping I'd just stop calling. I was angrier than I think I've ever been in a long time, not so much that they'd done it, but that they deliberately tried to get out of taking any responsibility for it. They tried to tell me that I was not "really" hired, which was bullshit, because the same day of the second interview I was introduced to a woman who was told, by the boss, that she would be training me. And furthermore, when I'd gone for the second interview, the fuckers actually kept me waiting for nearly an hour while they interviewed another candidate, who DID get a job. It's times like that I wish I carried kerosene.

So I left, full of righteous indignation and wanting to kill. At least, though, during that entire two week ordeal I had still had the common sense to continue looking, and I've also applied for unemployment, but I don't know if I'm going to get it yet.

And I'm not extremely, horrifically off, because one of my temp agencies landed me a job for the next two weeks. It's strange, doing data entry of a government level (I actually had to sign wavers and privacy contracts) from midnight to eight AM. But it is money, and I can't complain. However, Octobre is creeping to a close this week and I don't have enough for rent. I'm trying to figure out a solution, but I'll admit. I'm stressed.

So, if everyone can do me a favour and keep me in their thoughts or prayers, I'd appreciate it. Because I need some help now. But I'm not giving up.

28 October 2003 at 4:57 pm | No Comments »
bitching

• Saliva
  ("Back into Your System")
  You need to download Flash if you see this message.

look at me,
my depth perception must be off again
cos this hurts deeper than I thought it did
it has not healed with time
it just shot down my spine

you look so beautiful tonight
reminds me how you laid us down
and gently smiled
before you destroyed my life

would you find it in your heart
to make this go away
and let me rest in pieces

look at me,
my depth perception must be off again
you got much closer than I thought you did
I'm in your reach
you held me in your hands

but could you find it in your heart
to make this go away
and let me rest in pieces

would you find it in your heart
to make it go away
and let me rest in pieces

1 October 2003 at 10:49 pm | No Comments »
soundtrack

Two years ago today, Kent removed himself from my life in a manner I'll probably never know, much less understand his personal reasons why. I'd like to tell myself that in many respects I've moved on from it, and while that might actually be true in a lot of ways, there are still those moments, unforseen and unpredicted by me, where the ghost of that person I once knew creeps up behind me and overtakes my lungs, choking me and causing me to collapse. It doesn't happen as often as it used to, though.

I still miss him.

I guess I always will.

I guess that's what love is. The fact that even though a person ran off into the frozen wilderness or slit their wrists, you're still going to remember them, far after the point where the only photographs you have of them start to fade away, your conversations going from solid memories to loose paraphrases, the smells becoming associated with something else, but still something can trigger them back to life, if just for a second long enough to rip you apart inside.

I wonder what he'd say if he could. I wonder what he thinks of who I've become.

But I'm not sad today. Like I sad, it only comes when I don't expect it. I would've expected to feel something on this two year anniversary, but nothing. Except a different kind of happiness, because C.S. and I are also celebrating on this evening our seven month anniversary. And Samhain is in thirty days. So. Give me a couple days and I'm sure I'll be depressed again, but right now with all my bills and rent for Octobre paid and the stress of that not on my shoulders for once, I can't really complain about a lot.

Today.

1 October 2003 at 10:32 pm | No Comments »
introspection