Good Friday.
Well, my visa came through a couple of weeks ago, for those of you holding on for the suspense. I'm finally back at work...that is, during the regular week.
This week takes eventful pause as my course shifts for a moment to retrospect.
Today, almost 2000 years ago, God died on a rough hewn cross, clothed in little, covered in much, but never submerged in his 100% humanity; oddly enough, I had a hard time desiring to recollect the event. I remember childhood when these days were shrouded in mystery, a dark secret the earth whispered every April, every Passover, but never quite understood...why did it happen? More importantly, whose fault was it? Judas? The high priests?
Mine?
That last one causes my existence to shiver. But why not? After all, do I not try to forget his Godhood every day at some point? Do I not avert my eyes and yet beg for him to pay me mind? Do I not ask him to forget it all even as I thank him for it?
Well, today my qualms came in the form of work to be done; I have quite a bit piling up on my desk and though today is a day off, the files did not depart from my mind. At the same time, however, an unease settled in, the trembling of my soul; what would happen if I just went to work? I personally don't think it unholy to work on Good Friday and yet, if, as some say, the very meaning of "Holy" is "separate", does not treating it like any other day render it unholy, i.e. no different from every other day?
The uproar within me: Oh come on! I'm doing something noble. Coming to work on my day off!
I'm sure you've had the same struggle at some point, not necessarily concerning Good Friday, but perhaps regarding that fine line dissolving belief and relationship into religion, belief system and myth...
Myth.
2000 years ago: "Eloi, Eloi!!!"
Today I didn't go to work. I looked up at the brightening day and despite the cheery air, my heart darkened. It's the one day I rue to remember, and yet the one day that separates myth from reality for me. I met two strangers in a laundry mat instead and looked for the mirror of my God's death there.
It was no myth that looked back.

Well, today was one of those days. I saw a documentary on National Geographic about an elephant that has been "fostered" by a man who takes care of a herd of cape buffalo. The elephant has somewhat imprinted this man and this herd of buffalo as its kin, protecting the man when he is attacked and "leading" the herd, so to speak.
Anyway, elephants have a need for physical contact so they often use their trunks to affirm each other, etc. Sadly, though, this elephant attempted to show such affirmation and need for touch by touching the buffalos' horns, of course to no friendly response. Whenever the elephant tried, the buffalo would shake their heads, annoyed, and withdraw.

Today I feel like I'm amidst a herd of buffalo.

Let me take you where I've been today:
Stepped out of the hazy sleep blanket into the sunshine between blinds, my mind a vortex sucking in reality, sickly under unreality, a wretched feeling in my stomach, and euphoria in my brain. For a while.
After tax returns and breakfast found my way wending down residential streets to the looming invisible globe, bubblelike in texture, full of air, full of hope and thin skinned rainbow promises; something like home, but not quite.
Down the street saw a woman cross, woman glance at me, woman walk wildly the other way, all dressed in uncertainty and the click clack footsteps of an educated fearmonger. Just for fun, caught up with the wavering frame and followed, just to the building, then uncertainty took a quick right, glancing furtively behind, fearful of a following; perhaps fear was disappointed. >pop<
Black framed in black, myself moving over blazing asphalt towards the cool interior, my office decked like a relic of some arcane knowledge, a map here, pictures there, and personal notes behind the storage bin, all this meaning nothing to anyone but me. Snoopy stares back from a card.
Breaking for caffeine and sugar later, saw several faces from the past --a friend's old crush, a philosophy student, a book cover once borrowed for the knowledge within, all the skeletons stare back now, dry bones that will be sucked no longer but for sentiment,i.e. the times were once good.
Even skeletons deceive.
And here, now, typing it all out, surrounded by papers from foreign hands, surrounded by voices over insulated walls, verses, pictures in mind of past smiles on faces now marked by care and laughter--the tales of our lives etched there where we can't hide them, a canvas stretched out for all the world to see.

A couple of things:

Moo
Today I was listening to Third Day and thinking about how Psalm 50:10 says God owns "the cattle on a thousand hills."
Then I had a strangely juxtaposed thought: the Masaai of East Africa traditionally believe(d) they were given all cattle in the world by the creator. A laughable thought right? Well, they are right, at least, about the initial ownership of the cattle. Beyond that -- well, two words: Manifest Destiny. Their belief, it seems, is not quite as comparatively primitive as one might be tempted to think.
-------
Gear Up
It seems in such ease I have taken up complacency as my diet and regimen, as many do; who, two years ago, lived in fear of planes or war in the United States prior to the current ongoings, allbethey contingencies at this point in time? Likewise, not fearing conflict or danger, I would gorge myself on the fat of the land, "putting my mind in neutral", as my dad used to put it to my brother's and my childhood chagrin. As it now stands I have a greater understanding of what he meant.
"All we have to do is decide what to do with the time we've been given." Something happened today which reminded me to check myself -- true war rages all around us, as I know you suspect deep within you; it's that billboard you'd rather not look at but at the same time feel compelled towards; it's that suicide wish that comes back whenever you fail; it's that horror at finding out that he's cheating on you; it's that dad that comes home and terrorizes his own family; it's that woman whose uncontrollable spending habits are pitting you against bankruptcy; it's that man whose uncontrollable desire for you inexplicably makes you feel worth less with each touch after ecstasy's embrace; it's waking up in the morning, any morning, and realizing just how little control you have; it's that car accident, that irrational fear, that hospital bed, that illness, that death, that dissatisfaction, that hunger. No matter how many books you read, no matter how many shows you watch, no matter who you're with, there's something...not completely right.
I know an answer, which does not make things right, but at least gives direction, explanation. And with that knowledge, I know enough to gear up. Because when it comes my way, as inevitably it will, there will be no time (Matthew 24).

It's been a while since I last wrote.
Human pain is what this weekend was about too, so I don't know that now is the best time, but it's been a while, so I will take up my pen (or keyboard) and write.
I was talking with my girlfriend on Friday night about how I think of History as a metaphor for something larger that is going on; she was telling me about the coming of the Spaniards to latin America and the havoc they wreaked there and among the indigenous native American tribes with whom they came into contact. The dead multitudes seem a sad commentary if our very lives are metaphor
for the unseen. As if to counter my hopes in humanity's final resolution, a flurry of stories hit my life this weekend, other people's pain, the lingering trail of our inner darkness, and finally the reminder that, as Dostoevsky put it, I am "guilty for all". Yikes.
But the sun was shining today and over the tops of trees and buildings, I could see the snow covered shoulders of the mountains, a bastion of glory, and a reminder that not all need become completely obscure because of a little pollution.

I got one of those random promo-trash emails in my inbox at work today with the subject: Name a star for someone special. I thought that was kind of pretentious, and of course proceeded to delete the email before even reading. It's kind of ironic to me that we who feel so disconnected from even our neighbours find such comfort in identifying ourselves with the stars, mysterioius fiery spheres beyond our reach, evidence that we are miniscule and our lives infinitely microcosmic.
I've always kind of wondered what Abraham thought when he looked up at the stars -- obviously interplanetary exploration was not even a concept in man's mind at that time, so what were the stars to him? And truly, how is that different from us? I'm sure he had his theories: pin pricks in the fabrick of material existence letting through the brilliance of heaven; the dust from heaven's kitchen floor left over from the recipe for earth; the jewels of the spirit world embedded in the canopy of God's ubiquitous cloak; the very darkness of being flecked with infinite good -- this last a metaphor for what it means to be a part of this world. Or maybe he just took it for granted as many do today and simply didn't question just why they were up there or what they were.
Inquisitiveness has always come at a cost; those who dare to leap past the lull of ingenuosity put themselves at great risk: look at it -- ridicule, torture, excommunication, alienation; even today's Babel Towers come at great cost and the price is often ruin. I wonder often if and when we'll actually get up there. We've been building that tower to the heavens for thousands of years and we can't seem to get past the gravity of considering ourselves gods; sorry, wrong word -- advanced.
A little lower than the angels, a little lower than Elohim. What does it mean?
The interminable stream of questions as I gaze out at the passing traffic on the 5 freeway clogs my mind most days; maybe one day they'll just be stars to me as well. Or maybe one day we'll reach the heavens afterall and find out exactly who we're supposed to be.

It's amazing how a turn on life's road can completely change your perspective. I listened to a friend of mine talking about a car she wants to buy -- it's pretty much her thing right now. She's even thinking of changing jobs for it. I don't blame her, in a sense. Life is pretty much take it as it comes sometimes, so you do what you can to get what you want, and if all things do not match up, you cut your losses and see how many toys you can get before all goes to pot, hits the fan, [other cliche unpleasant metaphor here].
In all honesty I think would be happy if certain smaller things could be taken care of, but I found myself lurking in Vanity Fair last night, nikesoccer.com, looking at iD soccer cleats. I play every so often and I thought about how cool it would be if I had a black pair of iDs with blue trim and my initials on the back, and along the side in metallic silver "Lionsclub" like some weapon of mystery forged in the depths of....(this is where the dream dissipated) probably some Taiwan sweatshop where kids are earning about 50 cents of my $80 plus shipping and handling -- then, THEN I realized just what it was I was in control of...
But I don't think it's an error to dream; actually it does many of us good.

I started reading Possession by A.S. Byatt this week. I'm really enjoying it; she has a delicious prose style, not the kind my brother might call "cheesecake" but rather a lighter less rich style, beautiful enough when examined in form, but not so much so that one is overwhelmed:

In early days she had had lots of quiet opinions, he remembered, which she had offered him, shyly slyly, couched as a kind of invitation or bait...

As a student of a literature program, I also find the interactions between the characters and the artwork they encounter to be very telling; characters respond and this is what makes art. The center of the first couple of chapters, one Randolph H. Ash, a victorian poet, is a character constructed, it seems, primarily from art -- the main character reads poems and purchases paintings, yet is surprised and even suspicious upon encountering something that might at present seem even more connected to the man himself.
I will not begin to tirade about the idea of the poet's great soul and the knowledge procured from a world above and beyond our own; my girfriend awaits my call, so I will keep it to this: It seems immersion in art and history gives people life in this book (at least in the first 30 pages) and it comes to a point with some that the rejection from the school of artistic study (in the cultural and historical sense) can very well be the destruction of what is whole in a person; the twist is, that very immersion in the past leads people to forget themselves, redefines their lives and worlds, perhaps even causes the loss of identity:

"Oh, it's all very interesting, my menial keyhole observations, make no mistake. Just it doesn't make sense and it leaves me nowhere. I suppose I envy you, piecing together old Ash's world-picture. Only where does that leave you Old mole? What's your world picture?

Interesting. But for all of you who perceive life from Val's point of view, don't worry. I'll write something mundane soon.

Today I received a note from an old friend in the mail. I was a little startled; we were really good friends a few years ago, but things happened, as they tend to, and we hardly see each other anymore but once every few months or so per a chance meeting in the mall or a crossing of paths in the street. Funny how things play with you like that.
Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony, and I imagine sometimes that time moves along a path through a little minefield. Everyone hits mines at some point and all goes crazy for a few moments -- you lose a friend, win accolades, have a car accident, have a baby, get a new job or lose the old one -- all these things, good or bad, flip our lives upside down and in the chaotic aftermath we sit there and wonder, "Just what was that all about?"
So putting the note on my desk I stared at it for a moment, not really sure what to think; then, dazed, I turned to the pile of work waiting to be attended.
Maybe I'll deal with it when the dust has settled a little bit.

This was interesting:
The Word of the Day for Jan 06 is:

epiphany \ih-PIH-fuh-nee\ (noun)

1 capitalized : January 6 observed as a church festival in commemoration of the coming of the Magi to Jesus at Bethlehem
*2 : a sudden striking understanding of something
-From www.m-w.com

At times the past blows over me like the Santa Ana winds which now batter southern California buildings, street signs and trees, a relentless buffet, tearing up all familiarity with a reminder of things once gone:

Where now the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing?
Where is the helm and the hauberk, and the bright hair flowing?
Where is the hand on the harpstring, and the red fire glowing?
Where is the spring and the harvest and the tall corn growing?
The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow.
Who shall gather the smoke of the dead wood burning,
Or behold the flowing years from the Sea returning?

There was a time when all was ahead - I recollect a conversation with a friend today:
"Nah, we've still got time. How old are you now?"
She frowned at me as if I had just invoked some cruel ongoing joke.
"I'm 26."
This meant nothing to me until we went further into conversation.
"Well, I'm still living in denial."
"I've already been there, Jon. Now is my time to decide. Last year I was in denial. This year, something has to happen. I have to take some direction."
I stared at her and wondered. I think I envied her and pitied her at the same time; so distraught, yet so determined; resolute in her disillusionment and completely ready to plunge into the unknown beyond.
Not all stories are sad, nor do all dark moments capture the essence of what is.
This is life. Real life. The light all around which casts a shadow on pockets of existence; the sunrise just beyond the hill before dawn's final revelation;

medias res New Year's Eve, 2002.
I paused outside on the balcony for a moment to reflect -- in the back of my mind the bubbles were already beckoning the newness, yet there was still something hanging on. I did all I could to close the case. The last year was buried, yet there were still tendrils dragging in my wake, like spiderwebs, unseen, yet felt and feared.
Even so, the new year comes on without pause, regardless of my readiness. I played video games for a little while before taking a deep breath and walking out the door to head over to my friend's apartment -- a celebration of the birthing of 2003.
As I drove down Beach, the lights blurred their way past my window like I was falling, flying into the new year headlong; and you know that feeling -- head, hands and feet over handle bars and that moment of flight? That's what I felt like as I hurtled and time hurtled and the world hurtled, all of it over the handle bars and into the new year, for better, or for worse.
Another day...Just breathe...I'm used to this by now.

Almost a month. So much happens in a day, though, let alone a month. My brother got sick on the 23rd and ended up having surgery on the 24th, then eventually coming home for recovery on the 25th. It all sounds different when you use numbers instead of the names of the days. "Christmas Eve," "Christmas Day".
The ER was actually busier than I thought it would be a couple of days before Christmas, but when I thought about it that way -- the ER was busy on the 23rd -- it's a different concept. Christmas, a day like any other. Except that we remember one day that wasn't like any other. As I stepped outside the hospital that night after hearing that my brother had to undergo surgery, I kept looking at the sky for angels. But stuff happens Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Someone has to be on duty in the maternity ward; in fact a friend of mine just happened to be working on the floor on which my brother stayed at the hospital Christmas Day. She's a nurse now, yet somehow different to me that all the others in uniform I saw there.
So, the hustle and bustle of Christmas was a little different this year -- hustle and bustle to and from the hospital instead of the supermarket and my sister's house. Quite obviously my mind is still reorganizing after the craziness.
We live in an apartment that overlooks a main street and a freeway. My balcony faces the freeway and all day Christmas day I would look out my window and watch the cars. Sometimes I leave my window open at night and listen to them swishing by -- they never really stop. They slow a little, but there's always someone going somewhere, 4 in the morning, 3 in the afternoon, midnight, 6 AM, doesn't matter. Life just goes on and keeps rolling like the cars on the road and the parts in the factory across the street, or the spinning earth that kept spinning even when the son of God squeezed out into the world. I wonder if Joseph was afraid for Mary when the baby was on the way...Some may call that idle and unholy speculation, yet if they were not people like the rest of us the moment of the occasion is forfeit.
Anyhow, life goes on. Perhaps my speculation isn't unholy, but it may well be idle.
An MTA bus just passed my window.

Friend Athos sent me a comic and it managed, as do many things on the internet, to drag me from my work for a few moments -- long enough for me to write this blog entry. The internet is such a phenomenon, radical, yet recognizable; we have tv, on which you can channel surf for hours on end meaninglessly; we have the paper, where you can read all kinds of articles which may or may not pertain to you, depending on how much time you have in your day for the activity in question; we even have libraries and bookstores in which a person may pore over thousands of tomes and volumes of information that is only tangentially related to him or her. But the internet is a phenomenon of it's own, something to which we have a draw, like the subconscious, something to which no one will admit, yet to which all subscribe: You know of what I speak -- the times you plan on just checking your email, but end up playing those Flash games, or you want to look up information on a movie and end up reading criticism of government health policies worldwide. You see, that's just the draw of it; it's so large and yet so immediately accessible. If technology has increased our capacity to accomplish tasks in a more speedy manner, it has also increased out ability to waste time more effectively, so to speak. Like my blog about torri gates (below) -- at no point in history before the past two decades would a man be able to develop a philosophical position on the placement of torri gates in public and personally styled Japanese gardens without some sort of prior knowledge of eastern horticulture and religious symbolism -- all in 15 minutes.
I'm always eager to find out what people read on the net. Some only stop at news sites and checking email. To me that's like going to the grocery store and picking up bread and milk (which you can actually do on the internet now) -- the bare necessities. But in my Freshman year of college, I was introduced to a new kind of internet browsing by my roommate, inspired in my life by webcrawler.com. There was a little scrolling ticker you could place on your screen and as you watched it would parade random websites and searches before you, search requests which were sent in by people, mind you, and were therefore sometimes questionable. Even so, I was always fascinated, sometimes only morbidly so, at how much gunk is out there -- I don't know how many pop bands popped up and clothing sites swirled by, but there was a lot between them as well, random things which I cannot even duplicate in my mind now. Even with all the websites about topics like ancient druid rites and varieties of antarctic wildlife, people were still looking up the same stuff that was in the news, on tv and in libraries. So I resolved to use my time, made much more effective by high speed connections and hands trained by years of typing papers, to look up information that I generally wouldn't find elsewhere, or at least would not know where to locate. Afterall, if you can waste your time in the grocery store line reading the "info" in the tabloids, or in a bookstore browsing easily on the same topic, why spend such valuable time as ten minute breaks (only ten minutes!) on reading the same stuff?
I will not waste your technologically enhanced break time with the details of the outcome in my years as a websurfer, but the overall result has been a refreshing outlook on the world. All those generations trapped in the microcosm of subculture and geographical boundaries -- it would be a shame, I think, to set down the opportunity to access the mind of the global village for the sake of keeping a tight grip on myopia.
Of course, maybe that's what Adam thought before he bit into the knowledge of good and evil - a bite we've been trying to chew since then and will likely never swallow; if that's the case, then such wanderings into the dark corners of the electronic subcurrent of reality are written on our genes and we're merely keeping up a tradition as old as the origin of our species.
God bless technology. And thanks for the comic, Jeff.

Well, went to Oregon for Thanksgiving and visited with my old roommate and his family. It was a friend of mine and I driving up there from So Cal. (So Cal sounds so commercial, like one of those generic supermarket brands. Ick)
Oregon is a different place. In Oregon the fog hangs onto the trees like spiderwebs over a dark corner in a house, or an old man's wispy beard, unperturbed by sunshine or wind. The road out of northern California twisted up and down, past the far off and mysterious Mt Shasta. We were driving through that area going up at about 5:30 AM, so the mountain's shadow appeared to us like a phantom. In fact, at first I thought I was hallucinating. Finally, as we drew closer, its snowcapped peak loomed on the horizon, like the pillar of God's presence over the sleeping landscape.
Further into Oregon, the sunrise refused to come. Six o'clock, six fifteen. Jeff said, "We're pilgrims in an unholy land."
I laughed.
In Oregon I think my beard grew faster. Perhaps it was the wind, or that mountain man feeling when you can walk on occasion through trees and grass that aren't plotted by the city council. All I wanted to do was trounce around in hiking boots or sit in a park and read. TV sounded boring. I liked that.
While I was up there I read Melville's Bartleby. It's somewhat a disgruntling tale to me. That character standing there like some stubborn ghost, refusing to leave, refusing to work, refusing to do anything, even move or take money, simply on the basis of preference. Yet annoying as he seemed, I could not help but gawk at his bravery in jealousy. There are times that I long to do the same. I think that's the biggest draw of the story. Green eyed laziness.
I wanted to ride a horse up while I was up there. Funny thing is, we really didn't spend all that much time in the country side. It was just the knowledge of that presence; the river flowing through Portland under the bridges as if the very city was built from the bones and blood of a sleeping giant. We visited my old roommate's cousin's house and they had quite a few horses. The cousin simply refused to believe that I really wanted to ride a horse. Said it was the romance of the idea. "Everyone says they want to ride a horse, but no one really knows what they're in for. No one really knows..."
I've wanted to ride a horse since I was a young boy, but the smirk on horse cousin's face repelled me from the idea of riding one of their horses, even when the offer was placed before me willingly. Maybe next time. I'd rather not have an experience tainted by the rusty cynicism of superiority. Okay, maybe that was a bit harsh.

The imminence of rain has hung over the skies of Los Angeles for the past couple of weeks. Today at about 1, the clouds darkened, threatening deluge, so eagerly we looked to the smog swathed grayness above, hoping, waiting. Outside the library, I felt a few drops, but it was a poor showing. Rain cleanses me, I feel, and sometimes when I drive through it, I feel cheated and dirty, like those days I sit at home or in my office indoors and miss the press of the sun's heat on my skin, trading it up for the ghostly luminesence of flourescent lights and computer screens. Unnatural.
The consciousness within me balks when I come indoors. It's like the unnatural bites in and drains the venom of simulacrum and plastic into my blood, making me weak and sickly. Trying to escape, my mind races frantically to find some escape; I get a headache and have to step out; I have trouble breathing and need fresh air. And if I am strong enough to douse those urges, I find myself feeling sleepy from inactivity, dozing amidst the pale light and paperwork, all the names swirling around me in a thick ooze of numbers and letters and miscellaneous symbols.
This afternoon, to keep from sleeping I looked up torri gates on Google: I'm feeling lucky. The people's string of virtual conversation about a religious symbol seemed strangely out of place; religion is where people are, where their consciousness is; the digital multiverse didn't seem to have a language for the explanation needed: What exactly is sacriligious now? Is it putting a torri gate in a garden? Submerging a cross in a bottle of urine? Rejecting tradition or change? The fascination is peaked by the taboo -- what will happen? Will we get away with it.
Yet, across the gate between what is seen and what is unseen, the goings on of heavenly beings are, I imagine, untroubled. The worst has already been done, the head of a prophet served on a silver platter, the statue of a god broken and discarded, the Almighty throne challenged by the hand that served it. The meaning is lost down here, yet we ask the same questions, unsure whether the meaning was supposed to be important, unsure of whether there is some significance to a symbol beneath the surface of lucidity, the icons written on our genes, but unintelligible in writing or speech. They are natural and engraved on our very subconsciousness, somewhere between soul and frontal lobe. Meaning or none, they remain, unreachable, unerasable, but grounded firmly in the beginnings of humanity many years ago, a time forgotten but simulated in our lives everyday.

It's Monday again. I just realized that quite a few of my blogs fall on Mondays. Maybe it's that point in time when everything is just out of wack enough that I can see all the colors, like some cold prism that refracts life into a array of philosophical undertones.
Or it could just be coincidence.
Either way, Monday always comes too soon, and I found myself in the same bed in a new apartment when I woke up this morning, still uwilling to get up; but things don't have to change that much to take a turn for the better.
Everyone had had it last Friday: dragging their feet around the hazy blue-speckled-white office carpet amidst the dun 1970s looking partitions, just wasting time. Some of the guys over in Admissions were riding a scooter between the filing cabinets and the Assistant Director'd office; she obviously wasn't there, but it was Friday; even if she was, she wouldn't have bothered to say anything.
My boss was gone on a vacation thing of some sort at 1:00, so we had no boss, but moral convictions, a rock and hard place you find at religious institutions. It kind of makes me wonder what government offices would be like if they had religious affiliations. Can you imagine? The Buddhist District of Motor Vehicles.
Okay, there is something a little different from karma or jihad in a Christian institution (did I just make a statement?), but even after the weekend, even after 63 hours of freedom from files and belligerent phone calls, even after breakfast and coffee twice with no cubicle to follow, even then, Monday comes with a thud.

Thud

So I stared at my computer screen, wrote a few emails, ate some fruit salad and mulled over Bob's file. His parents are middle aged, rich, and unwilling to give him any money. But he wants money. And he's not going to go get paid minimum wage when he can just write a letter and claim that their house payements, his car payements, all the credit cards and gas...and, oh, he has to pay for his own food! The tragedy!!! What saviour can we find?
Stafford Loan, 3500. Apply for it or get a job.
And that's why I write on Mondays. Goodness, the students are so creative on Mondays, I don't know. Maybe they inspire me.

Despite my oh so lofty meditations, life does occassionally take a turn for the ordinary; in fact, office life is anything but extraordinary most days of the week.
Saturday this last week I went to a concert with my girlfriend. It's amazing how much of a step outside concerts can be. I had heard a song or two by the band before, but my guesses as to what the group looked like were completely off. In the bathroom at the concert venue (somewhere in L.A.) they had these "waterless" urinals. I know, I know, a little too mundane an observation. But have you ever wondered exactly who it is that designs the porcelain? What does a meeting at such a company look like? What do the bathrooms in such a place look like? Anyway, this whole experience revolutionized the way I look at bathrooms. Soyinka has a character in one of his novels who creates an entire philosophy of life based on his contemplations of bowel movements. I didn't go that far, but today I was wondering what kind of perspective on life the person who figured out the flush mechanisms in toilets had. Didn't have time to find that, but this was kind of...interesting: http://www.plumbingworld.com/historytoilet.html
There's always more to the mundane.
So life goes on. Spent a few minutes this morning standing in front of the coffee vending machine wondering why it is that Regular coffee costs 10 cents more than French Vanilla. Go fig. I wonder if inside there's a little container with a label, kind of like the ones on those juice bottles: 10% Coffee (just what is that other 90%? I know it's not water.)
And that's it. The long day is almost over.

The sunlight streaming through my window hardly made me alacritous to go to work this morning. Since I crawled from my bed the haze over my mind has not lifted, transporting me places against my will throughout the day -- work, home, Nairobi, Washington.
One of the higher-ups in our office is leaving. Wow. Today when she announced it, we all just sat there and stared, like babies being weaned, just stared and wondered. My first thought: We're so screwed.
She really gave us a month's notice, but that doesn't seem to make much of a difference in light of her years of experience. The budget's messed up, we've lost two key people in the office and counting, the director's going nuts trying to figure it all out, and our hope, our glue, the one person in our office that we could always count on for answers is off to the northwest with her husband. Wow.
So I sat there and stared at my computer screen. Helped a couple of students. I mean, seriously, how bad can it be? (I told myself). The whole place can't go down! (I told myself).

More than half of our office is female. I'm convinced that's an earth thing. I've never been to a school where there are more guys than girls. Supposedly such places exist, but they float somewhere on the fringe of my existence like Plato and his Republic, or those monkeys and their Shakespeare script, or Brobdingnag and Lilliput, a supposed contingency in reality, but nothing more than probability. The women in our office aren't even all married, an accentuation of my suspicions. It's the same story next door - one guy, thirteen women, not all of whom are married. This subset of society is unreal.
But south of Washington and west of New York, in my cubicle, I sat this afternoon and wondered how much of my reality is tainted by such caricatures; probability says that you flip a coin 100 times and the likelihood is that about 50 of them will be heads. But if you've had a good run of things you start to have a favorite, even if there's a 50% chance you'll be wrong -- my favorite is tails. My question as I vacated my mind: Any coins?

I spent most of the day alone today, in and out of social consciousness, so to speak. One of those isolation days, like a renegade electron refusing to be drawn to the center
Turning and turning in the widening gyre, the falcon cannot bear the falconer, Things fall apart, the center cannot, mere anarchy is losed upon the world.
Random bits of poetry show up in my mind on days like this, like my subconscious is frantically running a search program on all my archived thought patterns for answers. An intriguing phrase surfaces in the search, one of those things you forgot about until cleaning one day, and I stare at it for a few moments, savoring it, like wine in the cellar or the last piece of chocolate you thought you didn't have. Then, just as I have countless times before, I shove it back into the mental filing cabinet for later use -- there is no expiration on fine words, only our memory of them.

Turns of fate: One friend of mine got married this weekend, two broke up with their girlfriends. One friend of mine got a job, another's husband still can't find one. One friend of mine was commenting on how he's had a good year, hasn't been sick at all. Another's daughter was in the ER last night, shivering in the palm of God. The economy is getting better they say, business inventories increasing, but I have a feeling there will be a lot more lay-offs before things settle down again, whatever that means. A letter with a check, a letter with a bill, a stain on a shirt, the clean shirt I thought I didn't have, a telemarketer, a long lost friend's phone call.
Yet for all this, shall we accept the good and not the bad?
This is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper

Labor Day. I spent the day sitting around. My girlfriend came over in the afternoon, so we went to the mall and sat around there, reading and watching people with all of their funny little antics. We noticed a Muslim woman selling Mrs. Fields cookies and I thought about how historically significant that is. She was dressed in a flowing dress with a black shawl covering her head like an astronaut without his globular helmet, as she reached out and cleared away old chocolate chip cookies. A dad passing with his little girl stopped to buy some of the other cookies and besides the shawl, nothing separated them; it was a free market economy moment. No vendettas or suspicions, or even accusations thrown at the little girl dressed in shorts and a tank top. Just cookies for money.
Sometimes I wonder what our ancestors would have thought of us today, had they been able to foresee it all, no explanations; would they have thought of malls as worship centers, all of us pouring our little offerings like tokens of our gratitude to Nike, Verizon and AMC theaters? Perhaps they would be so dizzied by all the bright lights and flashy messages which bombard us daily, but of which we have become completely oblivious for the sake of our own survival; all those hungry bodies on their crazy trajectories throughout the free market of our small gods, our 21st century idols.
Shopping is religious.