YOUR PHONES OFF THE HOOK, BUT YOU'RE NOT

Having no job and a very minimal semblance of a social life leaves a person with a lot of time to sit - at coffee shops, on BART station benches, inside libraries you don't have membership cards for - and think about the little things in life. With this kind of time, I've decided there are just too many little things. Things that we all get jobs and social lives to avoid thinking about, except for in those moments at night just before you fall into half-sleep or deep-sleep (depending on your style). Nonetheless, here's where I'm at...All those small things, especially about people and relationships, have become so large to me that I've quartered them off into blocks and assigned them musical voices. Which has made for all kinds of odd habits. Listening to blocks of Richard Buckner and laying in bed wondering if there isn't some way a person can undo the tension between their own shoulder blades that doesn't involve some kind of pilates tuck-an-roll position that, we all know, I lack both the grace and agility to execute properly. Listening to blocks of Scud Mountain Boys, sitting on the kitchen floor, and wondering why Joe Pernice makes a point of sending such amazing mass emails and if I had met him just a few years earlier if I'd have wowed and wooed him with my wit and tenacity. Listening to blocks of X and walking super-fucking fast, soccer mom speed-walking fast, up and down Oakland's main throughfares thinking that I need to find someone to date immediately because a break-up would feel so good right now. So damn cathartic.
Basically, I need something to HAPPEN. I'm feeling settled and I'm ready. Plot Point One anytime now..anytime now...


TEMP-TO-PERM

Last week I had to sign up at a temp agency just in case I can't find a job. I spent two and half hours in their office, during which time I spent 15 min. talking to an actual human being, if you can call my "account executive" a human being. The rest of the time I watched a safety video and took a quiz, took a Microsoft Outlook skills test, a Microsoft Word test, a Microsoft Excel test and a typing test. Essentially, my capacity and value as a worker was summarized and graded on the basis of programs designed by one man and his mega-corporation. The brain children of Bill Gates is now the bar with which administrative droids like me are measured. And all I could think about this very DeLillo realization was:
"She summered every winter with a tan by florescent light. 'I was here' she scribbled in the restroom proves she was alive. All the working girls, all the working girls are fine."
Because I'm a little ridiculous.
In any case, this all makes me sound like my pessimistic sad self. But it's not true. I feel great. I feel some kind of crazy joy, like the possibilities are endless, like the New England winter clouds that trailed me are finally alleviating and breaking open to reveal blue skies, and the smell of jasmine, and an achingly wonderful cool breeze at twilight. And, slowly, revealing people who are all kinds of creative and interesting and boring and beautiful and ugly and, most of all, kind. It's different. It's new and it's what I wanted. I'm loving every minute.