introspective periscope : peeking inside since Y2K ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- midsummer speak ozone action day - 21 june, 2004 "so just give me my judy garland drugs and let me get back to work"~ani difranco i hardly find the time to just sit down anymore. and yet, i have no excuse because for the last two saturdays, i have come home from my early morning water aerobics (yes, funny) class and crashed the day away, holed up in an air conditioned room with blankets on the windows, creating a false night. but that was laying down and i was talking about sitting down. i hardly find the time (read that: desire) to sit down for long these days. i've been with my new job for nearly four months now. i have the hang of it. i have a schedule and a rhythm that locks in with the sound of the looms outside of my window, weaving threads of fishingline (monofilament yarns as they [we?] call it in the business)into thousands of sqare feet of stiff plastic fabric....breathe in breathe out....weave weave...type type...math math...breathe in breath out...weave weave...answer the phone...type type...breath in breath out and so on. those are my days. the occasional rush comes, but not too often that i dislike them. there are waves of busy weeks. life is becoming more....routine. i'm glad for this change in quality of life. for now, as i have not been hired on officially yet (i interviewed with four individuals and may as well have gotten the job but for that company policy, i guess) the paychecks come weekly and its the lavish life. the bills are getting paid and we are far from starving. with full bellies and a renewed sense of "going somewhere" we often go to bed before eleven and rise before the sun. we leave our house behind us in the dark and come home to it in the dark many nights a week. we put in the hours we can get (toby more than i, as circumstance would have it) and make the most of the time given us. there is this sense of accomplishment as the savings begin to gradually build up...as the "professional clothes" fill my drawers...as i become more comfortable in my position. there has, truly, been this sense of guilt. i feel like i let the eighteen year old girl down a little bit by enjoying my current lot so much. that eighteen year old girl never counted on an office all her own with her name outside the door. she was going to be rough and fight for everything she believed in but instead, she got older and, hungry....and interested in the world of things that she'd been fighting for so long. industry is an interesting thing. my friend left the job for a more noble position: working for non-profits in DC. another friend graduated with her fine arts degree. another wants to be a homeopathic pediatrician. i am the social responsibility opposite. i am making the products that will eventually go on the paper machines in the paper mills which will fuel the destruction of living forests. and yet, punching in the numbers to the sounds of those massive german looms is relaxing and fufilling. i'm working out the moral kinks. in other news, i got the ocean already this summer and there are more trips in the works. forth of july weekend, michael and i headed for DC to meet brian and see his place and visit my old friend, Normrat and his wife, Honey Bunny, who live just over the DC realm in Virginia (about a block or two from the seat of the (re?) election campaign for George W.)....and then, we headed out for New Bern, NC, to visit with Michael's parents who recently moved the the southern state. ocean was beautiful and stole my toe ring. the next morning, each wave washed ashore gifts of seashells and mother of pearl. (i am even with the sea.) at one point, michael and i fell asleep in the late afternoon sun on a bedsheet. the beach was deserting to nobody and brian took a walk. we slept til the tide washed up on us. it was the sleep of surf and salt and soul. i met naval officer who showed me his tattooed bum (he is in his late fifties) and his wife. they fed us well on the 4th...all filipino food like lumpia and pansik and minted cucumbers and barbeque. they have a dog named hudson who wears bling. hudson is a dashound. i think hudson might have a person inside of him. nacho graduates from boot camp next week. then she'll move on to AIT. michael and i will be able to visit her on the weekends (another reason i'm glad for this job: weekends and evenings off...a steady schedule by which i can set my life)...her and the sea. i have written to her often, but i miss our closeness in summer. i am anxious to hug her and listen to her speak. i met a witch at a little shop downtown, a few blocks from where francesca and i eat breakfast after our H2o-robics class. amazing things have happened. i am well on my way to just the sort of practical learning i've been craving. a year has nearly passed since the botched wicca 101 class and i feel like i can actually relate to this woman. it sounds like she knows what i experienced at the other group. she has agreed to show me how to mix oils and use herbs in magick. i have plenty of herbs growing this year: mugwort, wormwood, patchouli, basil, lemon basil, lemon verbena, licorice mint, catnip, majorum, clary sage, greek bay, lavendar, chives, thyme, rosemary, parsley, and more. my porch is a thriving eco-system of plants and lightning bugs. i've been sitting here for a long time, it feels, waiting for my laundry to finish so i can get toby from work. there is poetry in math, i find. and rhythm in machines like i never knew. it is time to get up and move around. xoxo until. be well. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- .what came before. - .what happened next. a diamond at the bottom of the drain - 20 october 2017 |
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