Time Out
There is a Time Out wrapper on the stair. Someone ripped and dropped it. 8.50 and I have the first symptom of rage.
Deep breath.
The raggedy man is ugly. There is a scar on his jowl. I can see it from where I sit, right now I can see it. It looks like someone sliced him one time. Miss Inoffensive is ugly. Her hair is fine. Can't you plump it up somehow? Can't you volumise it? Maybe she doesn't want to.
Maybe she doesn't want her hair to attract attention. She talks in a low whine. It says, I am not going to offend you. She was talking in the lunchroom about Aborigines but her comments had no substance. Something about a judge. Something about a case. You know she is sympathetic and can write in the substance for herself.
Is it a kind of ill-formed elitism to believe that you could write in the substance for just about everyone you meet? Were people really this unsurprising in the life I left behind?
My shirt smells strongly of the liquid B uses to "iron" clothes. It's entirely artificial. They did not think it worthwhile even to pretend to make it smell of flowers. It is odd that everything that has a floral scent smells like no flower you've ever come across. Because they could synthesise the flower smell, right? But it's just not worth bothering.
I feel caged. What else could I do? I think about that almost all the time but somehow it's as though there's a block someone has put in me, that the inability to figure out any way out of it is artificial.
I am thinking about a piece of art that I will paint. I have felt like I'm flourishing recently, albeit in a barely perceptible way. It's just that I feel like I'm going to die and that impels me. I am thinking about poker again: there are concepts at play. I know that if I nail them I will be made.
It worries me that I might not nail them before I die.
I do not have change for the machine. I was going to have a coke with lunch but I had no change. I realised I didn't care. I could just drink water. But I didn't. Just being able to was enough.
Do you have days in which you feel disconnected, and could you only get the dots joined you would truly see? No. I wonder sometimes whether I can feel any other emotion than vanity. And love for my childen. Which is the same thing, let's not kid ourselves.
I do not buy brand names. But I wanted a coke. I do not believe in God. But I want magic. I do not love myself. But I worship love.
I know. I could have picked the wrapper up. But I realise that only now: I was complicit because I wanted to despise another person. It is a long way to shore and I am treading water instead of swimming.
posted by Dr Zen @ 3:19 pm
3 Comments:
"Do you have days in which you feel disconnected, and could you only get the dots joined you would truly see?"
Not as often as I used to, but yes.
You sound like a caricature from a Hollywood movie, a man about to blow his stack, who may actually do something of consequence? Nah of course you won't you will just continue on your depressing course of decline to the depths of suburban mediocrity and servitude, you may become raggedy man minus the kids.
Anonymous is a cheery soul, wot?
I like the lightness of your style here, Zen.
As moi's getting older, the days go quicker, a disagreeable perversity if ever there was one. Less time left and one is shooting through it at an immoderate pace.
OTOH, Howard Jacobson was tossed the Booker bone at 68 --I think, and he said William Golding looked 500 years old when he collected the prize.
And... there's the crime writer whose name I can't bring up right now, known for her crime writing which doubles as serious lit.
Now that I've been booted off the wider blogosphere, I hope you don't mind if I stop by more often.
After all, both of us have a weakness for the word, cunt. :)
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