What The Hell Was That?

Almost everything was red, I remember that much. There were faces, people with dark hair surrounding me, pressing on me, their red skin highlighted with orange. There was a dissonant pulse in the background, anxiety-inducing instead of soothing, like fingernails on a chalkboard. Foreign languages, harsh consonants, vile sibilants, unfamiliar breaks in the pattern. More pressing, louder voices I couldn't make sense of. A claustrophobic, helpless feeling. Loud. Red. Close to panic.
   And a child screamed.

That's when I woke up. It was ten minutes after I climbed into bed.
   The first thing I said - out loud - was 'what the hell was that?' I haven't had a nightmare since I was a kid, but I'm counting that as one. My heart was beating like I'd just run for my life and I was just a little disoriented. My mouth was dry.
   I tried to figure it out, what could be going on in my head that I would fall asleep and have that kind of dream almost immediately? I don't have an answer, but it kind of freaked me out. Usually my dreams, when I remember to write them down, are innocuous, sometimes nostalgic happenings. I'm in my old car, or at a pizza factory. Not some sort of hellish torture chamber designed to offend every sense I have.
   I kind of want it to happen again, though. I want to write it down, pick it apart, analyze it. I want to see if I can find out what's behind it.
   At least I'm pretty sure that's what I want...


COMMUTE - there - 33 minutes      back - 36 minutes
CONTRACT COUNTDOWN: 33 days

Were-Squid

You ever have one of those days where people just get too close?
   From time to time it's unavoidable that someone is going to invade your personal space. It happens. But there are days...
   Like today. Seemed like everyone was trying to determine what I ate for breakfast by what my breath smelled of. Five people in a tiny elevator, too many guys in a small bathroom, someone looming over me in a meeting room, people standing right off my stern when we shared pie. Even when I voted this evening the polling place workers got close enough to feel my aura.
   I want something to let people know they're getting too close. Aside from a solid punch to the solar plexus, that is. So I figure I'll cross my genes with a squid's. I'll fill my ink sacs with black fluid, and when someone gets too close - SPLAT! - I'll squirt them right in the face.
   ... make people think twice about invading my personal space ...


COMMUTE - there - 35 minutes      back - 40 minutes
CONTRACT COUNTDOWN: 34 days

Grateful But Not Complacent

I think I finally get it.
   After years of working for The Man, being a corporate drone, living and working in a manner I never thought I would just for the sake of a paycheck, I think at long last I understand how to get by. How to make it through yet another day doing something I don't want to do so that I can spend my free time working towards my real goal.
   I need to be grateful. But not complacent.
   I've heard 'be grateful' a lot, off and on, but I never really got it. Sure, I understand the word, I get the concept, but the real meaning never hit me until recently. Be glad of what you have, not your things but your family and friends and situation, because there are billions of people in the world who have it waaaaay worse than you. Maybe it's because my father died and I've been thinking a lot about what I'm going to do with the rest of my own life, or maybe it's because I've been 'between assignments' for a while. Maybe both. But I get it. I don't know any other way to explain gratitude than this: you fall asleep with a smile on your face.
   But just because I'm grateful doesn't mean I'm satisfied with things the way they are. Working for someone else sucks, and there's no way it's ever not going to suck. I'm grateful to have a job but that doesn't mean those people own me, or that I intend to stay there for the rest of my life. Having free will - if you believe in that sort of thing - means that I'm under obligation to make the best of my situation, and to help improve others' lot if I can.
   Grateful but not complacent. I get it now.


COMMUTE - there - 35 minutes      back - 45 minutes
CONTRACT COUNTDOWN: 35 days

Time To Be A Kid?

I overheard a phone conversation the other day, one of the ladies who sits near me at work was trying to coordinate her family getting places on time and in one piece. She's at that unfortunate age where she not only has kids to keep track of - and her husband, of course - but she also has to provide some care for her parents as well. She's got twice the family she thought she did.
   Anyhoo, she was trying to figure out how her daughter could get where she needed to go while also making sure her son made his appointment/practice/hearing/whatever. Lots of things going on, and I chalked it up to 'just one of those days.' Until it happened again. And again. Pretty much every day her kids have places to be and things to do and people to meet, several different activities every day. They're waaaay overscheduled.
   But her kids aren't alone. Most kids these days have all manner of practices and appointments and meetings and what-have-you. It's just crazy. Insane in the membrane.
   When I was in high school I had several activities and clubs I participated in, which mostly I used as an excuse to stay away from home. Teenagers need that kind of thing to find out who they are. But that's not what I'm talking about. These are elementary school kids. Practically babies.
   When I was in elementary school my only activity was playing the cello, and then later I did gymnastics. But I also had time to lay on the lawn and stare up at clouds. Which I did a lot. Or build model cars. Or run around the neighborhood with my friends trying to find the line between fun and vandalism*.
   I think it's a lucky kid these days who can loafe and spend a lot of quality time doing absolutely nothing. There needs to be more 'do nothing' time in schools. We don't need perfectly-behaved robots, we need imaginative, productive members of society. And we're not going to get those kinds of adults if we don't let kids be kids.
   Remember: every day your kid has more things to do than you have yourself, the terrorists win.



*     come to find out the line for fun intrudes well across the line for vandalism. It's fun to toss dead florescent tubes from the fifth floor of a church under construction. They explode good, real good. Makes you feel like Zeus.

Litterbug, Litterbug, Shame On You

Pardon the perspiration but I just lugged a 70+ pound book case up three flights of stairs - because the elevator STILL isn't fixed - and I'm sweating like a whore in church.
   Which is kind of my topic. Perspiration, that is, not whores. Or church. It's unseasonably warm in LA today, 80 degrees in Pasadena, and as I was driving home from work I noticed a lot of rolled-down windows with people's arms sticking out of them. A lot. Usually LA driving is hermetically sealed, unless you're in a convertible, everybody in their own little cocoon of metal and glass. But today people were becoming one with their environment, at least the part that jets by at 30 miles an hour. But there was something else I noticed a lot of. A lot.
   The people with their windows down were littering. Brashly and brazenly. Unapologetically.
   I noticed a bus driver lady first, flicking something off her fingers and out into the street. Took her a while to get rid of whatever it was. Not two stop lights later I saw a guy throwing a wrapper out his window. And a guy behind him tossed something out too, which bounced and rolled down Wilshire. I noticed debris-tossing about five more times on the way home, and then another five or six when I picked up the monster book case I mentioned before. All were people who had their windows down, sunning their left arms.
   So I figure one of two things is true:
a)    people who like to litter also like to roll their windows down when it's hot
OR
b)    having a car window down makes otherwise fastidious people into scofflaw litterbugs.

I'm guessing it's a) because I had my window down and I didn't toss one thing out of my truck. Didn't even spit.

COMMUTE - there - 35 minutes      back - 35 minutes
CONTRACT COUNTDOWN: 38 days

I'm Still Not Satisfied

I'm fickle.
   I've come to this realization slowly, but I think it's accurate. At least I'm fickle when it comes to work. Let me 'splain.
   I've been at my contract gig for about eight weeks now, and I've been largely unsupervised. Not that I'm slacking off, but what I do is so different from what the others in the office do that they don't know enough about it to give me effective direction. However, having been in charge of contractors before, I know I would do things differently.
   So I'm taking a point away from them for not supervising me or my work properly.
   But today one of the managers was starting to take an interest in what I've been doing, and giving me some minimal instruction and direction. And while I was pleasant and nodded and agreed with what he was saying (I was doing it anyway), in the back of my mind I was thinking 'dude, just leave me alone.'
   So I'm now taking a point away from them for trying to supervise me and my work.
   See? Fickle.
   Either I want them to treat me the way I treated contractors I was in charge of previously, or I don't. I can't have it both ways. But I want it both ways. I want to be unhappy no matter which way my fortunes turn. Can't they understand that?
   Now I'm going to practice for tomorrow. I'm going to resent having the TV on, then I'm going to turn it off and resent it not being on. I'm going to be dissatisfied with my un-brushed teeth, then I'm going to brush them and be unhappy with that too. And then I'm going to be upset with my sink full of dishes, and when I put them all in the dishwasher I'm going to resent the fact that I have to turn it on.
   Ahh... it feels good running a game no one can possibly win.

COMMUTE - there - 35 minutes      back - 40 minutes, it took me 20 minutes to go 6 miles. That just ain't right.
CONTRACT COUNTDOWN: 39 days

Vega$ Opportunity

So I was stuck in traffic today - crap, crap, crapitty, crap, crap - and I was thinking that it would be really cool not to have to drive to get where I wanted to go. Driving's for chumps. And then I got to thinking about how somebody like Frank Sinatra used to take a helicopter between LA and Vegas back in the good old days. And then I got to thinking that I could really use a helicopter of my own, except that I don't have anywhere to park it around my apartment.
   Then I got to thinking, why should I want to be like Frank Sinatra, when I could be him? Figuratively speaking, of course. Sure would beat what I've been doing for the past decade.
   See, back in the day Frank was Vegas and Vegas was Frank. Sure, he was mobbed-up, but even if they were killers, the Mafia kept Vegas running like a top. Now it's all corporate and weaselly and about the bottom line. What Vegas needs is another Frank to come through and clean house. Since Frank is gone, God rest his soul, I'm willing to take up the mantle.
   I look good in a tuxedo - really - and I like to hang out with my cronies and have a good time. I can't sing, not a note, but I'm not gonna let that hold me back. I'm gonna take Vegas by storm, you'll see posters of me where you used to see posters of Danny Gans.
   And I pledge to you, the first thing I'm gonna do as the new Chairman of the Board is put a stop to this whole Celine Dion madness. Somebody has to take charge and it might as well be me. No thanks necessary, it'll be my pleasure.

COMMUTE - there - 35 minutes      back - 45 minutes
CONTRACT COUNTDOWN: 40 days

Dirt

I saw a homeless guy today. Which is not unusual, especially in LA, where even millionaires try to look as slovenly as possible. But there was something about this guy that made me notice him. He was in the crosswalk at Third and Vermont, talking to himself as he made his way across the street. His face was deeply tanned - he'd obviously spent most of his time outside - and he was wearing a jacket in the afternoon sun of a 75 degree day. He was worn and weary and thin from what was probably years spent on the street. Again, not unusual. But his feet were.
   He was wearing flip-flops, and his feet were black. I'm not engaging in hyperbole here, they were black, as if he'd walked through coal dust, with paler bits showing through where the grime had scraped off during his wanderings. And I realized that even the filthiest homeless person I'd ever seen in Pasadena didn't have feet that dirty. This guy must have gone weeks without a shower, without either the opportunity or even the compulsion to clean off in a gas station bathroom.
   That's a guy who needs help. And he's obviously not getting it. He's out on the street right now, maybe huddled in the doorway of a vacant office building or hiding out by a dumpster, trying to keep warm when it gets cold after midnight.
   On the rest of the ride home I got to thinking about how I'm sometimes less than satisfied with my lot in life. Things could be better, sure. But I'm living like a king compared to that guy. I have money, a car, a job (for now), and people who care about me and who would help out if I started wandering the street muttering under my breath.
   I got to wondering what choices that guy made that put him where he is, or what choices others made for him. And then I got to wondering what he thinks about his desperate situation when he's talking to himself because that's the only company he has.
   Man, sometimes I wish I was less observant.


COMMUTE - there - 35 minutes      back - 45 minutes, stalled car on the 110
CONTRACT COUNTDOWN: 41 days