Sacred Space

As of yesterday, this blog is three years old. Happy it.

Oh, sacred white square: I have feared visiting. See, there's so much to say. I've been thinking of shutting you down, packing you up in a hat box to display on the shelf in my bedroom closet. Here lies all the pretty things.

And yet, somehow, in all this public space, I have deluded myself into believing that we are safe.

I don't care. Hey, I can wear crew socks and search my cable listings for Baby Boom. This is now and I don't have to apologize to a stupid mute electronic square. There, I will drink beer from a wine glass. And nobody will say shit.

Three years deep. We're in the thick of it, you and me. Long as I'm learning I'll visit here.

And post.

And paint.

And squeal with delight at all the long shadows

we leave in our wake.

Humility is

a.) clocking in

b.) making change

c.) cashing out

d.) vacation request forms

e.) a break room

f.) receipts

g.) dinner at 11:00 p.m.

h.) a schedule

i.) a bathroom key

j.) hours and hours and hours

k.) being crap at something

l.) asking questions

m.) a locker

n.) a dress code

o.) overtime

p.) a new commute

q.) uncertainty

r.) uncertainty

s.) uncertainty

t.) probationary periods

u.) holiday hours

v.) retail shelves

w.) procedures

x.) discrepancies

y.) apologies

and...

z.) me, new at something, striving

Here's to five humbling weeks.

And to everything I still don't know.

Goodnight, Sweetheart

Oh, memory! You are so easy to manipulate. Proof: one might've enjoyed too many lychee martinis at last night's office cocktail mixer and gone home in a taxi feeling too sentimental about one's nearing departure. One might've too fondly recalled London in the spring, fall and summer and the pleasure of taking black cabs to QVC to sell lipstick to women in Dover. One might've too easily confused London in the spring, fall and summer with her actual work in New York, which mostly amounted to shuffling papers from one side of her desk to another and occasionally meeting clients for breakfast. In a moment of appetizer-induced abandon, one might've thought, I'll never have a good meal again. Shamefully, one might've also confessed to her mother over the phone that if it hadn't been for this job, she wouldn't have had a good meal for all of last year. Oh, if only appetizers and lychee martinis, black cabs in London, small plane rides to Halifax, occasional glasses of Veuve Cliquot and business-class hotel rooms could be the spoils of real work.

If only there hadn't also been days when one went home to one's husband and spent near hours coughing up blood-colored tirades. Or, mornings when one ambled down the hall to the office door in a state of total spiritual apathy, having surrendered to the limits of the ceiling one had hit years before. If only this job hadn't been the job that it actually was.

And after tomorrow, neither will it be again. Nor will I, my friends, nor will I.

I May (Or May Not) Miss These Things

One: Spooning chicken gravy over melting mashed potato disks at or around noon, depending.
Two: Knowing, in my soul, what's in the desert portion of every frozen diet meal on the market.
Three: Going downstairs sometimes to the snack closet for dark chocolate M & Ms.

One: The Bottega Veneta window on early September mornings.
Two: The marble border of the corporate lake at 375 Park Avenue, which sometimes makes a good seat.
Three: Choosing between Burger Heaven on 53rd and Madison and Burger Heaven on 53rd, between Madison and Fifth.

One: This broken chair.
Two: This broken desk.
Three: This broken pen and all its broken pen buddies.

One: Lipstick. Unending streams of lipstick.
Two: Three-stall bathrooms.
Three: Canadian business travel.

Four through five million: my bulletin board, my small desk calendar, my sticky pads, my shelf in the mini fridge, this highlighter pencil, my x-acto knife, all these little glass tchotchkes my co-workers brought back from their trips to China, Venice, Disneyland...Athens, even. I have a pen from Athens. I'm totally taking that.

I Just Ordered a $13.65 Lunch

and $13.65 of it came out of my scholarship money. In the first place, expensive lunches sneak up on you. And in my defense, it's not as though I'll be eating this piece of unmemorable chicken on a white linen tablecloth. No, I'll be eating blue collar style, on my broken frosted glass desk, under the lamp that bows to me often from its matte silver base. Also, this lunch involves soup. Oh, sneaky soup, you're just another add-on that I've upsold myself.

Soup is for closers
Closers and rich people

And here's another thing: I'm lunching at 11:28 a.m. How did I become a person who eats soup from an over-sized plastic spoon that cuts little slits into the corners of my mouth at 11:28 a.m.? As though I am independently wealthy? As though I receive monthly soup dividends from Schwab? As though I can pay for reconstructive surgery on my soup slits? I protest this lunchtime tyranny. When I leave here, I will banish public lunches. No longer will you be allowed to approach my desk as I feed myself and ask if I know when an invoice was paid. No longer will I take out a loan on myself so that I can order a tiny pressed sandwich in a tidy branded box. I will go back to what I know: peanut butter on wheat, wrapped in a newspaper sack. Down with this gold leaf stuck between my molars! I will pick it out with a blade of grass.

Ode to Structure

Courtesy of Manhattan User's Guide, who has been posting this every anniversary for more years than I can count (and also, Sexton, of course).

Riding the Elevator into the Sky

By Anne Sexton (1975) As the fireman said: Don't book a room over the fifth floor in any hotel in New York. They have ladders that will reach further but no one will climb them. As the New York Times said: The elevator always seeks out the floor of the fire and automatically opens and won't shut. These are the warnings that you must forget if you're climbing out of yourself. If you're going to smash into the sky. Many times I've gone past the fifth floor, cranking upward, but only once have I gone all the way up. Sixtieth floor: small plants and swans bending into their grave. Floor two hundred: mountains with the patience of a cat, silence wearing its sneakers. Floor five hundred: messages and letters centuries old, birds to drink, a kitchen of clouds. Floor six thousand: the stars, skeletons on fire, their arms singing. And a key, a very large key, that opens something — some useful door — somewhere — up there.

On Finally Getting Out

Embrace it when it happens quickly.

Step one: Say yes.
Step two: Take the thing, even if you can't be sure it's the thing.
Step three: Get out of the air-conditioned east side. Just get out of the east.
Step four: Dye your own hair once and feel humbled by the smell of rubber gloves.
Step five: Remember windows.

Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

Tuesday Morning

Tuesday morning, nine a.m.: the morning after going in about a job.
Crickets.
Halfway through $2.75 worth of iced dark roast. The shop owner picks the ice by hand
from a block in his dark supply closet.
That'll be the first to go...
Little luxuries. Hand-picked ice and shoes made from real fabric.
I'll never give up classic folk, though:

"Kathy, I'm lost," I said, though I knew she was sleeping
I'm empty and aching and I don't know why

Oh, the aching is free!
And I'll always have diaphanous synth
even if I wear plastic shoes.
Tuesday morning and the leftover brussel sprouts have gone sour in my pleather handbag.
Are you traveling for Christmas?
Oh, fuck, I have no idea. We never have any idea bout anything, do we?
But I want to see the La Brea tar pits and eat fish tacos.
There'll still be fish tacos, right?
And concert tickets?

"Kathy," I said as we boarded a Greyhound in Pittsburgh
"Michigan seems like a dream to me now"
It took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw
I've gone to look for America

I don't know why that song always makes me cry.
Tears are free!
So are ocean air, seasons
and pavement.
How about gummy bears?
Those aren't free but they'll do in a pinch.
Still, there will always be maps
scaffolds and
windows
and I will want nothing more than to sit and dream of La Brea with you.

You Take the Good, You Take the Bad

At this very moment --11:06 a.m., E.S.T. on Monday, the 23rd of August -- the most hotly searched topics on Good Morning America's website are:

• Egg Recall
• Iraq
• Jennifer Aniston

This brief, concise list further confirms my growing theory that key to mastering the art of being human is learning to measure accurate doses of experience. A dose of recall insanity can be tempered by small, powerful doses of Iraq (just Iraq, not Iraq war, Iraq conflict, Iraq veteran) and half a dose of Aniston for balance. Dosing: a new verb with which to combat the incessant pounding of sameness.

"I've overdosed on uncertainty so I'm taking half a dose of psychic prediction."
"I missed my morning dose of clarity. I'll double up on decisiveness."

Too much of one thing means too little of something else. Dose. Dose to drown. Dose to distract. Dose to intensify. Measure for measure, easy now, in doses.

I'm the Girl in Blue

I've never had one of those unhealthy long-term relationships...

But I get it now, I really do. I am to this desk, this chair, this file cabinet as Amy Winehouse is to Blake Fielder Civil. I might as well invest in a pair of toe shoes and get an anchor tattooed on my bicep. I am her.

I've stayed here too long and am past my expiration date. Every morning I lie in bed and think of the Thriller video. I picture heaving a heavy stone lid off my coffin and staggering into the gloom wearing a dirty Van Heusen business skirt. You're getting back out there! Gasp, I almost let them bury me.

Alas, I don't accept the funk of forty thousand years as my fate. I know I have to face my Blakey. And, lest you think I should die an early death from employment co-dependence, let me tell you this: we've been told the end is near. Time to replace my toe shoes with resume paper, it seems. I am, yes, getting back out there.

This Just In

Revelation: hope is not a plan.

Futility Ain't Just a Number

Today I am going into an office to defend something, to plead for and present possible scenarios on behalf of something that I don't even want. I've had this experience before. It reminds me of trying to convince the parents of twelve year old, tanned Colorado pygmies that their daughters needed $1200 modeling classes in order to hand out packets of granola at a stock show. I had that job, too. Not at the stock show, at the modeling school. Someone asked me this morning what my bottom line is. I can't say I've ever had one. What is a bottom line, anyway? Is it the same as a deal-breaker? Do you know it when you have one or is it more of a "winging it" kind of thing (whoops, I dropped my bottom line)? And how, precisely, does one unfurl a bottom line when one is already standing several floors below it? Okay, how's this for an ultimatum: "make me like this place more, or else"?

My Heart is Wearing This Shirt

I'm not a gangsta, but damn it would feel good to be one. Because everything's cool in the mind of a gangsta. Up three-sixty-five a year, twenty four seven (cuz gangsta biz is all there iz). Damn it'd feel good to be a gangsta, feedin' the poor and helping out with their bills (cuz benevolent gangstas get the best bitches). I'd sorta like to have the world swingin' from my nuts -- just to see if it'd still feel good to be a gangsta then (damn, I'll bet it would!)

I'm not a gangsta, but damn. Damn, it would feel good to be one.

On Coming Unstuck

First, go red. Next, wake at 3:00 a.m. and worry about what will become of someone like you. Take to short, shallow breaths. Ride the bus reading Julia Child. Worry. Try on various shades of lipstick: blue-pink, red-orange, abalone pearl. Worry. Worry. Worry. Decide you could possibly, someday, be fierce. If certain things would only fall into place. If only you could know more. Prop the pillows and sleep sitting up. Decide your dreams are trying to tell you something. Recite the lyrics to "My Generation" as if you wrote them. As if you understood them. See the orange cat sleeping on the floor. Understand that all things are still eventually. Accept there are some decisions you can't make now. Know just one thing in one moment in one small place in your soul. Know only one thing. Live on that.

Shopping for a Dream

Hello, may I help you?
No thanks, I'm just browsing.
Are you looking for anything in particular?
Well, dreams, if you must know.
Oh, we have many fine dreams. Have you ever owned one before?
Do you get repeat purchases?
First I'll need to know if you're interested in a complete dream or just some detail work.
A complete dream, I think. I mean, I guess, I'm not, I don't, I can't...
Let's see here, I have a sea dream in stock. Oh and here's a lovely family dream.
Those don't seem like me.
How about a nice, solid property dream? Very popular with people your age.
When you look at me, what do you see?
An escape dreamer?
A beleaguered dreamer?
Dream-repellent?
Let's say I buy one of these dreams.
THEN WHAT?
I'm sorry.
THEN WHAT?
I'm sorry.

Oh, Karen

This is the crown of an angel, surely; a fierce red-toned ghost who's wooed me away from my platinum dreams. What was it Philip K. Dick said of Sophia in Valis? That she was "touched by the finger of God". Naturally, I wondered what a celestial caress might really look like. Would it crack at your scalp and run down over your forehead like a butter blond egg yolk? Or shoot out from your skull in three wide stripes like bolts of electric pink lightning? Never mind, I tried both. I never looked touched. On Saturday I am going in for "statement hair" (see: "notice-me", "I'm still here" and "if it's really bright people won't look at anything else"). We'll just see if there's anything left to say about divine fingers after that.

People Don't Kill People. Offices Kill People.

As I type this I am nursing a plump pink gouge on the skin where my thumb meets my Mount of Venus. Right? The padded part of your palm. That's the Mount of Venus. I have no idea why they call it that. Moving on. Yesterday I was victimized by a manila folder. This isn't the first time I've gone to battle with those beige folios. They're sharp as blades. I had only wanted to file an invoice. A simple invoice. And forget about replacing the water cooler bottle. We're talking serious potential injury there. A dislocated shoulder, bare minimum. Sodden rayon slacks, guaranteed. Then there's paperclip puncture (tetanus, stat!), accidental packing tape hair removal, email ennui and (heads bow) the most devastating office injury of all: death from complications related to minutiae poisoning. We've lost so many, so very, very many.

This is Dedicated to the Me I Love

According to the July 2010 issue of Glamour, securing the #2 spot in their list of the Hardest Words for a Guy to Say is: "Can you save your yoga pants for, you know, yoga?" So that means "I think I prefer men" and "I haven't loved you since you went back to school" might come in after "I'm totally not down with cotton pants". Lo, the many mistakes I've made. Here, then a brief list of my other regrets:

• I regret having gratefully accepted a bag of hand-me-downs from a friend who'd lost forty pounds
• I regret pretending to understand the difference between "stupid fat" and "intelligent fat" as explained to me by a woman who was neither
  
• I regret allowing myself the cool, comforting embrace of a muumuu
• I regret ever having tasted Pinkberry

I am not a NO REGRETS gladiator. I don't see how you can leap toe-first into a pool of change if your diving board is free of barnacles. In the name of evolution, I declare:

I regret.

Onward?

I Am (Not) Awesome

Resolution: I will not Google myself. I will not Google myself. I will not Google myself. It can only cause internal bleeding, you know. There I am, nine pages in. That's a six-page downgrade from this time last year. I am quite behind myself. Realization: I appear second only to the American Horse Breeder's Association member, English quilt and chain mail designers who share my given name. Reconciliation: I have done nothing electronically indelible this year. I have no imprint.

Alas, there is good news. Shameful use of the word corpulent in reference to me has been downgraded to page twelve.

Progress, indeed.

Independence Day

Freedom is sliding the elastic waistband of these green palazzo beach pants over my pitted pockets of upper thigh skin, only to discover that no one is looking at me (and they never were). What, then, is the difference between emotional maturity and total apathy? Have I accepted my spider veins or do I just no longer care?