Almost There

(Crosspost)
So, almost wrapped at work, and almost have my obligations discharged. Funny, between being sick all week and being distracted with the election, thanksgiving, and friends (helpful and not) I've slowly chipped away at it and now have only a few final things to wrap. Have all my actual physical stuff home, including my "severence package" task chair, and I'm done with the dollie. So, tomorrow, just have to put the dollie in storage, hand in the keys and do a couple hours' worth of notes, and that will be that. Exept for applying for EI and triggering my credit card insurance. Tradition calls for a booze up. but hard to justify it, really.

The loans people sent another nastygram around for my Ex, which is distressing. I keep telling her to deal with this, talk to them or get her address changed, but she seems to be avoiding the issue. Went shopping for a Mountie hat yesterday, but the available ones are either children's sized or have the wrong shape. (I;m not paying 150 bucks for a stetson that's shaped like a hillbilly's hat, thanks all the same, hat shop owner who doesn't understand the difference between triangular and square corners) Luckily, I have a plan B.

So much to do. Not enough hours in the day. But I persevere. Almost there. Next week I'll be able to get into a steady rhythm of half-days job hunting, I hope.

Notes.

The election was fun, but draining. Working sick was difficult, but being a registration officer was much lower impact. Afterwards did Karaoke and tore the house down with a couple fun numbers (Weird Al and Thomas Dolby), croaky voice and all, and met a new friend who is intriguing. It's not love at first sight exactly, but...what is it?

2)Any story about lower voter turnout that doesn't mention the voter ID requirements is missing something important. There was a small but consistent number of people who were legitimate voters who could not vote, or who appeared at the wrong polling station. ELections Canada is saddled with some onerous rules and does its best on a shoestring, but problems are inevitable.

3)I registered a man who looked more whitebread than I am, who was born in Samarkand. SAMARKAND. which is evidently in what is now Uzbekistan. Amazing, amazing what you see when you work an election.

4) I understand Harper's strategy. It's Rovian 50%+1, playing on pure tactics to peel off the bare number of seats to get the majority. BUt somehow this genius took Quebec -Quebec of all places! for granted. Lots of ugly identity politics in the air, I fear.

I wonder, now, about doing Once in a Lifetime at the next Karaoke. Could I do it justice?

Crossfade

I'm enjoying using my new livejournal, a requirement for joining the MVK board of directors. The posts there are simple, matter of fact. It feels more public somehow, which I suppose it is. This blog feels more like Memoir. I've never successfully kept a diary, but LJ seems easier somehow.

Wednesday was the first board meeting, Thursday was Jedi's birthday and meeting his new gal (I like her, and the Bettie Page 'do doesn't hurt either) and Friday was Elections Canada training followed by sending off a resume, followed by my Mac Dying.



So now I'm doing some wrap up at work, which is also my only computer access until my Mac is fixed, however long that will take. May go to the Island tomorrow for turkey with the niece. All so frustrating and strange. I must remember the old saw about how to eat an elephant: one bite at a time.

Tonight we party like it's 1992.

The song is amazing, The video is incomprehensible,
Ladies and Gentlemen, from the dawn of Nu Metal,

Faith no More.



We were So Happy...
Things worked out better than we had planned
Capital from boy, woman and man
We were like ink and paper
Numbers on a calculator
Knew arithmetic so well
Working overtime
Completed what was assigned
We had to multiply ourselves

A bouncing little baby
A shiny copper penny

And he spent himself
Would not listen to us
But when he lost his appetite
He lost his weight in friends

Baby became a fat nickel so fast
Then came puberty
Exponentially
Soon our boy became a million
People loved him so
And helped him to grow
Everyone knew the thing that was best
Of course, he must invest
A penny won't do (no) A penny won't do (nooo)
A penny won't do (no) A penny won't do (nooo)

But he made us proud
He made us rich
But how were we to know
He's counterfeit

Now everything's ruined (yeah) Now Everything's ruined (yeaaah)
Now everything's ruined (yeah) Now Everything's ruined (yeaaah)
Now everything's ruined (yeah) Now Everything's ruined (yeaaah)
Now everything's ruined (yeah) Now Everything's ruined (yeaaah)

Lovers in a dangerous time.

So on Saturday, after helping set up equipment for a community-based leather party, going home, voting for the beleaguered local candidate (Memo to [Unnamed political party]: when Mr. "Nelson Mandela is a Terrorist" MP sends me a piece of [Unnamed political party] propaganda using his free mailout paid for by [Unspecified Calgary Riding] taxpayers to me six months before an election - well, that pisses me off, son), heading back downtown for the AGM of said organization, then heading back South of the Fraser for a friend's birthday party, I somehow got elected to the board of directors of said leather organization.

Time will tell if this is a good idea or not, I suppose. But they need bodies, and as C said Friday night, what's more important to your future? And since that epiphany at Rascal's a few months ago, it's been clear where the future lies, one way or another.

More later. I need to haul a dresser over to Value Village while the sun shines.

***

I didn't go in to work yesterday at all, though there are a few things left to do - there is simply no rush. My South African quasi-replacement (doing the work of three people) radiates a fearsome competence and is sure he can handle everything. Well, who am I to tell him no? I'm just spending a few days cleaning up the home front, putting L's art in storage.

-Any prospects yet? Teak asked on Saturday.

Haven't looked, really, I'm taking a few days to shake the panic out.

-Well, you're very employable.

***

Driving home from the storage locker, I get to Cambie and pause for a second as the advanced Green Turn left arrow ignites. It's physically difficult not to turn left, head east, to the office and/or the many domestic oriented megastores there - IKEA, Home Depot, Staples - as I have done easily hundreds of times. All over now. I shake my head and head straight, an angry and aggressive Richmond Driver already swerving around on my right to speed southwards at top speed, the delay of perhaps 3 seconds utterly intolerable. You go, buddy. The decaying leaves on the recycle bin outside my place formed some kind of burgundy paste, and I note my arm is now covered in wine coloured stripes, along with my shirt. The setting late afternoon sun is golden, dying,wabi-sabi, as I think about taking the long way home. But no good reason to, nothing to do and nowhere to go, so I wend my way back to the place, picking the indirect path required by this city's strange variations on a grid layout.

***

Get home, dive into the cleanup and at long last find my phone, in a place it could not possibly have been that I have looked in several times already. The Republic is saved. Then, remember too late that the 2nd Obama/McCain debate is tonight, catch the last few minutes then dart to the store for cheap Chinese before it closes. The post debate analysis is reassuring, it was hard to tell much from my limited slice. Finally can phone a few folks who have been concerned about my well being, start job hunting in earnest. Mom has been having kittens, in her way. Time to call her.

***

The conversation is smooth enough, but I'm getting tired. We won't do Thanksgiving. Or maybe we will. Fall asleep watching Colbert. No outrage left. Trying to arrange things with L, who wants to send money and hadn't heard anything about anything (Par for the course in her family, so obsessed with secrecy) and wants to know the story but I have no strength for the telling. Safari keeps dying as I compose. why? Exhausted. Barely able to rise at 4 AM, shut off the infomercials, andf the lights, and stagger to bed.

Hey. Dog. Fuck you, Black Dog.

It's about 8:40 Pm on Thursday when everything grinds to a halt. I turn off the CNN feed, close the chat window with JediSchoolDropout, lean back in my (her) chair, and realize I have no desire to go anywhere or do anything, and no idea what I would do, anyways. I should go back in to work, and finish emptying my desk, but even contemplating the thought is strange. ..And then what? Is all I can think, overwhelmed, numb. High school led to university, first degree led to second major, led to third degree, led to Japan led to Library School led to L, led to this job led to heartbreak led to unemployment and to brick wall, sometime in the next week.

Thirty Nine and I can go anywhere, do anything. But the problem with my generation has never been an inability to make choices or recognize the necessity: it has been that we are expected to choose in a game of 52 card monte. As Bruce once said, the problem isn't that we need to pick a door and go through it: the problem is that there are a hundred doors, they open and close at random, and many - maybe even most - have brick walls behind them. Case in point. Nineteen years of my life have brought me through the pachinko machine to this point.

I need to get up, do something. Everything tiny thing is frustrating. I still can't find my phone, the cat wants attention, I can''t even do laundry because some stupid cow has abandoned loads in all three machines. HOw is it Thursday? I have no idea. I recognize the inner brittle feeling, know I need to move, to do something. Alll I can think to do is drive, get some of my favorite Chinese takeout. I am medicating with food but I need to go. The gym is already closed. Knight street and the bridge are wall to wall with construction for miles, so I have to detour absurd lengths to go via Oak. I cannot think of what I did this week. How is it Thursday? I force myself to reconstruct it.

Tuesday I sang with Phantom and the gang at the Jupiter, seems job losses are imminent for a lot of our community. Did okay with Something About You and Round Here, too flat and tired by the time I did Side. Wednesday...Wednesday was the munch, only four of us, Shibbari and the host were deep in BDSM philosophy again. Dropped by Jedi's, the two of us commiserating, our conversation rich, expansive. Human history is clear to us, but what to do about it, another matter. Today the fired VP development, a thoroughly decent man, bought me coffee and suggested the time was to move fast, grab what I could, and introspect later. Bird in the Hand, and all. Start getting prospects in the hopper. SportsTalk on the radio, I think of Fireworks,

She said she didn't give a fuck-a-bo-ut hockey, I never heard anyone say that before.

Home, the cat buzzes around me in a quantum shell , curious about my day-olds and fried beancurd and mushrooms, and I wonder when my life became a William Gibson novel, Bulgarian pop music, planetary infonet, and all. But no email from assassins in mirrorshades with a job offer. The analysis from some distant galaxy confirms my suspicions, Palin did okay, but Biden won, The adults are back at last, far, far too late. Sink exhausted into the couch, let Jon Stewart take me out. Sleep helps, food helps. Laundry will help, eventually. Morrison's Invisibles in my mind, the clarity that comes with the gun in the mouth, the inevitable arrived at last as it always did and always will.

I know the secret of magic.
There is only one day.
There is only ever one day, and it is today,
The day of nine dogs, the day of illusions.
Today will always be the day of nine dogs.

Do you understand now?