cartoon world

Today felt like cartoon world. Where I'm the little line drawing figure at a desk working, while steadily the little line drawing inbox fills up with two-dimensional papers speeding up exponentially as I work faster and faster.

Well, not that bad. It wasn't nihilistic or hopeless just daunting and, at times, oddly satisfying.

Every place is the same. Mostly. You work with people, some difficult, most not. If you're lucky, you will be charmed by your peers and subordinates. If you're really lucky, you will answer to a good and decent boss. And if you're super lucky, you get all this and a job where your efforts promote something you believe in.

Even in my exhaustion, I feel super lucky.

cruppers and glue

crup this

A passage from Nightwood by Djuna Barnes. Matthew is sick of his friends and their well-nurtured sorrows. He is sick and contemplating death:

"To all kinds of ends I'll come. Ah, yes, with a crupper of maiden's hair to keep my soul in place and in my vanguard a dove especially feathered to keep to my wind, as I ride that grim horse with ample glue in every hoof to post up my deeds when I'm dropped in and sealed with earth."

(A crupper is a strap attached to a saddle that loops under a horse's tail to keep the saddle in place. It does not look very comfortable from the horse's point of view.)

How I love the metaphor of riding "that grim horse with ample glue in every hoof to post up my deeds..."

public transportation calls me grasshopper

I'm back to riding the bus. I won't test your patience with mathematical computations (fun as they were). Suffice it to say, public transportation is now an economically significant savings over driving, for a cheapskate money-wise woman like myself. (Damn you W, for forcing out my reluctant hippie.*)

*stolen shamelessly, but with warning, from my son.

Aside from the savings are the health aspects of walking an extra 15-20 minutes a day. I walk most of that via the downtown tunnel system as the sun has been cuddling right up to Houston of late. And if all that weren't enough, I'm surrounded daily by rich anecdotal material. Which coordinates nicely with the rich aroma. Ramped up by the cuddly sun.

I have long loved a rant. The world is never at a loss for providing crazy-ass things on which to comment. For laughing and catharsis. I have also learned to treasure the ability to rage. Stay with me, you peace-loving, non-confrontational readers (both of you). There's a good ending.

Rage, if you haven't enjoyed it, is powerful. It is especially powerful for women, who while maligned as shrews have also suffered as doormats. I'm not trying to be reductionist here, there are certainly examples all over the spectrum but I think it's fair to say that traditional women have been taught to curb expressions of anger to their detriment. They haven't, to be fair, been taught not to compress that suppression into flinty shards of passive-aggression (so poetical I am today) which is dangerous, to say the least.

Okay, to get personal: I was a cowering, frightened girl-child. I was obedient and self-sacrificing for god and survival. I was afraid of my anger. Of anyone's anger. This hamstrung me on more than one occasion. So, when I found my ovaries, I expressed my rage. It was good. Really good. I wanted to beat the shit out of anyone who threatened me or mine. Empowering.

But you can't stay there. You simply can't. It eats you alive and exhausts you and sends your loved ones running.

No surprise then, my social tolerance has not been...zen-like. I find inane phone, loud restaurant and boring office conversations Mad-Den-Ing. I'm actually not proud of this because I haven't been very successful at filtering that shit out.

Enter my yogi: Metro. Since I have grown quite fond of the remaining, unscarred sections of my stomach lining and am loathe unwilling to donate these to the idiocy surrounding me, I have decided to calm the fuck down. It's ridiculous to go apeshit about behaviors over which I have zero control.

Case in point. Riding home today involved the conscious defusing of my reaction to Rash-Inducing-Cell-Phone-Lady. She spent 15 interminable minutes talking loudly to some other presumably straw-hatted crony about the bus system. The bus she missed. The bus that passed her without stopping. She was going to call Metro. Maybe. She was on the bus that didn't travel via the HOV lane against her wishes. The connection kept petering out, Janey, are you still there? Janey, you're cutting out. Then, we talked about bus stops and schedules. All this at a difficult-to-tune-out volume.

I only glared once. Then, I thought, look at the bright side: she didn't plop down next to you and drill that tedious noise into your tired head! I retracted my fangs and redirected focus towards a happy project or a plan...you could almost hear the stomach acid spigot slow to a drip.

When we hit one more cellphone dead zone, Sister Gabby finally gave up and scolded Janey (like she purposely picked a phone service that sucked on bus route 50), Look you keep cutting out and it's driving me nuts. I'll just call you later. Click.

And someone in the next row, in that under your breath/loud enough for everyone to hear says "Thank you Lord, thank you Jesus!"

And it wasn't me. Ooommm.

read this

Today is my birthday. I came home worried/sad about work. Birthdays don't depress me but this was one of those blue days that just happened to land on my birthday. Then I read this. It jolted my life back into perspective.