This is something that I haven't done in quite some time. I am amazed how long it's been since I had the chance to go there and rest up in the morning. It felt like forever. It felt so good that I didn't even want to go to work. So I booked off today.
Well, that's not entirely true. I didn't shave, shower or change my clothes. I don't have a clean change of clothes, I don't have a clean ass, and neither do a have a cleanly shaven face. This is not the way to keep a job, and you don't walk into you job looking this way. It makes no sense walking into a professional office looking any less than expected of me. In another week I should figure out of way to take care of all of these things. That's what all of my present problems depend on. My use of my brain power to solve them.Which means that shit just ain't going to get done anytime soon.
I head to the library in the morning and go through my usual routine, although today DJ is reading at the Cornelia Street Cafe and my brother and I decided to support him. Today I take care of everything that I have to get done online, and off, and play some 2142 before it is time to wrap everything up and get the show on the road.
OBSIDIAN and I walk downtown to the Cafe, and it was indeed a long walk downtown. It seems like a trial to me now that I'm am aware of the weight that I bear. 28 pounds of anything on your back does not feel good after awhile. Especially when it is a while of walking. We get to the reading late and hope that we haven't missed his reading, but I have to go and use the john. When we get there, DJ is coming out and tells us that he hasn't gone on yet. Now that is good news.We finish up with the bathroom detail and hit the crowded reading area, and take up one of the few standing positions in the back of the room, near the bar. And of course we avail ourselves of the bar. Well, not myself perhaps but I help OBSIDIAN to. He has a couple glasses of wine, whereas I have a few Shirley Temples.
DJ does a good job reading. He seems comfortable on stage before so many people. So comfortable that he cracks a few jokes and humorous anecdotes. Before he reads comes on an elderly gentleman, reading from a shaking piece of paper in his hand. He is struggling to read his own writing, his voice weak and frail. Shortly, he looks up at the audience and says in a trembling voice: "My time is short. I would love to read up here forever." His comment seems interesting to me. We both know that he has only twenty minutes on the stage, and he's already used eighteen minutes. He'll have to step down soon. But we also both know that he only has a few figurative minutes on life's stage, and soon he'll have to stop down from there also. His comment seemed so appropriate to everything about him. I wonder, if I'll ever get to be his age, reading in a coffee house, wishing for more time. Wishing to stay on the world scene forever.
My brother and I left and stopped off to have a pizza and sit in the park for a moment before I headed to the Box. I took Bleecker street down and stopped off into the nearby Duane Reade for my evening's amount of frustration. You can always count on the knuckleheads in Duane Reade to make your evening. Tonight's festivities revolved around a freezing cash register, that took care of three patrons before it froze on me. Not once, but twice, while the invalid counterpeople kept calling the manager for instructions. When would the jackass manager realize that his people just could not handle the problem? After the twelfth call? Then whenever they get the stupid fucking thing to work, they try to ring me up again, the machine freezes once more.
We go through this several times before one moronic cashier asks the other equally stupid one: "Are you still having problems?" To which, the response is: "This is the cash register that always freezes up." At that I tell them to fuck this. I have to go. They make another call to the brick-assed manager upstairs to come down to see if I can get a refund. I reply that I'll be back tomorrow for it. They have killed enough of my time. And with that I leave gratefully, heading upstairs to more madness.Although it is pretty sedate upstairs.
The instant that I walk in, my name is called over and over again by what seemed like a dozen people wanting my attention. I head to the Tech calling me, KK, first, addressing what I felt would be the most important issue tonight. God, was I wrong! All KK wanted to ask me was what was my first name. There was mail for me, but the first name was wrong. I give him my full name and ask for my mail. Although he does not have it for me. It's in the Social Worker's office.Great. How impressive.
I noticed that when I came in there were at least three clients that followed me to the Tech office, stopping at the threshold, but when noticing that I had business with the Tech inside, they filtered away. Their inquires must not have been all that important.
I close down early, feeling achy and tired. At least I got a bottle of Advil from Duane Reade today and popped two of them happily.
Then I settled in for sleep. I guess I was tired.
Hobobob
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