...because assembling a cohesive entry any longer than a paragraph is next to impossible when you work 12 hours a day, seven days a week.
1. Neil Armstrong died and it registered barely a blip on the media radar. The first human being on the moon received less attention than a self-absorbed narcissist whose only connection with that celestial body was that funny thing he did with his feet. This annoys me, probably more than it should.
2. My teenage employees cannot read my cursive writing; nor, they admit, anyone else's cursive writing. I have to print everything -- like I'm writing a ransom note.
3. I have this sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that what passes as "election coverage" has become merely an exercise in dissecting sound bytes. What an incredible waste of brainpower to have to ensure that any three or four words strung together cannot be isolated from the body of a speech and made to indicate the opposite of what the speaker intended. And what a waste of my time to have to listen to it.
4. I'm a bit alarmed at the sudden demonizing of poor people. Oh, there has always been some loud-mouthed bigot at every gathering spouting off about welfare mothers giving birth to get more benefits ("someone" that "someone" told "someone" who told them about), but this type of person was always considered...well...a jerk. There have always been enough intelligent, compassionate people around who knew that even if such a mythic creature like the unemployed slacker raking in the social service benefits existed, they certainly weren't getting wealthy from their efforts. Aside from the fact that applying and receiving government aid is a bureaucratic nightmare, it's humiliating, intrusive, time-consuming and not often worth the effort. Even more alarming is that in a country that is so wealthy, we have set the bar so low for what a human being should have to live without simply because we don't consider their simple existence reason enough to maintain their health and safety. What happened to all those intelligent, compassionate voices?
5. I make Reuben sandwiches in my sleep. I want to dream of other things and it always starts out that way. But, in the end, I'm making Reubens...or, worse, trying to make a Reuben, but never quite finishing it. The degree to which I complete the Reuben is directly connected to my level of stress the previous day. Reubens have become my metaphor for life.
2 comments:
I paint murals in my sleep. In reality, I have no experience painting murals, no drawing skills, and I'm terrible at painting walls. But in my dreams, I paint huge, wonderful murals full of curves and people's faces and primary colors. They're beautiful and I am very happy painting them. It's effortless and, despite being afraid of heights, in my dreams I have no trouble being up on high scaffolding or even painting my murals while seated on one of those swings that macho window cleaners use.
During bad times, the murals become difficult to paint. The building is crumbling. I run out of paint or it's the wrong consistency. Sometimes the scaffolding isn't high enough to get to the area I need to paint next, or I swing on that seat-thing in a wide arc from side to side but I keep ending up in the wrong spot. Sometimes I drop my brush and it falls a long, long way down.
This was meant to be a comment on your Reuben sandwich bullet point, in case you're wondering.
It's always a delight to see your posts - I so admire your gift of words - I just wish I'd been able to express myself as clearly as you did in point 4
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