Arrived this afternoon via Autobuses del Norte. I write as sunset slants through a guava tree across this stony little courtyard.
I had a couple hours waiting in the big terminal, pushing through the crowds of Mexicans to buy tickets. They don't form lines; they just stand around the counter and hold up a hand, or money, like they were bidding. Still, someone does attend me in time, by whatever mysterious charity, and there's a couple of hours to wait for the bus anyway. No one seems upset or even bored; I entertained myself imagining they could wait as well at the station as elsewhere. The kids stop at me to stare absorptively, and as I type I realize it's not like cattle exactly, but as though I were cattle, or an orang, or something too altogether foreign to respond.
The bus rocks through fairly eternal suburbs, with tall Barrier-Block-style rectangular housing perched on improbable slopes. It's a darwinian theory of construction, I suppose: those buildings that survive the rains and quakes will tend to remain, and what remains will eventually house the greatest number of people in the smallest space.
The hills outside Santa Cruz feel like Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, at Disneyland. The road careens so narrowly all I see outside the window are the rocks. A goathead pokes around the seat from beneath the clothes of the senora in front.
For a second I imagine it has just done nursing. "O walleyed, unrepentant goat" -- insouciant, with his legs, I have to imagine, tied -- "tranquility to accept the things I cannot change" or "so placid and self-contain'd." But then, he's probably birria by now. /I'm stewing. But then, he's probably stew./
With the rocks parted, Santa Cruz opens below like sunrise, roads flickering in and out of red and goldish rocks, sparse nopales and mesquite, darker green gathering towards the copper lake below, and pink narrow spires rising above the town.
From closer, dust dominates. I can't say I mind, now that it's no longer midday and I'm no longer stomping from hotel to hotel with that GI dufflebag across my neck, but I wonder how the farmers manage. Maybe it reaches a point where as much topsoil lands as leaves, but I'm suspicious.
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Monday, October 29, 2007
DF
I cannot rent this room, the concierge tells me. When I ask Whyever not he says they rob the güeros frequently, that I look too obvious: he points to his eye and to me, then to the bag with this computer.
I'm fairly happy, though, and happier to sleep. I walk stairs to the ninth floor, where a naked bulb hangs some eighteen inches by a wire.
I hit the light, tie the computerstrap to a wrist and run the strap under my back. A moth lights on the window way up here above traffic, and refracted headlights cast across the ceiling from below.
Morning,
I leave the bag of clothes and grab a train to Librería Gandhi. It's closed, but the sun's still low, and I eat tamales beside some stand with some chocolate corn drink so thick it barely pours, almost a pudding or a porridge, and walk the damp streets. We must have had a light rain last night.
A woman sits crosslegged on the sidewalk, weatherburnt face, rotting teeth, legs doubled, a scanty rebozo beneath and around her.
I want to avert my eyes, but as she reaches towards me, lifting her hand, her arm, her mouth, her eyes, I see the baby nursing, wrapped in a woolen blanket. A large smooth, full perfectly formed breast pulls from its lips so softly my tongue presses against the roof of my mouth.
I'm fairly happy, though, and happier to sleep. I walk stairs to the ninth floor, where a naked bulb hangs some eighteen inches by a wire.
I hit the light, tie the computerstrap to a wrist and run the strap under my back. A moth lights on the window way up here above traffic, and refracted headlights cast across the ceiling from below.
Morning,
I leave the bag of clothes and grab a train to Librería Gandhi. It's closed, but the sun's still low, and I eat tamales beside some stand with some chocolate corn drink so thick it barely pours, almost a pudding or a porridge, and walk the damp streets. We must have had a light rain last night.
A woman sits crosslegged on the sidewalk, weatherburnt face, rotting teeth, legs doubled, a scanty rebozo beneath and around her.
I want to avert my eyes, but as she reaches towards me, lifting her hand, her arm, her mouth, her eyes, I see the baby nursing, wrapped in a woolen blanket. A large smooth, full perfectly formed breast pulls from its lips so softly my tongue presses against the roof of my mouth.
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
I'm back -- or forth
I'll explain.
I'm in a hotel on Benito Juárez off the Zócalo in Mexico City. I took a gamble, figured my money would last longer. I paid the ISP up front, hung the bike from a rafter in my dad's garage, and hiked up to catch a train to LAX. I'll wind up on my his door again; he'll wind up supporting this project another way, but six months later, so I won't worry when I write.
The trip -- everything officious at LAX, this plane a snug living room with almonds in the sky, the California grid computer chip grids in someone's rumpled motherboard below; then Tijuana streets some cattywampus termite-lust linguine, here sofas on the boulevard, there a bridge to zilch.
At Mexico City a thousand cabbies flood the airport. Nobody asks; the quickest grabs my bag. I grab it back. I do not own enough to pay someone to carry belongings, and no one carries my computer. The cabbie hollers something through the crowd, some explanation, I suspect, though it sounds like a complaint. He has waited because I'm a tourist, and now I won't produce him any money.
"Perdón."
Lo siento, I have been told, is sorry. But it translates as "I feel it," something I'm trying to not say in this crowd. The next cabbie grabs at my bags; I hoist one on my shoulder, hang the computerbag by a strap from my neck and plunge off towards the metro, at the end of the airport.
The second I hit the platform at the bottom, I find a slim young man beside me. He looks slightly shy behind thick, Ginsberg glasses. I notice he's in uniform.
"This is hard," he said. "You travel very far from home."
"I love to see all this." I adjust the army duffle square between my shoulders, cock my head to nod around its bulk. The boy's too young to be a cop. His friend, another cop, stands at the entrance looking with what seems distaste.
"I think I find it very strange to be far from my father. Somewhere I can't read the signs I don't know what to do."
"One makes mistakes. People usually forgive."
"Sometimes. But I would want someone to help. It must be very hard."
The train came. I waved and smiled patiently, perplexed at his attentions and only as the train pulled out noticed the sign behind him:
BULTAS GRANDES PROHIBIDAS
VIOLADORES SERAN MULTADOS
I'm in a hotel on Benito Juárez off the Zócalo in Mexico City. I took a gamble, figured my money would last longer. I paid the ISP up front, hung the bike from a rafter in my dad's garage, and hiked up to catch a train to LAX. I'll wind up on my his door again; he'll wind up supporting this project another way, but six months later, so I won't worry when I write.
The trip -- everything officious at LAX, this plane a snug living room with almonds in the sky, the California grid computer chip grids in someone's rumpled motherboard below; then Tijuana streets some cattywampus termite-lust linguine, here sofas on the boulevard, there a bridge to zilch.
At Mexico City a thousand cabbies flood the airport. Nobody asks; the quickest grabs my bag. I grab it back. I do not own enough to pay someone to carry belongings, and no one carries my computer. The cabbie hollers something through the crowd, some explanation, I suspect, though it sounds like a complaint. He has waited because I'm a tourist, and now I won't produce him any money.
"Perdón."
Lo siento, I have been told, is sorry. But it translates as "I feel it," something I'm trying to not say in this crowd. The next cabbie grabs at my bags; I hoist one on my shoulder, hang the computerbag by a strap from my neck and plunge off towards the metro, at the end of the airport.
The second I hit the platform at the bottom, I find a slim young man beside me. He looks slightly shy behind thick, Ginsberg glasses. I notice he's in uniform.
"This is hard," he said. "You travel very far from home."
"I love to see all this." I adjust the army duffle square between my shoulders, cock my head to nod around its bulk. The boy's too young to be a cop. His friend, another cop, stands at the entrance looking with what seems distaste.
"I think I find it very strange to be far from my father. Somewhere I can't read the signs I don't know what to do."
"One makes mistakes. People usually forgive."
"Sometimes. But I would want someone to help. It must be very hard."
The train came. I waved and smiled patiently, perplexed at his attentions and only as the train pulled out noticed the sign behind him:
BULTAS GRANDES PROHIBIDAS
VIOLADORES SERAN MULTADOS
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Time for Sale
I know why Earl kept my number. I thought he figured I was smart or something. He wants me to buy a house.
I have no money, as you know. But Earl assures me that money is no problem. The problem is that the house is not for sale.
That could be a long wait in Tunis. On the other hand, to write even a small book, to even pretend I'm doing what can be done, I need six months relatively free. For continuity, I need the time together if I can get it.
So think 1,000/month for six months = $6,000 up front. I'm easily $2500 short, maybe $3500 after whatever goes wrong that can.
I could get a job, but that doesn't leave me much time to deal with the package.
I have no money, as you know. But Earl assures me that money is no problem. The problem is that the house is not for sale.
"We've drawn up all the papers; the bank will take it. No one's been by the place for weeks. We need a buyer. You have no record."
"I can't buy a house."
"Oh, you can if you want to. You don't have any debts, right? You need a job anyway; when you get it you qualify. This just lets you leave early. We can help each other, but we need to trust.
"I'll trust you with the down payment; I trust you to actually buy the house. I mean, if you don't do it, I can be nasty, but you can hide, and I have no legal recourse. I trust you because I observe that you understand; you can trust me or not, based on the same reasoning.
"I provide the down payment. You buy the house from me. Go ahead and move in. If I were you I'd make payments. That looks a lot better. Of course, someone does own the house. In three days or three months, the owner shows up and kicks you out.
"You're going to play dumb. After all, all you did was buy a house. Oh, someone suspects; they'll ask. But I figure you know better than to confess. I'm the one who knows. I have no interest in confessing, and, trust me, I won't be around. You default on the loan. Your credit is ruined, of course. But what can that mean to you?
"We arrange to meet somewhere, say, a cafe in Tunis. They speak French, but that won't bother you. I wouldn't travel earlier than six months, maybe eight. It looks suspicious. We meet. I pass you your share of the money, and we never see each other again.
"No hard feelings, you understand. That's just safer for each.
That could be a long wait in Tunis. On the other hand, to write even a small book, to even pretend I'm doing what can be done, I need six months relatively free. For continuity, I need the time together if I can get it.
1 Room Westside________$750-
General utilities________0-
No car.
Food__________________150-
Cell___________________50-
ISP ___________________50-
So think 1,000/month for six months = $6,000 up front. I'm easily $2500 short, maybe $3500 after whatever goes wrong that can.
I could get a job, but that doesn't leave me much time to deal with the package.
Thursday, September 6, 2007
Rose Cafe
I felt so flattered this morning.
This may take me a few days.
Dr. Huffman called -- a biologist for the Alliance for Survival -- he said he wanted to drive up to talk.
We picked the Rose Cafe, since he knew it: straight up from the breakwater at Belmont and two blocks in. I pedaled down the riverside path and arrived early. He had three hours' drive up the coast, so I had time to wander in the bookstore on Los Coyotes and Bellflower, whiff the books and riffle passages to play with the rythmns of the texts. I strummed a few pages of Whitman, then Miller -- it's a mood thing, dontcha know. In bookstores I like to read from mid-paragraph to mid-paragraph, try poems backwards, so nothing exactly begins or ends.
What comfort we must take from speech before we know the words.
I arrived with time to gloat. I didn't know I was til later. The Rose has those odd tiny high stools that keep one's feet off the ground, those and the tiny tables that force one to be more than naturally precise with drinks and food and give some feeling of daintiness, I suppose. I perched. Everything cost two to three times what it would without the tiny tables and peppermint trim, or a block further from the water, but I'd decided to let the oddness of it all seep across me -- the unaffordable women in outfits calculated to some mildly alien algorythm. I suppose I savored my difference, whatever that is -- my ability to momentarily exist in their jardin like a foreign phrase or an absentminded gesture, obdurate in insignificance or unmindful of whatever meanings I might provoke in this context.
I felt friendly towards the girls and counters in an almost indistinct way and recognized the doctor the second he entered. I thought he scanned ruefully, but he took me in quickly, and I nodded him over.
He asked if I were an engineer, if I worked directly at the Casa Republica Plant, if there weren't some vital significance, some large specific infraction or documented manslaughter that he and his staff might have passed over in the documents, and nodded twice softly, eyes lowered, at my last No: "I thought not," he said. "I hoped perhaps." His palms fluttered, turned down towards the table carefully.
Doctor Huffman spent some time with me. He may have wanted to wait before driving several hours back down south. I had time to mention the pressurizer, the jumpers, their badges, the fishkill, the broken and unrepairable steamgen tubes, the missing uranium rods and pellets, the series of ad hoc experiments with water treatment to try to slow the rusting eating away the irreparable guts of the plant.
He nodded. He confirmed a few conclusions, added some detail, some legal context, radiation measures from the hills around.
"There were four items we didn't know about in all that stack of sheets. I do thank you for those, we do. And we appreciate your intent."
But I should realize that The Alliance seldom pays its labor, operates strictly on donations and volunteers, that kids like I saw in that office scanned through the documents one after another and tried to read them, that unless information can give some decent, concrete results, it only discourages the people who process it.
He shared some stories, things like camping out on the beach nearby when the radiation started to climb, and people still within the breeding population moved off. The others finally investigated the plant and found someone had left a door open, perhaps on purpose. I mentioned my fear of reprisals from ECorp, wasted his time with that; he nodded.
"You can't worry about that. My mail arrives opened. My phone clicks and buzzes and cuts out at odd times. You get used to that. But they won't kill you for sport. They'll sue you just for advertising or convenience if they can, but killing causes problems. I'd love to have something they might kill me for. I thought I might today.
"You know, this plant is a rhinoceros. It's bigger than you and I together. In some ways it's noncomprehending and aggressive. We hunt with an air rifle. There's only one soft spot, and it's right - in - the - eye. You cannot look at that eye long before the eye sees you. And if you're close enough to hit that eye, you're close enough it can hurt you. You're going to cause it any damage, you've got to take that one best shot.
"You're welcome, you know. We'd love to have you, and your talents, and your insights, any time you decide to get serious."
This may take me a few days.
Dr. Huffman called -- a biologist for the Alliance for Survival -- he said he wanted to drive up to talk.
We picked the Rose Cafe, since he knew it: straight up from the breakwater at Belmont and two blocks in. I pedaled down the riverside path and arrived early. He had three hours' drive up the coast, so I had time to wander in the bookstore on Los Coyotes and Bellflower, whiff the books and riffle passages to play with the rythmns of the texts. I strummed a few pages of Whitman, then Miller -- it's a mood thing, dontcha know. In bookstores I like to read from mid-paragraph to mid-paragraph, try poems backwards, so nothing exactly begins or ends.
What comfort we must take from speech before we know the words.
I arrived with time to gloat. I didn't know I was til later. The Rose has those odd tiny high stools that keep one's feet off the ground, those and the tiny tables that force one to be more than naturally precise with drinks and food and give some feeling of daintiness, I suppose. I perched. Everything cost two to three times what it would without the tiny tables and peppermint trim, or a block further from the water, but I'd decided to let the oddness of it all seep across me -- the unaffordable women in outfits calculated to some mildly alien algorythm. I suppose I savored my difference, whatever that is -- my ability to momentarily exist in their jardin like a foreign phrase or an absentminded gesture, obdurate in insignificance or unmindful of whatever meanings I might provoke in this context.
I felt friendly towards the girls and counters in an almost indistinct way and recognized the doctor the second he entered. I thought he scanned ruefully, but he took me in quickly, and I nodded him over.
He asked if I were an engineer, if I worked directly at the Casa Republica Plant, if there weren't some vital significance, some large specific infraction or documented manslaughter that he and his staff might have passed over in the documents, and nodded twice softly, eyes lowered, at my last No: "I thought not," he said. "I hoped perhaps." His palms fluttered, turned down towards the table carefully.
Doctor Huffman spent some time with me. He may have wanted to wait before driving several hours back down south. I had time to mention the pressurizer, the jumpers, their badges, the fishkill, the broken and unrepairable steamgen tubes, the missing uranium rods and pellets, the series of ad hoc experiments with water treatment to try to slow the rusting eating away the irreparable guts of the plant.
He nodded. He confirmed a few conclusions, added some detail, some legal context, radiation measures from the hills around.
"There were four items we didn't know about in all that stack of sheets. I do thank you for those, we do. And we appreciate your intent."
But I should realize that The Alliance seldom pays its labor, operates strictly on donations and volunteers, that kids like I saw in that office scanned through the documents one after another and tried to read them, that unless information can give some decent, concrete results, it only discourages the people who process it.
He shared some stories, things like camping out on the beach nearby when the radiation started to climb, and people still within the breeding population moved off. The others finally investigated the plant and found someone had left a door open, perhaps on purpose. I mentioned my fear of reprisals from ECorp, wasted his time with that; he nodded.
"You can't worry about that. My mail arrives opened. My phone clicks and buzzes and cuts out at odd times. You get used to that. But they won't kill you for sport. They'll sue you just for advertising or convenience if they can, but killing causes problems. I'd love to have something they might kill me for. I thought I might today.
"You know, this plant is a rhinoceros. It's bigger than you and I together. In some ways it's noncomprehending and aggressive. We hunt with an air rifle. There's only one soft spot, and it's right - in - the - eye. You cannot look at that eye long before the eye sees you. And if you're close enough to hit that eye, you're close enough it can hurt you. You're going to cause it any damage, you've got to take that one best shot.
"You're welcome, you know. We'd love to have you, and your talents, and your insights, any time you decide to get serious."
Monday, August 20, 2007
Fin
Done!
I can't believe it took me so long. In some way, I romanced myself (take that as you will) with the business of writing this thing up, with my attachment to the project - to such an extent that I didn't realize there would be other people fighting against the plant who would be happy to get information I could give them, who know other people, who had some idea what to do about it.
Today I just walked in to the office, call it office, of the Alliance for Survival. They're in an old house with the pillarpost porch just west and south of downtown. I made the requisite trip by bike without event. I didn't bother with the stupid tie or jacket; I didn't have to strap the stupid bookbag on the frame between my legs.
And I rode back with an empty pack, playing with traffic.
So, home free.
The kid behind the desk at the Alliance -- sneakers, T-shirt, all that -- said they had a lawsuit in progress about the very plant, seemed pleased. I left him the number at my dad's and an email, said I'd answer questions if there were any and apologised that the docs were pretty scattered and disordered since there didn't seem to be any one special way to order them, and walked out the door.
So, in net, I had earned a little over three thousand bucks. Voltage had called before I got back. I called Moneypenney, who seemed pained. Apparently LISA had called with the complaint that I had "simply not done the work." I pointed out that they might have noticed a complete absence of work before four months, particularly given that they had laid off over 90% of the people who started with me before they dropped me. She mentioned that LISA was "strange," and not for the first time, but seemed incompletely convinced.
I could read her reaction, and LISA's, in a lot of ways, I guess, but I doubt I'll need either. I'll pedal down the river to Seal Beach tomorrow, then call Carl and Colin and see who's renting out on the Westside. Rolling into summer Patrick will will have work on the trucks, so the next few months I can find money without temping. And whatever the Alliance finds to do with those docs, LISA isn't likely to have more on me than whatever they have now.
And if they do, I'm relieved to have nothing whatever that I can do but sleep.
I can't believe it took me so long. In some way, I romanced myself (take that as you will) with the business of writing this thing up, with my attachment to the project - to such an extent that I didn't realize there would be other people fighting against the plant who would be happy to get information I could give them, who know other people, who had some idea what to do about it.
Today I just walked in to the office, call it office, of the Alliance for Survival. They're in an old house with the pillarpost porch just west and south of downtown. I made the requisite trip by bike without event. I didn't bother with the stupid tie or jacket; I didn't have to strap the stupid bookbag on the frame between my legs.
And I rode back with an empty pack, playing with traffic.
So, home free.
The kid behind the desk at the Alliance -- sneakers, T-shirt, all that -- said they had a lawsuit in progress about the very plant, seemed pleased. I left him the number at my dad's and an email, said I'd answer questions if there were any and apologised that the docs were pretty scattered and disordered since there didn't seem to be any one special way to order them, and walked out the door.
So, in net, I had earned a little over three thousand bucks. Voltage had called before I got back. I called Moneypenney, who seemed pained. Apparently LISA had called with the complaint that I had "simply not done the work." I pointed out that they might have noticed a complete absence of work before four months, particularly given that they had laid off over 90% of the people who started with me before they dropped me. She mentioned that LISA was "strange," and not for the first time, but seemed incompletely convinced.
I could read her reaction, and LISA's, in a lot of ways, I guess, but I doubt I'll need either. I'll pedal down the river to Seal Beach tomorrow, then call Carl and Colin and see who's renting out on the Westside. Rolling into summer Patrick will will have work on the trucks, so the next few months I can find money without temping. And whatever the Alliance finds to do with those docs, LISA isn't likely to have more on me than whatever they have now.
And if they do, I'm relieved to have nothing whatever that I can do but sleep.
Monday, August 6, 2007
Sensible | Sensate
A belated happy 267th to the Marquis de Sade; let's everyone go make sense:
IF the plant leaks once in a while,
THEN almost no one dies of it,
SO it happens once in a while,
SO it is news,
BUT it is not important.
IF the plant leaks every day,
THEN many die of it,
SO that is important,
BUT it is continuous and we cannot sort out which individuals die because of the plant,
SO that is not news
AND no one wants to know.
C'est logique, non? -- what we use whenever a thing does not make sense at all. And what's a few roentgens between consenting amis?
The majority of the scientists at Los Alamos signed a petition that bomb that landed on Hiroshima be detonated at an unpopulated site in Japan, to demonstrate it. With all the times I've heard people discuss Truman's decision to drop the bomb, the option has never been mentioned.
Rudy's planning his class action suit. He called to say first that he spoke to some lawyers, then that he's planning to. I sent him the email addresses, let him go. If he thrashes enough, maybe he'll kick up someone I can hand this stack of papers off to. But I'm not running interference -- have to work, I say.
"How are you going to take care of yourself while you're doing all this?"
"Oh, my old man's got a house he needs painted. I'll just live in it while I paint it and fix it up. I'll have to bring some birds across, too."
Birds?
"Tropical birds. They don't cost anything down there cause they flit through the trees. People pay big money. Pet stores and them."
I mention the little legal issue; he's not dissuaded.
"They're easier than people. A little tequila, they keep their mouths shut all the way across."
"The birds are mum."
"Yeah. I'ts great; you can't let them get too much, though. Then pull them out of the socks soon as you get good across."
"Socks?"
"I visit my cousins, then stop off in Rosarita on the way back. I sit on the beach with the birds and the laundry and give the birds a little tequila. When they fall over, I pop them in a sock, one by one."
"Yeah. That's a few thousand dollars in that basket if they're all still good. "
When I was a kid, our parakeet always looked a little glassy-eyed.
IF the plant leaks once in a while,
THEN almost no one dies of it,
SO it happens once in a while,
SO it is news,
BUT it is not important.
IF the plant leaks every day,
THEN many die of it,
SO that is important,
BUT it is continuous and we cannot sort out which individuals die because of the plant,
SO that is not news
AND no one wants to know.
C'est logique, non? -- what we use whenever a thing does not make sense at all. And what's a few roentgens between consenting amis?
The majority of the scientists at Los Alamos signed a petition that bomb that landed on Hiroshima be detonated at an unpopulated site in Japan, to demonstrate it. With all the times I've heard people discuss Truman's decision to drop the bomb, the option has never been mentioned.
Rudy's planning his class action suit. He called to say first that he spoke to some lawyers, then that he's planning to. I sent him the email addresses, let him go. If he thrashes enough, maybe he'll kick up someone I can hand this stack of papers off to. But I'm not running interference -- have to work, I say.
"How are you going to take care of yourself while you're doing all this?"
"Oh, my old man's got a house he needs painted. I'll just live in it while I paint it and fix it up. I'll have to bring some birds across, too."
Birds?
"Tropical birds. They don't cost anything down there cause they flit through the trees. People pay big money. Pet stores and them."
I mention the little legal issue; he's not dissuaded.
"They're easier than people. A little tequila, they keep their mouths shut all the way across."
"The birds are mum."
"Yeah. I'ts great; you can't let them get too much, though. Then pull them out of the socks soon as you get good across."
"Socks?"
"I visit my cousins, then stop off in Rosarita on the way back. I sit on the beach with the birds and the laundry and give the birds a little tequila. When they fall over, I pop them in a sock, one by one."
"Yeah. That's a few thousand dollars in that basket if they're all still good. "
When I was a kid, our parakeet always looked a little glassy-eyed.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Knightly News
Folks, if any of you know how to use this, copy it, store it somewhere, and bless you.
I phoned NBS. They weren't interested. I phoned the Examiner and the Trib. That started to feel a little spooky, like ECorp had gotten there. But I don't mean to live inside my delusions; I decided to make a personal appearance, to show someone the documents. I decided to peddle across to The Daily Planet.
I took an old bookbag, laid the manuscript into with and lashed it across the top of my bikeframe to keep the straps from creasing my jacket, then ferreted up Alameda, across Slauson and Olympic through the weekday traffic until I came out on Second and Fairfax. I locked the bike to a cable that slanted from a phone pole, went into a john at the Farmer's Market, straightened my tie and waited for my sweat to dry and the color from my ride to leave my face before I marched across into the front office.
Maybe I need a mask or something. The mild-mannered guy behind the counter waved me off immediately.
"These are documents related to the operation of a nuclear plant."
"What happened?"
"What?"
"Which plant? Is anything happening?"
Where? Why wouldn't something be happening? I stammer.
"OK." Over his shoulder: "Do we have any reports?" A coworker's palms go up, out.
"I doubt you would have received any," I start. "That's why I came." He looks tired; I continue: "The structure of the plant--"
"No. Hang on. No, we don't need that. I appreciate your thinking of the Planet, but -"
"Wait, in the steamgens of these --"
"Is this recent?"
"Well, it's continuous, yes."
"No one has received any kind of a warning. Did anybody die? Do you know names or places? Is anybody hurt?"
"People --"
"No, nothing about nuclear plants -- look it splits open, it goes boom, the President says it will eat my grandchildren, sure. You got that, spit it. Go. Fight with me. But-- "
"Given the size of the nuclear power industry across --"
"No. Truly, no. Now look, I'm not unsympathetic. There's no use for this. You're wasting your -- I don't know, whatever you do with your time."
Why do I think that you meant you-all? I don't move. He gambles that a couple paragraphs will get rid of me, screws himself up to it.
"I printed stories about the plant -- ECorp's plant; that's who you're talking about, right? A leak here, and infraction there -- bam, there it is: big headlines, front page. Nobody reads it. Next one goes page eight, then sixteen.
"No: I pay for copy, pay for paper, pay someone to carry that paper around. Hey, I pay to advertise the paper -- so I actually pay people to read it, though they wouldn't know. Still nobody reads about leaks. Understand?
"You want me to put something in the paper that no one wants to read, that's called an ad. I got nothing against ads; I don't think anyone will read it. You want to pay me, open up an ad, say you stole that from ECorp? I don't think so.
And if that's really what that is, that wad of papers, you might want to put it somewhere and not go walking around with it."
I phoned NBS. They weren't interested. I phoned the Examiner and the Trib. That started to feel a little spooky, like ECorp had gotten there. But I don't mean to live inside my delusions; I decided to make a personal appearance, to show someone the documents. I decided to peddle across to The Daily Planet.
I took an old bookbag, laid the manuscript into with and lashed it across the top of my bikeframe to keep the straps from creasing my jacket, then ferreted up Alameda, across Slauson and Olympic through the weekday traffic until I came out on Second and Fairfax. I locked the bike to a cable that slanted from a phone pole, went into a john at the Farmer's Market, straightened my tie and waited for my sweat to dry and the color from my ride to leave my face before I marched across into the front office.
Maybe I need a mask or something. The mild-mannered guy behind the counter waved me off immediately.
"These are documents related to the operation of a nuclear plant."
"What happened?"
"What?"
"Which plant? Is anything happening?"
Where? Why wouldn't something be happening? I stammer.
"OK." Over his shoulder: "Do we have any reports?" A coworker's palms go up, out.
"I doubt you would have received any," I start. "That's why I came." He looks tired; I continue: "The structure of the plant--"
"No. Hang on. No, we don't need that. I appreciate your thinking of the Planet, but -"
"Wait, in the steamgens of these --"
"Is this recent?"
"Well, it's continuous, yes."
"No one has received any kind of a warning. Did anybody die? Do you know names or places? Is anybody hurt?"
"People --"
"No, nothing about nuclear plants -- look it splits open, it goes boom, the President says it will eat my grandchildren, sure. You got that, spit it. Go. Fight with me. But-- "
"Given the size of the nuclear power industry across --"
"No. Truly, no. Now look, I'm not unsympathetic. There's no use for this. You're wasting your -- I don't know, whatever you do with your time."
Why do I think that you meant you-all? I don't move. He gambles that a couple paragraphs will get rid of me, screws himself up to it.
"I printed stories about the plant -- ECorp's plant; that's who you're talking about, right? A leak here, and infraction there -- bam, there it is: big headlines, front page. Nobody reads it. Next one goes page eight, then sixteen.
"No: I pay for copy, pay for paper, pay someone to carry that paper around. Hey, I pay to advertise the paper -- so I actually pay people to read it, though they wouldn't know. Still nobody reads about leaks. Understand?
"You want me to put something in the paper that no one wants to read, that's called an ad. I got nothing against ads; I don't think anyone will read it. You want to pay me, open up an ad, say you stole that from ECorp? I don't think so.
And if that's really what that is, that wad of papers, you might want to put it somewhere and not go walking around with it."
Monday, July 16, 2007
------------->
Did it!
Foom! Fired!
Released, anyway. It's all the same thing.
Bill and Terry's supervisor, a little Hispanic woman, slipped over very quietly and told me I need not return. I tried to catch my breath and torture my smile to make it polite.
Fired!
Terry Lynn looked pleased. Were it not for keeping my head down to look despondent, I'd have blown her a kiss.
My deskmates passed around email addresses - Earl's idea, and it surprised me - the first time we'd done so, at least that I've noticed. I considered forgery, but why would LISA need my email to follow me? I wrote it out well and firmly a half-dozen times.
My batch was done by three-thirty. With no chance of photocopying anything, the work felt light. I took a special luxury in having it before me and dawdled til 4:45.
As I walked out to the bike, Earl asked for the phone number as well. "We may all need connection soon," he said, though I think he appreciated that job hunting was furthest from my mind.
Free.
And I didn't get caught -- which I suppose amounts to one and the same thing. I go. I call a news service. I let them hash this stuff together. Au revoir et adieu.
Foom! Fired!
Released, anyway. It's all the same thing.
Bill and Terry's supervisor, a little Hispanic woman, slipped over very quietly and told me I need not return. I tried to catch my breath and torture my smile to make it polite.
Fired!
Terry Lynn looked pleased. Were it not for keeping my head down to look despondent, I'd have blown her a kiss.
My deskmates passed around email addresses - Earl's idea, and it surprised me - the first time we'd done so, at least that I've noticed. I considered forgery, but why would LISA need my email to follow me? I wrote it out well and firmly a half-dozen times.
johnhenryhancock@shootme.org
My batch was done by three-thirty. With no chance of photocopying anything, the work felt light. I took a special luxury in having it before me and dawdled til 4:45.
As I walked out to the bike, Earl asked for the phone number as well. "We may all need connection soon," he said, though I think he appreciated that job hunting was furthest from my mind.
Free.
And I didn't get caught -- which I suppose amounts to one and the same thing. I go. I call a news service. I let them hash this stuff together. Au revoir et adieu.
Friday, July 13, 2007
Streams
Who are we?
I pedalled home through Little Shanghai today and stopped at the market that steams of fish and leeks. I always peddle out into traffic on the wet street because they hose the sidewalk down outside the store. Today I got down and walked with everyone over the wet concrete past the news stands and between the aisles to smell the aging vegetables, the pickles, and the spice.
If I lived on the field I worked and flooded it, if I ate the produce of that field and drank the irrigation, what difference would remain between the swamps out and inside?
I pedalled home through Little Shanghai today and stopped at the market that steams of fish and leeks. I always peddle out into traffic on the wet street because they hose the sidewalk down outside the store. Today I got down and walked with everyone over the wet concrete past the news stands and between the aisles to smell the aging vegetables, the pickles, and the spice.
If I lived on the field I worked and flooded it, if I ate the produce of that field and drank the irrigation, what difference would remain between the swamps out and inside?
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Pressure Release
I've held onto a document batch too long, but it's about the pressure release system. The pieces come together over weeks. Sadly.
1. ZzTech hires workers on the beach north of Castillo Republica as jumpers.
2. Jumpers have radiation badges, the last of which go off after an average of 45 minutes of work.
3. When the badges go off, that means the workers have been exposed to the maximum amount of radiation considered safe in one lifetime.
4. The fulltime workers complain loud and long that Zappo-Tech workers so much equipment that catwalks and passages become unpassable.
5. ZzTech workers wash the Pressure Chamber.
6. The Pressure Chamber is a safety device that relieves the pressure from primary and secondary parts -- from the core and the steam generator.
7. Robotic devices clean the pressure chamber as well as possible before the jumpers enter.
8. When the pressure chamber the pressure is blown out into the atmosphere.
I could take this and leave. Would there were a way to leave without tendering a resignation, just disappear. I could say I'm sick, having recently passed out. But no, people know more than they say -- they leer because they assume there's some emotional basis, because deathrattles itch of the familiar. The number of people over the years who have told me they wished they could seize, that it looks like a wonderful release or discharge.
Release. Release from?
Discharge. I'll leave that.
1. ZzTech hires workers on the beach north of Castillo Republica as jumpers.
2. Jumpers have radiation badges, the last of which go off after an average of 45 minutes of work.
3. When the badges go off, that means the workers have been exposed to the maximum amount of radiation considered safe in one lifetime.
4. The fulltime workers complain loud and long that Zappo-Tech workers so much equipment that catwalks and passages become unpassable.
5. ZzTech workers wash the Pressure Chamber.
6. The Pressure Chamber is a safety device that relieves the pressure from primary and secondary parts -- from the core and the steam generator.
7. Robotic devices clean the pressure chamber as well as possible before the jumpers enter.
8. When the pressure chamber the pressure is blown out into the atmosphere.
I could take this and leave. Would there were a way to leave without tendering a resignation, just disappear. I could say I'm sick, having recently passed out. But no, people know more than they say -- they leer because they assume there's some emotional basis, because deathrattles itch of the familiar. The number of people over the years who have told me they wished they could seize, that it looks like a wonderful release or discharge.
Release. Release from?
Discharge. I'll leave that.
Saturday, July 7, 2007
Passage II
Still can't figure just what in the conversation made me pass out last week. If the abuse stories got to me, I may be better off. But the last thing said could as easily have had to do with the plant.
Moneypenney called at work today, and I told her everything was fine, of course. She started off in French, and I felt flattered even though she initially threw me and wound up apologising profusely for her supposed accent. I had to go to Bettina's desk to take the call, but what can I do? I think about her when I visit the ducks.
Once upon a time, Bettina, the Sátanas must have been a real creek, though it must have dried sometimes without the treated water coming out of the pipe -- meandering flat on the flattish sand, a line of trees between the sparser bush.
The story will wait.
If I leave, will they keep Edna on? Maybe I should just give Edna some money and know she's moved out.
"Oh, they'll fire him," Terry Lynn tells William as I walk by, "It takes a while when they do that, but they always get them." She could mean anyone. She dislikes me, but I doubt that makes me unique.
Moneypenney called at work today, and I told her everything was fine, of course. She started off in French, and I felt flattered even though she initially threw me and wound up apologising profusely for her supposed accent. I had to go to Bettina's desk to take the call, but what can I do? I think about her when I visit the ducks.
"Cheers, Bettina; have another ficus."
Once upon a time, Bettina, the Sátanas must have been a real creek, though it must have dried sometimes without the treated water coming out of the pipe -- meandering flat on the flattish sand, a line of trees between the sparser bush.
The story will wait.
If I leave, will they keep Edna on? Maybe I should just give Edna some money and know she's moved out.
Friday, June 29, 2007
Passage
I passed out at work today. No idea why. Hasn't happened in years. That's part of the trouble with seizures: they cover their tracks. The easiest way to seize a second time is to ponder the first: "I felt, this, then that, then -." Pfuuff.
So I left it for later rather than risk a reprise. Oh, great, Jack -- be inconspicuous. As my eyes cleared, Bettina hovered at the door, then vanished; Earl stood over me, his socks and loafers more or less in front of my face. He seemed to have just stood, probably as I started to move. Branley had risen; Edna sat somewhere behind, to judge by sounds. I figured Bill and Terry Lynn, the supers, might still be across the room. To judge by the fine texture of the tactile electric buzz as I rose, I couldn't have been out very long.
It's been so long I figured they couldn't happen anymore -- almost ten years. I went through a psychotherapy; when I could cry and speak, they just evaporated. I told everyone today that I banged my elbow on the table, hit my funnybone. But clearly something upset me. They heard it, and I forgot. The smiles could have been the smug looks one always sees when rising from seizure. Whatever griefs and vices people have, they feel they've managed when they see a man convulse.
Alternately, the smiles could mean my denials might make no sense, since any one of them might remember what someone had said when I passed out except me.
The conversation at the table had gotten pretty bizarre. They have started to joke regularly about documents. They gather stories that don't come from the documents, or not from ours, which Edna claims are filtered -- stories one or another super has told them. The stories, I think, are filtered, too. They show individual foolishness or chicanery, or principles we have to understand anyway.
1. Some engineer set the beaker of secondary fluid he meant to test for radiation near the coffeemaker as he went to the john. He couldn't find the beaker later, and the office sat and sipped their coffee some time while they discussed what he might have done with it.
2. Three engineers plugged a coolant tube with a basketball. "Natural or synthetic?" Cliff asks. The coolant tubes get heated to over 800 degrees F, apparently flipped the trio up through the concrete containment dome. No way -- does someone plant stories, to see what we will repeat?
3. At some site in Arizona, someone stole thirty earth-movers -- thirty expensive vehicles. They never showed up. Apparently workers who had purchased homes in the area did not want the plant to go online -- probably because that meant the end of their jobs. The vehicles may have been buried in the desert.
4. The golfball-sized balls used to plug the small steam generator pipes drift onto the beaches upcoast, where children collect them or play catch in the waves.
5. Sea lions, porpoises, large octopi, and sometimes sharks form a line outside the outlet valves to eat the fish cooked in the secondary fluid as it moves through the plant. They don't fight or squabble or eat each other. Apparently, there's plenty to go around.
6. The secondary water --compressed liquid at 800 or so degrees -- must depressurize and "flash" to pure steam as it approaches the generator turbines. One day it doesn't: liquid particulate stays in the steam. The particles blow the blades clear free of their axle. The blades continue to spin, ricocheting through the control room, past desks and console panels, out the other side to nick the main coolant line. The main expense to Ecorp is having to shut down the plant.
The blown pipes to radioactive to repair, the Westinghouse instructions to "blow out" the pressure chamber to the outer atmosphere while the plant's shut down -- these escape mention.
I fear a probe, or even that it's a way of discussing my activities. But why shouldn't it be boredom? And the table has gotten bizarre in other ways.
"I've stopped hitting them. I'm so proud."
That wakes me up. Edna has two girls, thirteen and eleven.
"So I can't stop the therapy: I need that."
I nod; she's addressing Branley and Earl, but this seems to want public acknowledgement.
"Now if I can just hang on here for two more weeks, I'll be able to move both of them away from their father."
With the woman who hits them. "How do they feel about that, Edna?"
"Oh, they're fine. I worried about it, but they've assured me. I asked. 'I don't need him around,' she says. My thirteen-year-old's a trooper."
And the eleven?
"She has no objections, but she's pretty quiet. But I don't know if he's done anything to her yet. He started molesting the older one a couple years ago, but I don't know whether she may be enough."
Someday maybe I'll quit judging people for knuckling under to corporate pressure. But I don't see how I had a right to start working here.
So I left it for later rather than risk a reprise. Oh, great, Jack -- be inconspicuous. As my eyes cleared, Bettina hovered at the door, then vanished; Earl stood over me, his socks and loafers more or less in front of my face. He seemed to have just stood, probably as I started to move. Branley had risen; Edna sat somewhere behind, to judge by sounds. I figured Bill and Terry Lynn, the supers, might still be across the room. To judge by the fine texture of the tactile electric buzz as I rose, I couldn't have been out very long.
It's been so long I figured they couldn't happen anymore -- almost ten years. I went through a psychotherapy; when I could cry and speak, they just evaporated. I told everyone today that I banged my elbow on the table, hit my funnybone. But clearly something upset me. They heard it, and I forgot. The smiles could have been the smug looks one always sees when rising from seizure. Whatever griefs and vices people have, they feel they've managed when they see a man convulse.
Alternately, the smiles could mean my denials might make no sense, since any one of them might remember what someone had said when I passed out except me.
The conversation at the table had gotten pretty bizarre. They have started to joke regularly about documents. They gather stories that don't come from the documents, or not from ours, which Edna claims are filtered -- stories one or another super has told them. The stories, I think, are filtered, too. They show individual foolishness or chicanery, or principles we have to understand anyway.
1. Some engineer set the beaker of secondary fluid he meant to test for radiation near the coffeemaker as he went to the john. He couldn't find the beaker later, and the office sat and sipped their coffee some time while they discussed what he might have done with it.
2. Three engineers plugged a coolant tube with a basketball. "Natural or synthetic?" Cliff asks. The coolant tubes get heated to over 800 degrees F, apparently flipped the trio up through the concrete containment dome. No way -- does someone plant stories, to see what we will repeat?
3. At some site in Arizona, someone stole thirty earth-movers -- thirty expensive vehicles. They never showed up. Apparently workers who had purchased homes in the area did not want the plant to go online -- probably because that meant the end of their jobs. The vehicles may have been buried in the desert.
4. The golfball-sized balls used to plug the small steam generator pipes drift onto the beaches upcoast, where children collect them or play catch in the waves.
5. Sea lions, porpoises, large octopi, and sometimes sharks form a line outside the outlet valves to eat the fish cooked in the secondary fluid as it moves through the plant. They don't fight or squabble or eat each other. Apparently, there's plenty to go around.
6. The secondary water --compressed liquid at 800 or so degrees -- must depressurize and "flash" to pure steam as it approaches the generator turbines. One day it doesn't: liquid particulate stays in the steam. The particles blow the blades clear free of their axle. The blades continue to spin, ricocheting through the control room, past desks and console panels, out the other side to nick the main coolant line. The main expense to Ecorp is having to shut down the plant.
The blown pipes to radioactive to repair, the Westinghouse instructions to "blow out" the pressure chamber to the outer atmosphere while the plant's shut down -- these escape mention.
I fear a probe, or even that it's a way of discussing my activities. But why shouldn't it be boredom? And the table has gotten bizarre in other ways.
"I've stopped hitting them. I'm so proud."
That wakes me up. Edna has two girls, thirteen and eleven.
"So I can't stop the therapy: I need that."
I nod; she's addressing Branley and Earl, but this seems to want public acknowledgement.
"Now if I can just hang on here for two more weeks, I'll be able to move both of them away from their father."
With the woman who hits them. "How do they feel about that, Edna?"
"Oh, they're fine. I worried about it, but they've assured me. I asked. 'I don't need him around,' she says. My thirteen-year-old's a trooper."
And the eleven?
"She has no objections, but she's pretty quiet. But I don't know if he's done anything to her yet. He started molesting the older one a couple years ago, but I don't know whether she may be enough."
Someday maybe I'll quit judging people for knuckling under to corporate pressure. But I don't see how I had a right to start working here.
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Ficus in Chief
By her desk, by the door I walk by every day, Bettina has a ficus, the only one in the entire building, as near as I can tell.
She wants to apolgise, wants me to know she's still angry. It gives an interesting expression, but I have no idea what to say.
"Nice ficus."
She wants to apolgise, wants me to know she's still angry. It gives an interesting expression, but I have no idea what to say.
"Nice ficus."
Friday, June 15, 2007
Colorblindness in the Abstract
I can never figure what people see. Like I spent an evening once explaining red to Carl. He let me keep at it like a student who's just discovered phenomenology. Then, knowing he's colorblind must give him fits when he looks at his paintings. But maybe not: I'm sure he left thinking it was attitudinal.
Bettina went off on me today, just really angry. Edna chirped: Bettina snapped smack in the doorway to the workroom, both of us framed like Punch and Judy. The table was looking down when I turned around, but that wouldn't last.
Bettina someone I see in the hall, or at her desk. We'd never spoken, just Hello and some joke on the company or the brown paper wrapper over LISA windows, more to slow her down or excuse my lingering an extra second than anything. Normally, I'd call her response attraction, but I doubt it. She must be five foot nine in stockings -- were one to see her in stockings -- and becomes amazing with the office heels. I'm s-h-o-r-t. All I'd done was shave the goat beard finally. But she talked like I'd betrayed a trust.
I'd get rid of one writerly trait at a time, I figured -- just quietly, no comment, no matter how little any of it has with typing even a word. I'd have better acted like a ficus, strange as an actual green ficus would be at LISA. People forget what doesn't change. She must have felt some complicity in the jokes, when I wanted to say, Hey, for $2.75 and a gallon tank, I could solve all LISA's problems and clean the building.
I suppose there's no way to mention what I'm doing here.
From how she looks and where she sits, does everyone slogg by each day and forget to ask if she has a brain? Must be some kind of supply and demand thing applies.
Bettina went off on me today, just really angry. Edna chirped: Bettina snapped smack in the doorway to the workroom, both of us framed like Punch and Judy. The table was looking down when I turned around, but that wouldn't last.
Bettina someone I see in the hall, or at her desk. We'd never spoken, just Hello and some joke on the company or the brown paper wrapper over LISA windows, more to slow her down or excuse my lingering an extra second than anything. Normally, I'd call her response attraction, but I doubt it. She must be five foot nine in stockings -- were one to see her in stockings -- and becomes amazing with the office heels. I'm s-h-o-r-t. All I'd done was shave the goat beard finally. But she talked like I'd betrayed a trust.
I'd get rid of one writerly trait at a time, I figured -- just quietly, no comment, no matter how little any of it has with typing even a word. I'd have better acted like a ficus, strange as an actual green ficus would be at LISA. People forget what doesn't change. She must have felt some complicity in the jokes, when I wanted to say, Hey, for $2.75 and a gallon tank, I could solve all LISA's problems and clean the building.
I suppose there's no way to mention what I'm doing here.
From how she looks and where she sits, does everyone slogg by each day and forget to ask if she has a brain? Must be some kind of supply and demand thing applies.
Thursday, June 7, 2007
Objectors, Conscientious & Otherwise
"They can force me to shoot; they just can't force me to shoot well."
One of Earl's better moments, I think. Earl sits across from me at Ecorp. His formulations sound better as LISA smells worse. When 50,000 guys stand in two lines facing each other, let's bless everyone who shoots badly.
"I went into the National Guard," he starts, as he has a couple of times.
Vietnam-era guy -- he figures avoiding the draft gave him some special training for corporate life.
"Where there's a job, I'm a nonparticipant. Any of you like what we're doing? "
"You get your batches done on time." Edna signs she's on to him. Branley smiles, what could be solidarity. Earl continues.
"Oh, I acknowledge authority, no question. They can force me to do things."
"Well, alright, but all of us --"
"But I volunteer no extra. I don't want much: a little land -- in Africa, for all I care. I'd prefer somewhere people speak English -- I'm not a polyglot like Jack here. But English, that's not hard; the Brits spread it like syphilis and tobacco. I don't want much -- just house, someone to staff it, enough to live."
"That's all any of us do."
"I figure."
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
Class Inaction
If LISA offered to hire me on permanent, what would I do? I need to exit somehow. It's like Fabienne talking about her attempted lawsuit. The way she put it herself,
Sometimes I even wish LISA would catch me, just so the fear would end. That scares me. Maybe Carl's take makes more sense. Stealing from LISA is like the drunkard's walk. (You may know this. The drunkard walks north with a street at his right and a wall at his left? There's a 50% chance he stumbles left, 50% chance he stumbles right. Where does he end up?
Answer: He always ends at the wall, of course. In my case, that means I leave without being caught or when LISA catches me. The hour basketball game may be just the thing. It's more a gesture anyway, best because it's pointless, as though we had no idea whom we were flipping off. Which I suppose I don't.
"I tried a class action suit. I thought it would work, you know, many people die, no one cares. I had been a small role in a movie. I am young enough men will feel sorry for me.
"But I spoke to a lawyer, no? He said my chance of leukemia was a few percentage points higher for the background radiation of the plant. There might be some chance, perhaps, a class action suit. Who wants to live in court with cameras?"
Sometimes I even wish LISA would catch me, just so the fear would end. That scares me. Maybe Carl's take makes more sense. Stealing from LISA is like the drunkard's walk. (You may know this. The drunkard walks north with a street at his right and a wall at his left? There's a 50% chance he stumbles left, 50% chance he stumbles right. Where does he end up?
Answer: He always ends at the wall, of course. In my case, that means I leave without being caught or when LISA catches me. The hour basketball game may be just the thing. It's more a gesture anyway, best because it's pointless, as though we had no idea whom we were flipping off. Which I suppose I don't.
Saturday, June 2, 2007
Basketball for Lunch
The game was fun in its way -- the basketball -- ties pulling on and off, hustling back to the office, shirts too sweaty, oddly tight. I'm too bullnecked for the clip-on ties, so I'm half-standing in the back of Cliff's mustang, trying to get my neck in his rear-view and get the damned noose tied while he careens around the downtown alleys he seems to know. The guys laugh and swear at my stumbling. "Five minutes" Cliff keeps promising. I'm thrilled to worry about getting in to work late: piss-all, maybe they'll lay me off. I might be lucky that way. Rudy's on about a class-action suit, but all he means is that LISA doesn't have the right to take back our work.
If LISA offered to hire me on permanently, what would I do? I do feel some responsibility to stay on, to get as much as I can. But then I even wish LISA would catch me, just so the fear would end. That scares me: you know that feeling when you watch someone at the side of the road and the car starts to track off?
I will exit somehow. It's like Fabienne talking about her own considerations when the doctors diagnosed her leukemia. As she put it,
Maybe Carl makes the most sense. Stealing from LISA is a drunkard's walk.
In my case, that means I leave without being caught or LISA catches me. I can never know it's too late until it is. I can never feel I've got enough on ECorp: no information will shut it down. The hour basketball game may be just the thing. It's more a gesture anyway, best because it's pointless, as though we had no idea whom we were flipping off. Which I suppose one never does.
"We're temps, Rood." Could there be a case?
"We still have rights. No one does this."
If LISA offered to hire me on permanently, what would I do? I do feel some responsibility to stay on, to get as much as I can. But then I even wish LISA would catch me, just so the fear would end. That scares me: you know that feeling when you watch someone at the side of the road and the car starts to track off?
I will exit somehow. It's like Fabienne talking about her own considerations when the doctors diagnosed her leukemia. As she put it,
"I tried a class action suit. I thought it would work, you know, many people die, no one cares. I had been a small role in a movie. I am young enough men will feel sorry for me.
"But I spoke to a lawyer, no? He said my chance of leukemia was a few percentage points higher for the background radiation of the plant. There might be some chance, perhaps, a class action suit. Who wants to live in court with cameras?"
Maybe Carl makes the most sense. Stealing from LISA is a drunkard's walk.
In my case, that means I leave without being caught or LISA catches me. I can never know it's too late until it is. I can never feel I've got enough on ECorp: no information will shut it down. The hour basketball game may be just the thing. It's more a gesture anyway, best because it's pointless, as though we had no idea whom we were flipping off. Which I suppose one never does.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Intermission
Why does nothing that feels like a solution have to do with the problem? I'm so happy I forgot about the plant for a couple of hours, like a fool. On some level, craziness becomes a strategy, but probably just when one goes nuts.
Cliff's starting a basketball game among the workers, so I accepted on a whim with great relief, and told myself I would thus throw Branley off. But Branley must at least know I leave the office with papers.
For one moment I couldn't leave the stable melancholy of the weekend.
Maybe I can convince Branley I'm a fool, and he'd better go away or ignore me. My photocopy logistics will get worse, but that's not a lawsuit in itself, and I can hardly imagine I will last long anyway.
Cliff's starting a basketball game among the workers, so I accepted on a whim with great relief, and told myself I would thus throw Branley off. But Branley must at least know I leave the office with papers.
For one moment I couldn't leave the stable melancholy of the weekend.
Maybe I can convince Branley I'm a fool, and he'd better go away or ignore me. My photocopy logistics will get worse, but that's not a lawsuit in itself, and I can hardly imagine I will last long anyway.
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Long Weekend
Why do humans have this thing about having to tell? Knowing I was headed out to see Grey, my fingers felt good around the handlebars. I rode up Alameda, out Manchester out to Culver City through the sort-of ruins without stopping for a lot of lights Sunday morning, like cruising through a bricolage Pompeii.
L.A. streets seem dated and new, the city hollowing from center out, motilities of force, motilities of empire, the We the They concentric like rings from a drop of water or where a bullet passes through a window. Or motilities of consumption, like rings of mold through a loaf of bread.
I haven't seen Grey since before Paris; soon he gets to Perthe. I pedal across town because it's Grey, not someone else, but I spill about my Situation, which hasn't changed since Lakewood.
I have made conversation hygeinic. I'm doing that with everything. I even push fear out the pedals when I ride, pull safety from the handlebars. Since I could blow this all in a sneeze, it's just as well I sneezed at Grey's. He'll tell no one; I don't need to ask. He's even worried about me instead of the plant. I find myself defensive of my endeavor: "I'm not a fool."
Ouch.
We had a few hours; then he left for work in his cab, and I had that sense of having passed time without partaking: Has it been hygeinic for you, too?
His roommate had shot into her room with his first mention of work; Trish eventually picked up her cell, so I pedaled up to Studio City, a bit of a trek with the grit and the slope. Trish lives up Fredonia, an alley that crooks straight up into the damned mountain, so I actually got off the bike for the last couple blocks. I'd rested at the liquor store so as not to arrive early, but I felt just as well walking.
Not half what it seemed a couple of seconds ago.
I'd hoped she'd clear my mind -- a lot to ask of anybody, as you will have observed. But we sat in the jacuzzi with a demi of cold chardonnay and the sun casting shadows across the 101 so far below it seemed actually far enough, Trish stark naked and the water just over her nipples. Mn?
She's on about her website business. She does intranets, mostly: company presence for company personnel. She likes playing in Photoshop and Dreamweaver and talking to business managers about concrete desires that she can fulfill. But work takes her time and she had thought of a child and I am glad she has the place and the jacuzzi and the picture I don't remember at just that perfect place on the wall. And she's Trish whom I would tell most anything but I can't timeshare even this wine and we both know it. So I watch the freeway spread San Fernando into the Basin and vice versa to create the illusion of seeing all: the Souths go south; the Norths go north, but if one arrives, one gets off the freeway. And look at the freeway.
A musician would be perfect, Trish informs me: intense, romantic, absent.
She wants to pay for a massage: "I'll enjoy it more." I slink and accept, and stay an hour after the hour and a half touching her back and her neck until something in my insistence wakes her and she stumbles to bed, the sheet gathered around her breasts and momentarily translucent between her thighs.
She has pointed to the linen closet, and I look at the furniture and consider curling up near her cat and leaving early, but I lock her door behind pretending I'm a ghost and slide off down the river valleys past the streetlights guarding the curves and slopes so it's downhill most all the way in to Lakewood.
Which leaves us where?
L.A. streets seem dated and new, the city hollowing from center out, motilities of force, motilities of empire, the We the They concentric like rings from a drop of water or where a bullet passes through a window. Or motilities of consumption, like rings of mold through a loaf of bread.
I haven't seen Grey since before Paris; soon he gets to Perthe. I pedal across town because it's Grey, not someone else, but I spill about my Situation, which hasn't changed since Lakewood.
I have made conversation hygeinic. I'm doing that with everything. I even push fear out the pedals when I ride, pull safety from the handlebars. Since I could blow this all in a sneeze, it's just as well I sneezed at Grey's. He'll tell no one; I don't need to ask. He's even worried about me instead of the plant. I find myself defensive of my endeavor: "I'm not a fool."
Ouch.
We had a few hours; then he left for work in his cab, and I had that sense of having passed time without partaking: Has it been hygeinic for you, too?
His roommate had shot into her room with his first mention of work; Trish eventually picked up her cell, so I pedaled up to Studio City, a bit of a trek with the grit and the slope. Trish lives up Fredonia, an alley that crooks straight up into the damned mountain, so I actually got off the bike for the last couple blocks. I'd rested at the liquor store so as not to arrive early, but I felt just as well walking.
"No sex," she opens. "How was France?"
Not half what it seemed a couple of seconds ago.
"But I'd like to act in ways that might seem like we were."
I'd hoped she'd clear my mind -- a lot to ask of anybody, as you will have observed. But we sat in the jacuzzi with a demi of cold chardonnay and the sun casting shadows across the 101 so far below it seemed actually far enough, Trish stark naked and the water just over her nipples. Mn?
"No."
She's on about her website business. She does intranets, mostly: company presence for company personnel. She likes playing in Photoshop and Dreamweaver and talking to business managers about concrete desires that she can fulfill. But work takes her time and she had thought of a child and I am glad she has the place and the jacuzzi and the picture I don't remember at just that perfect place on the wall. And she's Trish whom I would tell most anything but I can't timeshare even this wine and we both know it. So I watch the freeway spread San Fernando into the Basin and vice versa to create the illusion of seeing all: the Souths go south; the Norths go north, but if one arrives, one gets off the freeway. And look at the freeway.
A musician would be perfect, Trish informs me: intense, romantic, absent.
She wants to pay for a massage: "I'll enjoy it more." I slink and accept, and stay an hour after the hour and a half touching her back and her neck until something in my insistence wakes her and she stumbles to bed, the sheet gathered around her breasts and momentarily translucent between her thighs.
She has pointed to the linen closet, and I look at the furniture and consider curling up near her cat and leaving early, but I lock her door behind pretending I'm a ghost and slide off down the river valleys past the streetlights guarding the curves and slopes so it's downhill most all the way in to Lakewood.
Which leaves us where?
Monday, May 21, 2007
Gather this:
Today Branley handed me a document:
It dealt with fish impingement at SONGS -- the San Olfactory Nuclear Generating Stations, down in Southern Cal, not a ECorp project, but it has to work the same way. Suck in the cold seawater to cool the plant, boil the water to steam to turn the turbine blades, spit the heated water out through the gratings into the ocean. The sea mammals form a kind of Peaceable Kingdom outside the grate; the wait in line for the cooked fish. They can gorge on all they want; why fight?
Branley waits. Intent, patient, watery-blue eyes, stolid behind the slim brass-rimmed glasses. Do I feign disinterest?
Branley holds holds my gaze: enough. He's awfully clean-cut.
He's complicit. Or he's baiting me.
He's a kid. Or he's female. I'm changing everything, and not just the names. Europe this summer, SC in the fall, "going to get an MBA." He's said nothing bout politics whatsoever. He's asked about Paris: What should I see What's ahead; Where should I eat Where anyone buys.
He holds out the sheaf of stapled papers: "I don't need this until one."
He means right after lunch, after I get back from the library.
"Have a look."
It dealt with fish impingement at SONGS -- the San Olfactory Nuclear Generating Stations, down in Southern Cal, not a ECorp project, but it has to work the same way. Suck in the cold seawater to cool the plant, boil the water to steam to turn the turbine blades, spit the heated water out through the gratings into the ocean. The sea mammals form a kind of Peaceable Kingdom outside the grate; the wait in line for the cooked fish. They can gorge on all they want; why fight?
Branley waits. Intent, patient, watery-blue eyes, stolid behind the slim brass-rimmed glasses. Do I feign disinterest?
"Oh, those fishies went and impinged themselves on us" hoots Aetna; I turn to her as to liberation.
"You like those, Jack?" She continues. "I get those every day. How many pounds, how many tons of fish."
"You know, it's the language of all this that gets me," says Earl. Earl always looks like he has an opinion -- bald, heavy, broad, grey shot through the spreading Tolstoy beard. Earl seems half like he ought to be doing something more important, half like he ought to be looking for a beer by his Harley.
"Hey, look both ways and don't impinge yourselves on any cars, kiddies."
I manage a laugh: "Yeah, what a place." If he's moved, I don't know it. I can't glance over.
"Oh, where you been, Jack?" Aetna continues, "We got impingement to go around. You don't need ECorp. Half the freaking world impinges itself on Boeing. My husband's an engineer. He can't even talk to me there's so much impingement going on. I ask him. I used to ask."
"So you're the spy!" responds Earl, but the joking tone does not reach his eyes.
"Hey, I didn't need his secrets, but there you go. No, he lays there, lays in bed sometimes. He stares at the ceiling, and his mouth works. I'm his wife; I'm not supposed to ask? He says, 'No, office stuff.'"
"Could be" Earl puts in.
"Oh, it is -- usually is, or always: he's an engineer; he can't talk. He's all -- oh, kill ratios and like that. He starts; he goes silent. He looks at me like he's ashamed or he's pissed at me cause I'm there. I shouldn't ask, but it isn't nice. It took awhile."
Branley holds holds my gaze: enough. He's awfully clean-cut.
He's complicit. Or he's baiting me.
He's a kid. Or he's female. I'm changing everything, and not just the names. Europe this summer, SC in the fall, "going to get an MBA." He's said nothing bout politics whatsoever. He's asked about Paris: What should I see What's ahead; Where should I eat Where anyone buys.
Streetlights dapple peach off the Seine before dawn. The ground chills then, so you'd might as well walk. But see the Tower in the day when the wind's down.Les bleus run you off of the Champs d'Elysees, but by the Tuileries you can doze in the sun, while the ground's warm. Le Boubourg's the best. It's warm even when the snow falls. But it closes at night, so check the grates on the metrostops before the first frost. They leave a few broken for charity.
But yes, at the Picasso, visit the goat. There's a lady in clay you should Hullo at the Museé Rodin, right before you leave. Reddish clay, with her eyes hollowed out, but brown -- brown eyes and hair just like Katie Foster in 1990, and if you'd known her you'd remember. And look.
Am I avoiding the question over the document? Not gracefully:
He holds out the sheaf of stapled papers: "I don't need this until one."
He means right after lunch, after I get back from the library.
Friday, May 18, 2007
Fab: An Early Obit
OK, Fabienne: footnote.
I suppose :
Or.
Or.
Or.
So, Fabienne.
Never mind:I'm standing in a library in Alambres, the girl in Paris, presumably, newly married. Pardon the drama.
What did Fabienne say? Her words and would I remember? -- something "wind might dry our bones could leave us clean as stars, so quiet, something something something.
Maybe she lied about the plant in Bretagne or the radioactive tailings by the coal mine in Anjou where she played con los hijos de los campesinos españoles in convincing castellano. Or even her leukemia. She might have thought I'd leave politely, leave her to the man she must have known on our first night that she would marry, the man who had reviewed her work in Le canard enchainé, whom she found comfortable but did not love -- she claimed.
If I can't say this is true, why not a paean to a ghost? Besides, Fab wouldn't die on me so quickly; she's just extremely gone.
Therefore :
And how should I presume?
I suppose :
Her fingers laced through my chest hair, drawn tightly to her mouth in the tent, I suppose. I suppose that that says all I might. She must know that hurts. She must pretend that she's asleep. She must pull the reaction out of -- my skin? my chest?
Or.
Or son corp de danseuse naked head-towards-feet curved backward over my two arms, curved again to kiss the London floor between her ankles, shaking in seizure, dying dove like doves I shot.
Or.
Or the blowjob on Havasu in daylight. "Keep paddling out" she says. "They're going to see. Fab? Fab, the lifeguards have jumped off the platform."
(Ants eat thru the tent, I pull her hand, she won't go on the lake at night.)
Or.
Or asleep suddenly on the campgound table as storm crosses the steppe, approaching strident purple-blackening tumescence cloudbank darkening our starry Utah midnight, gleaming. Her hair grown out now, a bit, as long as my finger from tip almost to the first knuckle, grown fast and blonding fast, whipping frenzy at her ears, her eyes still asleep still as I place the stones, one hand holding a corner of the tarp firm to the table as I roll another stone close, pump it with my leg and arm up on to the table to the tarp, to it hold firmly in place over her blankets.
And another stone, as though the tarp won't billow. And eight. And nine. And twelve. And another stone, as though a grave. And another only stone.
Her lashes in the wind alive.
"Oh, Jack, this finest place to die" she'd said that day. Why can't she feel the wind? I watch her still -- why can't she feel the wind? --
So, Fabienne.
Never mind:I'm standing in a library in Alambres, the girl in Paris, presumably, newly married. Pardon the drama.
What did Fabienne say? Her words and would I remember? -- something "wind might dry our bones could leave us clean as stars, so quiet, something something something.
Maybe she lied about the plant in Bretagne or the radioactive tailings by the coal mine in Anjou where she played con los hijos de los campesinos españoles in convincing castellano. Or even her leukemia. She might have thought I'd leave politely, leave her to the man she must have known on our first night that she would marry, the man who had reviewed her work in Le canard enchainé, whom she found comfortable but did not love -- she claimed.
If I can't say this is true, why not a paean to a ghost? Besides, Fab wouldn't die on me so quickly; she's just extremely gone.
Therefore :
"Hello. I walk in here several days a week, once or twice a day, photocopy a few documents, stroll into the stacks for a few seconds only, then always leave without a book."
And how should I presume?
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Buddy, Can You Spare $0.15/Sheet?
This kills me: having pressed the documents up under my jacket, having walked past the guard and skipped my lunch to make copies, I can't ask the librarian for change. No ATM, no credit card. What a leap of faith, moral training. A leap to a fall.
I stand beside the photocopy machine at the Alambres Public Library trying to look like I'm considering just anything else. I could just walk to the librarian's desk; I could say "I need twenty-five cents" for whatever reason -- "I have a class that starts tomorrow". I could beg it in the parking lot. But no, I can't.
Is this important? The sheet in front of me reads "JUMPERS" with a diagram. Jumpers go in: they clean the pressure chamber. These are the "ZZPTech people I've read so many documents about. Hot mops and buckets, discarded rad suits -- the catwalks become impassable with so much crap.
ZZPTech hires "drunks off the beach at El Castillo," per Suit Man. My colleagues object.
The diagram shows the badges that go off" when they exceed their lifetime exposure to radiation: lifetime. Pop-tarts, y'all? It takes about 45 minutes. Apparently the suits tend to tear open on the hatches. Sometimes, it appears, they leave in a hurry.
The diagram, the original, has a T-short sketched in clean black lines with a baseball cap centered directly over the neck, everything perfectly regular, perfectly symmetrical in dumbshow of objectivity. Should I avoid calling the librarian's attention to me, or am I making excuses rather than bum a quarter?
I grab a pencil that's lying by a computer to copy Dewey Decimal numbers, fish a couple sheets discarded beside the printer, and sketch:
The badge on top above the scrubbing, the badge behind away from the scrubbing, the badge in front in case contamination comes from behind. The worker stays until all three badges go off, reports the lowest two figures: TickticktickticktickTicktickticktickTicktickticktickTicktickticktick--done!
Apparently the workers lie about having worked previously, the better to beg back on.
That's a funny volition with the DT's in the sand. In Paris, I learned to recognize by the chafing on the face how many nights a man had spent outdoors. I suppose it's a bit better by the beach. I picture how it would be scooping the hollow shallow so as not to hit groundwater, anchoring cardboard over the top. In practice most people seem to prefer parks a couple blocks off, where the first row of buildings has blunted the wind.
My ownership this agreement that I may exclude my friends from certain objects
My money a lien on some person's time
My status en différance from another failure,
The top of the desk I write at is still grooved from angry notes I wrote my mother when she confined me to my room "until you learn to behave." I remember the details you might imagine, but I can't remember what the librarian at Alambres looks like. I find that odd: she's female. I walked by her desk today. I know she is about 35 or 40, caucasian, brown hair, light eyes of some sort, curls with a lighter color against a darker. I can see her hair from the side, the hairs on her neck. Her face is slanted away -- my memory covering its faults? The curls are probably set, faux curls, as Frank Norris calls them somewhere.
One question -- in what sense may I care for her opinion more than for Fabienne?
Of course, Fabienne I'll never see again.
I stand beside the photocopy machine at the Alambres Public Library trying to look like I'm considering just anything else. I could just walk to the librarian's desk; I could say "I need twenty-five cents" for whatever reason -- "I have a class that starts tomorrow". I could beg it in the parking lot. But no, I can't.
Is this important? The sheet in front of me reads "JUMPERS" with a diagram. Jumpers go in: they clean the pressure chamber. These are the "ZZPTech people I've read so many documents about. Hot mops and buckets, discarded rad suits -- the catwalks become impassable with so much crap.
ZZPTech hires "drunks off the beach at El Castillo," per Suit Man. My colleagues object.
"You hire drunks to clean nuclear facilities? Don't they make mistakes?"
"Oh, there are problems. Who should we get?"
"Well, engineers, at least to direct it."
He laughs, briefly: "You can't have engineers clean a plant. They know what's inside it."
"Someone, then -- you have to advertise."
"We're willing. Hey, do you want it?"
"Besides, even if you did, we couldn't hire you for very long. By the time we train someone, they're almost done working. We rehearse them, we show them how to use the suits, we take them through each step. But from the time they cross that hatch, they have about 45 minutes,"
"45 minutes? How can anyone make a living with that? How much does it pay per hour?"
"Not much. At the beginning it was about seven dollars an hour -- no no! it's more now. But it's not something most people who have useful lives would consider.
The diagram shows the badges that go off" when they exceed their lifetime exposure to radiation: lifetime. Pop-tarts, y'all? It takes about 45 minutes. Apparently the suits tend to tear open on the hatches. Sometimes, it appears, they leave in a hurry.
The diagram, the original, has a T-short sketched in clean black lines with a baseball cap centered directly over the neck, everything perfectly regular, perfectly symmetrical in dumbshow of objectivity. Should I avoid calling the librarian's attention to me, or am I making excuses rather than bum a quarter?
I grab a pencil that's lying by a computer to copy Dewey Decimal numbers, fish a couple sheets discarded beside the printer, and sketch:
Badge in front.
Badge on top of head.
Badge in center of the back.
The badge on top above the scrubbing, the badge behind away from the scrubbing, the badge in front in case contamination comes from behind. The worker stays until all three badges go off, reports the lowest two figures: TickticktickticktickTicktickticktickTicktickticktickTicktickticktick--done!
"Oh, we don't force them," Suit says.
Apparently the workers lie about having worked previously, the better to beg back on.
That's a funny volition with the DT's in the sand. In Paris, I learned to recognize by the chafing on the face how many nights a man had spent outdoors. I suppose it's a bit better by the beach. I picture how it would be scooping the hollow shallow so as not to hit groundwater, anchoring cardboard over the top. In practice most people seem to prefer parks a couple blocks off, where the first row of buildings has blunted the wind.
My ownership this agreement that I may exclude my friends from certain objects
My money a lien on some person's time
My status en différance from another failure,
Tick Tick Tick
The top of the desk I write at is still grooved from angry notes I wrote my mother when she confined me to my room "until you learn to behave." I remember the details you might imagine, but I can't remember what the librarian at Alambres looks like. I find that odd: she's female. I walked by her desk today. I know she is about 35 or 40, caucasian, brown hair, light eyes of some sort, curls with a lighter color against a darker. I can see her hair from the side, the hairs on her neck. Her face is slanted away -- my memory covering its faults? The curls are probably set, faux curls, as Frank Norris calls them somewhere.
One question -- in what sense may I care for her opinion more than for Fabienne?
Of course, Fabienne I'll never see again.
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Filing Stolen Papers
So,
someone analyzes my responses to see I'm too stupid to be an engineer. I don't suppose I'll confuse them. They dumped over a hundred temps that trained with me, all but eight or nine. We repeat that the others read too slow -- nervously, I suppose, though I wish as often I were laid off. The supers nod, but I can't make those numbers work. For what Ecorp spent to train that room, the slowboats can't have cost too much.
What might LISA check? We each get documents, fresh stacks, each the size of a novel in printed type. We each wade through a couple stacks or so a day. We read, we classify each doc by site, date, topic, activity, personnel -- a set of numbers, a couple words. The supers get a batch, record hour and minute, hand out another batch. They spot-check everything, revise nothing. They send it back. The slowest get laid off, they say, plus Jim.
But I have to photocopy at lunch or evening. I skim ahead, hang onto docs overtime. I can't photocopy at LISA, of course. A guard actually stands at the machine. Branley told me, laughing, and I actually walked back down the hall with him to say hello to the guard. We annoyed him, I suspect, but mildly; and it seemed like the least suspicious thing to do at the time.
So I copy the docs at the library, Alambres Public Library, just across the street and about a half a block down. But that means I have to skim thru the docs and look for copy, then hang onto the docs til lunch or 5 oclock. If I copy at noon, I leave the copies in a copy of Sartre's Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr -- something no one's apt to disturb.
The irony of which makes this work better as fiction, doesn't it? Assuming there's no dead body turns up, or none with a name on it.
someone analyzes my responses to see I'm too stupid to be an engineer. I don't suppose I'll confuse them. They dumped over a hundred temps that trained with me, all but eight or nine. We repeat that the others read too slow -- nervously, I suppose, though I wish as often I were laid off. The supers nod, but I can't make those numbers work. For what Ecorp spent to train that room, the slowboats can't have cost too much.
What might LISA check? We each get documents, fresh stacks, each the size of a novel in printed type. We each wade through a couple stacks or so a day. We read, we classify each doc by site, date, topic, activity, personnel -- a set of numbers, a couple words. The supers get a batch, record hour and minute, hand out another batch. They spot-check everything, revise nothing. They send it back. The slowest get laid off, they say, plus Jim.
But I have to photocopy at lunch or evening. I skim ahead, hang onto docs overtime. I can't photocopy at LISA, of course. A guard actually stands at the machine. Branley told me, laughing, and I actually walked back down the hall with him to say hello to the guard. We annoyed him, I suspect, but mildly; and it seemed like the least suspicious thing to do at the time.
So I copy the docs at the library, Alambres Public Library, just across the street and about a half a block down. But that means I have to skim thru the docs and look for copy, then hang onto the docs til lunch or 5 oclock. If I copy at noon, I leave the copies in a copy of Sartre's Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr -- something no one's apt to disturb.
The irony of which makes this work better as fiction, doesn't it? Assuming there's no dead body turns up, or none with a name on it.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Orwell Rockin in the Free World ~or~ A Little Bit of Hairy in the Night.
Pity Orwell in his grave. Someone's going to have to dig him up and install a rotisserie spit.
LISA caught Jim today, assuming he's guilty or that his guilt matches their accusations. Something in his responses said Westinghouse, so SuitMan the PR Pro didst regale us, trailing a litany of consequentia. Suit:
If you don't know squat but you're trying to think, maybe that's easier: they haven't caught me, so far as I know. They'd bust immediately were they certain. Why wait until after a leak?
On the other hand, one person might lead to another.
I worked with Jim for a couple months w/o camaradery -- dumb luck, or a strategy of his. I took him for stupid -- a misstep that starts to look like a pattern. Now I want to know what he had for breakfast.
I can draw his face back. A bit. He sat, so, hung his face so: Muuaoouuw
-- hopelessly corporeal meatpuppet with the rest of us caught in the geometric tines of LISA's will.
Mostly his mouth would go slack.
Pray he's guilty; maybe he'll get off. At least Westinghouse might spring for a lawyer with claws, something more feral than the Rex Todd thing that David Keogh got in Britain.
You may not know: The NY Times put Keogh and O'Connor's story wa-a-ay down on A-12 today. Had Bettina not double-folded the paper in front of that white blouse at break I might have missed it: "British Court Convicts 2 of Leaking Secret Memo on Bush-Blair Conversation." Seems George II spoke to Blair about blowing up Al Jazeera News in Qatar. Of course, the prosecutor's paid to play Pilate:
Even the attorney for the defense characterized the defendent's action as "misguided" and done "in a way that was likely to cause damage." The defendent had pleaded innocent, BTW.
First the Il Deuce-style crotch-shot on the aircraft carrier, now this. Bush's handlers must miss their jobs at the Washington Zoo.
Maybe I could grant delicacy to the diplomacy behind MSNBC's decision to can top-rated Donahue -- delicacy in an Alberto Gonzalez kind of way: they had the sagacity to lie about it. Their sagacity makes me wish I'd watched the program, but I guess we won't get reruns right away. But no, a Patriot Missile right across the desk of the Late Edition. That's escalating discourse.
LISA caught Jim today, assuming he's guilty or that his guilt matches their accusations. Something in his responses said Westinghouse, so SuitMan the PR Pro didst regale us, trailing a litany of consequentia. Suit:
"When you know something, it's hard to hide."
If you don't know squat but you're trying to think, maybe that's easier: they haven't caught me, so far as I know. They'd bust immediately were they certain. Why wait until after a leak?
On the other hand, one person might lead to another.
I worked with Jim for a couple months w/o camaradery -- dumb luck, or a strategy of his. I took him for stupid -- a misstep that starts to look like a pattern. Now I want to know what he had for breakfast.
I can draw his face back. A bit. He sat, so, hung his face so: Muuaoouuw
-- I turn from the keyboard to practice the gesture. He stroked his thin whiskers, stared frontwards during training
-- hopelessly corporeal meatpuppet with the rest of us caught in the geometric tines of LISA's will.
Mostly his mouth would go slack.
Pray he's guilty; maybe he'll get off. At least Westinghouse might spring for a lawyer with claws, something more feral than the Rex Todd thing that David Keogh got in Britain.
You may not know: The NY Times put Keogh and O'Connor's story wa-a-ay down on A-12 today. Had Bettina not double-folded the paper in front of that white blouse at break I might have missed it: "British Court Convicts 2 of Leaking Secret Memo on Bush-Blair Conversation." Seems George II spoke to Blair about blowing up Al Jazeera News in Qatar. Of course, the prosecutor's paid to play Pilate:
Diplomacy is a delicate and sensitive act, and it cannot properly be carried out in our interest when what one government says to another cannot be kept secret or confidential.
Even the attorney for the defense characterized the defendent's action as "misguided" and done "in a way that was likely to cause damage." The defendent had pleaded innocent, BTW.
Why, do turn your pretty blue eyes, Scarlett. How one does blush to see the delicate diplomacy of a Patriot missile exposed!
First the Il Deuce-style crotch-shot on the aircraft carrier, now this. Bush's handlers must miss their jobs at the Washington Zoo.
Maybe I could grant delicacy to the diplomacy behind MSNBC's decision to can top-rated Donahue -- delicacy in an Alberto Gonzalez kind of way: they had the sagacity to lie about it. Their sagacity makes me wish I'd watched the program, but I guess we won't get reruns right away. But no, a Patriot Missile right across the desk of the Late Edition. That's escalating discourse.
Tuesday, May 8, 2007
Musing Whitman
self
of passions whittled
rhythms of memoire
forgettings
in absence
event leaves
dried
unfold enfold no
explanation
....
/*Let's go back, Walt,
& let you explain the grass*/
of passions whittled
rhythms of memoire
forgettings
in absence
event leaves
dried
unfold enfold no
explanation
....
/*Let's go back, Walt,
& let you explain the grass*/
Orwell's Grave
"Four verbs," Aetna says -- Edna. Edna -- Aetna -- is from The Far Side, roughly pyramidal, sits beside me or across the table in the War Room at LISA M-F 8-5 and jokes with the dozen or so of us who've survived the recent eighty-some percent attrition rate.
The supers kicked back my Friday batch of documents today; I must have looked perplexed.
"They'd really like everything that happens in these documents to fit under four verbs," she continued. I'd really like that, too. LISA gets the documents from ECorp, her only customer after five years of happy corporate marriage. ECorp seems to get them from all over. They're from the NRC, Zzptech, Westinghouse, Bechtel: resumes, discussions of steam generator corrosion, redundant signatures for shipments coming & going -- it's hard to tell which.
Four verbs. The super actually walked over to my desk to mention that the word accident did not exist for LISA: "We call that an incident. No. Accident, if there ever were an accident, I'm not a highly enough placed official to chew you out about it." Then, walking away: "And that's not to imply that there is such a thing."
Does this sound like something I was supposed to have known?
So imagine, George Orwell writes a book, calls it 1984. He gets it published, even read, read so much his folks incorporate his words into daily English. I'd call that time for brews and congratulations. But no, the people he would burlesque use his piece as a guidebook -- to the extent that no one in charge anywhere at any time during six weeks of training could say or would say, "Yo! Asshole! four verbs."
So why write why move? Hey, go ahead, buy a place in Seaside or San Anselmo and let the wind blow when Zztech opens the pressurizer and "blows it out" for cleaning. I'll go write loveletters to carp.
Aetna took it better. She does:
She must have meant to be comforting: she near-swallowd the guffaw when my eyes bugged. Like me? Am I unzipped? Should I shave my whiskers, or does that look like I'm trying to hide?
I barely talk at LISA. I try not to look long at anyone or swing my shoulders as I walk. Maybe she saw the bicycle I lock to a phone pole outside the office lot. I had not taken Aetna to be perceptive. So clearly she has perceived more than I and is willing to be generous.
"No, really," she went on, "What is it you do?"
Eat, sleep, move when poked. Until five seconds ago I smuggled documents out of the information service of a nuclear energy facility.
"I mean, do you paint, do you write?"
I flatter myself -- but, well, you see.
"You're not invisible, you know."
"No." I don't have a third eye either. Is this something everybody sees?
"Oh, Jack, you're fine. But all this regularity has to just bug you, this business of having to classify things just the way we-all do, of having the supervisors review each little thing and send things back when you would normally classify everything some way no one even imagines."
No one even imagines?
She talks on to smooth my nerves, but the gestures hint broadly that she knows nothing of what would make me nervous, then:
"People know things about you, Jack, just like you know things about them. Sometimes we find it easier to not speak. Don't we?"
Do we?
I need to be misunderstood. I need someone who doesn't care:
The supers kicked back my Friday batch of documents today; I must have looked perplexed.
"They'd really like everything that happens in these documents to fit under four verbs," she continued. I'd really like that, too. LISA gets the documents from ECorp, her only customer after five years of happy corporate marriage. ECorp seems to get them from all over. They're from the NRC, Zzptech, Westinghouse, Bechtel: resumes, discussions of steam generator corrosion, redundant signatures for shipments coming & going -- it's hard to tell which.
Four verbs. The super actually walked over to my desk to mention that the word accident did not exist for LISA: "We call that an incident. No. Accident, if there ever were an accident, I'm not a highly enough placed official to chew you out about it." Then, walking away: "And that's not to imply that there is such a thing."
Does this sound like something I was supposed to have known?
So imagine, George Orwell writes a book, calls it 1984. He gets it published, even read, read so much his folks incorporate his words into daily English. I'd call that time for brews and congratulations. But no, the people he would burlesque use his piece as a guidebook -- to the extent that no one in charge anywhere at any time during six weeks of training could say or would say, "Yo! Asshole! four verbs."
So why write why move? Hey, go ahead, buy a place in Seaside or San Anselmo and let the wind blow when Zztech opens the pressurizer and "blows it out" for cleaning. I'll go write loveletters to carp.
Aetna took it better. She does:
"Don't worry. This sort of work is hard for people like you."
She must have meant to be comforting: she near-swallowd the guffaw when my eyes bugged. Like me? Am I unzipped? Should I shave my whiskers, or does that look like I'm trying to hide?
I barely talk at LISA. I try not to look long at anyone or swing my shoulders as I walk. Maybe she saw the bicycle I lock to a phone pole outside the office lot. I had not taken Aetna to be perceptive. So clearly she has perceived more than I and is willing to be generous.
"No, really," she went on, "What is it you do?"
Eat, sleep, move when poked. Until five seconds ago I smuggled documents out of the information service of a nuclear energy facility.
"I mean, do you paint, do you write?"
I flatter myself -- but, well, you see.
"You're not invisible, you know."
"No." I don't have a third eye either. Is this something everybody sees?
"Oh, Jack, you're fine. But all this regularity has to just bug you, this business of having to classify things just the way we-all do, of having the supervisors review each little thing and send things back when you would normally classify everything some way no one even imagines."
No one even imagines?
She talks on to smooth my nerves, but the gestures hint broadly that she knows nothing of what would make me nervous, then:
"People know things about you, Jack, just like you know things about them. Sometimes we find it easier to not speak. Don't we?"
Do we?
I need to be misunderstood. I need someone who doesn't care:
O gentle reader, do not leave!
Sunday, May 6, 2007
Day Off
Bronzediamond carp grouts
At the shore
At the work the work the root the reed ~*
Did I ever think a trout was finer
Push at colors
Ever the work obrar filtrar the slow
consumation
.done ~*
So wd I work
& work@ LISA
So who's LISA?
Legal Information Service Associates
And who is LISA to me?
Better sleep with the fishies.
At the shore
At the work the work the root the reed ~*
Did I ever think a trout was finer
the grandeur of the colors on the side
the colors of the carp against mud the floating algae
the tan and green and yellow reed
colors of a person I recall at nightPush that the seen bend
colors of a person I might see in her child in her aunt in her cousin
Push at colors
Ever the work obrar filtrar the slow
consumation
.done ~*
So wd I work
& work@ LISA
So who's LISA?
Legal Information Service Associates
And who is LISA to me?
Better sleep with the fishies.
Friday, May 4, 2007
snoitisnarT
Sorry to leave abruptly. There's a rhythm to this; I'll get it. I imagine a You: When I don't write, You get pissed. When I get pretentious, you feel shame; you don't forward the site. You stay away, but only for a bit.
So go ahead, pretend I'm real.
I'm staying with my father, have for months since I got back from Paris broke and 40-some hours awake, startled at the width of suburban streets.
I explain for myself if not you.
I don't mean to present this as romantic or deliberate or other-than-fuckupped. I came, I wrote, I floundered. I had some idea that I could write truth, so no one read to say I sucked. I sat ripping pages out of Writer's Market, nothing to smoke them with. Phillipe loaned me a couple grand to relocate: "Come to Paris." Whyever not? About the time the money left I left my address book and passport on a car in the Rue de francs bourgeois long enough to get a couple car-lengths away and turn -- oops.
The Embassy folk Place Concord felt I'd behaved badly. The Embassy must be a fun place to work. "You meet the strangest people," as an elegant ancient man with a curling handlebar moustache told my aunt Monica one time on a bus in Culver City as she leaned over and glanced at his sketchbook to verify that he was, indeed, Salvador Dali.
The embassy does filter the people entering. But then, I qualified -- a blue-eyes-no-Qu'ran thing, I suppose: as an American citizen, I had a right to know why I couldn't return home.
Now I wish I were back at le Beaubourg, thankful again at the grey rain slanting outside, proud owner of a chair with a view of two library stacks. Do I miss it? Or does seeing the rainwater jet through the handcarved gargoyle mouths on Rue Saint Denis give me a way to avoid being in my father's home in Lakewood CA speaking Aeromilitary with you --
-- and dealing with my job for ECorp, at LISA, where I classify the documents of said industry in a language which contains just four verbs, none of which involve leak, break down, irradiate, brainfart or fuck up.
No no no: moi, je suis poete: so I've just got to find what rhymes with incident.
So go ahead, pretend I'm real.
I'm staying with my father, have for months since I got back from Paris broke and 40-some hours awake, startled at the width of suburban streets.
I explain for myself if not you.
I don't mean to present this as romantic or deliberate or other-than-fuckupped. I came, I wrote, I floundered. I had some idea that I could write truth, so no one read to say I sucked. I sat ripping pages out of Writer's Market, nothing to smoke them with. Phillipe loaned me a couple grand to relocate: "Come to Paris." Whyever not? About the time the money left I left my address book and passport on a car in the Rue de francs bourgeois long enough to get a couple car-lengths away and turn -- oops.
The Embassy folk Place Concord felt I'd behaved badly. The Embassy must be a fun place to work. "You meet the strangest people," as an elegant ancient man with a curling handlebar moustache told my aunt Monica one time on a bus in Culver City as she leaned over and glanced at his sketchbook to verify that he was, indeed, Salvador Dali.
The embassy does filter the people entering. But then, I qualified -- a blue-eyes-no-Qu'ran thing, I suppose: as an American citizen, I had a right to know why I couldn't return home.
"All you have to do is bring in five Americans who do have ID's to vouch for you."
"Can I get them to come into some office in Los Angeles?"
"Don't you know anyone?"
"I'm American."
"The United States Government will not issue a passport with no way of
identifying you."
"Can I get a dozen Frenchmen to say I'm not French?"
"American citizens with identification. Do your best."
Now I wish I were back at le Beaubourg, thankful again at the grey rain slanting outside, proud owner of a chair with a view of two library stacks. Do I miss it? Or does seeing the rainwater jet through the handcarved gargoyle mouths on Rue Saint Denis give me a way to avoid being in my father's home in Lakewood CA speaking Aeromilitary with you --
-- and dealing with my job for ECorp, at LISA, where I classify the documents of said industry in a language which contains just four verbs, none of which involve leak, break down, irradiate, brainfart or fuck up.
No no no: moi, je suis poete: so I've just got to find what rhymes with incident.
Thursday, May 3, 2007
Dust Angels
Dear Angel of Dust;
I always wanted to write that. Nathaniel Mackey wrote that. He wrote it in Bedouin Hornbook and maybe the rest of the trilogy. I should have brought a copy to the ducks today. I could have sung it.
Like roadside dust to settle myself I settled to watch the ducks today. Again. Then pedalled in darkness, glad for the rocks and gravel vibrating chill thru my shoulders from the tines, glad for darkness.
What if Mackey didn't want religion, just a book? What if he never wanted to write a book, but no one had written it or someone left it somewhere, let the leaves scatter and damp in algae and birdcrap.
The leaves I stole from the office I left on the spokes of the bike, dry, pinned by the keys.
Thank you for coming to a second post when I wrote you nothing in the first.
I must have known something when I felt guilty to take this job. I'd walked into the Voltage office, the temp place, and told them I needed a paycheck. I felt I implied that I would do most anything, and the agent smiled behind her Moneypenney dark frames as though that anything sounded just correct.
I'll get to funny, but my father's keys are at the door, and he doesn't need to know.
And there isn't time. Was there? I've mislaid it. Dear Angel of Dust these four thousand years whoever ever else?
I always wanted to write that. Nathaniel Mackey wrote that. He wrote it in Bedouin Hornbook and maybe the rest of the trilogy. I should have brought a copy to the ducks today. I could have sung it.
Like roadside dust to settle myself I settled to watch the ducks today. Again. Then pedalled in darkness, glad for the rocks and gravel vibrating chill thru my shoulders from the tines, glad for darkness.
What if Mackey didn't want religion, just a book? What if he never wanted to write a book, but no one had written it or someone left it somewhere, let the leaves scatter and damp in algae and birdcrap.
The leaves I stole from the office I left on the spokes of the bike, dry, pinned by the keys.
Thank you for coming to a second post when I wrote you nothing in the first.
I must have known something when I felt guilty to take this job. I'd walked into the Voltage office, the temp place, and told them I needed a paycheck. I felt I implied that I would do most anything, and the agent smiled behind her Moneypenney dark frames as though that anything sounded just correct.
"This writing," she mentioned, and casually, "Does it ever take, well, a journalistic air? I mean, ah, pieces for newspapers, or --"
"Oh, no no, just poetry," I played a hunch, played a false modesty as though to hide false pride, "a thing about how words fit together." She smiled. I suppose I fit some part. From the stubble on my face when I'd gotten off the plane I had carved some affectation of a goatee, and as I spoke to her I had crossed my legs comfortably in a way that should feel faggy this side of the Atlantic.
"No, that's OK. That's fine," she said. "It's just. We've sent people before. They're funny over there."
I'll get to funny, but my father's keys are at the door, and he doesn't need to know.
And there isn't time. Was there? I've mislaid it. Dear Angel of Dust these four thousand years whoever ever else?
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
Mayday
"You work for ECorp."I'd thrown my bicycle in the back of his pickup where he pulled over on that long stretch near Walker Narrows -- an act of faith, but an innocent one -- thrown it in and jumped into the cab grateful enough. Then I got the novelistic long moment, his head framed in the window of the pickup, the eyes the ears the nose the line of the hair no one I knew: no one from Voltage Temps, no one I'd passed in LISA's corridors sneaking to the john. And I considering how fast the truck might be going, how the asphalt would rasp and tear were I to jump, where or whether a point might come in which I could snag the bike from the back, snag it and have a few feet down some road before he might turn.
The pops of the shotguns just off at El Cuello Rojo Trap and Skeet spoke
Time
Time
Time .12 gauge, 20 gauge -- For years my father reloaded shells from a huge tin of slow-burning Unique powder someone had special-ordered and abandoned. They'd flash a good foot out of a 25-inch barrel and roar; I listened for his roar.
Time.
"Yes," I answer, answer the driver who has pulled over. If he knows, what can I tell him?
"Ha! Look at yourself, man - no, your eyes: look in the mirror. You fool! Like I can't spot an engineer so close to ECorp, nothing else for fucking miles."Nothing else. Voltage Temps signs my checks; I work for LISA, at the office there in Alambres, so of course I work for ECorp:
"Don't we all?"
"Who else but an engineer would peddle through the middle of nowhere on a bicycle with his shirt open and his tie flapping in the air like a goddamn dog's tongue."
I don't know any engineers: what I'll write comes without expertise.
"You headed down the bike trail, down the river?"
"Sure." A little out of my way, but I'd ride with no traffic, and that would do.So I sat and looked at the ducks on the river. I decided to write you, to write this, to actually post it.
Just don't believe a word.
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