Say what?

There are some things that make you want to break out in song, like a cheap musical. My life has a pretty weird sound track anyway – so  a little Monty Python would not be too far off the mark.

I am thinking of the Spam-song right now…

“Spam spam spam

Spameli-Spammmm”

- second verse same as the first, ad infinitum.

I was checking my emails at work and found the following piece of poetry:

“Walled city, where i hoped my broken arm would joy and sorrow,
honour and insult, etc.,) with constitute the double manifestation
of the soul. Streets to the little house opposite ford’s
theatre. Maid. Poor georgette! Said hermia softly, watching.”

And – yes it does read like nonsense poetry doesn’t it? The bastard love child of Shakespeare and some coked up German expressionist. And what made it even more funny was that it came under the header “how to make your girlfriend happy” or something like that.

Well, spam on you! Spam on you all!

The cogs in my brain start whirring like crazy at this point.

What is that? Random text generator? How does a text like that come into existence? Drunken chimpanzees at the keyboard? And I’ve read enough literary theory for all the categories and post-modernist theories to start kicking in. Paul Auster would love this stuff. And the absurdists would too. Ionesco and the boys… Don’t look at me like that – I told you I read.

Besides I am running on two hours of sleep, eleven cups of coffee and pure adrenaline right now. My brain is allowed to amuse itself any way it can.

ROL

Books and … stuff

Aherm.

I’m quite comfortable with living alone, actually. I mean, stepping in to my apartment is a bit like walking into my head. Wait… that can’t be good …

It’s close quarters and all that. My place is small, littered with books, paraphernalia, bones and more books. Oh, and did I mention the books?

Yesterday I finally snapped. I own too much stuff… It hits me every once in while. I mean, all this stuff. Some of the stuff is necessary, but a lot of it is just stuff. You know. The kinds of things you can’t really throw out because – well, you need them later, but not right now.

So, there I am knee deep in stuff and occasionally yelling “son of a bitch” at something or other… No, that’s pretty normal for me, don’t worry. You know, throwing away books is against the rules so I can’t really do that – but clothes and shoes and appliances? No problem. I can jettison that without batting an eye. Occasionally that results in me looking for a shirt I already threw away, but I can live with that.

The last couple of weeks have been tough. I’ve been whittled into kindling by work and friends and family telling me what I am and am not. And most of the time that doesn’t really bother me, everybody has an opinion about everything, it’s just how we relate to the world. Sometimes though it comes in droves and that can get to be a bit much. Especially when all the verbs are tiring and all the adjectives negative.

There’s a book – well, there’s almost always a book, isn’t there? – that I read a while back. It’s been made into a movie that I just happened to see the other day. It put me in mind of what I was at seventeen, at nineteen even. Funny how these things go… and you know the best cure for that kind of thing really is throwing things out. Get rid of the stuff that just accumulates and try to figure out what is worth hanging on to.

The irony is that the silly season is coming up. That usually means more stuff. I don’t know…. Right now all I want for Christmas is to be sitting in front of a huge pinewood fire deep in the woods eating spaghetti-o’s out of the tin. Possibly washing them down with brandy laced hot chocolate.

ROL

Soul snaps back

Yesterday was a tough one.

There's a lot of travel in my calendar right now. That's okay, though, 'cause trains around here run on time and are clean and reasonably comfortable. 
No rule without exceptions, though. 
So yesterday I woke up, went to work, but in a loooong day of headachingly hard stuff – concentration on max, topic a bit  on the bleak side and ten trotted off to the station. 
At this point I had to make a choice. I either bought myself a book or something to eat. I can go a good long while without eating, but I can't survive a five hour journey without a book. Choice made and noted. Got book, got on train. 
Due to arrive in my home town at 22:46. I figured I'd make it back to my apartment, have a snack and then be all stowed away and tucked into bed at around midnight. 
Not so much, actually. 
There was trouble on the line. Let's put it this way, we left on time and then got screwed several times along the way. And not in a way you'd enjoy. First there was the ”we only have one rail operating for trains in both directions” problem. Then there was the ”we're behind a freight train right now and – as the conducted put it – we can't overtake it, because we're in a train” thing and then to round out the day – the light signals went dark. And dark is pretty dark around here. No way of knowing if there's a train coming in the other direction. Not a good thing at all. Since I'd rather not crash and burn horribly in a train (or a plane, or a bus ... or any kind of vehicle, thank you.
I read my book. 
I tried to sleep. No luck there. 
I thought about the wisdom of my choice of skipping the eating-thing. 
I looked at the scenery, when such was afforded. 
I looked at the moon. 
When we finally did arrive we we're almost two hours late. Do the math.

Just before we pulled into the station I catnapped for about twenty minutes and then I had the brisk walk home so I wasn't tired anymore when I finally did make it back to my place. 

When I lay down in bed so late it was actually early again I got that strange sensation you sometimes get when you've been traveling all day. It's like you're soul has been stretched thin across the darkened landscape having just grounded itself in the place where you've been staying and now it's struggling to get back to you. Like a chord of stretched military grade parachute chord is the only thing keeping it attached to you. It's a little disorienting. I guess that's the land version of jet lag. You expect it to thump back into your body when you are finally still. 
Or maybe that's just fatigue? 

A couple of hours later I'm back at work. Still a little lost and hung-overish, not from drinking, but from lack of sleep and cognitive overload. Things are looking pretty Tyler Durdenesque right now.
At least the coffee is good. 

ROL

The Paperless office…

My desk at work is a marvel of order. I keep all my stuff neatly stowed away, arranged in pleasing patterns and piles. Things that need immediate attention to the left, things that might be smart to hang to in their own place. There’s a place for everything and I work hard at keeping it that way. Not that I’ll hunt down and beat anyone who’s borrowed my stapler or anything…

Now, my desk at home is a completely different story. I have a big desk. It’s cluttered beyond belief. Even I feel a little uncomfortable as the steadily growing pile of papers shift and lurch and threaten to avalanche. Post-its tacked to every available surface. And of course the mind-map madness I face as I look up at my notice board. Organic growth has taken over and slips of paper containing random quotes, bits of stuff, lyrics, poems, pictures and maps have slowly started blooming onto the wall.

My apartment has a few too many characteristics in common with the average American serial killer movie for me to be entirely comfortable with it. It’s not so much that it makes me nervous as the fact that I really don’t feel like inviting anyone over anymore. It’s clean… but it looks a bit … unwholesome, frankly. I have a thing about books… So I live in a little burrow of books. My book cases have vomited on the floor. Stacked against the walls… Hmm. I think I might be giving a little too much information here. I’ll stop now.

I go at my desk at least once a week. I mean I sort though the mail, throw out the junk and finished business. I tend to throw out some of the unfinished business too. I just can’t be bothered with caring about absolutely everything. I mean… Honestly – does anyone believe I’ll make it to retirement? Come on – the way I live? And – whatever happened to the paperless office? It seems the more shortcuts we create via computers, cell phones and messenger and what-not the more paper we generate. Still get the junk mail. Still get the forms you have to fill out, surveys, bills, papers about the papers you just got.

So maybe living a bit more nomadic will be good for me. I mean I can’t possibly lug all this stuff around, now can I? And I won’t buy more books as I travel, now will I? Oh, wait… That’s right – I will. I know myself well enough to know that if I have two hours to spend in any town where I don’t live I gravitate towards the nearest second-hand bookshop. And once you entered one of those places you rarely leave without buying. At least I don’t.

I can almost see a hint of wood now – I mean I can almost see a hint of the actual desk under the piles of stuff and gear. The notes I’ve written to myself haven’t been that disturbing this time. Mostly just reminders and pass words and keywords. And I think I have it under pacific control. Time for another cup of the black stuff and then I’m off to work.

ROL