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| Sometimes I wonder
if I'm dead. If maybe my spirit is curled in some corner of the celestial round-tent
- hallucinating life. I've learned, as one must, to ignore the leaves falling from the ceiling when I walk down the hallway at work. I know they belong to another autumn. The carpet might have been blue once, but now it is so worn and stained that if it had a few flecks of crystal, granite would spring to mind. The smudged and scratched walls were originally 50's institutional white; kind of fitting, really. Occasionally the water will burble in the bathroom. I hear streams in the distance. The walls dissolve into a snow bank, frost crunches under my feet and I taste blood. Eventually I remember that I am a native Floridian. I've never seen snow - let alone a snow bank - outside of pictures. Reality makes a choice and solidifies around me. Conversation and swirling air greet my exit. I walk back to my office on the almost granite carpet. | |
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| The voices tend to
get surly when I ignore them, but the incessant chatter makes it difficult to
hear my boss give instructions. Brake pad stock levels are not going to wait while I sort out the newest discord between the Aspects. My palms itch and sweat. Several Aspects are expressing discomfort at the lack of a firearm close to hand. Others are still bemoaning the fact that I stopped carrying a knife years ago. The weaponry issue isn't novel really; it comes up at each new movie or book with violence and mayhem at its core. And since those are my favorite types of entertainment, I am besieged frequently. Hockey was my temporary salvation. It appeased even the most violent Aspect and gave me a few hours of enthralled quiet. Oil filters, air filters and spark plugs don't interest the Aspects in the slightest. I don't mind them sulking. I just wish they'd sulk in silence. | |
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| Going out into public
is always an adventure. My distinctive stature makes me easily noticeable. People
often come up and ask if I remember them. Hmmm, let me think. Were you the serving boy in King Edward's court that I thrashed for spilling wine on my new shirt? Were you one of the three men that killed me in a back alley on gorgeous spring night in 69? Perhaps you were my favorite client when I worked the streets in Paris, late 1800's? No? Oh. You went to elementary school with me. I smile, cordial as always. The conversation is forever the same; first, polite inquiries into each other's health; then, congratulations at the achievement of life's milestones and finally, condolences over major losses of family or whatnot. It is a routine I can do in my sleep. I grouse to myself, once the conversation closes, about how exasperating it is for people to expect me to remember them from that many years ago. The Aspects howl with laughter. Hours later I get the irony. | |
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| It seems so out of
place, a dinosaur amongst the sleek monotony of gray. It must have been an accident.
What else would explain a wood filing cabinet where once stood a copier/fax? What
else, but an accident, would account for the only wood object in the office? I stop and stare at this anomaly. People mistake my expression (nothing new there) and ask me if I am unwell. My faithful peanut gallery giggles as I assure all questioners that I am fine. The Aspects tease me for lying. They know what a stickler I am for honesty, but even I realize the futility of answering some questions with the truth. I gaze a little longer at the misplaced item, enjoying the way the light reflects the changes in the wood grain. In a few days it won't even register. In a few days it will simply become another prop in the office drama, but for now it glistens a hello to me and I answer with a silent one of my own. | |
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| It is coming. I can
feel it. The power, as it rolls relentlessly on, is intoxicating. The wind, at first cajoles, then demands and finally finds its voice. Nothing is impervious, nothing spared; indifference being one of the greatest appeals. Chaos surrounds me. Treetops bend nearly to their roots; rain stinging against my exposed, and not so exposed, flesh. Lightening that startles even when anticipated. Thunder so powerful it is as much a physical sensation as a sound. It is this spot, this exact moment that I am finally at equilibrium. The cacophony inside and out, the pressures inside and out, have reached a balance. At the altar of nature's fury where even the mightiest are humbled, I find peace. The rain softens, becomes a caress, a farewell. The wind follows, with impish gusts that tease a promise to return. Thunder fades, returns to just a sound. And I grieve. | |
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| I'm not entirely sure
what kind it is. A flash of red, then perhaps it is a Cardinal; a peek of brown,
perhaps a robin then. The only thing I am sure of is that it's a distraction. My coworker is looking a little distressed that I've had to ask him to repeat what he said - again. Whatever it is, it chirps and the Aspects chirp in mimicry. A wren, they cry. No, I reply. A thrasher? I'll thrash you! The conversation has stopped and I'm left with the uneasy realization that I've just said that last bit out loud. A quip rolls out. A line to cause laughter, tossed out of my mouth by one of my more protective Aspects. I relax as his anger crackles through my being and silences the others - for now. I take my leave, turning my back on the coworker, whose name I can never remember, and the damn ever-shifting animal nesting in his hair. | |
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| I awoke to soft mewls
of discomfort; only to find they were my own. Wind, from a door out of sight, brought the realities of human existence crashing head-on against sterility, like a battle between good and evil - which was which is debatable. Words like hernia and minor surgery meant little to a nine year old and did nothing to ease the hurt. Raspy breathing came from behind and I made the arduous journey to turn over. Were I less in the throws of an anesthesia hangover, I might have been frightened by the frail man staring from the next bed. Instead, I was intrigued by the wrinkled, trembling hand reaching out. I stretched my little arm as far as I could. Dry, cool fingertips brushed mine in a fleeting caress: a defining moment, occurring against the whir of life support. His identity still unknown; his reasons unfathomable. In daydreams, he gave me superpowers. Passing on the gift of ancients, with his years spent. In reality he gave something far more meaningful; the concept that it doesn't matter if you ever know who you help or whose life you touch, it only matters that you keep reaching out. | |
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| We come from different departments, misfits of corporate America. We are too wide, too short, too gay, too crass, too naïve, too cynical, to clique with the mainstream nine-to-fivers. We refuse to swim upstream to our death, preferring to walk along the edge and watch. We contract and expand like gas, eventually finding a cohesion and a balance all our own. We find strength, support, rapport, and understanding in one another. We baffle, bewilder, confuse, and concern our higher-ups. We occupy a space and make it ours, if only for an hour. We have a core. We have satellites. We thrive. | |
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| They should be my
peers; these people who see me eye to eye. We share the same life anomaly. There
should be a mutual understanding of the struggles that make up every day existence,
a sort of fellowship of the damned. Yet here they are, looking down their collective
noses at me. Am I not pretty? Are my teeth too crooked? Do I not go to the right meetings? Do I not know the right people? They do not snub me for anything I have done because they've never spent enough time in my presence to decide if I'm unworthy of theirs. I am approached. With a grimace I turn away, hoping she hasn't noticed me. I've run across her before. Her slow speech is undoubtedly indicative of a slow mind. I don't have time for this. There are people I need to meet, people I need to talk to, to advance my cause. Her stringy hair, her dull gaze, her rolls of fat mark her as no one important. She calls my name and I pretend not to hear her. Instead I step closer to a group of people, trying to blend in as if I belong. They look at me with vague curiosity and return to their conversation. I realize with a hint of nausea that I fit in with these people, far, far better then I thought. These are my peers. We do share the same life anomaly, a dependency on superficiality. | |
| Chained to our desks;
a weak joke at best, yet look how far we have not come. We who are corporate serfs
with no more say in who rules us then did our counterparts of yore. The lords above come and go with the whims of profit, while we huddle in our three sided hovels praying. We pray that our new masters won’t flail us with their verbal sting, scald us with their glares or scar us with their disdain. The dreaded word reorganization reverberates through our world like the war drums of long ago. It sweeps through with the same ruthlessness and tramples our carefully cultivated dreams, with never a thought of how we are to sustain ourselves through the long winter to come. Some are sacrifices for the raging army of progress. They fall by the wayside in a fate worse then death, irrelevance. The rest, debatably lucky, pick up the pieces and whisper about the carnage just witnessed. | |
| As
if things weren't bad enough, now the dead are trying to rent cars. "Sir, I'm sorry we can't rent you a minivan. You're dead," I said as politely as possible. Company policy requires friendly service even under trying circumstances. "Well how about a sub-compact then?" "No sir, I'm sorry we can't rent you any vehicle. You're dead." He cocked his head to one side, far enough to make me worried about it staying on his shoulders. His skin looked strong enough to keep things attached but not being an expert in dead people, I wouldn't have bet money on it. "I must get back to Rhode Island. The Greatful Dead are reuniting," at this point, to my dismay, he leaned further over the counter and blasted me with his breath of death, "and I'm afraid of flying." A dead man who was afraid of flying. Priceless. "Sir, I'm very sorry but I'm going to have to ask you to step aside so I can help the people behind you. They're alive, you're not." "But I'm a corporeal entity." "Yes, but you're not a legal entity. You are dead." Finally the deceased man huffed angrily and shuffled away. With each step I cringed in anticipation of a body part being left behind but to my immense relief he made it, in his entirety, to the front door. There he stopped and turned back towards the counter, one emaciated hand raised in defiance, "You'll be hearing from my lawyer!" then he muttered a little lower, "Just as soon as I dig him up." | |
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