Cybersocializing

I was just de-friend-ed on MySpace.com. Every comment I posted, my very existence has been completed obliterated from someone's world. (I am using the underappreciated passive voice, here, on purpose. ) I deserve it. I was not a friend by any stretch of the imagination. I have other friends on MySpace that I'm not exactly good "friends" with (according to the more sacred definitions of that word), but this time I was actually anti-friend, so I deserve this and every other consequence for being selfish Juliana. This pokes at the sore. I am remorseful. I am ashamed. And I crave the forgiveness that I don't deserve or expect. I am lucky to have the friends that are left.

long distances

I think about Willis a lot

stifling

Air conditioning has always been a luxury in my mind. But now, I am in the center of a cubicled basement worker hive, smushed into the underground with no view of any windows or outside reality or anything organic or spacious at all. And now, air condiditioning has a role in my life. In this bustling building crowded with other lungs demanding oxygen, other hearts generating body heat, other mouths expelling warm carbon dioxide every other second, I need the machines to refresh, cool, and maintain the quality of the air that is necessary for office monkey survival. These machines are broken today. And Juliana is choking on the hot dungeon air.

Before air conditioning existed, this type of office building, structure, setting, environment, ergonomic? might have been deemed a sweatshop.

Hm. I sound like I am whining. I was just trying to be insightful, reflective, prosaic, wasting my workday because I am too uncomfortable to concentrate on my chores. Even in China, the most successful business executives take a xiuxi (uh, that's "shyo-shee") . During xiuxi (the citywide midday summer nap) if you want to buy a coke at the corner store you have to disturb the cashier, head limp on the counter, if you expect to get your change (and don't expect a smile and a thank you come again for that).

Even when the tropical summer has passed, Chinese take a truncated, sixty minute winter xiuxi.

Today Lower Metzger needs xiuxi.

saga of an office monkey

bureaucracy bites my butt

this week i was offhandedly dubbed "the file queen." and I am. my co-worker, martin, has sort of adopted me as his assistant. he is thrilled by my irritated attempts to tackle the huge, sick, paperwork disaster he inherited from the last, profoundly right-brained lawyer that inhabited his cubicle last winter. a couple weeks ago i found the title to a Cadillac and some other documents that had been deemed lost. i was a hero. now, every ten minutes martin says, "hey, ya got something to do right now?" and he gives me another task that would take even the most organized office-monkey genius another week to finish. i have enough chores to keep me busy for a year. but i only get 20 hours a week to do it. i want to work full time. martin wants me to work full time. martin's boss wants me to work full time. the sick mess of paperwork definitely wants me to work full time. nobody can think of any reason why i shouldn't work full time. but the budget needs to get approved. the budget needs to get approved: "they" need to make sure "they" can squeeze in a few more hours for a few more weeks at a measly hourly rate for a job that has been aching to get done for, literally, a decade. apparently this takes more than 3 weeks to approve.

this is why we work in the basement. this is why we work far, far away from any windows, packed into the canned air of biola's nether areas: "they" can just ignore us.

we make the money. we make the money make more money. but when we want to spend the money, we don't exist.

perhaps it would be better to serve as an office monkey upstairs (in the spacious, spacious, remodeled president's wing that is stocked, daily, with breakfast pastries) than to rule as file queen in basement.

Last impression of a week in New Mexico

I think I just fell out of love with New Mexico.
I still love so many things about her.
I still love being here and seeing her.
But it was a tough week,
and I realize that she doesn't love me.
And I realized that I don't need her.
And I need to move on.
There are other places in my future that will be home,
that will be more dear to me than this beautiful place,
that won't have the same baggage that I keep experiencing
every time I come back here,
that won't be as hurtful or complicated or antagonizing or tense or mixed or bittersweet every time I come here.
There are other places to explore, to learn about, to love, to discover, to get to know, and to fall in love with.
And it's really hard, but I know its right.
And even today when I was saying goodbye to people,
I told a few people that I didn't think I was going to come back for a long long time.
I said, "It will be a while before I come back again."
And part of that is circumstancial--
I'll be busier. I won't have the time to get away.
But part of it is knowing that it's over between us.
And that's really sad.

one last lick