Update: I'm NOT Dead (Yet)

Just working in Florida this week, no time to blog. Bugger all!
-cK  ¶ 9:05 AM

  Quick Like a Bunny

I'm behind on typing up anecdotes, but I did try to go to Memphis. As documented at the Drama, I failed.
-cK  ¶ 9:08 AM

  More Than Just Adverbs

Lovely. I'm just blissed out that Lollie has launched her blog. She's the sweetest pea and one of my faves. Please go have a crush on her words at Lollie's Follies.
-cK  ¶ 5:54 AM

  Creepy

Does anyone else see a young Bill and Hillary Clinton in Caravaggio's 1598 painting of Holofernes being beheaded by Judith?

I miss the Big Dawg.
-cK  ¶ 7:13 AM

  A Former Life, Part 5 of 5: Roseville

Roseville is the site of my former employer's office. For five years I sat inside a windowless brown-walled cubicle in a spec building with brown carpet and brown trim work. Roseville is a city loaded with octogenarians, small office buildings, gas stations, chain restaurants and a mall. It's alive during the lunch hour. The drivers are terrible, all Cadillacs and SUVs. My Altima, sans two hubcaps, looked a little ragged. It was sort of like the Steve Buschemi of the city's traffic.

Today I am driving the ten minutes into Roseville to have lunch with another former employee of this office...though we're not going to eat at the grocery store I bought lunch at on something like three days per week for much of those five years.

I'm not going to say that office work sucked out my soul. That's extreme. Everyone's job has a challenge (Violinists need not apply!), and bills must be paid. The experience did leave me pretty goddamn depressed, though. A change was needed. The lunch hours, however, offered some simple joys. I wrote the following in January 2004.
-cK

My Lunch with Roseville

I went to the Byerly's for a little to-go grub. Shepard's Pie for a sharp, cold day. All morning my eyes had blurred as I made many revisions to a manuscript sent by a jovial, brilliant engineer from Eastern Europe. Articles (of speech) are not a common part of his English, so while I'm happy to publish his contributions, I'm a little nervous that in adding articles and reorienting sentences I'm pushing the text towards unintended meanings. Is "stress increase" different than "an increase in stress"?

The girl behind the hot lunch counter was new. She had a pale, round, Russian face (tiny chin), and her hair was pulled back in an Amish bun, complete with that whole, non-threatening peasant-cloth tiara which may in fact be nothing more than a reappropriated doily. When I wandered up she was absent-mindedly spooning cranberry sauce over thick slices of pork, probably wondering what it is that brings a young woman to this station, while I went on in the dream world in which I'm eating at a grocery store, AGAIN. What is it that brings a young man to this station? It's like a short story by Chekov. One of us should have a toothache.

I snap out of it. I order.

She paused, looked around. She asked someone what to do. The woman she asked was one of five workers huddled just a few feet away at the Lee Ann Chin's side of the counter, but who, in a Kafkesque display of bureaucratic imbalance, made no move to help the new girl. (Note: The Asian workers, who are assigned to roll sushi, wear special, blue work-kimonos. The veteran white women of the lunch counter wear sous chef jackets and tall, crimped, white hats.) The woman uttered some vague remark about how "It's probably more of a beef pie than a shepherd's pie" and turned away.



The girl and I are kind of frozen by this. The girl improvises.

She gets a plastic container. (Good start.) A pie wedge. (Handy implement for this job.) And proceeds to gouge all form out of this piece of shepherd's (beef) pie. It was a massacre. Not wanting to be impolite, I stared at some herb-coated carrot balls. I wondered, How does one ball carrots as if melon? What happened to the rest of the carrot? Perhaps they were shredded and buried in this mystery meat pie?

Slowly, slowly--I'm talking, for about 90 seconds--she picked out the pieces of beef, crust, mushrooms, and giant peas--Are those really peas?--that had previously been meant for a single, unblemished slice of pie. No big deal, of course. I would have mashed the heck out of it anyway. It was just one of those plodding moments when two people are united in the drudgery of commerce. We neither knew what to do nor had the heart to feign concern, but we weren't going to laugh about it. We were both just going to say Thank you and smile knowingly in the way that says, "My alarm is set to NPR." We did.

Outside, I avoided two cars packed to their powdered gills with octogenarians--who should not be driving, by the way, if judged by their killer clown car antics. Only video game characters drive with less concern. I saw a mini-van on the side of which was stenciled MOPAR RACING TEAM.

Roseville is a dangerous place. No joke.
-cK  ¶ 6:15 AM

  A Former Life: Part 4 of 5, Germany

In late February 2004, I spent a week in Munich. It was my first trip to Europe, and while I've wondered often whether I might live outside of the northern Midwest states (I really don't want to. I agree with Mips: It's the seasons, and these are my people.), Munich and my subsequent trip to Copenhagen and southern Sweden made me think I now knew how one might leave a country.

Of late, it's Iceland that has my heart. I've left many links to it in the rightside bar at the Drama. The following note was sent in a letter after I returned from Munich.
-cK

***

This country nearly lost me to Germany. I want to tell you about much of it. Today I'll tell you about this:

On Thursday I visited Dachau, both the city and the concentration camp. True enough, the most annoying people at the camp were the Americans. I can't stand anyone--esp. Americans--going on about Amercians being dimwits. I mean, really: Yeah, we're easy targets for it, you know? We've done a heap of harm. But most of us are really really good. There was, however, a travel group of American teens at Dachau who spent most of their time finding places to sneak cigarettes, cuss the F word as a fish breathes water, and threaten to throw one another in either the river or the ovens. Nice. Thank you for your diplomacy.

Many of them, though, were much more polite by the end of their tour. I saw a bunch of the loudmouths in the museum, where there are photographs of bodies and such. They had quieted down by then and were reading the postings.

So. The bunkhouses at Dachau are gone now. They've left two--each of which resembles a few double-wide trailers fused end-to-end--and beyond that just the filled in foundation foots. So Dachau looks like this gigantic park. There is even a sculpted row of trees along the center path. Nature seems to have come to something of a standstill there. The wind blows hard across the open space but it doesn't make as much noise as one expects. The birds are present but ambivalent. The quietest point I found was in the firing-range execution woods, one zone of which had a drainage ditch labled in German as "blood collection pit." Horrifying.

But back to the foundation footings: As I walked along the path, I had one of those ghostie moments. I reached the end of the first row of imprints. It was cold. It was going to snow later in the day and I'd worn too thin of a jacket. (Somehow that seemed appropriate, though. It was a pretty paltry bit of suffering on my part for had transpired there in what is really not so long ago.) I'd walked past about twenty of the footings, and as I passed the final one, I felt abruptly ill. I felt my stomach turning in on itself and a fist close inside my chest.

The feeling passed, however, when I was away from that bunkhouse. I went on to see all the apology chapels (the Russian Orthodox was my favorite). I sat in the below-ground chapel with a cluster of strangers, none of us speaking. It's a crippling sort of quiet that follows you there.

I walked the gravel paths of the Carmelite nunnery on the edge of the grounds. It was impossible to know if anyone was in those houses. Stillness, clear and absolute.

Heading back towards the museum, I walked up the same row of bunkhouse footings. And as I passed the one that had pulled at me, I felt ill again.
-cK  ¶ 11:04 AM

  Here and There

Today I'm there, and it's all about what lies beneath.

Weekend: Duluth trip; Josh's sister is in town; J & J's birthday; taxes. One of these things just doesn't belong.
-cK  ¶ 9:21 AM

  A Former Life, Part 3 of 5: Dropping Eaves

I write in public places mostly. It's been that way for years. For the most part, I don't hear what's really being said around me, though certain words--usually sexual ones, but also "Cubs" and "sudoku"--will snap me to attention, briefly. I tune it all out soon enough, because I must. I'm no good at lying. If I'm listening, it's obvious.

Found among the detritus of all the work I've never lost in a tragic fire, this anecdote from early January 2004, back when I used to hold Museday (though never the Muse) at the Tap.
-cK

The Lawyer's Wife

Next to me is a table of three genuine (and genuinely lovable) nerds. Their conversation is spirited. They seem to be catching up on many things, though this quickly evolves into stories, most of which I lose in the din of the place and in my own little writing world. The odd cuss, though, or mention of body parts, or the sudden drop of tone into something conspiratorial brings me to attention. The lawyer is talking across the table to the other nerds (I love nerds!). They seem to be a couple. Here is the story he tells:

He and his wife had friends out at their cabin for New Year's Eve. They played a party game that his wife had learned in college at her sorority house.

The other two nerds laughed. "Uh-oh!" they said. One of them even snorted here at the story's outset.

In this game, each person had an identity pinned to her back and had to find out what it was by asking the others Yes / No questions.

The lawyer said, "You know who I assigned to Doug?"

His voice had gone quiet, the very thing that probably brought the whole story to the forefront of my attention. He was trying to hold in his laughter. (Or maybe Doug was in the bar?) "Who!?" the others whispered eagerly.

"Pigpen!" he said. "You know? from the Peanuts Gang?"

The two intended listeners laughed uncontrollably, stomping feet, slapping knees, covering their mouths, leaning into one another.

"And you know what?" said the lawyer. At this point, I’m just watching. His face is growing red as he struggles to deliver the punchline. He says, slightly wheezing, "He wasn't able to guess who he was!"

Now they laughed even harder. The laughter spilled into the bar. The woman across from him cried, "What is he, a rock!?"

Poor Doug.
-cK  ¶ 9:04 AM

  A Former Life, Part 2 of 5: Interior Lights

Over the weekend I noted I’d publish a series of anecdotes about why I no longer work in an office, and I tried to support that yesterday; but, really, I lied. I’m just going to reprint some things I wrote while attempting (and failing?) to keep my sanity in an office. It’s just that among the many pages of correspondence I wrote during those years very little of it had to do with working there. My thoughts were elsewhere, as they should be.

I was reminded of having written this anecdote after reading a similar (though better written) anecdote at Reykjavik Harbor Watch, a site I adore. Lovely work there.

Yes, the ice has already melted from the sidewalks this year, so it's high time to get out. I've been taking walks and feeling good.
-cK

Running in Saint Paul

It was eight o’clock. Night. I went running. Interior lights were taking effect.

After 3.5 miles, I was feeling pretty warm and wondering what had compelled me to wear running pants when my entire motive for heading out at sunset was to avoid the heat. It puzzles me, at times, whether the sun is tougher on the body or the will; in my case, I suspect the will. It would be easier to decipher if it ached like my shins.

I ran my standard loop along the bluff, a forgotten road that begins in a condominium’s parking lot and snakes down to the hospital district. I passed the lonely-looking French-style country home with its “Rue DuPont” sign, past the crumbling retaining walls and fallow yards the walking tourists are never shown. I huffed up the six hundred feet of stairs to the top of Cathedral Hill. The bells would not ring at this hour. The traffic was light. I ducked down brick-paved allies. I slowed to peer a little longer into an enormous home in which people had gathered, just then, for a meal. Steam rose from a bowl.

Closer to home now, I drifted back onto Summit for another few blocks—all that brick and wealth. (It must be my will.)

On Portland Avenue, just past the law school, I slowed for the cool down. I took in the neighborhood and the evening air. I heard a small motor.

So there I was, easy in the evening. Televisions flickered against glass. People wiped at dining room tables. My lungs felt dry. An ankle ached. My running pants made that damn swish-swish sound. On the surrounding porches, shadowed people with awkward postures hunkered in high-backed chairs. A porch swing creaked. The small motor sound continued to buzz.

Was this a remote-control airplane? a remote-control car? It had that sort of whine.

Two houses from the corner of Chatsworth and Portland, the corner at which there was always the smell of dog feces, a small, slowly rolling, open-air vehicle came into view. Dusk. Am I seeing this correctly?

A young couple trawl through the intersection. They are seated on an apparently motorized love seat, the fringe of which swishes lightly swishing over the asphalt. On the back of the seat they’ve taped a Minnesota license plate. I could pass in front of them, they’re moving so slowly, but I wait and I watch. They aren’t even laughing.
-cK  ¶ 7:53 AM

  A Former Life, Part 1 of 5: Just Add “Huh?”

I’m conflicted about whether this is the sort of thing I miss about office work or one of the 2000 flushable reasons I no longer work in an office. The following anecdote was found on the disc I burned on my last day of trade association work, 20 December 2005. The woman noted in this was (and remains) really quite sweet, but she was (is) a relentlessly offense-minded conversationalist, which is a serious foil for other question-ready, offense-minded conversationalists like me. Those of you who know me will probably recognize some well-deserved comeuppance herein.

In five years of working with this woman—I’ve renamed her for this posting—I never found a defense for her style. I documented a number of these exchanges, and in each you can read my helplessness. At least I didn’t wind up like Luzhin.
-cK

Accidental Conversation with Molly, 12 Feb 2004 – Lunchroom

Our trepid hero cK stands at vending machine. Molly sits at lunch table. They are the only ones in the room, and two empty tables separate them.

Molly: Careful it's not counterfeit.

cK: Uh, yeah.

cK straightens dollar bill. Eyes a Snickers.

Molly (laughs): Boy, you got a lot of faith, huh?

cK fumbles dollar once. Machine does not take it. His hands don’t seem to be cooperating nearly as much as he’d like them to.

Molly: Think it's not counterfeit, huh? Trying again, huh?

cK makes a crisp fold down the center of the dollar, longwise. Why is he so edgy? This time, the machine accepts the currency.

Molly: Boy, I tell ya. You must be charmed.

cK: Pretty much.

Molly laughs as cK punches E6. The machine whirs to life. The Snickers inches forward.

Molly: I was sure it was counterfeit—a counterfeit dollar. [Latter said with a hint of gee-whimsy.]

cK crouches. Snickers catches on edge of row. Machine goes silent. Horror enters cK's heart. He hops a bit, goblin-like. Machine whirs again, and Snickers falls.

Molly: Scared ya, huh? Thought it wasn't going to fall, huh?

She laughs. The change falls.

cK: Just some high drama for the day.

He drops a dime, bends to pick it up. She continues laughing. As cK leaves the room, he hears:

Molly: First a counterfeit dollar, and then nothing. Boy, I tell ya.  ¶ 5:28 AM

  New Reads

I'll repost this reminder, I think, during the next week, but for the moment please know, dear friends, that the cK (i.e., me) has a second blog: Drama Mater. It's like your alma mater, only more dramatic and even less applicable to career-track work.

Also, Mips has moved her blog out of MySpace. Check out the Skyylark, please.

So. I finally found the disc that I burned on my last day of office work (December 20, 2005) and it contains more than 80, single-spaced pages of e-mail correspondance from the past five years. (Actually, most of that is from the last two, as the previous three years correspondance are on a disc burned during the e-mail system upgrade, late 2003, but that disc is, I fear, lost for good.) I'm going to post some of the office stuff this week: Why I No Longer Work in an Office. Woo! I've a crush on working at home.

More soon.
-cK  ¶ 11:46 AM