drbanality

I spend three to four hours a day reading news stories and watching on Youtube a goldmine of interviews and exchanges with noted intellectuals who have done their research. Try and perplex Chomsky with an ill-informed question and be prepared to hear a retort backed by eighty to ninety sources. The internet is the indispensable tool for change. Pertinent information to your screen in three seconds or less. Now, from the comfort and warmth of your living room, you know the answers to the most glaring political quandaries that our congress quarrels over like dogs trained from their secluded vantage for the next routine dogfight. So if the answers are there, why all the fighting?

The answer is ideology. When the interests of corporations--now given more power and privilege and rights than flesh-and-blood U.S. citizens by our supreme court--are at stake following the bursting of the economy-killing housing bubble, lobbyists rail against the working class. If you want to divert attention away from the rich socialites, you invoke "personal responsibility" as the call against working citizens who were herded like cattle into the lion's den and fed upon. Meanwhile, you set up convenient examples of those who have achieved the so-called "American Dream" (Barack Obama, John Boehner, and so on) and tell the other 310 million American citizens that they can all realize that dream (despite that incomprehensible number) and that they can all make it big. It is possible. Never mind how unrealistic the notion, working hard doesn't grant you success. Poor people work hard every day and get nowhere. Bums occupy street corners in great numbers, wielding makeshift cardboard signs--"WILL WORK FOR FOOD"--that beg for a bit of humanitarian effort (even the sparse contributions by conscientious citizens are often used to fund drug and alcohol binges. And so be it! There's not much of a reason to endure a life of pain if there aren't any prospects for healing). Even if they're not working for hourly wages in a small office--confined by four walls and a ticking clock--waiting in the cold for more than eight hours in tattered clothing is more difficult work than being one of those dancing sign-holders who can look forward to a warm living space after the day is done. Neither do they have access to a public system of health care that would at the very least keep them afloat.

Corporate executives run the government. Look, for instance, at Obama's curious decision to elect people like Jeffrey Immelt to his administration. Immelt is the new "job guy". He's also the CEO of General Electric, a now partly U.S.-owned conglomerate that outsources more than fifty percent of its labor-force. That means that most of the labor force doesn't even exist in the United States. And he's responsible for creating an environment for U.S. jobs. Now that's ironic!

I know that I risk sounding too cynical, but there's not much room for trust and optimism in a political environment that precludes it. Now contrived narratives fill our news and skew opinion one way or the other, widening the rift between reason and ideology. Ratings are contingent upon making death and destruction and conflict entertaining. It's always been that way and it's not surprising. But it does disseminate the wrong message to the American people. What is surprising is the continued belief that the intellectual elites are working in our best interests. I'll end with a list of changes we should be fighting for because it means better prosperity for all (and keep in mind, I shouldn't be able to make this list as a commoner):

1.) Cut the defense budget and extract troops from Afghanistan.
2.) Invest in public health care, funded by the citizens, for the citizens. Take cues from far more efficient and less costly systems like France and Australia.
3.) Instead of abolishing collective bargaining rights for unions (unions set the standards for salaries and wages for workers, by the way, so these bargaining rights are very important), raise taxes on the rich and force them to take accountability for our bisected economy.
4.) Instead of cutting from important public sector stuff and investing in the private sector, do the reverse. The public sector, covered by American taxpayers, is supposed to be accountable to its people in principle, while the private sector (as evidenced by health insurance companies and bigger corporations, like Wal-Mart, that outsource their labor) is only accountable to itself.
5.) Don't cut funding for Planned Parenthood or NPR just because it conflicts with your ideology. Politicians have an ethical responsibility to make logical choices based on what will contribute best to human well-being. And really, that's everybody's responsibility.

Protests are happening all over the world, and they're happening because people feel the pangs of a failing world economy. Dictatorships are in the process of falling all across the Arab world. Egypt ousted its dictatorial leader, Mubarak, and expressed solidarity with protesting Wisconsinites. Just as people overseas are trying to gain workers' rights through peaceful demonstrations (even as they're getting killed by pro-dictator factions), we're working on refining a system we all believe in. There are objective ways of producing and sustaining human well-being in the United States and around the world. It's our responsibility as specks of dust from the guts of dying stars to get there somehow.

Somebody commented on my year-and-a-half-old post and it led me back here to a part of my mind I seem to have forgotten. How tragic. And yet that last post marked a bizarre transition that metamorphosed into a flawed part of me that I can't elude. Or maybe it just illuminated that flaw. I don't know. I'll begin at the end. That's where all the learning happened.

Weeks ago I ingested 3.5 ounces of psylocibin mushrooms. It wasn't experimental. Science had nothing to do with my decision. I wanted an experience and I had one. It wasn't good.

Friends had put a positive spin on the drug. They cited its "magical" consequences: carpets grow, ceilings and walls reveal patterns heretofore unseen, hallways widen and morph, invisible beauty emerges from the new world forming in front of you. And believe me when I say it is a new world. A fresh and beautiful world. It's ordinariness romanticized. It's not just the colors and patterns, either. Glow sticks drip their colors into your hands and your body parts merge with the environment, almost as if they were never distinct in the first place. This description hardly does it justice. Your mind alters in such a way that you appreciate the beauty. You don't just see it; you understand it. In this hallucinogenic place everything feels spectacular...

...unless your mind takes control. Then there are the circles. It began when I looked at my feet. They grew monstrous. I pulled them apart. I separated my big toe from everything else, peeled the right foot like a banana, perceived the true and monstrous ugliness of my feet. L tried to call my attention to other things.

"I want you out of there."

I said nothing. The two feet aggregated, and in a bizarre twist of mind-sabotage, I recognized that these feet weren't mine. They were my brother's. I was my brother. My self, my whole ego, vanished in a puff of vague memory. I panicked.

"Out of there. Get out of your mind. That's not a good place to be right now." She called my attention to the glow sticks. "This is what these are for. I'm going for a little. Pay attention to these."

L left the room. She was stuck elsewhere, because accomplishing anything on mushrooms is next to impossible. Your mind moves quick, but it is difficult to act. Latching onto a single thought is like grabbing a molecule from a vat of water.

Still, with the time available to me, I created art out of the shiny sticks. A soft song played. It illustrated my solitude. It was a childlike loneliness, like I was left to the dark world of my own making, and there were toys right in front of me. I took three green lengths of glowstick. One I made into a circle. I arched the two others over top and bottom. I had created an eye. It stared at me. My mind reasoned that this was my eye; it was a metaphor for vanity. My vanity. It kept going. My vanity, I reasoned, is debilitating. It hinders me. It keeps me socially stagnant.

My identity dissolved, there was nothing to do but live out the next six hours of altered consciousness. I lay on L's bed and melded with the covers. She left the room as the speakers blared Entheogenic (an appropriate selection) and enhanced the impending nightmare. I was left to my thoughts. Intense layers and beats pulsed in my ears. They guided the visual hallucinations. Nightmare scenarios lied to me. The other three chatted in the living room. I heard laughter from their secret convene. They're laughing at me, I thought. L reentered. She pulled her mind away from the surreal playland, eschewing fun for the moment and focusing her attention on getting me out of my circular consciousness.

"Are you okay?" Words failed me. "Shane, I need you to tell me how you're doing." She continued like this for some time, but I muttered bollocks through the growing lump in my throat. "I need you to tell me how you're doing." My mouth moved, but like a stroke victim it only moved. Nothing elicited.

Five hours passed like this. During that time, I had taken to pulling out my dick and pissing all over L's carpet, muttering the depressing nut-speak "does everybody want me dead?" and "did that whale...? Life is a joke", and diving under the living-room table like one of K's frightened cats. That is that.

Why does this connect to the previous post?

The anonymous commenter led me here at a convenient transitional moment in my life. Passing college leaves you devoid of the social relations that defined the experience. Those people have moved on. They're elsewhere. I'm here, stuck in my loneliness, reinventing my life in a way that might lead to some mental sustainability. That involves the usual: get a job, make money (enough, anyway), get politically involved, attain higher learning, and so on. But for me, college was the pinnacle of my life. It embodied everything about me that I loved and hated. Every person described in my posts since 2003, when I was an infantile nuisance, meant something. They were a jigsaw piece, neatly fitting into the fabric of my existence.

The mushrooms--they did something spectacular to me. An experience like that can be a paradox, both terrible and amazing. In its lies, the mushrooms taught me truth. My college relationships were meaningful and fleeting, bizarre and eventful, life-affirming and life-debilitating. In the end, it produced social retardation that now hinders every room-filled experience. But it's just my mind that sabotages those experiences. The consequent interpretations are false. They used to be mere ruminations. Now interpretations happen in the moment. I analyze the social scenario as it happens. I ruminate before rumination. And it hinders. It hinders and betrays.

A year-and-a-half ago, I lingered on my weak social hinges. I both looked Paul in the eye and averted my gaze, telling an incongruous and depressing story. But was that story so unequally received? I interpreted the reaction written on his face. I couldn't claim to know its truth or beauty or complexity; I could only ask without answer. And I answered the question myself... perhaps incorrectly. None of it should matter. None of it does matter. It's the vanity that keeps me thinking. It's the ego that tethers me to the pain.

So maybe this is a start. A rickety one, but one all the same.

Social anxiety never hit me so hard as it did tonight. My friends had explained the feeling to me before: body a-tremble, utter silence, hot flashes, sweat drips swiftly from your pores. Only isolation combats the symptoms. For three hours of agony, I felt like an overheating furnace. The loud, commingling voices of my friend's family became a unified susurrus. Friends tried and failed to include me in their conversations. Jokes about dicks and balls and asses and cheese (and so on) found laughing participants, while I loomed silently and (probably) creepily over these people with nothing to add, shivering out my next self-conscious quip. The silence became a part of me. To say anything at all would be absurd.

For instance, Paul tells stories about his employment at a mental asylum, only to hear me follow up with a completely unrelated, secondhand account about a woman who unexpectedly died in a hospital, where her visiting husband and two grandkids tragically found nurses huddled around the fresh corpse. Paul's reaction is a confusing mix of cold acceptance and silent but salient disgust. I couldn't blame him. It must have seemed like my only interesting story. Where his stories found humor in tragedy, mine extinguished even the faintest ray of light. I soon discovered that none of my stories suited the occasion. Having been divided from most of these people for over four years, I realized then that their circle of friends didn't include me. Their stories had endless potential; mine seemed out of place. It's moments like these that expose my fraudulence.

Nothing happens in my banal life that would necessitate a lengthy journal entry. It's all about throwing my thoughts out willy-nilly, I guess, but thoughts are scarce these days. To ridicule "world events" would just be redundant. An entry about my visit to Lipstick last night--where I tried my damnedest to throw away that high-schooler mentality that colors me charmless around women--would be like watching mountains erode. I haven't the guts nor the patience to explain myself in detail: job prospects, to put it concisely, are nil (throwing resumes at people doesn't help); employers react to my persistence with sighs and groans and almost, it seems, expletives; and I'm worth about twenty-two dollars (give or take). Netflix, gym visits, and friends keep me going. This funk I'm in, this boring, droll, concentrated annoyance, should encourage reflection... some sort of life philosophy, I imagined, might have developed slowly in my imagination during these days and days and days of free time. Nothing emerges but a bunch of anger and pain. I'm more impatient, I'm vile, and days pass during which I feel nothing for myself but disgust. I've become that which I criticize the most...

Those who do nothing... I'm one of them, I guess.

A few weeks ago I went dancing at Old Ironsides with my friends Michael and Micah. A girl tugged on my shirt, pulled me over to her and her friend, and whispered in my ear.

"Don't worry," she said, "we're not lesbians."

"I see," I said lamely, then danced flailingly.

"Do you know this band?"

"No," I said truthfully.

"They're called The Faint. They're good."

"So I hear." My responses were so pathetic and so impeded by shyness that I couldn't muster the courage to begin an actual conversation. I tried anyway. "You ever heard of Passion Pit?" I said awkwardly, a little Jamesly, very pre-pubescently.

"No, I guess I'm not cool enough."

"No, you're not." A sensible person could easily have made this response sound like a joke. Instead, I sounded abrasive and serious, like a verbally abusive boyfriend, a disrespectful little twat. She patted me on the shoulder and said that she and her friend were going. I didn't follow. I stayed behind and danced embarrassingly with two men. With them I had no ulterior motives.

My night ended in utter disappointment. This is apparently what happens when a girl tries to hit on me: I'm mean, I guess, and I become socially inept. I'm too used to the friends I already know.

The end.

Months ago I cryptically insulted the excuse "life isn't fair." This abstraction--life--cannot accept responsibility for anything: that is the sad fact of its place in the English language. The excuse arrives fallaciously on the tongues of those who wish to eschew actual conversation--it is an effective conversation stopper for some. But what the statement assumes is essentially this: one should never argue against anything that's unfair, because it's unfair. I doubt many would agree with this. It's circular and therefore logically empty. Read on. I would appreciate thoughts.

About a year and a half ago, thieves went on their many random car-stealing excursions around the Barnes and Noble parking lot. My co-worker and good friend, Amanda, was among the lucky few whose car fled the lot, glass broken, for a far away field located somewhere in Elk Grove, where the cops later discovered it, stripped of all the essential parts. Metal innards replaced the comforting seats, the stereo took a trip along the black market, car and auto parts (among them the car's engine) fed shady dealers undeserved monies from likely unsuspecting (or else vulturous) buyers. The Target store employees endured similar pains. Meanwhile, the rest of us who call Barnes and Noble our unwanted and unwelcoming occasional home lived in fear of our work days ("what would happen to me should my car get stolen?" and so on).

My natural inclination was to park closer to the store. Being the guy who is always tucked away in the cold and dusty asshole of the barren bookstore, this reaction seems all the more reasonable. Apparently, though, I had been disobeying a repeatedly stated mandate that says all employees must park an arbitrary nine spaces from the front of the lot, behind the first over-sized plant-box, toward Panera, beyond the reach of the human eye, and obscured by a spring-ripened seedling. Disobeying these rules grants one a yelling match with Napoleon-complex afflicted managers...

...One person is exempt from this rule, however. I only recently discovered that Amanda may park wherever she pleases. This seems reasonable for obvious reasons. By the same token, if this privilege arises from her irrepressible fears, every employee should be granted the same privilege. My car did not get stolen, of course, but the potential is there, and I'm far more than a common customer. I am there throughout the week, eight hours a shift, pulling my weight in the thought-leeching music department. I ask for fairness, for equality.

But Mini-Hitler (known as Greg in more socially unacceptable circles) has taken frequent note of my disobedience. "You need to park behind the first big plant-box," he would say. I would nod my head in false approval, only to disobey him passive-aggressively. Again he would repeat the mandate with increasing impatience.

Almost a year has passed since our first uneventful confrontation. The other day, however, it somehow exploded into a yelling match amid co-workers.

"Shane," he began patiently, "I need to talk to you."

"What's up?" I said.

"Once again, you parked too close. I've told you time and time again to stop, and yet you continue to disobey me. Why won't you listen?"

"Because I disagree with you."

"I don't care. You either listen to me or you don't. The next time this happens, it's going to be written. Do you understand?" (I didn't) "I've been talking to you about this for over a year and I can't believe we're still going over this. End of discussion."

"Greg, I disagree with you and we can discuss this."

"We can't discuss this. You listen to me or you don't." He had hoped this commonly employed tautology of his would end the conversation. Greg is a smart man, but his impatience during arguments gets his face looking like tomato ketchup.

"Are those really the only choices? You will let Amanda park closer, but nobody else."

"She got her car stolen."

"So by your logic, I have to sacrifice a really expensive piece of machinery to purchase a better parking spot?"

"Yes. You do."

"Do you see how unfair that is?"

"Yes."

"And you're willing to stick to this? Despite everything, you're going to hold firmly to your conviction?"

"Yes. Life's unfair, Shane. You listen to me or you don't. If you do this again, I'll write you up. Getting a closer parking spot doesn't guarantee that your car isn't going to get stolen. You're making a mountain out of a mole hill here."

"I guess I'm a good builder, then. By granting Amanda this privilege, Greg, you admitted it makes a difference. Even if you're doing it just to appease her, the unfairness factor far outweighs any other considerations."

"I can take the privilege away from her just as easily. Do you want that on your conscience?"

"Yes, Greg, that's really what I want," I said sarcastically, "that's what we're arguing here. You want to attack me right where it hurts, cut straight for the jugular? Go ahead, exercise your yearning for power, hold it over me like a nice big steak. You're wrong and you know it and you're holding firmly to this out of pride and it's goddamned annoying."

"Listen to me or else you'll suffer the consequences. End of discussion." He walked away, red-faced, red-eyed, probably with the desire to pummel my face with brass knuckles. I could see it in his face--the anger, the sadness over his diminishing power. From his pain I derived a profound sense of pleasure. Vengeful though it was, how supple were the fruits of my laborious logic, how plodding and dull were his reasons for holding so firmly to a ridiculously unethical position; still, a sense of guilt arose from the ashes. I felt, after all, like I really had created something out of nothing. But I was right and I knew it.

I later confided in two managers, one of whom (Mary) had this to say--some of it correctly--in a nutshell: "All that's going to happen is Amanda's going to get her privilege taken away. Just stop. You're being a baby. Life's unfair. If you want to live in a Utopian society, go and create your own and populate it with people who will give you what you want. Did you just want people to say that you're right? Well, you're right, Shane, does that make you feel better? I don't know what you want from me." Having eliminated Mary from the pool of possible sympathizers, I selected Neil, who responded more favorably: "You can actually sue us if Greg writes you up. This parking rule he talks about isn't written in the books. I know because I've been with this company for eighteen years. The fact is that Opus, our landlord, owns and operates the parking lot, not Barnes and Noble. If there's a rule that Opus created, you have to obey them, but Greg has nothing on you. In fact, I should probably address this issue in one of the meetings because it's really unfair." I would not allow Neil to get Greg in trouble. As compelling as the thought seemed, I knew it would be wrong. If I'm to solve this problem, it'll be on my passive-aggressive terms.

Every day is another emotional obstacle. This has been a difficult time for me. But in the interest of showing my respect for others, I realize that my missing blind cat and my increasingly rocky relationship is relatively feeble compared with some of my friends' problems. This is very true, and I'm sorry if I seem selfish in petitioning others for advice where there is, perhaps, little available. But there's a virtue to selfishness that's both disconcerting and comforting. In one sense, people don't really care to hear me blabbing on about this or that. Thankfully, I'm still allowed to bitch over webspace. Let's be honest, after all, our problems are exclusively our own: people don't usually care about you quite as much as you care about yourself.

*

Now to the point: my blind and always lethargic cat, Cosmo, went missing a few days ago. Having three shit-and-piss ready indoor dogs necessitates the makeshift doggy door that my father astutely attached to our sliding-glass door. Locking the doggy door would, of course, eventually result in differently colored carpets, a wealth of spattery poo stains, and a few more hairballs. No doubt you understand where I'm going with this: Our cats easily gain access to the outside through the doggy door, blind or no. The irony of letting a blind cat feel his way through grass and blacktop while cars approach and zoom away has never escaped my notice, but I had no control over Cosmo's blind ineptitude.

When my father came inside to announce Cosmo's strange absence, I thought nothing of it. "He's been gone longer before," I said, "he'll be back." I was sincerely convinced and unperturbed. That night, however, he had remained outside. The following day was the same. I have since walked through town, trespassed in my geriatric neighbor's backyard (only to discover that a strategically-placed sprinkler had been watering a muddy lawn under the night sky), and even waited in suspense at Sac State as my father perused the animal shelters about town (to no avail).

Kiko only recently died on me; the thought of losing Cosmo to these constant deluges of rain, or to cruel delinquents who hate cats, or to kind people who saw a creature in need of food and shelter, only exacerbates things.

I've lately suffered for sinking into complacency with Joyce. Losing Cosmo has been poisonous; it has made me vile and distant. My identity has become little more than what plagues me at the present moment. That's never a good thing.

If you've all read this far, I thank you. If not, I thank you anyway.

Keep in mind while reading the following account: after two and a half years at this job, this was the first time I had seriously attempted to sit complacently still without voicing blunt complaints.

Nearly six months ago, two managers at Barnes and Noble brought me into the back office for my review. To my chagrin, a packet of papers--four copies (one for their records, two for them, one for me)--displayed the common reductionist arguments against me.

"You don't work well with others," they began, "you foster an 'us vs. them' attitude." To this I remained silent, observing Carol's (my general manager's) barren expression. As Carol sat resolutely with her right palm propping up her face, Mary (the music manager) expounded upon my lesser attributes. Evidently no positive ones stood out. "Not at standards," Mary repeated, going down the list of points. Having read off all the sad bits, Mary topped the confection with this general consensus:

"You're subordinate. You argue with managers when they tell you to do a job, you're sarcastic, you write inappropriate notes in the binder--" she broke off, pulled out one of my subversive writings, and read it aloud. "And I quote: '...bastard customers and shit.' This caught on throughout the store and your co-workers started following your example. When you saw that Abby had gotten fired for this, it looks like you went into the notebook and edited out some of your entries." Again she pulled out a sample: "Thankfully some of the originals stuck in my head. You wrote a disclaimer for your vulgarity that told people you meant no offense, which seems considerate at first, but where you had written 'profanity' you had crossed it out and replaced it with 'flowery words,' I guess because you wanted no evidence against you. You did this throughout the whole thing. Then you turned 'fucking customers' into 'peach daiquiris.'"

"It made sense at the time," I said. "If my job was in danger, that was the remedy."

"Yes, I understand, but the point is that you shouldn't have written pointless and inappropriate entries in there in the first place. The communication binder is for communicating only necessary things and nothing else." I found this condescending for its obviousness. She had assumed that I had no knowledge of its utilitarian function. I kept quiet despite my reservations. "This is a business, Shane," she went on, "and you're basically insulting your management." How could I possibly refute the truth? My intention was to insult my management kindly, humorously, because, I said, "it keeps me sane. Humor distances me from reality." Also, in retrospect, sarcasm serves the very same function for management.

"If you don't like it here, then you shouldn't be here. If you want--"

"Shane, either you love retail, or it's going to drive you nuts and you'll hate it," Carol interrupted opportunely. To this statement I wanted to point out all the times she had unreasonably lost her temper with her employees, her particularly infuriating brand of micromanagement, and her frustrations with life that likely stem from consistently burning away her magnesium time with seventeen hour work days. But that would have been fallacious of me. That she has problems--that she is a hypocrite--does not exactly refute their arguments against me.

"Do you have anything you want to add?" Mary asked me.

"Well, yes, I hate my job, that's for sure. Possibly that's why I'm ill-tempered, sarcastic and humorous to combat all the moments where I feel imprisoned. 'Imprisoned' is a strong word, I think, but as grandiose as that sounds, it's the truth, at least."

"Then why are you here?"

"I don't have much of a choice, do I? The job market isn't booming like it used to, and student positions are almost extinct. What could I possibly do?"

"If that's what you're afraid of, you have two choices: either change your ways, or get out of here." Either/or propositions rarely work for the simple fact that they're false dichotomies. Other choices might include acceptance, leniency, getting a professional deep tissue massage, etc. and so forth.

"Shane," Carol interjected once more, ascending her soapbox with an air of majesty, her palm suddenly leaving her cheek for the arm of her office chair, her back straightening despite all the thoracic and lumbar creaks (she resembled Caesar, bleak and unhealthy), "there's something so amazing about these customers. I mean, have you ever observed their faces? They light up when you put a book or CD or DVD in their hand: a sad day becomes a happy one for these people, and I tell ya, it gives me satisfaction every day of my life. That's why I'm here... that's why you should want to be here. Don't you get a sense of joy when you put an item in a customer's hand? And that's what counts, right? Customers. There's nothing better than that." I silently resented her sentimentality; I shifted in my lesser swivel chair and propped my chin up with a thinking fist. Carol's selling-point was lost in a sea of murky rhetoric, a lousy string of questions that lacked the conviction of a seasoned orator. My vocal chords almost involuntarily shivered out a few ballsy words, but with a strength of will I never knew I had, I choked on my saliva instead. Those words floated through my mind over and over, and everything that Carol had said to me over the following months meant nothing... not ever again.

After her speech, she seemed on the verge tears: maybe this was because she had wasted her life on a job that had finally failed to live up to her mid-life expectations. A husband never awaits her arrival at home--he expects her absence, while Carol herself toils away at building book promo tables that are aesthetically acceptable by company standards. Or maybe her problem is something relatively simple. She could have meant every word, after all. My conjectures can sometimes be hasty and erroneous.

Eventually Carol left the room. Mary rolled her chair next to me. "Shane," she said, "I hate my job, too. I know how you feel. I used to react just like you do."

"Should you be telling me that?"

"It doesn't matter; we're behind closed doors."

"Why not complain, too?"

"Because it doesn't matter. They choose never to listen because it saves money. Employees serve a very small function. They're not really good for business a lot of the time. What's practical counts to these people. You begin to think of your job as a sort of game--that's what I do. Generating sales becomes a game." She sounded genuine, at the very least. She shouldn't have sounded genuine. "I've got a kid and a husband, and Carol determines whether or not I get my raise based on your performance." This surprised me. If, this entire time, Mary's pay relied entirely on my performance, then it seemed I had been abusing my privileges all along. It seemed that I had reached an impasse. I have since regretted thinking this: my past behavior could not have accounted for all of the emotional turmoil. She probably had exaggerated this.

"I had no idea. I'm sorry, really."

"Just keep that in mind. I know this place sucks, but think of it as temporary. It doesn't have to last forever. Just work well and get a job somewhere else when you're more equipped to do so."

I signed a few papers, went rigorously through my "improvement plan," and essentially--under threat of being fired--rolled up my sleeves, prepared to fight, and got knocked down by the bigger fist. At least I had gotten paid for the hour and a half it took for them to lower me to the status of a jell-o mold. And here you have me, six months hence, a washed up, obsequious servant, spouting music department advertisements over an intercom, writing 'appropriate notes' in the binder only when necessary, and setting aside my sarcasm in favor of something more 'work friendly.' Mary has since taken me aside, patted me on the shoulder, and said "I'm really proud of the way you've improved." Apparently I was a broken worker. Has my mind finally been sucked out?

*

When I said, a few entries back, that my mind resembles a dried up well, I think this situation explains it. This job is vexing, to say the least. It should be better than this.

I really can't stop at a degree. I've got to go all the way.

Last week I met a somewhat racist person. I did not know this until today, however.

My primate observation class at ARC is not especially daunting because it happens at the zoo and it's relatively simple. But simple things often become complicated by other factors.

Last week, while weaving toward the zoo exit along with a dense group of students led by my foul-mouthed professor, a girl bumped into me from behind. The action itself was clearly an act, for she had made a strange comment under her breath, somewhat inaudibly, almost decipherable, and then introduced herself after laughing awkwardly at her nervousness.

"Okay," I said, averting my shoulder from her proximity.

"I'm sorry, am I being weird?"

"No," I said truthfully.

"." she said.

"I'm Shane." I shook her hand and told her that I would see her the following week, expecting nothing.

*

But earlier today, walking toward the chimpanzee enclosure in exuberant expectation of observing whether my greater ape subjects would be either on the ground or off the ground, I heard her voice from behind: "Shawn."

"Shane."

"Whoa, sorry, you gave me an evil eye there."

"No, not exactly, you just surprised me. I forgot your name, actually, so it's fair." She reminded me, seemingly offended. Then we awkwardly entered into a conversation that would stop at intervals, continue at smaller intervals, and finally peter out, proving us both ultimately ineffectual. This went on for two hours until, having exited the zoo, she said "there's something about me you don't know."

"I'm sure there are a lot of things about you I don't know. I don't know you."

"Well, I would like to tell you, except that you're a sweet guy and I'd like to keep talking to you and I don't want to ruin that."

"It's against the rules of conversation to announce a secret just so you can keep it." She mulled this over for a moment, saw my disappointed face, and then went on despite herself. "Well," she continued, "my roommate has rubbed off on me over the years. He's thirty. Now," she stopped herself for a moment, "I have to let you know that I'm a humanist, that's important... and I'm not racist by any means. But I do prefer certain races over others because of personal issues." These "personal issues" seemed contrary to her roommate's influence, but perhaps both factors contributed.

"So in essence, you don't like black people."

"No, I guess not."

I responded to this statement as diplomatically as possible, and also--apparently somewhat insultingly--told her why racism is bad. I felt both justified and terrible for this. I had good intentions with my pedantry, but I think she interpreted the move as my dismissing her, because right then, her eyes looked to the ground for guidance. "It's fine," I said, trying to quash the awkward silence, "it's... okay. I suppose personal issues are at work here."

"Really, there are things you don't know... there are lots of things that would take years for me to reveal." She had tried to maintain the mystery, all the while keeping a collected, calm tone. But somehow the mystery had lost its luster, obscured by a thick mist. I had waited a moment before deciding not to endure the silence any longer.

"I actually should get going," I said, studying my watch, "there's somewhere I have to be in a half hour. See you next week."

"Okay. Bye."

I sincerely hope I don't give this girl the wrong idea. Perhaps I described her unfairly. In written dialogue, the conversation might translate unreliably. Tone is difficult to convey. I seem only capable of conveying sarcasm. She was nice and well-intentioned, but I'm ill-equipped for these random social events.

Having loafed around for a half-hour during my lunch break, accomplishing nothing, and feeling generally displeased with myself while being locked securely away in my deep imagination, imagining hilariously ideal scenarios, I returned to the music department a decrepit shell dreading the rest of a useless afternoon at work. My co-worker had been helping a curly-headed harridan locate a few DVD's. In order that I might relieve my co-worker of her burden, I offered the woman my assistance after I heard her ask "do you have The Secret Life of Bees?"

"Yes," I said, "I think so. I'll search that."

"No, I'm already being helped," she said curtly. Then she ignored me.

Two minutes following this short exchange, the woman approached the register wielding a pile of stuff. When I began grabbing at it and subjecting bar-codes to the scrutiny of lasers, the woman looked to my co-worker in supplication and asked "you don't work back here?"

"I do on occasion," she said, "but he's the guy who knows this department."

"You're not ringing me up, then?"

"No, Shane will help you with that."

"Ohh," the woman moaned, "I'm so disappointed it's not you."

"Shane is fine," she said, retreating by inches, "I have to get back to the floor, though. I was only here for his break."

"Dang it!" She grabbed at air and shook a fist under her saggy melons (here I lose patience and roll my eyes stealthily). "Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate your help."

"Of course." She left.

Meanwhile, I stood two feet away, conspicuously awaiting her validation. "By the way," I said, halfway into the transaction, "I conducted that search for you anyway." I had hoped that the emphasis on "anyway" might elicit a look of faint regret, but in its stead I received a cold, blank stare that seemed to peer right through me.

"Yeah? Do you have it?"

"I'm afraid not. It should be here on the third."

"Of February?" she asked impatiently.

"Yes, of February." She sighed and walked brazenly away.

I stood flabbergasted, taken aback by such profoundly unwarranted rudeness. I began making personal calls on work time, just so that I could transfer the memory to somebody else.

*

Rifling curiously through the months since I joined this site nearly six years ago, I find that the entries have dwindled in frequency. Two years ago I was a passionate youth whose conviction, while imbued with considerably less patience, was beautiful. What I lacked--and still do lack--in skill and structure, I made up for in quantity because I had serious thoughts. Now, for whatever reason, a cloud has descended over me (and now I've ventured into cliche territory). My mind, once brimful of ambition and profusely opinionated, resembles a bone-dry cavern of worn-out, tried-and-ridiculous philosophies. There is little left to be said. My metaphorical soul has been sucked free, and I've settled so uncomfortably into a routine. School, work, eat, work out, internet, sleep... repeat. I used to feel more interesting. I used to believe so confidently that I had interesting things to say. Where the passions exist, they now lie dormant; they escape occasionally in conversation, more patiently now, fewer times, far between.

In my room there is a Harry Potter box in which memory fragments, ideas, and opinions that I wrote during particularly dull work days sit complacently still, filling the box from end to end. These folded up fragments represent moments of bliss that end where the pen stops--a mind-graveyard. But anything that ends up in there, it seems, becomes a piece of forgotten rubble. If I allow nobody to read these, then they may as well not exist.

Sentimentality is the enemy of patience. Keep me from confronting it.