Wiffs

A man sat down and a smell came with him. That is all I have to say.

This is the balance I get for getting to leave work early.

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Soda Jerks

It's that time of morning when the sun tries to override the night's hold on light. Some mornings the night relinquishes control promptly with the sounds of birds and morning cars to bring in the day. Today, the night fights back and a gray, overcast sky obscures much of the sun still. I stand at the front desk with the artificial lights still above me looking much like heat lamps from a fast food establishment. I'm warm.

Two more hours and the shift ends. I walk to catch a bus. I spend time with my boyfriend before closing my eyes and attempting the daytime sleep so that I can do this night routine all over again. It's like the sun just heard me type that last line because I can start to see ripples in the pool where there are still people dipping in and out of as has been the practice all night long. Working this graveyard shift only two nights a week pulls me in and out of this world; in, just long enough to understand and get used to it, then out, to remind me what that this nighttime playground is a subculture within a subculture....

After tonight, it's back to Long Beach for a couple days and hopefully time where I mix the worlds I keep keep active memberships in.

I've been thinking of Nathan and Randy a lot lately. Perhaps my days off will allow for those thoughts to come to some type of action. There seems to always been something that is important in the moment that moves my thoughts. Tasks and day planners have been my solution in the past. Pen & paper....my tried and true processes.

As we're fond of saying around The Inn...."You can have a coke." (Mad TV reference)

Month Nine, Day Five

It's September and the buses are full of the extra bodies of those going to school. I am lucky to have a seat. Spanish being spoken to my left, Tagolag to my right. We're at La Brea & Santa Monica Blvd. and I'm wide awake for this hour.

This has been a very long week. Sleep was a valuable comodity that I could not seem to come by, but in its place there was knowledge gained, and the tradeoff was worth it for me. And though it is Friday and the ending of the week for most everyone standing on the bus, it is my first day back to The Inn and back up in LA.

I managed to make it home for two nights this week.

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Dew Drops To Candyland

AIDA - Amneris' Letter

"I'm sorry for everything I've said
And for anything I forgot to say too
When things get so complicated
I stumble...
At best...
Muddle through

I wish that I our lives could be simple
I don't want the world
Only you
Oh I wish I could tell you this face to face
But there's never the time
Never the place
This letter
Will have to do
I.... love.... you...."


I've been listening to words of songs more closely lately than I would normally. I know an extensive search of this journal would show several entries with song lyrics that have caught my ear or some heart string over the years. I'm not oblivious to all ties to words--hahahaha... what is this? Writing? I think I just enjoy the idea of songs and music conveying something without relying on the words themselves. I used to have many, many movie scores collected back when hoarding material things like that meant more to me. I still feel ties to movies that have a good score that paces with the movie.

I'm standing at the front desk and I can feel my muscles starting to fatigue. I push up to my tip toes to stretch the arches of my feet and my calves. I lean side to side and feel the pieces of a body that has little regular activity. My neck cracks and I think about all of the bodies I see here at work that obviously go to some type of gym on a regular basis. We all make time for the things that are important in our lives. If something is important enough, the time will be found, etched out and squeezed in to make it happen.

The journey home: one bus, a subway train and a light rail train. I hope to be home by 9:30am. I haven't decided on whether to sleep when I get home or stay awake. I have to flip the graveyard schedule I've been on the last two days. It would be nice to go and lay out at the beach today. Something tells me that upon arriving back to my humble abode, I'll look around at the clutter and want to start picking it up but end up laying my head down for a moment and then it will be early evening. Hahaha....I'm looking forward to the smell of laundry detergent and fabric softener.

7am..... busy bees begin buzzing...

Under the gray ceiling of the Silverlake outdoors, it's 6:26am when I step into the red bus, grab the yellow handle and deposit my $1.25. We take a seven minute detour because of the event known as Sunset Junction but then it's a straight shot down Santa Monica Blvd. Everything is overcast and nothing but the potholes are doing anything to inspire the sleep to leave my face.

I tendered my resignation from the promotion I was given at work. I have long subscribed to the triteness of ignorance being bliss. I also know how impossible it is to unknow something.

Lady Gaga - Just Dance
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A Shattered Face To Hold The Door

I know that title might flash a scene where someone's face gets slammed into by a door...but even that picture was an afterthought for me. Simply...I use a shattered face to hold my bedroom door open. (It's a piece of a sculpture that was given to me as a gift and I use it as a door stop)

I slept at home last night and woke up to read a magazine. I don't read often so when I make a conscious effort to browse an article that has an eye-catching title it's almost as big a deal as the The Queen Mother passing gas in public.

It's nice to sit on my bed and be surrounded by the sound emanating from my speakers. Not having showered yet, sitting here like this is like bathing in sound waves and my body naturally starts to rhythmically move as each vibration can literally be felt on my skin. The tingles start. Little hairs start standing up as goosebumps form. My entire body becomes a gigantic nerve that excepts the musical stimuli and tears actually start to form in my eyes. I smile.

I need to make a more concerted effort to get back here regularly. It's Summer and I've been to the beach three times this year. What's wrong with me? Music, dancing, the beach & my friends.... I've let them all fall by the wayside with all of the time and effort I've been putting into work and my relationship. This is a familiar pattern. (As I type that I stare at the lights on the Winamp electronic oscillating frequency display. Beat. Beat. Beat...patterns) I should not make it sound as if my efforts are in vain. The allocation of time has all worked in my favor and now it's just a matter of balancing everything back out.

The article I read was in the the September issue of DETAILS magazine. Shia LaBeouf (who I love not for his acting but because his name has every vowel of the alphabet in it) is on the cover and apparently can't get laid. He was not my reason for reading. An article with the title, "Would You Marry A Porn Star? Meet Guys Who Did" caught my eye. One of the quotes that was blown up and printed in bold was, "Life with a XXX actress has its perks--hearing about her day isn't one of them." Even though it had a straight-focus, I figured the issues I deal with would be universal and after reading the article...They are. Usually people find comfort in relating that they are not alone and that there are other people out there dealing with the same things. I've never been comforted knowing that I'm like other people.

I find comfort right here--right now; in the brief dinner with Charlie last night and conversations of our colleagues; in the cuddles of J Squared; in the faces of babies giggling as they experience the world around them; in eating mountains of sugary ice cream; diving under a wave as its about to crash down on me and coming out the other side. I find a lot of comfort in sleeping.

I was going to go into work about noon today, but I really need the time away right now. I just spent the last hour reading different people's blogs--something else I never really do. I stopped when I came around to one that had a link back to my own journal and when I clicked on it I realized that my last entry was on the day before my promotion at work. In just under two months I've become the Assistant Manager of the place. I'm sensing all the things about work that I don't want to be dealing with as I start to form thoughts about what to write about it so I won't. I have one more month left of my evaluation period for the place before I make a stay or leave decision. I'm sticking to my initial 90 day commitment.

Time to cut the hair...

Morning Train

It's my first morning shift in as many weeks as I can remember. Leaving Ky's place this morning I thought of the Sheena Easton song "Morning Train." (Albeit I don't have any trains to take this a.m.).

I watched "Short Bus" for the first time last night. I wasn't sure I was in the right frame of mind for it when the DVD began. I ended up liking it a lot and relating to many of the situations. Some painful; some tearfully joyful.

The bus passes La Cienega and approaches San Vicente.. I'm up.
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"Chasing Pavements" by Adele

The Village People

Have you heard that expression, "It takes a village to raise a child?". I've often thought fondly of the random tableaus that this notion conjures on the surface of this non-stop, synapse-firing brain of mine. Cute. Cute. Cute. A steady progression of time honored milestones; increased respnsibilities; tender mishaps and mistakes where a lesson was learned or a new corner turned...

Ok, now enter in a co-worker of mine who is probably a year or two my senior. I think her (it's a he) village failed her somewhere along the way. Instead of magnificent murals of awesome age-progression pictorials I see soggy, wet cardboard shoe box diaramas that have been dropped once or twice. The crayon coloring is shotty at best and always outside the lines. Shit, the poor thing used that thick, white kindergarten paste instead of Elmer's glue so the plastic furniture and scenery pieces are coming loose and falling off. Shambles. Not cute. Not cute. Not cute.

A separate co-worker summed it up perfectly: she's like Dorie from "Finding Nemo." No matter how many times you show or tell her how to do something she will simply not remember. (Or better yet, just decide that she doesn't want to do it the way that she's supposed to and creates her own process for the rest of us to shake our heads at.)

I want to burn her village down right now.

The ironic part is that she has worked in the shared front desk position the longest of any of us there. While other heads are rolling as management seems to be cleaning house--or The Inn--as the case may be, somehow her lil bobble-head remains untouched by the blade and it has boiled me to the point of having to vent through my journal about it.

Hah. I used "tableau." Talk about pulling useless vocabulary out of my ass from eons ago.

I like this riding on the bus time. It gives me my much needed alone time to collect my thoughts. In the span of time I've been writng, I can feel that the veins on the side of my temples have started to recess back to reflect a smooth dermal layer and not tiny speed bumps on the road from my hairline to my eyeballs. As I walked away from the front gate at work and entered the "heart" of West Hollywood, I called My-Ky-Guy and felt my whole head throbbing with each step. Now...at Santa Monica Blvd and Vermont, stopped in front of the Metro Rail station, I feel the idle vibration lulling my eye-lids shut.
Soon to dream. Soon to cuddle.

After typing all of this, I realize that my village did right by me somehow. I step back and realize I'm still in it. And dammit, that bitch is in my village too!
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I'm tired

I'm so tired right now. While drinking may make me a more social personality, it certainly takes it's toll on alertness as well. My shift seemed like it would never end today and my focus was scattered all over the place.

I have a family email I need to write soon. The seedling of a thought has been growing all week.

I have been wondering why people have been staring at me the entire bus ride. I forgot that I have "Vote No on the Marriage Ban" stickers on the sleeves of my white t-shirt. Haha

Lovely
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