Monday, June 27, 2005
The Untouchables
Don't have much to write at the moment.
I've been pretty sad lately and I haven't quite found a way out of it. I basically go home after work and cry. It's a ridiculous way to do things, but until I have a better plan I don't have much choice but to keep on doing it.
The craziness at work on Sunday really took a lot out of me. I can't stand feeling like Cashier Robot Barbie who asks the same damned questions over and over again and swipes a thousand credit cards in a single day, all for a lousy $45 before taxes.
I have a problem with the hierarchies of the world. Why does everyone think it's okay to step all over the people whose services we cannot live without? Why do we underpay and overwork the people who keep our society operating, and overpay and underwork the ones who sit at a desk all day and make a lot of phone calls and take two hour lunches that cost $150 on the company tab? What would we do in the developed world without cashiers, wait staff, dishwashers, garbage collectors, cleaners, cooks, and salespeople? We'd fucking implode, that's what. And yet we all think it's just fine to chat on our cell phones throughout an entire transaction with yet another cashier who might as well be a machine for all we care. Fuck, I wish I had a union. The least that people could do is bloody well be polite.
This is really not about my job. The job is no more and no less than I should expect it to be. It's about this terrible lonely feeling that I carry around with me all the time. It's the feeling that I could love every single person in the world and not even one would love me back. I miss the Boy. There were a few funny and odd little things about me that he really understood. He didn't seem to get the obvious, the functional, and the superficial. But he did get certain deeper parts of me, those parts that no one else on Earth seems to understand. And I miss that more than anything.
I'm just fragile right now. The tiniest irritating thing makes me feel that the world just isn't ready for me yet. I sure as hell am not ready for the world.
There's this girl called Ella who comes into the store for about a half hour almost every day of the week. She goes to a private school in a suburb about an hour outside the city. She rarely buys anything, and she comes in just to talk to Emma or Cris -- and now me, since I seem to have befriended her. She's a brilliant kid -- she's written short stories and even whole novels, and she's read books way beyond what we'd recommend for a kid her age. She has a writing mentor and she also knows a lot about film and culture -- she started talking to me about Hunter S. Thompson and she knew way, way more about him than I did. She sometimes reads aloud to me in the store and she's wonderfully expressive and funny. She's incredibly witty, sweet, and kind-hearted. She's also autistic. She's an outgoing version of Christopher Patrick Boone (don't ask questions, just read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time) She has virtually no social boundaries and often runs around in the store or talks too loudly or does and says exactly what she wants regardless of the subject matter.
I live in a world where this sweet and brilliant girl is tormented by other children and adults alike. Boss #1 can't tolerate her presence in the store. I have to be on my guard at all times in case she sees me talking to Ella so I don't get yelled at for it. Ella had to change schools numerous times because the kids were so mean to her.
In short, I don't get this place called Earth. Why are the greatest people so maligned, and the most evil people so celebrated?
I can't understand it.
I'd really like to write more, because now I feel a bit better, but I went out and bought some cds today (new Coldplay album, new White Stripes album, Kelly Clarkson, Jack Johnson, and Weezer) in a half-hearted attempt to cheer myself up, and now I want to put them on my Zen player.
Not much else will get me through tomorrow, which is Tuesday.
I'll write more on my days off, I promise.
That is if I decide against attaching a lot of helium-filled balloons to my lawn chair and floating to Japan. At least that way I'd go out with a Darwin Award.
See ya.
-N
p.s. I practiced that Fiona Apple song with my brother on the piano today for the first time. It sounded okay, but two of the notes are very difficult to hit (not because they're high, but because they're very unusual and not at all intuitive) and the timing is all off. It will take a lot more practice, but at least he seems somewhat willing to work on it now.
I'll post more pics to tide you over.
