Tight-Rope Walking Through Mondays
February 8, 2008
I leap over door-frames, reminding myself to pick up the soles in case they catch, I run up inverted staircases and jump jump jump until the skim of my hair fuzzes the couch. I’ve learned to read upside down by now, so the price tag on the bottom of my mirror is no longer 66.61$ but a rightful Jackson bill. And South America looks like it has an idea with its finger pointing out of its Brazilian fist. Getting to work is kind of loopy. It took me a while to figure out. I thought that maybe I’d be scrambling to keep my core above the trees’ under-canopies, taking hopscotches to get from branch to branch. But trees got too far apart too fast, so tight-rope walking on contained electricity is the way of my day now.
That was last Tuesday and my gravitational coup d’etat plans are continuing to develop nicely. All of this masterminding occurs, of course, while I am alone on my bed at night, my long brown hair trailing dream-like on the floor and my neck crammed back. As if not every other busy bustling busy-body human does that in their spare time; the hours after my grocery runs and other small errands loft into purposelessness, and I have to wonder how everyone else fills their evenings. By Tuesdays, after the unbearably long two-day work week thus far, and with three more doom days to come, my body is wont to find itself horizontal and hoping for better worlds. Who wouldn’t want a better world? A much better world, much much better, where the clutter of your C-life floor is stuck above you, your white ceiling’s emptiness now new clean lounging space. Freeing, it would be. I think it would greatly improve the murkiness of my murky cyclical days. Murkiness makes me think of bogs and upside-down bogs just seem so much more interesting to me.
I am learning that I don’t live in my life. I am learning that other people do. They move into my mornings and take up space in the office bathroom. They have names like Penelope and Garrett and need me to fill the air after they hello me. They pull me down to the ground with directed prompts, and holding on I get dragged until my feet are heavy again on Earth. It’s their small demands that I be in this world that are momentary reminders that I am required to be being in my life. Those how-are-you yanks quickly float to poof-nothing-land though as I slurp myself back into the other worlds I occupy.
I walk along the thread of my comforter, hopping from strand to strand until I make it the crossroads where one giant feather has been sucked into the teal-colored earth. I blow on it with all my toothpick weight and watch it just barely budge in my breeze. My pillow is looming mountainous far off into the distance and my horizon warbles with a rumpled quilt folded at the foot. Getting to the ground where my slippers await larger feet would be tricky, possibly dangerous, and definitely needs being done. After bounding across a large inch of eternal-drop space I land on my bedside table where a few books, a looming set of emergency red digits, and a tissue box reign. I wrap my pale arms around the alarm clock cord and position my body like it’s a fire-pole. I’m scared at first, so clinging there, I hang for a few moments until my arms get tired and then woops I’m half down already and jump the rest, falling onto the carpet but still hitting my hips hard.
This is my first time so small, so I haven’t adjusted yet to my titanic life-style of before. Under the bed really does look scary, and it occurs to me that that’s the kind of valley of death that Psalms 23rd is referring to. I hear myself muttering “I will fear no evil,” as I scamper passed hair that my head had shed onto the floor. It was gross, my floor, I should probably fire my vacuum and re-hire. I wandered over to my bra, which I had thrown to the ground last night getting into bed. One of its boobs became my love-seat and I drew my legs into Native-American style sitting.
Getting to work would be hard. Fortunately it was only a few blocks to my office cubicle but I would still have to leave hours earlier, possibly even before sunrise. I considered the materials I would need to fashion a hard-hat that would protect me incase I got knocked over or stepped on when side-walk traffic increased around 8:00. Dewder would probably make some stupid comment about me wearing a helmet to work. Cross-guards aren’t supposed to make people feel bad on their way to their bad jobs, but this one does. He probably wouldn’t see me tomorrow anyway. Just in case, I could jump down from the curb and hug its gutter until I round Dewder’s corner. Now the ten seconds to cross the street would be a problem.
Today Carlos handed me a memo that I slapped onto my desk, unread, like the ones underneath it. When Boss called a team-meeting in conference room B and announced the three people who were transferring to the center six miles away I was surprised. No one else seemed ruffled. Must have been that ignored memo this morning. Walking back to my square working space I let the feeling seep into my schedule. This would change my life! I would have to meet bus 68 which is down past Dewder’s corner, I would have to bring an extra granola bar for my bus ride home, and I would get to see my way to work at some 34 miles an hour. All of these changes were improvements, I could tell already.
Carlos came by again, lingering over my post-its and my highlighters to see what I thought of the switch. It meant I’d be leaving the carpet and the spin-chair and the wall that I had been with for three years. It also meant that I’d be working with a different group of cubiclelers.
“So what do you think?” he asked, not looking at me. I was surprised to see his coolness that was trying to cover care. I had figured that for most people it wouldn’t matter that I was leaving.
“I guess, I guess it’s alright. It doesn’t seem like it will be too much of a change. I mean, it’s the same work, right?” I was surprised at my coolness hiding reality. Dang it, I thought, I was really going to miss my great chair that could spin in slow 360s. I looked up at Carlos who was waiting for more, watching me lingering in the clouds. I knew at that moment that they all knew about me and my worlds. No wonder they didn’t bother dropping by more often. What was Carlos doing?
“Well, hey, I just thought I’d let you know that it was great having you here, and that if you ever feel like reminding yourself of…” he looked up over the sea of low walled boxes and finished, “like reminding yourself of this, just give me a call.” He said this knowing he was handing me a life-saving life-preserver. A chance to save me from myself. He fluttered another post-it note onto my desk. Digits breathed into the air as they stuck to my already post-it noted place. I picked it up in my fingers and watched his back as he made his way to the sixth cubicle to the left. I shouldn’t be offended should I? It occurred to me that the normal woman would maybe even feel flattered. That was out of the question.
Today I watched bus 93 stop at the light at the intersection and pass me by. I counted the number of red cars that passed and wished all cars were red – imagine the confusion in parking garages! Bus 68 pulled into my standing space to let me on. $1.80 went into the metal box at the front and the moustached driver waved me in, his large steering wheel spinning on his lap to take us away. There were only a few spots left so I chose the one near the window in the back, the right place for me, a window to the world passing in a blur. When I say near the window, I mean next to someone who was sitting near the window. My hands are folded on my lap, my knees together, my lunch and my baggy briefcase at my feet, and my eyes staring outside. The man next to me had politely shifted over as I sat down so that none of him would be touching me, as society demanded.
I notice the frame of his glasses, black, like his eyebrows, his hair. His brow, furrowed over the paper he’s probably not actually interested in, matches his concerned outfit. Strict for a work that needs to be important. Black overcoat, shoes dusty with dry snow, a well-tied tie buried somewhere under his layers no doubt.
Before I can catch myself I ask him, “Don’t you wish every day was Monday so that planet Earth could get over their obsession with hating Mondays?” He looked up, surprised at noise. He seemed like a Steve, or a Michael, the full name. No Mike. “Monday is actually my favorite day of the week,” he replied. Wrong. Untruth. How could anyone like them? “Why?” I gave back. I noticed that despite society’s restrictions to stay cool, calm, collected, my hope was leaning forward. I was anxious to hear about the regular world in a non-regular light. “They’re just like test days back in school, loved them,” was his answer. Wrong. Another untruth. Not answer enough. I wanted more but didn’t say anything, feeling restrained in giving him my incredulous attention. Here was a world I didn’t know about. His stop came to a stop and he smiled, stood up, handed me the paper, got off.
Work was work, but in a different chair, a farther cubicle from the water fountain, and under pinker fluorescent fixtures. I tried my best to smile at these new people over their morning coffees, fixing my own only to have something else to put on my desk’s empty surface. The woman across the two-foot mini cubicle hallway of stretched air had pictures covering her low walls. They were all of dolphins.
We were all underwater. At first water pouring in from the ceiling tiles, loads of it dumping itself over our keyboards, splashing into our faces, our blouses, our buttons, our ties. Not to worry though, this was a usual occurrence. At precisely 9:32 every work-day morning The Flood happened. We wait patiently for it to finish and after only about thirteen minutes our whole lives are underwater. By 9:45 we’re back to work, seatbelts securing our bottoms to our seats, snorkel masks on, women have to tie their hair back.
Men start their trip to the bathroom free-styling through the teal air and at about the second cubicle finally resort to the breast-stroke, tired and unable to learn their lesson from the women who leave and return in a relaxed fashion. The doggy-paddler is always the funniest to watch. He tends to get up around eleven to do his business. I get to watch him pass my door-less doorway, his large white-collared shirt blossoming and billowing around him, untucked, his untied shoelaces suspended and looking a lot like antennae to bug-feet. The best part of this underwater life is that everyone still has their shoes on. It’s perfect.
Today Steve or Michael was where he was yesterday. Hesitation slowed my steps for a second or two until I sat next to him again. He still got the window. He looked up from his paper, nodded, smiled, looked back down. My hands are holding my lunch, my baggy briefcase is on the floor, my scarf is too warm for this morning. That’s not too weird, right? Sitting next to the same stranger on a bus two days in a row? Steve/Michael was well-playing his role in normalcy. I let the window occupy my senses. Trees passed outside and I wished they were all holding hands, they seemed so much closer together at this speed.
He was done reading. He looked at me looking out the window, and his eyes joined my trees.
“So how was your Monday?” he asked, still looking past the glass. “Hateful?” It sounded like it was followed by a smile.
“I guess not really,” I paused. “Just boring.”
“So you’re bored,” he diagnosed.
I looked at him. He glanced over at me, a glance that locked our eyes but had him inspecting my whole person. I felt his thoughts on my skin. It wasn’t that they were touching me, more like probing to reach the deeper whole-image-me. Other people occupy my life I think to myself. It was them that moved in and out of it, flitting through with little permanence, nodding in my direction. I give nothing back. This man with the concerned wardrobe, he somehow is sticking. He’s holding me up against light. Challenging the me that hovers over my walked steps instead of stepping. He’s watching me think, watching me grow quiet. He pushes once more, this time playing a role beyond normalcy, a risk in a must-be-kind world.
“I’ve always been told that if you’re bored you’re boring.”
My hands hold each other a little bit tighter, my lunch bag crinkling under folded knuckles. I’m looking out the window intently now, my eyes only for what’s beyond the bus, focused, as if importance was outside, not here, with me. That was strong, outlined, an opaque shape he handed me. I feel the need to feel offended.
Suddenly, I’m not. Simply that. My lunch bag is released from grippy hands, and I shuffle my feet, moving again. An interesting choice I just made. Let me not be offended and instead give this challenge acknowledgement. Let me stay here, on the ground, make importance with me. Strangely, I want to be here for what I’m about to say, for what I’m thinking. It’s easy.
“The trees look like they’re holding hands,” I slap that onto the table.
Our something like 34 miles per hour slow to an approximate 5 and then a certain 0 as the bus pulls up to Jefferson Corner. Steve/Michael gets up, it’s his stop. He passes my knees with silence. He’s smiling. His extended hand surprises my face, and I shake it. “Nice to meet you,” he says.
Later I told Deborah the dolphin-lady that I liked her calendar pictures.