has anyone seen my tambourine

Jesus it gets cold in this house. Being poor equals wearing layers. On the bright side, my status at ½Price is officially being bumped up to fulltime regular made-man fella, instead of seasonal-temp dingus. So that's happy. I guess everyone's dressing up there today, but the only costume I can think of is a giant fake beard I saw at Fred Meyer one time. Incomplete! Grade NC - you may retry for credit next semester.


[04:28]

Elsewhere... Hav's mom is having her employees take the Jungian types test, so she had H take it too, and so, of course, I couldn't not. H is a Giver, and apparently I made Visionary. w00+! I think that means I can get William Blake to kick your ass. In a bar fight. In Memphis. Yeah.

to recap, summer

at the tip of the hands the dazzlement of butterflies

Illustrations from Japanese kids' books from the '20s.

bookstore.

Bookstore bookstore bookstore. Bookstore bookstore? Bookstore, bookstore.

Bookstore.

Weekend tomorrow.

oh it's about time

mp3s available, finally.

ahhh, life...

I used to think I thought about books a lot. Turns out, shelving them four or five hours a day for a couple weeks compels a lot more scrutiny of the book as an object. All those titles and authors flying by, plot descriptions on the backside (or else quotes from other writers) - spine after spine, sheer quantity: the vast number of fellows must be the great equalizer. Standing amid all these tomes, and bound items are such sacred objects, I get the feeling that even if I wanted to add to these piles and piles of books cycling on & off shelves ceaselessly, it would be a criminal waste of space & effort. Everybody wants to leave their mark on the world, and books, the most tangible way to do so, seem to be also the most common. My most frequent wish is for a match.

Except my brain then says "No wait, please wait," and rationalizes some criteria for me. First, reading books is not necessarily different from watching tv. For example, the (good) show Firefly vs. the (actual) Star Trek meets the X-Men novel. Almost 300 pages. So by and large the majority of books printed are trash, albeit trash we sell faster than anything of substance. Literacy is vital to democracy, of course, but in the sense of the great eventual goal of self-government and autonomy, mind-numbing items like the NASCAR romance novels serve only to quiet the imagination.

Which brings me to criterion 2, the purpose & usage of the human imagination. That may sound a little JimHenson-y, but there's truth in the chaotic backalleys of the mind. Experientially, we are dual: conscious & unconscious. In mind, right now, we have little more than immediate experience; everything else is "forgotten." The purpose of art is (yeah, arguably) to dredge the straits of our being, make the unconscious conscious, effect anamnesis - and the mechanism of this is imagination. Neal Stephenson writes about a mafia-run pizza business, Tolkien writes about the scourging of the shire, Dante writes about Odysseus in Hell, and with each we're one step closer to unity. I mean, right? That's not too much to ask, is it? I won't be stingy with my definition of art if people will just try, dammit.

Anyway, that's all I got for now. Theory as survival instinct. Time for lunch.

bob on borrowed time

Wow. One of the very greats is not long for this world. Heavy sigh.

character re-classing and you

I love everything.

This job is readjusting my modes of operation: where before I would casually shirk one of PizzaHut's policies, e.g. always getting a credit card rubbing from a customer, simply from lack of identification with the multinational corporation & its ideals, now I feel compelled to "care" about not only my position within this company, but *gasp*, the company itself, family-owned and co-competitive as it is. There is a story about how HPB won't expand into Colorado until a nonagenarian businesslady there releases interest in her own pre-existing "Half-Price Books," a single, teeny store. Ethical business practices! What?

Every job I've ever had, I've coasted. Seems dangerous to be feeling this idealism again, what a job should be, which I haven't felt since hs graduation (turbulent times as they were). The sleeper awakens? Somewhere between life ambitions and survival necessities, the last ten years have been quite nearly murderous.

The last 3 days have been solid training, working with managers and reading dense manuals for hours on end, watching some (occasionally, surprisingly creative) training videos, just getting to know the ins & outs. This shadowing will continue for at least another week, and we're told (we = me & the girl hired the same day, christened "punk rock girl" by staff) the job won't be fluent until after six months. It feels almost alien, the opportunity/desire to invest myself in employment, having adopted anti-capitalist attitudes over the years simply out of resentment of corporate greed. The reality is that within capitalism, there is room to maneuver, if you asume and understand your ultimate responsibility to your self, and your connection to the rest of the world. A free market is not deleterious to agency.

So, I like this job so far. What this means for the future is uncertain in specifics, but more certain on a broader, deeper scale. I'm still just an hs graduate after nearly 10 years, and suddenly I'm not feeling so horrible about it. I think maybe that feeling was coloring my worldview with unnecessary opacity.

Where does the newborn go from here? The net is vast and infinite.

i may look ridiculous, but i feel GREAT!

I received a package this morning from my g'ma, bearing all sorts of random items like tube socks, fitted sheets and Norman Vincent Peale books, as well as this dapper affair, a blue silk superman robe. The question marks are still rising from my head. How did my grandparents come to possess this unique curio? What made them decide to send it here? Have they indeed finally and inevitably gone screaming mad? Silk? Well, it doesn't matter now, 'cause I'm looking and feeling GREAT.

In other news, I'm finally starting at HalfPrice today. And festering with anticipation. Hopefully it's as good as it should, from the preconceptions I've built up over many years, be.