The Face of the World

I've been away, or rather haven't been away from the entanglements and scheduling conflicts that keep me occupied most of these days. I've moved now; I have a room instead of a house. Less expensive, more boxes of stuff to store.
I just realized that public speaking no longer makes me shake physically. I guess if you do something enough, you eventually get used to it, even if it's something you never thought you'd embrace.
I've been writing more, which is good, but falling behind in my jobs. I now work at 4, count 'em 4, different places.
ITT Technical Institute - full time
Southern California School of Music - part time
UX - part time/contract work
The Princeton Review - on hiatus
What does this show you, friends and neighbors? It's never the fact that you can't get a job. It's how many of them you need before you can pay your bills. Let me stress again that I am single, no children, average student loan debt, average car payment. Is anyone listening in those hallowed halls of Congress? Or is that the point - let's make our citizens work themselves so much to make it that they no longer have time to participate in world events and we can run this country into the ground?
A friend tells me that the rhetoric Bush is spewing out now about Iran is exactly the same as what he said before we invaded Iraq. Please dear God let us know some peace for a time - no more war. Is it so selfish to want this? Will Iraq and Iran and Afghanistan really suffer so much without us? If so, who else can help? Surely if there is so much danger and distress in such a crucial part of the world, other countries would be willing to step in where we leave. Or perhaps we just don't want anyone else there due to the oil interests?
Tangled, tangled. My own life is so complicated. I can't imagine deciding the fate of a nation. It reminds me of the old Groucho Marx axiom - "I don't care to belong to any club that will have me as a member." I've heard the reverse is true of presidents - the only men who want the job are the men you don't want to have the job.
Just as an interesting fact - with the state of our country's homeland security today, the statements I've made can be counted as treason. Just an FYI.

In memorium - Martha Smith

I just received word that a dear coworker, Martha Smith, has passed on tonight. She was a spirited lady who I was lucky enough to spend time with, to enjoy her ironic humor, and to learn from her. She even indirectly helped me with my stories by telling me about her experiences riding the trains. She was a fellow Texan and someone who you walked away glad you had spoken to them.
I know she was suffering before she died, and I am glad that she is no longer in pain, but all the same there is a hole in my consciousness that will never be filled up with her jokes or stories again.
I miss her very deeply. She was a part of home here in California.

Memoria in aeterna, Memento mori, Memento vivere.

In requiem.

Updates

It's been quite a crazy month, with my almost attendance of my father's wedding and a computer refresh for the school I work for. I'm tired and sore and miss summer vacation more than ever.
I will be moving in a month, keeping my record of the past seven years of never living in an apartment more than a year. It's hard and I hate it, but I never seem to be able to put down any real roots. Money is always an issue these days, hence the move. I know things could be a lot worse, but I still wish for a little less stress.
Nothing much to say. I've been too busy to write stories lately, so I'm out of practice. I don't know if Nightshade will ever get done - I'm not the same person I was when I started writing her story and it's hard for me to continue it.
Time is my generation's crisis. People can point to record wealth and standards of living, but what about having free time for yourself? Less and less of it, even for someone like me who is unmarried and has no children. Perhaps especially for someone like me...there are a lot of subsidies and tax breaks for children. It begins to look economically sound to have a dependent when you do your taxes yourself and see all the things you're missing out on.
Alas, I digress...Go out into the world and do your own thing, my imaginary audience, but ponder to yourself - are T. S. Eliot's words really true? Will there be time for all the works and days of hand? If there isn't, you're in trouble.

Poemesque

I stand at the foot of the pounding ocean. Every hope, every dream I have will be no more than a single grain of sand to the world, a nothing beyond notice, not substantial enough to be forgotten. The sun will set and rise again, washing away the old, a child with no memory.
We live our lives in an orb of self-importance, sharing other orbs, repelling yet others. Is our dance any different than the very molecules we are built from? Are all our longings stamped into existence by electric current, filling the spaces between? Things fall apart, but oh the bittersweet rush of the fall! Breaking away from the set patterns, feeling the rogue attraction of a passing current - we are what we are made of. Is it so wrong to be made of the universe? To be a part of the godlike enormity of it all, a stepping stone in between matter and planet - or must we feel special, a being of celestial exquisiteness, a matter unencountered anywhere else?
I lie down in the sand, letting the waves touch me, letting the sand mingle into my skin. For a short time, I dream the dreams of the sand. The waves carry my hopes to unknown destinations. Electrons and wishes mingle in a microcosmic dance as the sun washes over the shores, settling down for the ever-new day to begin again.

Stream of consciousness

I would give all that I own for once to build up instead of break down.
I realize this isn't the way of the world, but it's hard for me to accept that my life will be spent moving from frustration to frustration, always dissatisfied.
I was stupid. What else is guaranteed in youth but stupidity and temerity? The weight of those years has always hung between us. Year by year, we have broken down more and more. Will you eventually look across a crowded room and meet my eyes, not realizing who I am? Will you let me haunt your thinking until you finally remember my name on the way home?
Could it really have been any different?
The biggest lie that every story ever told perpetuates is that of love.
"Nature's first green is gold
Her hardest hue to hold
Her early leaf's a flower
But only so an hour
Then leaf subsides to leaf
So Eden sank to grief
So dawn turns down to day
Nothing Gold can Stay."
You can never see truly into someone else's mind. You can never know what they're thinking, when they're lying.
The sharpest edge lies on the truth. Lies are smooth, curved, promising. Truth is bloody and hurtful.
Everyone regrets something deep down. Mine will be my lack of control. Every time. Emotional, physical, mental. It all fails. Human, only human. Which one will be my downfall this time?
Fear is my biggest enemy, and the biggest part of my personality. When is enough? When is too little? It takes a lifetime to master...then you die, unable to pass that mastery on.
Foolish to think we are anything but transitory. But we touch the divine...and spend the rest of our lives unable to reach it again.
These words will never reach their intended. They will only reach the people they will least help.
I long for grace. I believe in things that aren't real. Religion is most people's delusion of choice, so I'm in good company.
All this feels like rambling, and probably is. This is the real Fringes of Lunacy, where the absurd meets the inspired. Bring your towel and don't panic.

Thoughts about the Virginia Tech shooting

At the risk of going off and saying something half-cocked, I will write this post. Please forgive me if I am insensitive.

I worry about the notion that it's okay to kill other people, but I also question the wisdom of warning the entire population to be hypervigilant. Is it really right to tell everyone else to react more violently, more quickly because a few nuts with guns, or a few nuts with box cutters, kill others? Those people are less than a 1/100th of a percent of the entire US population, let alone the world population, and are responsible for their own actions. To tell everyone else to live in fear because there's a better chance of winning the lottery than to be shot in a shooting spree is ludicrous. It's precisely what our country doesn't need right now. We need togetherness and justice, not suspicion and prejudice. And when is it ever right to blame the victim by telling them "Cowering under a desk and waiting for help to come is no longer an option"(source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18174900/ )? Our citizens should not be prepared to live in warzone.

My biggest fear is that more of our rights will be taken away in the name of security. College campuses are still the biggest place for the free and open exchange of ideas. Please don't bolt down the doors and post the HSA at the entrances. When our country stifles the last bastion of cultural exchange, then we will truly be poor.

Money

I can't say that I'm poor, but for the first time in a long time, I simply don't make enough. I try my best to live within my means, but apparently with the gas prices the way they are, that means not having a car. I work too far away not to have a car, so I'm stuck. I have three jobs, and still I simply don't make enough money. Does any other American sense the desperate irony here? I am an educated individual, a Bachelor's Degree under my belt and enrolled in a Master's Degree, working three jobs, all of which pay less than twenty dollars an hour. Why? Because no one wants to hire someone who doesn't have less than two years experience in a field. Because no one will take a chance on intelligence over certification. It makes me angry in a way - since when do I need to have someone tell me what I am capable of? I can do anyone's job, given the time to learn and the resources. How many CEOs of multimillion dollar corporations can say that? Yet I cannot even get beyond a flunkie position being a no-name in one of those corporations...tell me this isn't age-based discrimination?
Anger at my potential being squashed. Anger that so many scheming, useless morons can hold jobs they are unqualified for, and more anger still at the system that supports those scheming, useless morons and makes them in charge. This isn't anger at my current employer. This is anger at the system, at being a cog in a machine, at making less in my current position than the dumbass technician who has to call five different people to figure out how to do his job.
All I want at this point is to be able to learn and work...I don't even want to be rich. I just want a job where I make enough to pay for gas and that's interesting enough that I want to go everyday. I'm sure there has to be one...or is that just my youth speaking?