how did that dead fly get on my zed key?

I mean I don’t use zed that often but I Just did and it’s sitting in the bottom right corner of the zed and ..

it’s still there.

Okay I tried to teach you that loveis all about
dancing in a pit of broken bottles,
okay that happened.

but now that’s passed.

And maybe I never shouldhave tried to
teach anyone-anything, but

regret is a rusting scythe
in the back shed

I don’t think about it very often.

So we can’t fly anymore: we just need to
be like those old men in Breughel’s Icarus
what were they thinking anyways, sort of bored – oh
they had better morepractical things on
their minds: Auden seemed to think those old men had the right
idea he always liked that kind of seasoned
disenchantment.

And ah hope that we can carry on some kindof
peace while our children are trying to blow
bubbles in the turning ocean currents.

This morning, I put some beans and rice in half a pita with some avocado and ate that.

Then I put the same in the other half of a pita.

Then, I ran out of pita so I just mixed beans and rice together and ate them off of a plate. And it was then I realized that the pita was all pretension.

I had been fooling myself.

I think part of being an adult means that sometimes you are allowed to ignore certain people. Like, say, an old, estranged, and never-known-well classmate from your high school. Or, the Subway guy who you used to make small talk with when you were getting sandwiches on your lunch from work. I think it’s generally understood that your relationship was tenuous, and it may only make things awkward if you go ahead and begin a ’so what are you doing?’ conversation with them.

I don’t take offense when I see someone I barely know turn their gaze pointedly at something else when I meet it. I know it’s not because they suspect I’m a paranoid schizophrenic. Or at least, I think I know that. I expect it’s because I’m absolutely peripheral to their lives. And, the same is true for me of them.

And though I understand it, I can’t help myself. I have to say hello. It’s like an itch that I have to scratch. They see me, I see them. I know they know me. I know them! I know I should stay quiet….. and just pretend that I don’t see them. But it’s like lying. And I’m a terrible liar.

Usually I fidget and my stomach turns until I can just get it over with and start some meaningless conversation so I can assure them (and myself) that there’s no animosity between us. It’s always a little strange and forced and I tend to laugh louder than I should, at jokes that I would never find funny in a situation that wasn’t as uncomfortable.

So, it happened the other day that I saw a very old school mate on the bus home from work. One who I had a pretty good rapport with in grade nine, but with whom I haven’t spoken in years. I figured: this is it. I’m really going to do it. I’m going to employ a perfectly reasonable strategy, and just pretend I didn’t see him. I gazed distractedly out the window, and fiddled with my iPod. I was casual. I pulled the bus-bell, and got off at my stop. It was seamless. We never made eye contact, and I spared us both stilted bus conversation.

And, no kidding: he finds me on Facebook and sends me a message asking me how I’m doing, and wondering why we ignored each other on the bus.

The one time.

A large part of my job entails NCLP (Not Computer Literate People) translation. People come to the service department to ‘participate’ their drive, and ask how many ‘jigga-bytes’ there are on their computer. I don’t mind, really, when people come to me and don’t know what they want or understand how their computer works. I wouldn’t have a job if everyone knew how to use and repair their own computer. And they’re not half as irritating as the people who come to the counter with their specs memorized, hoping to out-smart you by dropping obscure technical terms:

“My MacPro has a 1TB Serial ATA 3Gb/s, 7200 rpm, 32MB cache HDD and I installed a RAID Card with 512MB cache and 72-hour cache battery backup.”
“And…”
“I need an ethernet cable.”

In any case, when NCLP come in and ask questions things can become confusing. A woman asked the other day if she could get wireless internet to stick in her computer. It turned out she wanted a wireless router.

So, a customer came in a week or so ago with a computer for repair. She had an interesting way of speaking in that she always sounded like she was speaking in a church – softly, and deliberately, and seriously. So, it surprised me when she mentioned very straight-forwardly that her daughter was looking at some unpleasant sites on her laptop. And, just in case I wasn’t sure what kind of unpleasant sites she was talking about, she locked eyes with me and explained: “Pornography.”

I said we would be able to show her how to block certain sites on Safari with parental controls, if that was what she wanted, when she came in to pick her computer up.

So, she came back to pick the computer up when her repair was done a few days later, and I described to her the way that she could block certain sites in her browser. While I was showing her, she mentioned that she had quite a lot of photos she wanted to back up. She had heard that there were online backup sites, and I told her this was true.. etc. etc. and absentmindedly explained that it is also nice to have a physical backup drive at your disposal.

I explained the steps as easily as I could to censor sites, and began filing away the paperwork for her repair. She lingered.

“So, could you recommend any sites?”
“Any sites?”
“You know, picture sites.”
“Oh,” I blushed looking down at the desk – conscious of the customers waiting in line behind her. “No. I honestly don’t visit those sites.”
“But do you know of any?”
“Well. No, I mean.. I don’t..” I suppose if she’s really adamant I thought to myself. I blurted “There’s PornTube and YouPorn, but I don’t…”
She looked at me, horrified at my answer, and softly replied: “I meant to put my photos on, one of those backup sites.”

I laughed, and turned red and mumbled something about not knowing exactly and sorry and have a nice day.

She thanked me with a concerned gaze and said goodbye. She didn’t laugh, at all.

As I type this, there is a narrator in my head narrating that I’m typing. It has a calm, confident tone – and has no qualms describing the minutiae of my day. It narrates as I cycle to work, and it describes me in third person as I lean my forehead against the glass of the bus, and contemplate how likely it will be that I will end up living in my father’s loft in small town suburbia for the rest of my adult life.

It is irrepressible. It will quiet down during conversations, only to resume again once the conversation has ended. And it is always optimistic. It ends sentences with “she thought this would be the last time she would talk to that book-store owner. But, much to her surprise, a few months later..”

The narrator hates boring endings. For instance, rarely does the narrator say: “On her date, she made an awful, awkward impression – and he never bothered to contact her again.” But, the narrator will create at least three plausible futures, all shot off as quickly as it can – to smother the pedestrian reality. “It would be the last time that she would ever see a man again. She assumed a life of total celibacy.. [edit] a life of total lesbianism.” or “The man was actually a drug dealer, and knew that she would discover his secret sooner or later. He gave up his social life – caught up like a fly in the web of gang violence and drug addiction.”

And, then, finding myself unable to be a lesbian or even able to muster the energy to try to be a lesbian, to live up to the optimistic narrator’s demands – the narrator disappointedly begins narrating again from where we left off. “She walked to the mall, where she bought a Snickers bar. A snickers bar that was going to change her life forever.”