posted on October 7, 2009 at 10:24 am by Khali
You believe in what nobody else does
In your mind theres no time and a constant buzz
So disregard the master plan
It’s a disaster man you better ride it out
I can see it all in your eyes
Your future fades, your minutes are few
When the angels make contact with you
You believe in what nobody else does
And things ain’t the way they was
A fool like you is a freak to me
It’s unique to me, what you seek to see
I can see it all in your eyes
Your future fades, your minutes are few
When the angels make contact with you
I’ve seen the future isn’t pretty
Killer instinct, love a surprise
Make a stop, build a fire
Hold you breathe, cover your eyes
The tides are turning crimson
Nightfall growing like a cancer
Feeding on your broken body
Isolations not the answer
Listen what the wind says softly
Sound of traffic, smells like paper
Kisses on your worried eyelids
Sleepless nights turn into vapor
Like a dream and as the crow flies
Must reject the pain your trapped in
Give me all your hard earned beauty
Now I’ll tell you what will happen
Your day will fade and your thoughts will jade
And you’ll wake up in the middle of a dream
Coming up on hard luck, with a moment of silence
And no time to kill, no reason to care
Beware
I can see it all in your eyes
Your future for a dime, anytime
I can see is all in your eyes
Your future for a dime, anytime
I can see it all in your eyes
Your future for a dime, anytime
Your future fades, your minutes are few
When the angels make contact
[When Angels Make Contact - Matt Mays]
So what if she wakes late on weekends, at least she waits until after noon to pour her first drink. At least she cleans the litter box and and does the dishes from the night before before she settles into her chair with her drink and her book. This is all she wants, really. Time to do a little escapism into the realms of fantasy, time to be creative. It seems nowadays she needs more time that usual to unwind from the trial of the week: work. She used to like it, but when the addition of more responsibilities the joy has gone out of it and it’s become one giant demand of her resources. The status of her relationships have suffered recently and that has also stressed her out. By the time saturday rolls around she is exhausted.
She has to take time to think. It takes more time now but she thinks she can answer his question. He can’t get her out of his mind because enough time has passed for things to become idealised, and ideals are hard to live up to; hard to destroy. They never had enough time for things to pass from perfect into the mediocre that marks most relationships. All either of them have left is the passion and the tragedy. A sense of unfinished business. She ponders why this is; how it’s nearly impossible to lay the whole thing to rest. Maybe even how it might be best the way it is. Human frailty at its best. She sips and sighs. She knows that reality has moved them too far apart for anything to happen between them; they have both moved on. But there is a part - and she closes her eyes when she thinks this: there is a part of each of them that exists, perhaps in another reality, together. She cannot deny their affect on each other and she likes this thought, tucks it away to examine later. For now, she thinks it might be enough that they are a part of each others lives, whether they speak or not. They are part of each other because their time together helped forge who they are now. That kind of history makes thier current partners uncomfortable because they can’t live up to the tempestuous nature of what happened during said history. Not that either of them expect thier partners to even try. She respects the others enough to leave it alone, even though, like him, she feels a desire, now and then to reconnect. To re-examine, to maybe even make sense of all that happened… and so she writes. And writes….
Posted in Fiction, fiction maybe | 3 Comments » | Tags: an alternate reality, lyrics, obsessobsessobsess, the road less travelled, things that make you go hrm, what lovers do
posted on May 11, 2009 at 6:54 pm by Khali
This week…. Well, it’s been longer than a week since I last posted, hasn’t it? So I shall rephrase. This last interval has been a tad hairy, thus the absence. Long story short, I think I might be able to relax for five minutes now. Perhaps I shouldn’t say that since Murphy has a tendency to rule my life.
No one ever made the mistake of telling me that step-parenthood was going to be easy. In fact most people rolled their eyes and cringed when I mentioned that J’s daughter was coming to live with us. She’s 16. I’m sure you can do the math. I’m sure you all remember what you were like at that age and cringe at the fits you probably gave your parents. Thing is, I think only half of it is intentional. She’s a smart kid and it’s infuriating that she seems to have no desire to use her brain because it’s too much work. I suppose it comes from being raised in an entirely different atmosphere. I don’t think she’s ever been held to a routine that involved chores, ever. In fact I get the distinct impression that she managed to weasel her way out of whatever was requested of her so many times that she just expects that that is how it works. Right now, she’s peeved that we don’t eat at what she considers a “normal” time and contrives to always be elsewhere so she doesn’t have to eat when we do, or what we do. We’ve suggested that she get a job because J and I can’t afford to maintain the level of spending that she’s used to (this kid must have fifty pairs of shoes!) but she has only tried half-heartedly. She doesn’t really need to because there always seems to be someone willing to fork over some money for whatever she wants. I despair of teaching her the value of money this way. I can’t help it, I care about how she’ll fare when she’s out there on her own but I’m sure that anything I say right now on the subject sounds more like the adults in the Peanuts cartoons or just plain nagging than anything.
It is also equally obvious that she is not used to talking to other people with a proper measure of respect. (This is not entirely unique to her, since I’m fairly certain it’s a trademark of her generation – and not just her age group. Check back with me in ten years and I bet you I’m right on this one. I may even fill you in on why I think this is/will be/might be true.) She keeps throwing the “respect is earned” thing in our faces, but she still talks down or back whenever she gets the chance. Getting her and J to communicate and not jump on each other at the first opportunity is a huge challenge, because J, of course, can’t stand being spoken to like he’s he teenager. (Who does, really?) They’re both so very good at pushing each other’s buttons and it’s a royal pain in the arse to bet out the nerf bat and beat them into submission and/or a place where they can talk like normal human beings. I get that they each want to be treated with respect: Kiddo like an adult and J like the elder. ‘Course, Kiddo is not an adult yet and she’s certainly not behaving in a manner that suggests we should treat her that way, but they’re both so busy being reactionary that I’m getting tired and confused. Because of that I’ve suggested counselling. For all of us. I’m tired of talking at cross-purposes and I can’t figure out how to get them, and me, on the same page. I’ll try anything! I’d like us to be a family after all.
J and I seem to be doing well in spite of everything. It seems that things have conspired to make us work together - not that we weren’t trying to do so before. It just seems that we have more things that require us to form a united front these days than we had before. We’re talking more and making more of an effort to communicate how we really feel about things rather than letting them slide into growliness and angst. We were so good at that for so long that it’s been a bit of a challenge, but neither of us was willing to accept the alternative. This makes me happy. We’re rediscovering what it is we loved about each other in the first place.
We had our birthdays this last weekend and treated each other to MP3 players so that we can have our own respective tunes. It’s a pretty awesome present I must say. (Thanks, Bear.)
In other news, work is weird and things keep happening to make me think that my time there is more limited than I originally thought. My boss doesn’t seem to think that I know my market, or what I’m doing, which is only half fair. I’m learning as I go, but I know for a fact that my branch doesn’t operate the same way that others do. The numbers back me up. As for going out and getting more big clients – well, there is only so much one can do in this kind of atmosphere. This place is totally tourist oriented and I mean totally. There is not the volume of import/export that there used to be.
And to that effect, tourists still amuse me. They are the one part of the job that makes it worthwhile. I mean sometimes we get the occasional “dick-bag” as The Music Fiend (that being my newest teller) calls them, but on the whole they are either very nice, or very amusing. You’d think the things they ask would stop amusing me, but it never gets old. For example:
This one lady comes in earlier today and she has this very puzzled expression on her face. She puts her purse up on the counter and leans close to the glass and says to The Music Fiend:
“I’m confused,”
“Oh no!” says TMF. “What can I do to help?”
“Well, I put my bank card in the ATM and asked for some money and I don’t know what happened!”
“Oh no! Did it give you a receipt or anything?” TMF asks, thinking that perhaps the machine rejected the card.
“Yes!” says the woman and pulls out her wallet. She pulls out a slip of paper and then several twenties. “Yes and it gave me these too, but these aren’t American at all!”
“Oh,” says TMF as she takes the paper and the twenties in through the slot. “This is easy to explain. You see, the machine gave you Canadian money.’
“But I asked for sixty American!”
“Well, you typed in 60 probably, right?”
“Yes,”
“The machine gave you 60 dollars. All it has in it is Canadian you see.” There’s a pause and I can see the woman thinking about this. It’s obvious she had never thought of the machine having anything in it before. It makes me wonder what people think about how they work. If I had asked her before this experience would she have even thought about the actual physical existence of the machine, the physical reality of the money inside it?
“But it took out 60 American from my account!” the woman says, a slightly hysterical look in her eye as she points to the receipt.
“Don’t worry,” says TMF, your bank does the conversion for you; you only withdrew 60 Canadian worth.”
“Are you sure?” she asks suspiciously.
“Positive,” says TMF in her firmest voice. Again there’s a pause, but after a second there’s a visible slump of relief in her shoulders.
“Ok, so what do I do with this?” she asks, gesturing at the three queens in TMF’s hand.
“How long are you in town?” TMF asks.
“Three days,” the woman replies and TMF smiles.
“You’ll need this then,” she says and slides it back to the woman.
“But aren’t all the prices in American?” she asks, the edge of hysteria creeping back onto her face.
“Actually, they’re in Canadian. You are in Canada here after all,” TMF explains.
“Really?”
“Yes, that’s why the machine gave you Canadian money.”
“Oh,” she says and stares at the green money for a moment before stepping away. “This is so new for me,” she says and leaves the store. TMF turns to me and opens her mouth, but nothing comes out - I can’t help it, I burst out laughing.
Now, before you say I’m being mean, this happens with many people, not just American tourists. I mean I suppose it’s not something one thinks about, but I think that if you really did you might come to a logical conclusion. What gets me is that no one actually thinks about how things work, they just take things for granted. Anyway, that was the highlight of a stupid day at work. It amused me. Leave me alone.
On the writing front. I’ve written nothing. Zip. Zero. Zilch. I blame lack of time and stress. Those may be lame excuses, but thats what excuses are. Lame. Truth is, I haven’t taken the time to sit down and write. I’ve let life distract me. Life and all the crap and noise and whatever that comes with it. I am the queen of procrastination.
listening to: Ferry Corsten - Down on Love
reading: Charles de Lint - Widdershins
eating: stew
drinking: pepsi
headspace: a cluttered attic
feeling: flat
Posted in commonplace book, work | 2 Comments » | Tags: blargh, life, step-parenthood, the things tourists do, what lovers do, work
