Purely Medicinal (1)

I think it's that recent My Bloody Valentine album that came out early 2014 all suddenly, was the talk of all my feeds, and now I largely don't hear many people mentioning. Or a rough facsimile.

It's been a long enough week that Monday feels like, a week and a half ago. A WEEK AND A HALF! So much longer than four days. Timescale stretched by minutiae. But largely good-- have all the writing in for the Medicine Ball, so my curation/wrangling/writing portion is done, and it's on to the staging, blocking, memorizing.

The theme is (d)constructing Seattle. This theme, or a variant thereof, seems to be on everybody's mind, I just participated in an event called "Inumbrating Pinnacle," which was investigating the Now of Seattle, the Becoming, the Past/Present/Future. For that I wrote 7 pages-- 17 minutes aloud-- of new prose poetry. Still mulling what to do with it now. Perhaps it'll turn up here, in chunks. For Medicine Ball I ended up filling in for a poet who had to drop out. It was challenging to write to two similar themes in one period of time, but I tried to create content that varied enough in tone and subject matter as to be interesting (to myself at least, not sure how many people will see both.)

Now I go to Target. The glamorous Saturdays of weekend workers.

Broadcast Coffee, Summer Day Date (Overheard) (rough)

Tables separation. Tindr date near the door. Hum of espresso. Pretending not to eavesdrop. Pretending to pretend not to eavesdrop. She is more attractive, objectively, than he is. This always encourages. I ate fishballs for dinner last night, and possibly will have grilled cheese this evening. These are the sorts of details people tend to omit. Or lead with. Who knows. This thing that everyone does, no one seems to know how to do. Dinner, movie, checking apps.

Now.
Now.
Now they are talking about housing prices. Each face drops, but they are new and do not have anecdotes that don't make them sound like they'd rather be home. A house in place for a price is
how much? My head starts to hurt. Neither likes this conversation. But they can't stop. The boredom oozes across and around the coffee shop. The decor seems somehow even more tasteful. The barista caresses his own beard in an effort to soothe himself. They keep talking. Really? That much for a room? Something about investments.

Other conversations wither and die. The boredom seeps out of the coffeeshop. Kills the trees in the park. Another building topples. Time, space, stop. I am slumped to my seat. No one will every make love again as long as the dry tongues of endless boredom and the fidget of anxious fingers.

A terror so mundane that nothing can stop it.


________________________________________________
the original draft accelerated the level of absurdity of the situation, and in this version I tried to reign it in a bit, cutting lines like "Jesus goes back and un-dies for all our sins," just because that sort of goofing tends to be a well I go to a lot. But I'm not sure-- kinda miss that ramp up. 

Split Schedule Informal Poll:

You work evenings. Not quite graveyard, but the earliest you're ever done with work is 11:30 p.m. Late ends around 3:15 a.m., though the general average for shift-finishing is 1:30 a.m., which is what it'll likely be tonight. You often take between one and three hours after getting off work to fall asleep. Today, due to a variety of forces, you got up at 8:30 a.m. (you didn't work last  night, so you got about 6 1/2 hours of fitfullish sleep) and now it is 1:45 p.m. and you're looking ahead to a night of work. You've achieved a couple of things you planned for the day, but there's a huge gap between the now and the then.
Soo do you:
--all answers are legally binding, btw--

A) Go home and nap; sleep all the sleep you didn't have until your alarm sounds and you have fifteen minutes to get to the train and work. Ignore bodily or mental impulses that try to wake you up, sublimate the already consumed caffeine and pull blankets and pillows over your head and squeeze your eyes tight, demanding every possible second of rest from the universe.

B) Power through. Another cup of coffee, dish doing, poem editing, service-provider-calling, information-gathering, eating, then, after that, work will seem less a daily grind than a remarkably decision-free zone where you can know for facts what your best uses of time are.

C) Start "The Idiot."

D) Wander around the general waterfront area and do a lot of gazing out upon it, toy with the idea of taking a ferry to Bremerton and back again, just in time for work. Backlog that on a list of things to do someday. (See also: King Street Station and a bus to Kent.)

E) A reasonable mix: go home, short nap, dishes, grab some groceries for the morning. Boring blog post, decent day.

F) If you do________________ much of _______________, you'll give yourself permission to ___________ before work. If not, WEEP!

G) What was that movie everyone was telling you about? You've got the time.

These are the things I talk to myself about on days like this.