Yesterday was a bad day. There was no particular reason, I woke up, there was no morning porridge left at the café and my fragile world was torn apart. "Grumpy" is part and parcel of my personality. I'm considering moving to some obscure English small town so that I could sit in a pub drinking pint after pint with folks my age - 70++ - and nag about that crazy old hag Geraldine or that son of a bitch Hubert who pissed in my pot of flowers while intoxicated with too much gin. While in this state of mind, toiling and working is an impossibility. 'Labare' - 'to stumble under a burden' - 'Arbeit' - 'Armut'. Every sound & movement is under my radar as my mind grows unsettled and wearisome. My ears gain superpowers. I hear dust fall to the ground, I hear frontal lobes creak, I hear the ghosts of Arken moan (they are factory workers like us). So there I sit, at my paltry desk, cursing the universe & the wicked, fallen state of Man. Then S comes around and offers me a bun. That makes me happy. I'm like the Underground man: "a little present..."
Today I do what I always do under these conditions. I take a day off. I get up at an hour that would give my employer a stroke, and I flip a few pages of academic book. Then I take a nap. After that, I listen to some music, flipping a few pages more. I eat lunch at a Chinese restaurant one block away. No need to walk far in this condition! There's 10 mugs of coffee, of course. Then I - take a nap, exhausted from coffee and from doing nothing. A few pages more. And goddamit, then office hours are past, the factory bell tolls in my head and my conscience allows me to call it a day.
2 comments:
this would be the perfect fucking beginning of a novel. i want the rest of the story. what happens now? some dame in a black dress wants you to investigate a case?
- alberto
No, sir, this is what happens:
A red-haired dame called Viveca or Gun-Marie investigates MY case. She wears striped suits & a coat. She eats babies for breakfast. She talks with a drawl. There's a bottle of Jim Beam in a drawer in her desk. She takes a sip now and then. She's got connections. Many.
Viveca says I gotta do better. She says I gotta think about the future. She reminds me that we all have to make a living somehow, she and I, too. Viveca talks to me about projects, funding, jobs. She tells me I am not realistic.
Viveca calls me in the middle of the night to ask me about my CV. She hollers to me: "do you fucking lot even have a research portfolio???" I begin to see Viveca in everybody. In you, in me, in the clerk, the barman. She stalks me on the way home from the bar, I see her signature in the lecture notes. Her ghostly whisper everywhere.
I try bribery, I try conviction, I try threats. I try smooth talk - to no avail. Viveca is a stern lady. Principles. She does what she wants. The story does not have a beautiful end...
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