this is old
In my dreams, everyone is speaking German. I've never heard a word of it spoken in my life, but there it is--guttural, disapproving and unmistakable. I'm sitting at my desk, and around me, the Germans are like a flood. There are hundreds of them, stocky and rigid and loud and always busy. Their strange language collides with itself until it is the abbrasive buzzing of bees. Occasionally, one will look right at me, with eyes like cream suspended in coffee, perfectly still but with threatening instability. He will say something--it is always a he. I know he is asking me a question, although it lacks the English intonation I associate with inquisitiveness. His question is a command: justify yourself. I open my mouth, but my tongue is too wide to navigate their vocabulary. I sound like a duck. Ock ock ock.
I awake gurgling, my throat having straddled itself too tightly around a breath. It's all very profound and very troubling. As a result, I go through my day tired. Everything around me is one familiar blur. I feel my emotions as a distant dripping in the back of my skull. Every one a leaking faucet. It's like living in a world of stucco surfaces and bathroom flourescent lights.
I work in retail, at a local Wal-Mart, where I've exhausted the career track. After seven years, I am the store manager. There is no up from here. There is only forward--nowhere to go but forward. I know the price and location of every lighting fixture and bedset in the store like you know the names of your childhood friends. I know the things that are too mundane to even notice: the color and pattern of the floor tiles; the number of tiers in the overhead air-conditioning units. I know that in the stockroom, there are no shelves or ceilings that are both high and stable enough to hang yourself from.
I have little time and no hobbies. When I return from work at 9 pm, I soon go back to sleep and to my dreams of the Germans.
I awake gurgling, my throat having straddled itself too tightly around a breath. It's all very profound and very troubling. As a result, I go through my day tired. Everything around me is one familiar blur. I feel my emotions as a distant dripping in the back of my skull. Every one a leaking faucet. It's like living in a world of stucco surfaces and bathroom flourescent lights.
I work in retail, at a local Wal-Mart, where I've exhausted the career track. After seven years, I am the store manager. There is no up from here. There is only forward--nowhere to go but forward. I know the price and location of every lighting fixture and bedset in the store like you know the names of your childhood friends. I know the things that are too mundane to even notice: the color and pattern of the floor tiles; the number of tiers in the overhead air-conditioning units. I know that in the stockroom, there are no shelves or ceilings that are both high and stable enough to hang yourself from.
I have little time and no hobbies. When I return from work at 9 pm, I soon go back to sleep and to my dreams of the Germans.