Dreaming out Loud 11.02.08
I can hear his voice in my mind, all gravel and tobacco, all age, insecurity, and wisdom. I can hear the metal nib of his pen scratching on an expensive pad of parchment paper. But no matter what I do, I can’t see him. He’s foggy, and indistinguishable. I see him, and then I forget him. His hands are the only thing that I can make out. They’re beautiful, especially when the candle light casts deep shadows onto his arthritic fingers. I try to think of where I’ve seen those hands before, and - like the slow rumble of thunder in the distance - he begins to speak to somebody who isn’t in the room with him.
I have never written in a journal before today. I never thought it necessary. I have everything I need inside my head and I have never had a wish to share my life with anybody. This is not about my life, however. This journal will be kept as a gift to a young woman whose name I do not know yet. I have learned, throughout my many years, that life is too fleeting to understand anything in any given fast-paced moment and one is lucky to remember one tenth of what they don’t realize they’ve figured out years after that moment has passed. I would swear to you, dear girl, that I never would have done this for anybody else. The thought has never even entered my mind to do this for anybody else. But you remind me of somebody I once knew. Your spirit and hers would have been “kindred” as she so often labeled mine. She was wrong though. She and I were not kindred. I did not realize what I already knew until it was far too late. None of that matters now. This journal is not about me. It is a gift for you, about you.
Now her? I can see her. She’s pretty, young, thin, with short hair (wow, short pink and purple hair, no less), with a pierced lip, and small tattoos spread over the parts of her body that I can see. She’s laying in bed, and can’t see me. I’m an observer tonight anyhow. I can hear her thoughts…
I lay on my side, staring at the alarm clock. I’d turned it off an hour before and still could not gather the will power it would take to climb out of bed and get ready for the day. I needed to get going, but who wants to get going when it means spending 10 hours (plus an hour each way commuting) in an office with a man who thinks derogatory racial slurs and jokes are the pinnacle of comedy, his wife - who will do anything legal or not to get her hands on one more dollar, confident that she can frighten or outwit every other person in every other company who might try to stop her, an insecure yes man - who, despite his last biting pieces of wisdom and integrity - is slowly being eaten alive in front of your eyes and you cannot decide if you hate him for it or just feel exceedingly sorry for him, and last but not least, the constant barrage of teary eyed, red-nosed truckers looking for somebody to validate their reasons for wanting to quit their job and move to the unemployment line.
When you’re the only one in the office in any kind of a position to listen to these people, you start to wonder if your integrity and wisdom might be on their last legs as well. When older, stable, married fathers are walking away from every piece of security that has defined their life for the last 10 years to find something not quite so humiliating, one has to wonder why a young woman who feels the way I do about it would stay for more than five minutes. Which is what I do every morning at 5:00 AM. I lie on my side, after turning the alarm clock off and I wonder why I stay here in this gray world where funny is defined by a man who dropped out of middle school and ethics are defined by a woman whose only job experience was a few years at Circus Circus in Las Vegas, Nevada.
…………
I haven’t woken up feeling like I was an intruder on my own dream in years. YEARS. I liked that a lot. Another analytical post is coming soon.
icon by sweetestfriendx @ LJ
cross posted here at THE QUILL