All you are

I am a good worker: bells are ringing, I am singing, joyous in my industry. I have an eye for details, which is what all these jobs require. I take the degradation of order and make it right, I am efficient and brisk in my movements. They wish they could find more of me, I take the piles of documents and make them disappear: now it is right. I make everything right. I am order, I am straight lines and clean documents, I am everything in its place. I am a drill sergeant, I am the patriarchy, I am Dewey, Cutter, and The Superintendent rolled into one. Errant documents squeal and line up when they see me coming, whip in one hand, number 3 pencil in the other.

I am a bad worker. I can't stop daydreaming. I perform a task and sit for five minutes. I hide in the bathroom, take off my clothes, examine my body, and put the clothes back on again. I dance in the aisles and startle when someone catches me. I invariably show up five minutes late and leave five minutes early. They regret hiring me.

I am solemn and serious. I am earnest to a fault - you have heard all of this before. I speak in a low voice and look directly in people's eyes. I nod gentle greetings to the elderly people who work as cashiers, whom I pass on the street. I have been in solemn places, behaving appropriately. I picture myself receiving a gift in the solemnest of solemn demeanors. I never break the rules. Never. I know the Holy Spirit, the light within us all, and treat it with dignity and solemnity. There is not a community of light, we have our own, our lonely own, and I know it and I recognize it.

I am funny at all the wrong times. I am a child. I start laughing when I call public safety, or inquire after a friend's health ("We were afraid you were dead," as I start laughing like a hyena). I am massively inappropriate. I laugh in class when I'm afraid, when I've just said something cruel or mean, when the Natives have been Slaughtered by the Conquistadores. 10 million dead, heh, requiescat in pace. I laugh like a scared chimp, baring my teeth in a grotesque grin. I have fun when there is suffering, I refuse the deadening weight of the years, I life in denial or I live in hope.

I am brilliant. I blow away my professors. I am the kind words in the recommendations, the kind numbers on the transcript, the kind words on the final papers. I am brilliant - I see things that other's don't, I turn my muddled reaction into something eloquent.

I am inflated. It's all made up, they say that because I pay my way. They say these things because they know I'll cry and raise hell if they don't.

I am a dilettante, a wretched half-hearted Renaissance woman. I long for old-time grammar to be in use, but I barely know how to use it myself.

I am the salt of the earth, I am valuable, but I am the salt that prevents growth. You scatter salt on the fields, and nothing will grow there.

I am making this all up.

I am on hold.

2002-10-02, things

before / after

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