No Beds in City Hall

Jackie starts the process of writing a condolence for a six year old
and travels down the elevator to see me.
Everyone has to check with me before finishing their condolences
But I walked around the corner just before she came in
and the three tiny children of a co-worker had piled into my chair and
were attempting to touch everything with a solution of saliva, starburst, and glue stick.
I came back, sat myself down in the chair amongst them like they were a viney bushel of berries
*Happy, they were, like the grapes from the fruit of the loom commercial;
And they parted as a school of jellyfish used to working their chaos uninterrupted around adults.
The youngest girl grabs the amethyst from my computer in her fist and holds it up to me and says IS THIS A ROCK !!!!
( no question mark )

Yes, i say, and think, why are you asking questions you know the answer to? what ARE you, a lawyer?

I began typing.

How are my fingers sticky? They're touching everything.

And I type the name that begins with 'Six Year Old' and I know it's not the regular protocol, and I know that's not the kid's legal name, but this is Baltimore, and we do things differently here and a little more descriptively.

And I love that it's Jackie who wrote it.
Because I love her so much for her only being my work friend.
And because Jackie can do whatever she damn well pleases when she writes a condolence because her son was shot a few years back;
and she doesn't seem like she's even old enough to have a son old enough to be around guns at all.
Like she took his youth into her when he died and maybe she'll never have wrinkles...

ever.

And I was just glad the kids were there because they added some levity to the situation.

It wasn't so heavy

Then, the oldest girl screamed, I LOVE IT HERE.

I LOVE CITY HALL.

I NEVER WANT TO LEAVE!

And she said she wanted to LIVE there,
and I laughed and I knew what she was talking about,

And I said, You can't live here. No one can. There aren't any beds here.

Coconut Turn About by the Superintendent of the Rec Center

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, we're singing and hanging out at the rec center,
exploring the hilly west side with big houses and wooden porches.
And a nineteen year old is murdered at 1pm on the South side of the water after an argument.
"Something's wrong with Baltimore."
I watch two brothers, artists, actors, dancers, walk away from me down the blue corridor, past the ceramic kiln, past the crew cleaning the bathrooms, toward the gymnassium with the dance troop, and I think the same thing.
I think that if they aren't here and they are walking outside these walls, by themselves, or WORSE with a group, their safety can't be taken for granted.

Mr. Furlow knows it, my new friend that reminds me of my father and my brother (if you could mix them both together). I walk with him and smile as a toddler toddles quickly in the opposite direction. Mr. Furlow takes his large hand and gently places it on top of the toddlers head. He times it perfectly like a magic game of whack a mole. The little one stops and like a Reiki master of Louissiana, wills the child to change direction as if the tiny head is part of a huge mechanism, a coconut-sized weathervane that must point north.

And he smiles, and I can hear the echo of a silent whimsical giggle behind his eyes, as he takes his hand from the top of the child's head and he toddles back in the right direction.

Jonah and the Whale?

I woke up on Saturday and I was glad the rapture didn't happen, I guess.
But, guess what. I had the date wrong. It's this Saturday the rapture is supposed to happen. And all the good people are going to get sucked up into God's blow hole ( because God is a huge whale in space... duh)

So anyway, that has not happened YET. And I'm not sure what my plans are on Saturday.

I have a menial job, but at least I have health insurance so that if I hit my head on something while I'm going up the vacuum tube, I can recuperate in the hospital with a five dollar tylenol. In fact, I have excellent health insurance, so if I'm lucky enough, I'll get a vaccine for zombie bites since the other side effect of the rapture is that the dead walk the earth. I mean, Jesus. Really? I have to worry about this?

Probably not.

I'm having my coffee and vitamin B. I'm going to fight child abuse today. And I'm also going to work late, late hours today. I won't fail. Today will be a success. I'm drinking out of a cup that says 'Princess'. I won't ask too many questions. I'll stand up for myself if I need to.

That's all I have time for now.

Let the Professionals Handle This

Like hair bleaching, some things should be left to the professionals. It was roughly two years ago, I found myself with a little free time on my hands. And like they say, idle hands can be the devil's plaything, and I was trying to stay busy, obviously to avoid evil as always. I bleached my own hair. Half way through, I called my friend Joey to help me apply the bleach to the back of my head. He helped A LOT. But neither of us were licensed in this practice. It was too strange and I dyed it back to brown within twelve hours.

The following year, I had a job and payed someone to make my hair blonde. It was fun while it lasted.

This evening, five hundred dollars into an ongoing investment a professionally styled head of blonde hair, at eight-thirty-seven, I had fully committed to bleaching my own roots. What is pathetic is that I failed to learn this lesson. And what's more important is that I didn't lose my resilient nature in the past two years.

I tell myself to keep hoping. Yet, now that I've made this mistake twice, the only time I'll ever make my hair blonde again ( by myself at least ) is only if I am put into the witness protection program and it is required to avoid death.

Although I enjoyed galavanting as a bombshell of a different descent; and conducting my own psychology experiment ( yes, people dooooo treat you differently ) ( and yes, I had my own little joke about being a white bitch barbie ); every time I looked in the mirror for more than ten seconds, I missed my old self.

Above all, I'll have more money for cigarettes this year. Like my friend Jeremy says, "she quit her job once so she could have more time to smoke".

True.

Your mother broke the See-Saw

Your mother is sooooo fat, she walked around the corner, saw her own ass in front of herself tryin' a get around the other side.
Your mother is soooo fat, she walked around the corner, tried to pick pocket somebody, felt somethin' touchin' her ass and smacked herself in the face.

Your mother is so fat she set off the neighbor's smoke alarm makin' pancakes and bacon. Your mother is so fat she has a george foreman grill in the passenger seat of her car and fries chicken in the glove compartment.

That's all for now. Rapper's warm up, #1.

Out of Practice Big Time

Now that the "911 generation's boogeyman is dead" I'd just like to say that I'm from the generation before that.

I'm from the generation after the hippies on shakedown street, but before Brittany Spears.

We had a LOT of fun before all of this paranoia. Things were pretty cool. And I'm hoping we can go back to chillin' like villains and quit the witchhunt mentality.

I'mjustsayin'.

Wouldn't that be great?

I'll tell you what would be splendiferous, if people would also stop spewing gibberish like tiny-minded cause-whores. That's right.
I can't possibly be so passionate about so many things since the internet blew up for me in 2005 when I got a job with a computer. I just got the internet at my house in 2008 and it was a whole new world.

I became empassioned, enraged, engaged, and enraptured all at once and wore it the fuck out.

I realized that some of my closest real friends are not on the webs at all and I talk to them on the phone on the regular. Some of my closer friends I just run into on the street, but that's rarer these days, yet, it does happen.

So, goodnight. I have no super-creative spark to send you, just tired fingers writing a tiny bit of my perspective.

Mandala in the Office

Her office is a mandala.

Every time I forget what the meaning of the word means, I am reminded by experience.
By trying to hold on to things and people.

She was supposed to go on vacation right after me. As the wheels of my car rolled downhill and I thought,
I grieved her vacation,
I thought of her
and I heard her voice break through and say 'let me go'

and the accent fell on the 'o' like the exhasperated childish voice I remember hearing sometimes when she was frustrated.

Maybe I was the one she let hear that for some reason;
and my God, that was one way I related to her so much.

Overworked and wanting to win the lottery...

GET ME OUT OF THAT OFFICE.


You can psychoanalyze it all you want and tell me that it was my voice-- but I complain about ALL my jobs. 100 % of all jobs. I complain. And maybe my job there isn't done and that's why I'm not gone yet.

But, her job is done.
And she was due to be in Jamaica March 14th if she hadn't died.

I kind of feel like I owe it to her to tell someone about this experience in my car, so this is what I'm doing.

That's why I'm calling her office a mandala.

Stop holding a place for someone who is not coming back.