#6 The Test

So, obviously, this is not "The Custodian's Closet" anymore as I am no longer a custodian. I now have been given the wonderful opportunity to serve at a community action agency teaching life skills to underprivileged individuals. However, I cannot think of a more fitting qualification for doing so than working as a custodian for the first 20 years of my life. Hopefully I will have some opportunity soon to explain why. If anyone is even reading this anymore, please leave me a message. Even if it's just to say howdy or any other colloquialism you find useful. This would greatly encourage me to actually keep writing.

Oh, and regarding the new title, if you look up a definition of that word it will refer to a work of fiction using hypertext in the document. Sort of a "Choose Your Own Adventure". However, my use of it is in reference to an explanation given on the radio many years ago, meaning "an account based on fact, but stylized in such away as to necessarily refer to it as fiction". Or something like that. Pretty well describes every humans personal recounting of facts based on their own filters.

That's my story.

#5 - The Switches

"One must somehow find a way of loving the world without trusting it; somehow one must love the world without being worldly." -G.K. Chesterton.

    These words appeared at the beginning of Part Two of Loren Eiseley's book "All The Strange Hours - The Excavation of a Life".  How I happened across this book in my usual thrift store forays is beyond me.  But it is striking such a powerful chord in me that I have that unsettling suspicion it was waiting for me on that shelf.  Let me digress regarding that for a moment. 

    A restless puzzle tends to kick around in me whenever I uncover something I value.  It only seems to manifest when the object physically predates me or closely coincides with my birth.  It's something akin to the unknowable mystery of synchronicity.  How close did our paths brush? Or was it a 39 year meander until, on catching sight of the spine, I grabbed it and connected. Why?  Had it not been the copy with this cover, I might have brushed it off.  I've seen other covers since.  Reprints.  The desperation in the author's face seems softened.  But this yellowed copy tripped that little switch within. I swear those are inside me, endlessly fluttering and clicking away.  I feel them like the rows of mechanical switches in the darkened back room of the phone company I used to clean with my parents as a child.  I'd like to imagine my switchboard making logical, informed decsions day after day.  But, good luck.  "See that guys face?" Click.  "He's a liar and a sneak". Click click.  "You can't trust a face like that." Thrum-thrum-thrum-click. 

    The older I get the connections cannot be traced back.  Faces floated above me at the bewildering parties of adults.  Masks of weathered skin, both kind and cruel, may have appeared above me just once and then vanished. And yet my hungry childish brain analyzed them effortlessly and wires were connected that cannot be cut.  The puffy face of the morbidly obese lunch cafeteria lady in the project where our babysitter lived.  Rumours circulated that she made her teenage son aid her in bathing and that between the folds of her voluminous flesh he found mold.  I can't shake that image to this day.  A silent shudder flows through me everytime a see a similarly circus-sized human scootering through the grocery store isles filling their carts with fat cell fuel.

   I'm sure I'm not alone in these unfair predispositions.  What unknowable atrocities do people associate with my unusual tall frame, beak-like nose and conspicuous Adam's apple?  Maybe this explains the continuous appearance of urine in the elevator and public icebox. 

   "Clean THIS up, janitor.  That's what you get for looking like my uncle Gary. I don't trust you. I hated him. I. Hated. Him."

   I can understand it.  But it's no good to live that way. Not for any of us. Chesterton was right. Trusting nonchalantly is not wise.  But loving everyone is. It overrides the switches in your head and most importantly it helps you forgive them.  Even when they're peeing on you.

4: The Enemy

3: The Aftermath

   Today is a double aftermath- first workday after the Super Bowl and first workday after the memorial for my stepfather.  Obviously, the Super Bowl is of no importance to me other than it signals an opportunity for most students to cut loose and really bro out.  Viewing the aftermath I can pretty easily piece together two likely scenarios:

1. "Bro, dude, bro!  Packers won!  This is exciting for me and validates my need to supplement my lack of personality by associating myself with a group and/or situation that excels over another group/situation! Expletive!  Now I will engage in mindless acts of vandalism with the most difficult substance to clean from any surface: eggs!"
2. "Bro, dude, bro!  No!  Steelers lost!  This is distressing for me yet fortunately it validates my need for personal drama with the appearance of life-shattering disappointment despite any lack of hardship or deprivation in my 19 years of coddled existence!  Expletive!  Super expletive involving someone's maternal relationship!  I provide physical evidence of my duress by engaging in mindless acts of vandalism with the most difficult substance to clean from any surface: eggs"

   If I sound vitriolic it's only because since learning the word vitriolic I tend to feel that way a lot.  The eggs were splattered all over the floor, one was smashed into every nook and cranny of the telephone including the earphone and receiver.  Worst of all, they managed to smash an egg into the outgoing mail slot so that it would drain down onto all the outgoing mail, thus making this a federal offense.  Oh, crazy kids and their hilarious federal offenses!  Here are some pictures before I spent the entire morning cleaning it all up.

   All this aside, I can hardly find the words to talk about the memorial for my step father this last weekend.  So many kind souls showed up that it was almost overwhelming.  I put a video together that told his life story in as much detail as 15 minutes, 4 songs, and 100 some photos and video clips can tell.  I was very happy that everyone responded well to it despite the awkward nature of the family relationship issues and such.  But still no closure.  That term is a verbal unicorn, looks swell on paper, but in reality it's mythical and ridiculous.  The only closure any of us get is eternal sleep, because until then nearly every wound has the potential to be scraped anew by today's unexpected events.

2: The Blackness

    Polishing the handrails on the Titanic.  It's hard not to feel that way right now.  An unexpected death is supposed to put all things in perspective.  What a sad oversimplification.  You gain perspective when you're uplifted.  "A bird's eye view of a bird's eye view" as Gordon Downie put it.  Death doesn't give you that at all.  Not in my case.  More of a worm's eye view of a worm's eye view.  Buried.  Blinded.  Burrowing, tunneling, and when you finally get to the top and feel you're getting somewhere you find you're lost on the pavement with a sense that the birds are circling.  Sorry to be so dramatic, but no one is reading this anyway.
  
   Back to the cleaning routine- upon my return to work I found one of my message boards ripped down by a drunk.  Yet another item purchased with my own money since our department is so "financially challenged" that such things can't be afforded for us.  Yesterday my 8th dry erase marker was stolen, gum spit all over the floor, spit all over the walls, nasal cavity refuse fingersmeared all over the elevator.  This morning I walked into the building to a disastrous mess in the stairwell.  An exploded can of cola was sprayed up and down the walls.  If youth is wasted on the young at least intelligence isn't.

1: The Return

   So today the youth of the nation began filing back into their living quarters.  Most I've talked to did not enjoy the time spent with their families.  This is sad but expected.  The experience of three months of freedom can be squelched with one "Where do you think you're going?"   When you're all caught up in school it can be easy to forget whose footing the bill. 

   Anyway, on my end things appear to be better this quarter.  The monstrous bag of the Dutch persuasion is finally gone.  Just one guy out of 240 students can make my job a nightmare.  And he did.  I'll explain more about that in my next blog. 
Just the sound of that word makes me cringe.  ME! IMPORTANT!