eyes wide shut
It is 12:08am and I am at work. I could be sitting on the 12:06 bus, rumbling towards my house (and my bed) right now, but I missed the 12:06 bus. Instead, I must wait for the 12:36 bus and there's no reason to stand out there and wait on the corner, so here I am, at work, at a computer, passing this time in the only logical way.
I can hardly keep my eyes open. I have to be up and showered and back here in this building by 8am tomorrow. That's my brutal turn-around. Once a week, every week, this turnaround, which doesn't usually bother me so much, but missing my bus tonight feels a bit like a personal insult from the universe. If I'd only packed my bag faster, counted the narcs faster, etc, etc. If I'd walked out of the building thirty seconds sooner I would've caught my bus. Instead, I walked out the building thirty seconds later and, three-quarters of the way down Third, I saw the eight bus roll by, too far to run for, but close enough to make me angry.
Tonight was busy. Dinner at 6, Bingo at 7 and then an intake which lasted until 9. Paperwork. Boring. Next thing I know, I'm sitting at the desk with Fat Tony and the Drop In Center is deserted. Fat Tony had the guitar out and he was looking up Tom Waits songs online and mangling them, though he does a pretty good impression of Tom Waits's voice, which is already pretty mangled. He does a better Tom Waits than he does Fat Tony. As it is, Fat Tony is pretty lacklustre as a musician. He's pretty lacklustre as a human being, really, but he gets by somehow. All night he hogged my new copy of the Paris Review, but I was too busy to care. The fact that he'd want to read it at all is mildly endearing. Eventually he showed me a page he'd bookmarked: a Japanese cartoon depicting a monkey being killed by other monkeys. What are they putting in the Paris Review these days? Wow.
Ok, now it's time to go try and catch the 12:36 bus. If I miss that one, I'm screwed. I'll just sleep here tonight.
I can hardly keep my eyes open. I have to be up and showered and back here in this building by 8am tomorrow. That's my brutal turn-around. Once a week, every week, this turnaround, which doesn't usually bother me so much, but missing my bus tonight feels a bit like a personal insult from the universe. If I'd only packed my bag faster, counted the narcs faster, etc, etc. If I'd walked out of the building thirty seconds sooner I would've caught my bus. Instead, I walked out the building thirty seconds later and, three-quarters of the way down Third, I saw the eight bus roll by, too far to run for, but close enough to make me angry.
Tonight was busy. Dinner at 6, Bingo at 7 and then an intake which lasted until 9. Paperwork. Boring. Next thing I know, I'm sitting at the desk with Fat Tony and the Drop In Center is deserted. Fat Tony had the guitar out and he was looking up Tom Waits songs online and mangling them, though he does a pretty good impression of Tom Waits's voice, which is already pretty mangled. He does a better Tom Waits than he does Fat Tony. As it is, Fat Tony is pretty lacklustre as a musician. He's pretty lacklustre as a human being, really, but he gets by somehow. All night he hogged my new copy of the Paris Review, but I was too busy to care. The fact that he'd want to read it at all is mildly endearing. Eventually he showed me a page he'd bookmarked: a Japanese cartoon depicting a monkey being killed by other monkeys. What are they putting in the Paris Review these days? Wow.
Ok, now it's time to go try and catch the 12:36 bus. If I miss that one, I'm screwed. I'll just sleep here tonight.
posted by reasonably prudent poet at 12:10 AM
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