Letter Never Sent

Being in an antsy, fidgety mood, I don’t think I can muster the focus to write anything too long, but I wanted to update this thing with what I’ve been up to, if for no one else but me. With no further ado, some of the details that provide the reference points of my life:

1. Friday night there was snow, the first snow I have seen since I was last in New York several years ago. I left work early at 1:30am and drove down 360 at about thirty miles per hour. I could only see about twenty feet in front of me. I stopped along the way to try to help a woman in a Miata push her which had gotten stuck. Somehow she had slipped back going uphill and had gotten mired in the snow wet grass. She kept giving the car too much gas and with rear-wheel drive was just not having any luck. Pushing it didn’t seem to help much so once she arranged to get pulled out by one of the highway trucks I took off. The snow was great and an unexpected treat. When I got home I made a miniature snowman on my old car that is parked on the street. Then I went over to wake Jody up so she could see it before it melted and to give her her presents for Valentine’s Day. We played for a little while but then it was getting cold playing with snow so we went back inside. I love the snow.
2. Saturday we went to see “The Triplets of Belleville” this neat little French animated film that made me want to start drawing again. I liked how everything had this grotesque quality to it. Jody and I bummed around for a while at the mall afterward and then went out to Fry’s to look around. We then went to the Arboretum where we ran into Sara and Jason who were on their way to see….The Triplets of Belleville.
3. Sunday we went to see The Phantom of the Opera play at the Bass Concert Hall. We got all dressed up which was fun since I don’t get to do that often. A woman came up and told Jody that she looked ‘absolutely stunning’. The show was great. I’ve never really experienced anything like that. I really liked the way they did the production, with the flash paper and the set pieces and the fog. After the final curtain when all the actors came out there was a standing ovation that lasted so long that I don’t think I’ve ever spent that much time clapping. And the music, of course, was great too. I would like to see things like that more often.
4. Yesterday kinda sucked as I was in a bad mood. I had a meeting with one of my clients that went well and then I basically came home and played UT 2004 until I went to bed after midnight. I did find a copy of The Complete Essays of Michel de Montaigne at Half-Price Books, though. Generally, ‘Selections From the Essays’ is what I’ve come across so I grabbed this one I was looking for books by Otto Weininger or The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton which I didn’t find until I went to Book People today.
5. Today, I didn’t do a whole lot, but I did make twenty bucks raking leaves. I needed the exercise and it was kinda fun in a weird way. I have to do the other neighbor’s leaves soon too.

There are a large number of auctions for antique typewriter keys and subsequently for jewelry made from antique typewriter keys on eBay right now. There was a Time Magazine article about this phenomenon. As someone who used to have quite a collection of different antique typewriters (I’m down to three now), I hate to think of all those typewriters without their keys. Although some of the things people have made from them are really neat.

The job I was courting turned me down while I was headed toward third base. So close! Now it’s on to the next one. I actually enjoy job interviewing. I just don’t like all the work involved in setting it up and waiting to hear back. It’s a lot like dating, fraught with anxiety and uncertainty but exciting when you’re in the middle of it. And of course, rejection is always a bitter pill to swallow.

So, I was supposed to hear back Friday about the UT job. I didn’t, but then I also didn’t hear that I had not been selected. While I have been assuming the worst and obsessively going over everything I said and did that day, the truth is I have no idea what’s going on. Since Jody, my mother, and even my roommate thought I should call and check on the status, I called them today after I worked up the nerve. This involved pacing around and clearing my throat and letting the phone sit with the number dialed into it before I felt ready to go. Well, apparently, they’re meeting to discuss it this afternoon and the project manager said I should receive a call some time after four o’clock today. The suspense will end soon enough.

Dream themes for today:

• I dreamt I was caught up in some Latin American coup d’etat or revolution in Haiti or Colombia. This has to do with the Haiti uprisings, I suppose, but it also involved some vehicles from Desert Combat.
• A volunteer army consisting of old men from some sort of Elk’s lodge, the leader wore a giant, black bearskin hat and the old women (wives of the old men) were patrolling outside in military uniforms of high-waisted khaki shorts, sunhats, and red scarves. I think this armed militia or whatever it was was in opposition to some group in another part of my dream expressing extreme sexual liberality.

I went and got tested for allergies today since I have been sneezing a lot in the past few years. They did the scratch and stick test and I got to sit around in a reception room with my shirt off reading people magazines while they waited for the red welts on my skin to rise. Apparently, I’m allergic to pecan pollen and cats. Ironic, especially since my neighborhood is wooded with pecan trees including the one in the front yard. I also have a cat. Good thing is, I’m not really that allergic to anything else except for grass pollen, no mold, or dust allergies suprisingly considering the way I keep house.

Today I went and had lunch with Susan and Michael and then with Jody. It was nice, but I’m always feeling rushed even if other people aren’t feeling rushed. I live at the mercy of the tyranny of the one hour lunch. I find it almost impossible to enjoy myself fully if I know there’s a time limit. Well, I pretty much have trouble enjoying myself but the added dimension of time really weighs heavily on me. The things I enjoy the most are those things which liberate me from the feeling of time: reading, sleeping, fishing, sex, video games, drawing, etc. This is an aside…I meant to talk about something else.

I meant to talk about my conversation with my lovely neighbor and landlord, Joyce, a retired nurse. When I got back from my lunch outing we talked for an hour or so about ourselves. She told me a lot about her childhood and early adulthood as well as her experiences as a nurse and how she has been with many people as they died. I think we got onto this subject by talking about our experiences with loved ones dying. She said that having experienced death so closely and with so many people really confirms her own faith and religious belief. Joyce related stories about people who said they saw Jesus, white light, chariots, and one woman who called out her own grandmother’s name and claimed to see her as she lay dying.

She gave me a Frappuccino and asked me about myself and my history, and I told her my stories about growing up, and about my family. Things I don’t mind telling inquiring souls, but usually don’t get around to. It was nice to share them with an older person who you can talk to on that level as near equals. In the end, I felt good having learned so much about her and hearing so many tales of different people and different lives lived and experiences had across a wide field of time. I could almost see it unwinding in my mind as a colorful psychic tapestry. Visions of people I could never have known enacting scenes from their alien yet familiar lives within my imagination. Something about it made me feel sad, maybe for all the love and loved ones lost to time. It arouses a feeling of weary bitterness in me. I just want to hang onto everyone I know and love and keep them close, protecting them from the millstone of eternity.

I’m waiting to hear back about the you know what. This is when I get that ever-hardening knot in my stomach, when every nerve and muscle in my body goes tense in expectation of bad news. Waiting, for the hammer to drop or for sweet relief.

Everyone thinks I worry too much, but I’m superstitious in how I worry. I believe it is better to expect the worst and receive it than to expect the best and receive the worst anyway. I’d rather go through the agony a million times in anticipation than once in actuality unprepared. I’ve always been this way. It’s what I do. My mind becomes like a wild thing gnawing.

It is in times like these that I’m glad I have friends. People who place sandbags against the emotional storms. My friends. The ones who have been here before to ease some of the burden and who recite their familiar and powerful incantations of hope and optimism, keeping the vigil with me. The ones who know that I’m not as confident or untouchable as I try to make it seem to the rest of the world.

This is the perfect opportunity for quotations!

• “Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents, which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant.” — Horace
• “In all things it is better to hope than to despair.” — Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von
• “Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.” — Joe Louis
• “There are no laurels in life…just new challenges. ” — Katharine Hepburn

I had the follow-up interview for the UT job yesterday. I’m not sure how it went. It was all a blur. I feel pretty good, but when I feel pretty good I start to wonder if I’m being overconfident and that makes me start thinking about things I might have done wrong or just not good enough. I suppose I shouldn’t worry about it. The good thing is, I don’t think I betray this type of neurotic thinking during interviews, only after. I’m the sort of person where I need a shove out into the stream and then I’ll start to swim on my own.

I was actually running a little late to get there which is never a good thing, being late to an interview I mean. Then on the way past Zilker Park while I was speeding (55 in a 35) I got pulled over by a traffic police officer on a motorcycle. As soon as I topped the hill and saw him I knew he had me dead to rights. When he approached my car I turned off the radio and rolled down the window and said something like, “I’m very sorry, sir. I was totally speeding. I’m running late for a job interview and I apologize. I was going about 55 when I saw you.” To this he replied, “I had you going about 51. When is your interview?” Then he looked at his watch and at my license and proof of insurance. “Where are you interviewing?” he asked. I told him where and the address and then he looked at my papers again. After a moment, he handed them back to me and said “Slow it down.” I read somewhere that there are a few things that can help you get along well when pulled over by a police officer:

1. Tell them if you have any warrants right away. If they pull you up on the computer and you have a warrant, they HAVE to take you in.
2. Always address them as sir, maam, officer, or sergeant if they’re a sergeant. Respect goes a long way here.
3. Don’t lie or get defensive. Generally speaking, I don’t think the police will pull you over without good reason. In my case, I was speeding and I knew it. Furthermore, traffic police are there for one reason, to give tickets. I’m sure they’ve heard all the angles.
4. Keep your car clean. Turn music off. I’ve also stopped putting bumper stickers on my car since I’ve discovered that you’ll be treated differently if you can be lumped under some sort of cliche. Bumper stickers are good ways for other people to make assumptions about you. If you have green party stickers or NORML you’re a hippie who probably smokes pot. I don’t really have anything that would give someone a certain, particular impression about me. It reminds of that admonition that if you want people to think well of you then keep your mouth shut.
5. Keep your hands in plain view and don’t make any sudden moves. This one is rather obvious.

Anyway, thanks to officer whatever-your-name-was I don’t have to pay a 150 dollar ticket.

Back to the interview, when I got there I met with two people I had interviewed with previously and they told me there were nine final candidates for five positions then proceeded to ask me the sort of questions you would ask a prospective employee: “what would your coworkers say about you”, “what are some of your biggest accomplishments”, “describe a difficult situation with a coworker and how you handled it”, etc. They were obviously trying to get a handle on the type of personality they might have to deal with. At one point they described the work they had to have done in a year to which I replied “So, what are we going to have left to do after six months?” Cheesy, huh?

After all this I was sent over to visit with some other people I would have to work with and then the Assistant Director of the project. He asked me that famous open-ended question, “Excluding the bible and the dictionary, if you were stranded on a desert island which book would you choose to take with you?” Excuse me, who chooses the dictionary? I answered the complete works of Shakespeare since there are things in there that seem differently to me the older I get. When I’m younger I see one side and then I see something else entirely when I look back again. For example, the relationship between Hamlet and his father takes on a different dimension once you start to see your own relationship with your father from a different perspective. Just things like that. I’ve really only noticed this quality in Shakespeare, but I think all literature and art can function this way. Almost like the layers of the onion peeled off in sequence revealing new things.

I got called today for a followup interview with UT. Weeeee. Keep those fingers crossed. I may have a normal work schedule soon.