Letter Never Sent

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