Meditations of the Unemployed

these are my darker thoughts all thrown into one. these are not all of my thoughts.

9/10/10

Go to café and shoot shit and eat food until my landlord Razh B. Gosh gets me a copy of my key. $6 My keys are missing as of last night.. Get key from Razh. Bring bike wheel into shop for new tube – go to wrong entirely wrong side of town in effort to get a lock so that I can ride my bike to the grocery store and drop off a resume. Key for bike lock is lost with keys. Two hours wasted. Finally find bike store – don’t like the selection. They say – try the locksmith, maybe they can make you a new key. Go to locksmith – locksmith cannot make a key for the old lock. Leave. Go back – you forgot – go back and make two copies of your house key so you never have to repeat this. $4. Go to 2nd locksmith – they send you to a 3rd locksmith. 3rd locksmith says no dice. But you can buy a brand new lock. I have one left. Fine. $40. Walk to Trader Joe’s across the street. Finally I can do what I intended to do when I left my house today – finally I can apply for a job. Trader Joe’s floor clerk points me to the “office” area. Not hiring, says the man behind the desk. In fact, when they were hiring they got over a thousand applicants and hired 55. About the other Trader Joe stores, the man at the office says “we’re all in the same boat”. And so it is on America. A thousand people apply to work at a grocery store. 945 go away empty handed. I am one of them.

I remember the nice lady at the Sweet Adeline café “Ahhh….” She said smiling at my resume. “A graduate of Reed – a highly educated barista!” It’s true. My mama used Boeing money and her business savings to put me through a college that cost somewhere around 35 grand a year and now I can’t get hired at a grocery store.

But right when my blood sugar & hopes had plunged to record lows – there’s Chris Edley on the phone – "my folks want to meet you tomorrow." A glimmer of hope. There was also the extremely nice Mexican girl at Common Grounds who immediately pounced on me. Might be able to set up a blog for them. Shoot some pictures of the space – offer to manage it – maybe make a little cash. She also wanted me to hang work – just unsure if I can drop the funds. I guess it would just be a couple hundred bucks and then I could hang them again in another space. Do some actual PR. Get my name out there.

Sitting on the rush hour train – everyone around me has that light airy, bubbly employed color – everyone knows where their rent and mortgage payment is coming from, where tonight’s supper is coming from. They talk on their cell phones and complain about how their internet service is down or what swimming club they go to. Round trip Bart ride $7. I write with a pen I stole from a cell phone company in a book I made with my mother and wonder with all the sincerity in the world how I’m going to make it in America and what path I should be pursuing.

9/13/10

Everyday. Everyday is the same. Everyday is begun with a feverish, hopeful beginning. I made a good breakfast with the lines running through my head: “Today I’m going to make it happen. Today is the day my bad luck ends.“ All the faith in the world. I get on my bike and ride to the café, order a latte, and immediately start applying to jobs, filling out the same forms, answering the same questions a hundred times over. Please list your employers for the last 5 years, 3 references, your skills. I must have filled this out a thousand times. A thousand and one. All the blank fields stare back at me, mocking me with their blankness.

Whole Foods - Apply online. Trader Joe’s - apply online even though you went to the store and the man behind the desk said they received 1,000 applications and hired 50 people and were no longer hiring. Chat with your previous boss from Russia on Skype about resuming translation work from the US. Inquire about training program at the local radio station; email the contact you met at dinner the other night, trying to get a job babysitting your friend’s younger siblings. Find out all the addresses of all the restaurants and cafes that are hiring according to Craig’s list and jot down all the addresses to ride to later and drop off an application. Jupiter, new cafe you never heard about, movie theater, book store x2, record store, art supply store. (When you finally get there hours later they will tell you they are not hiring or tell you that you don’t want to work there). Make ads on Craig’s list for babysitter, housecleaner, photographer, search for openings, apprenticeships, internships. Everyday on my bike I ride to approximately 15 different institutions all of which give me the same response: we are not hiring at the moment but we always accept resumes. They take my piece of paper, the man or woman behind the counter, and the piece of paper is tucked away into a dark void and I understand as they slip the paper into that void that my opportunity of employment is again lost forever. At the last bar, while standing there, waiting for the tank-top adorned bartender to catch my attention, I realize that no one is going to hire me. A storm cloud has now gathered over my head. I see the world in black and white, a world made up of one word “NO”. “NO.” The sound of the word “NO” echoes throughout my brain. My eyes are dark and shining. I realize I must leave the bar and come back at another time when I don't feel like this. Indeed, come six pm I don’t think I can take it anymore. I go home and I prepare a huge delicious dinner to make up for my lackluster day of rejection, my lackluster month of rejection. I made a huge delicious dinner to which no one comes home to. I want to cry into my dinner.

America. America you pose quite a challenge. I will be rounding up to 30 years of age soon. A perfectly capable human being, America, and you deny me the right to bag groceries. I have the drive and determination of a thousand college-bound Asian students. I have the guile and the concentration of a hundred Russian gymnasts. One woman told me I should work for the CIA. The other asked me if I aspire to work at Trader Joe’s – if that is my career goal. America – I am confident I will break in. But you do make me wonder – what about all the others, how the hell are they making it, America, you cut me no breaks.

But the Iraqi man at the corner store. He understands. “I don’t know what’s happening,” he says. “Everyone is losing their jobs.”

finders keepers

List of things we rescued from the studio next door where the artist woman passed away

Two fake palm trees
A fire pit
A barbecue grill
Several fancy ass plants in huge pots
Enormous ancient shells
A strange bird-like sculpture made of various materials
A bull skull with horns
Several silver pitchers/pouring devices
A kerosene lamp
Several bird houses
Etc

SF

san francisco, you are good to me.
i don't care if i'm homeless, jobless,
burning through my savings. it doesn't matter.
you are fine in my book.

happy birthday

it's been years

the middle chapters

mexicans at the laundromat in tall hats
holding guitars
hipsters man the coffee shops and the
sweet scent of weed sticks to the dewy air
a thick white fog crawls over the hill
and i would love the chance to be where you are

how many years can the flesh ache
a dull rapping on the heartbox
i keep waiting for someone to throw a blanket
over the whole room
to put out the light and scoop my heart off
the stained carpet
but my future is all bareboned empty rooms
an occasional visitor helps me forget that
there is nothing to hang on the walls

these are the middle chapters
every night it gets harder to give up

The City That Knows How

I arrived in San Francisco. one week ago.

One of the great things about living here is I can call a friend up on the phone and say "hey I can't figure out this guitar tab, why don't you come over, we'll drink some whiskey and play some music." 10 minutes later my friend is here, drinks in hand. I haven't really been able to do that for four years. I cannot emphasize enough what a privilege that is.

I've gone for my first run. I found myself kind of running in weird zig-zag patterns around the Mission due to the prominence of 45 degree angled hills in every direction.

By the 3rd day of running my legs are lead-heavy. I can barely make it through 3 miles. A slow heavy pony gallop. Jesse takes me down to the water where the boats sit like candy soldiers. I am so grateful for this new-found friendship. These old friendships that are now rekindled in the city where the air is crisp with wintery fog and the old heart-pangs have vanished. Re-born into this bi-lingual playground of a city. I think I will make it a home for a while. I've already met some characters and laughed some laughs.

Pushkin hangover

ЭЛЕГИЯ

Безумных лет угасшее веселье
Мне тяжело, как смутное похмелье.
Но, как вино - печаль минувших дней
В моей душе чем старе, тем сильней.
Мой путь уныл. Сулит мне труд и горе
Грядущего волнуемое море.

Но не хочу, о други, умирать;
Я жить хочу, чтоб мыслить и страдать;
И ведаю, мне будут наслажденья
Меж горестей, забот и треволненья:
Порой опять гармонией упьюсь,
Над вымыслом слезами обольюсь,
И может быть - на мой закат печальный
Блеснёт любовь улыбкою прощальной.

this is it

the door to your soul is off the hinges again

Yo Mama

Introduction back to America. Day 3. [draft]

Jaime picked me up from the airport. We then proceeded to the liquor store. He bought nine bottles of fine wine for Dana and guests. One half liter of Absolute Vodka and a case of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and a Summerpack. $200. Then we went to the beer store where we bought three wine-size bottles of beer. One of them was $30. Lunch at the Frisco Grill. Steak Fajita Sandwich with goat cheese and fries for Jaime. Two chicken tacos for me. Four original beers. Northcoast Prankster. Evolution Lot #3 on firkin. Sierra Nevada 30th Anniversay Fritz and Ken. And one white marsh blueberry on cask. $40. Everyone at the bar knows Jaime’s name. He keeps a book. Every time he goes to the bar he drinks three original beers and writes them down in his book. That means he never has the same beer twice. These last four beers puts him at 680 unique beers at that particular bar, which he frequents twice a week – Wednesday and Friday 2-4. Happy hour. Next stop – the beer brewer store. Maryland homebrew. It smells like malt in here. Kind of makes me feel ill, but he gets a high off of it. We buy 3 pounds of malted wheat, a pound of crystal 40 and a pound of crystal 60 and an ounce of hallertau hops. A bucket of sanitizer. $30. Someone is grinding malt and the air fills with little malt sugar dust particles. BJ’s. I am in a daze. The stacks of everything pile high to the ceilings of this warehouse. They have perfectly good black stretchy jeans for $15. Huge quart-size bottles of Listerine – 2 for $10. You could buy this thing and not run out of Listerine for two years. T-shirts for 8 bucks. I want to buy clothes. Jaime buys a 28 pack of 20oz waters. 3 bottles of lemonade. A bag of pinenuts and pistachios. An economy size pack of Bratwersts. One variety case of Izzy sparkling fruit juice. 3 different flavors. 72 rolls of toilet paper. “Gotta whipe my butt!” exclaims Jaime in the car on the way home. “Couldn’t find the whipey things,” he reminds me. Spending the day with my brother in suburban America: priceless.

I lay in bed at my brother’s house and there are no arms wrapped around me. No hands to hold. No one to scratch my back. No one to tell me what to do next or comfort me and remind me that I will figure this thing out. I take my first nap alone. It is 5pm. I don’t wake up until 1am. I decide to go back to sleep. I sleep until 7am.

no taxation without representation

(an email from my friend Jon 7/4/10)

life is truly weird and very airborne. kind of like a virus. kind of like juggled chainsaws. i don't know how to feel about it and it gets me so lost in thought i started to feel at home there, in thought. i built a house there and wasn't lost anymore, and i don't get up but to use the thoughtouthouse and pour thoughts all over folks like yourself. life is up in the air. even if the jugglers drop the ball, and even if it shatters, atleast the clean up effort will have a strange humpty dumpty beauty to it. up in the air is the best way to be. easier to find out if you can fly or not up there. not as dirty as down in the ground, nor as claustrophobic.

good times to you! fuck the british! independence!
jawndice

Introduction to America. Day 2

Within 48 hours of arriving back in America I have managed to spend nearly $400. It is baffling to me the rate at which it disappears - taxis, phone expenses (t-mobile gave my phone number to someone else!), food, drink, metro, luggage charges. Already suffering the effects of this abrupt awakening - yesterday I awake at 4.30am, today 5.45am. Hungover. Head throbbing. I'd like to get better at this - follow my costs as I see Bryan doing - keep a log, make monthly/weekly limits & goals. Save. Grow. It's probably a good time to stop hoarding things too - little scraps of paper from all over the world. I do not journal anymore like I used to. It's only really something you can do when you have a stable home. All around me I see women slightly older than me - with children. Motherly American women with motherly hair and motherly shirts. It will always be a strange sensation returning to the US without a job, a home, and many old friends now so distant. Was hit with that age-old alienation yesterday after dropping off Owen, wandering about Williamsburg friend-less, hoping to find someone to eat dinner with & spend the evening with. Alone. Alone is such a strange phenomenon. America seems so strange again - like a David Lynch film. Characters ingenuine - something is always slightly off; dreamlike. I crave intimacy but it's not something I can expect 48 hrs off the boat. It will take time but I will make sense of this life.

my security blanket

for the past four years i've had boyfriends and lived in far-away places. it is my security blanket against the world. it is my way of being sheltered.

find myself crying my eyes out as i count down the days. clinging to this beautiful person next to me. i know its for the better, but what else can you do when someone is taking your security blanket away from you?

these past two years i've been particularly well off. my boyfriend is the kind any woman in her right mind would marry in a second. sensitive, thoughtful, the best listener in the world, engaged, can carry on a conversation with anyone, poly-lingual, handsome, smart, compassionate, self-less, generous, traveled, confident, it goes on and on. hell, he's even a photographer and artist. ??? too good to be true, right? perhaps it will hit me when he leaves me in new york in two weeks. not right away. but a couple weeks later.

when i sit across from him at a table over dinner and he's chatting away with our co-worker next to him - having an engaged, adult conversation. i know this is what he needs - a sophisticated woman. someone who's comfortable in their own skin. sincere about their work. an adult. i sit at the table feeling like their teenage kid, interjecting their serious conversation with questions that have nothing to do with what anyone is talking about. "where'd you get that shirt? did you buy it at the same place? in cairo?" i hear myself and cringe. what's wrong with me?

he will find that person. the person who is on the same page as him - who is comfortable with life. who never panics or can't sleep from anxiety. they will have children together. i can't be that person right now. not until i fling off the security blanket and go do what i have to do. give me four years. then, i'll be ready. i swear.

please call me baby

2nd day of sad. just finished my Eddie Adams Workshop application earlier today. went completely mental on it. I had been kind of working on it for weeks now and today i got so mental i had to just throw in the towel and turn it in. next time i gotta just chill out, lock myself in a room, and trust my gutt. not ask everyone and their mom to double, triple check my edit. i'm tired of this forever second guessing myself.

the truth is i'm just hard up for a friend. this is year four of isolation. can't tell you how hard it is sometimes. not being able to pick up a phone and say hey - let's go get a drink, let's go get a sandwich - this one's on me. goddamn.

i'm stocking up on savings. I shouldn't be depressed. should be proud as all hell. i've got all these little jobs on the side too, outside of finishing up at ARCE. Writing for a fodors travel book and a photo shoot for the african bank of development. But it all means nothing if you got no one to share it with.

A tattoo upon my arm: Happiness only real when shared.

resilient

There's a little girl that comes to my door almost every day
now, shouting my name. I give her fruit or water or steal
meat and rice from the research center across the street.
we can barely communicate, but at least i can help her out.
she's forever on the streets going for tourist's money.
her parents live in aswan, probably drug addicts. she has
no shoes. one time she came around with a head wound
and owen washed it out and shaved the hair around it
disinfected it. She was running from the cops and banged
her head running under a car to hide. Later she went to the
hospital and they gave her stitches. She's always happy though,
always smiling. Resilient, really.

lighting out

The word "safari", in Shahili, means "journey"; it has nothing to do with animals. Someone "on safari" is just away and unobtainable and out of touch.

Out of touch in Africa was where I wanted to be. The wish to disappear sends many travelers away. If you are thoroughly sick of being kept waiting at home or at work, travel is perfect: let other people wait for a change. Travel is a sort of revenge for having to leave messages on answering machines, not knowing your party's extension, being kept waiting all your working life -- the homebound writer's irritants. Being kept waiting is the human condition.

I thought, Let other people explain whree I am. I imagined the dialogue:
"When will Paul be back?"
"We don't know."
"Where is he?"
"We're not sure."
"Can we get in touch with him?"
"No."

Travel in the African bush can also be a sort of revenge on cellular phone and fax machines, on telephones and the daily paper, on the creepier aspects of globalization that allow anyone who chooses to get his insinuating hands on you. I desired to be unobtainable...

I was going to Africa for the best reason - in a spirit of discovery; and for the pettiest -- simply to disappear, to light out, with a suggestion of I dare you to try and find me.

Home had become a routine, and routines make time pass quickly. I was a sitting duck in my predictable routine: people knew when to call me; they knew when I would be at my desk. I was in such regular touch it was like having a job, a mode of life I hated. I was sick of being called up and importuned, asked for favors, hit up for money. You stick around too long and people begin to impose their own deadlines on you. "I need this by the twenty-fifth" or "Please read this by Friday" or "Try to finish this over the weekend" or "Let's have a conference call on Wednesday." Call me, fax me, e-mail me. You can get me anytime on my cell phone, here's the number.

Being available at any time in the totally accessible world seemed to me pure horror. It made me want to find a place that was not accessible at all: no phones, no fax machines, not even mail delivery, the wonderful old world of being out of touch. In other words, gone away.

All I had to do was remove myself. I loved not having to ask permission, and in fact in my domestic life things had begun to get a little predictable, too -- Mr. Paul at home every evening when Mrs. Paul came home from work. "I made spaghetti sauce... I seared some tuna... I'm scrubbing some potatoes..." The writer in his apron, perspiring over his bechamel sauce, always within earshot of the telephone. You have to pick it up because it's ringing in your ear.

I wanted to drop out. People said, "Get a cell phone, use FedEx, sign up for Hotmail, stop in at Internet cafes, visit my Web site..."

I said no thanks. The whole point of my leaving was to escape this stuff, to be out of touch. The greatest justification for travel is not self-improvement but rather performing a vanishing act, disappearing without a trace. As Huck put it, lighting out for the territory.

Africa is one of the last great places on earth a person can vanish into. I wanted that. Let them wait. I have been waiting far too many times for far too long.

- Paul Theroux, Dark Star Safari

When comes my moment to untether?

Russia has been in my thoughts again. Here's a well-known passage from Pushkin's Evgenii Onegin that I memorized for the class back at Reed College. It spoke to me, for obvious reasons. Of course it's lost in translation, and I ditched trying to translate it myself because trying to communicate the meaning but keep the rhyming scheme at the same time would take some time, so I've included two different translations here that do the trick. It's mostly the restless feeling of wanting to get out of a place, of hungering heavily to set out. To set out again. I've been trapped inside for what seems like weeks - the heat is here 100 to 115 degrees everyday and up until my date of departure. I've been feeding some fantasies of briefly visiting Russia before returning home to the US, even after I told myself I wouldn't! We'll see. White nights are very much in effect there. As I'm told, it's that time of year again when couples wander the streets into all hours of the night, making out in public and bearing all kind of flesh, where the streets are decorated with broken glass and the scent of urine. i know it doesn't sound like much to you, but I will always be nostalgic for the place.


Придет ли час моей свободы?
Пора, пора! - взываю к ней;
Брожу над морем, жду погоды,
Маню ветрила кораблей.
Под ризой бурь, с волнами споря,
По вольному распутью моря
Когда ж начну я вольный бег?
Пора покинуть скучный брег
Мне неприязненной стихии
И средь полуденных зыбей,
Под небом Африки моей,
Вздыхать о сумрачной России,
Где я страдал, где я любил,
Где сердце я похоронил.


Will ever come my freedom, treasured?
It’s time, It’s time! – I call for this!
Roam by sea; wait for some weather,
And lure sails of the distant ships.
Under the storms, with fast waves vying,
Along the waters, freely lying,
When will I start my blessed race?
It’s time to leave the boring place
Of nature that appears so alien,
And midst my African wide lands,
Between blue skies and flaming sands,
To sigh about Russia, sullen,
Where I had suffered and loved,
Where I had buried my heart.


When comes my moment to untether?
it's time! and freedom hears my hail.
I walk the shore, I watch the weather,
I signal to each passing sail.
Beneath storm's vestment, on the seaway,
battling along that watery freeway,
when shall I start on my escape?
It's time to drop astern the shape
of the dull shores of my disfavour,
and there, beneath your noonday sky,
my Africa, where waves break high,
to mourn for Russia's gloomy savour,
land where I learned to love and weep,
land where my heart is buried deep.

letter to mom on her 61st

Happy birthday dearest mama!

I picked this book for you because I've become engrossed in everything Scott Carrier has to say. He is the author. He does regular radio shows for NPR's this American Life, which I listen to almost every day and I've listened to hundreds of programs, but his voice always stands out to me. Running After Antelope was even one of the stories he did on NPR. I fell in love with this it. There's something very raw about all of them. Always the common thread of getting back to nature, of wanting to live close to the land the way primitives did and blocking out the modern world. I think you and Scott have that in common, ma. I'm really glad I was raised by someone so captivated by the natural world - all the camping, the hiking; it has rubbed off on me. I've yet to do the same amount of camping as you, but it is what I want to do. It's what I'm always fantasizing about. Somewhere in the background a future in river-guiding may be waiting for me.

Here is the link so you can listen to the radio story: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/80/Running-After-Antelope

This is just one of many of his shows. Here is a list of all his This American Life contributions: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/contributors/scott-carrier
If you have time, you should give them a listen. You can totally download the shows, burn it to a CD and listen to it in the car on a long car ride. Like if you are driving to visit Nicole or Jaime for example. It makes the time fly. I listen to them everyday while I'm doing my talatat blocks. Only 800 something left...

It looks like you had a really nice birthday weekend with the whole family. So great to see the whole family together. I miss you guys a lot. Nicole is so pretty these days. Jaime is so good with the kids. You look youthful and pretty and happy.

I think everything will work out with me being a photographer. I just need some time to feel my way through it. It's like this - until I know how something is done, how it works, I feel dumb-founded about how to approach it. I can't quite visualize it. It's not like in school when you were given a paper topic or a math problem and there was a step by step logical way of going about it, this seems different somehow. This real world. But I'm going to figure it out. Have faith in me and I will have faith in me too.

You have my electronic "i owe you" for an afternoon in the garden, and a hiking/camping trip. It will be fun. We can drink hottie tottie's and talk about everything.

I love you,

Sara

travel

"You think of travelers as bold, but our guilty secret is that
travel is one of the laziest ways on earth of passing the time.
Travel is not merely the business of being bone-idle, but also an
elaborate bumming evasion, allowing us to call attention to ourselves
with our conspicuous absence while we intrude upon other people’s privacy
— being actively offensive as fugitive freeloaders. The traveler is the
greediest kind of romantic voyeur, and in some well-hidden part of the
traveler’s personality is an unpickable knot of vanity, presumption, and
mythomania bordering on the pathological. This is why a traveler’s
worst nightmare is not the secret police or the witch doctors or malaria,
but rather the prospect of meeting another traveler.
Most writing about travel takes the form of jumping to conclusions,
and so most travel books are superfluous, the thinnest, most transparent
monologuing. Little better than a license to bore, travel writing is the
lowest form of literary self-indulgence: dishonest complaining, creative
mendacity, pointless heroics, and chronic posturing, much of it distorted
with Munchausen syndrome."

- Paul Theroux
Ghost Train to the Eastern Star: On the Tracks of the Great Railway Bazaar

build

I very much want to learn how to build houses. From the ground up to the roof and then through all the small details. After years of sitting in front of the computer editing photos, nothing gives me more satisfaction than to do some work with my hands where you can take a before and after picture and see the real life result of your work. Something someone can live in. Where to begin is the only question...