St. Anthony never asked questions in a letter because he never really blogged!

You get to jump on this one halfway into the game because this is the part I´ve already started with the musing to my own self and you can´t really do a thing about it, see, so whereas you´re even liable to speculate or muse to yourself it´s going to be of no use because I´ve already decided on the Hieronymus Bosch triptych winning over something by Magritte´s or another, and no I´m not really buying reproduction artwork and all.

It would nevertheless hang from that two-story wall just up above & by the side of the lower balcony, just so that you know.

It would hang there framed in silence for the short years to come- - maybe it will, still - - the Bosch painting hanging like a dreaded omen in tomorrow´s memory hovering over a telephone never really to ring, an inspiration held up against ending up smeared in blood or some O.D. or another, straight up that bit in the timeline saying Year Zero, Anno Domini, whatever, past the thrall of the real estate pipe-dream and the plastic credit card orgasms shed like dead skin flakes over a way-overused metaphor but that´s life, up until the moment it´s no longer what it was supposed to have been.


I used to remember tomorrow in a totally different way:
What would you do like ten, eleven years later?

A contribution to the study of sleep-deprivation in young adults

By the time I realized I had actually misplaced a tomato somewhere inside my apartment while making dinner, I called it quits on everything, hopped to the shower then took enough muscle relaxants to down a horse, and slept for 13 hours straight...

More class-clown messianics at the office

Scene: I´m sitting before one of the Advis*rs´ workstations doing some pre-Go Live testing to their thin-cli*nt machines and the phone system. We´re supposed to be receiving calls from Ch*le, Ur*guay, Argen*ina and Par*guay his afternoon. Br*zil, also.
Boss comes up to me to check on things, catches me hunched over some file cabinet, lots of printed sheets of paper lying on the carpet all around.

BOSS: "I thought you were supposed to be doing the pre-Go Live testing to the Advis*rs´ thin-cli*nt machines. And to the phone system. I mean, has Argen*ina called in already?"

ME: "Actually I got sort of bored with the tests and decided to work on our Business Cont*nuity plans instead..."

BOSS: "But what about the tests?"

ME: "Oh, I´m doing those as well."

BOSS: "Are you doing two things at the same time?"

ME: "Actually I´m doing three. I sort of enjoy multi-tasking."

BOSS: "Wait a second... have you just picked the lock of the file cabinet with a paper clip?!"

ME: "Oh. That. Ahh, to be quite honest with you, it took me two paper clips to pick that lock. And the best part of these twenty minutes´ worth of testing!"

BOSS: "What, are you hyperactive or something?! I mean, what am I going to do with you..."

ME: "Well if you plan on doing an arrest, you can pretty much rule out handcuffing me next to paper clips, for one thing..."


- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Among my other talents:
I actually know the full words to four songs in Natalie Imbruglia´s 1997 debut album, "Torn".

Class-clown messianics at the office

I.
In the end we did terrific time for a first-time drill, as per what the Fire Department said, with 1,000 people having evacuated the building in 8 minutes flat.
“What the heck have you gotten yourself into this time around?,” asked my mother on the phone a few days later.

Working with Business C*ntinuity, on what was supposed to be a part-time basis, means I get to tackle the craziest things. For instance, media training for executives. How to proceed if the company receives a bomb threat. Building-wide fire evacuation drills. And so on.
So you can probably picture me in day-glo orange safety harness and blue construction hat, with a Batman logo pasted to the side and my name to the back. I was actually considering writing “Maverick” instead but assumed few people would get the joke, and decided against it anyhow.
But I digress.

Fire evacuation occurs via the fireproofed stairwell, after the alarm’s rung and all the offices have been emptied into the halls, and once the four floors we rent out in the building were clear and the premises all inspected, I was good to follow suit and leave the building alongside everyone else.

Only, I didn’t.

See, there I was, looking up past the thronging crowds climbing down the fireproofed stairwell, my tasks all done, the remaining of the building’s companies to go, like, 10-plus floors or something - - and I could go down with the flow if I wanted to- - only that mischievous voice in the back of my head just wouldn’t stop singing this Echo & the Bunnymen song, in fact chanting it like a mantra; it goes like, “Say we can / Say we will / Not just another drop in the ocean” and I started recalling their concert like a couple of months back where Ian McCulloch looked so cool at the mike, like some goddamn drunken messiah in sunglasses, and like I told you there I was in day-glo orange safety harness and blue construction hat, with a Batman logo pasted to the side and my name to the back, and I don’t know if was the that song in the back of my head, or all the caffeine in my blood, but regardless of anything I decided against looking like a total doofus, and made the call as to do it like a rockstar instead.

It´s fairly simple if you think about it:
This year... this wondrous, wonderful 2008... is no longer about money, no longer about power, not about love, not even about either freedom or sheer fun, and entirely beside & beyond all pleasure as well. It is, simply put, about denting the memetics of the mundane with a half-smile more confident than god´s own.
It´s about doing everything I can, just because I think I can, regardless of the outcome.

...So up the stairs and against the crowd I went, herding the crowd in an orderly manner down step by step, waving my hands and barking out orders left and right, all the way up to the very last floor, then going down again past everyone else, guiding them through the way until the meeting spot in the park by the building outside.

“You know, you are nuts. You´re crazy. You´re entirely out of your mind, pulling a stunt like that,” said my Director (boss to my own boss, jesus-made-flesh himself) afterwards. “But that was amazing! I loved it! Thank you so much for going above and beyond the call!”
Not really expecting that reaction (in fact I was quite ready to have my behind kicked by then), I became speechless for this one single golden instant and just beamed a large smile back at his own. But then upon turning my back to head back to the office that little impish voice inside my head kicked in once again: Why not? asked the trickster god in me.
So I turned back to that whitest among the white collars and let it out in a deep, rasping mock-Batman voice: “You´ll never have to thank me.”

Just like that, you know, just like in the movie, and just because I can, not just another drop in the ocean...


II.
There´s this...
I mean, every morning there´s this thought that flashes across my mind either during breakfast or brushing my teeth or whenever.
It´s this one single, simple question I often get to ask myself:

What are you gonna do for the REST of your life?

And every morning, upon realizing I´ll never get to find a proper answer to that dime-store half-riddle, half-Zen Koan, makes me close my eyes and bite my lower lip just lightly, then smile that secret smile to no one but myself as Creation unfolds back onto itself like a Lotus flower withering backwards into its own bud.