Something Swift this way comes…

So, it has been the required time period between posts and I thought I’d sit down and tell you guys a little bit about what’s going on with me before I have to jet for class.

So far, I’m making all A’s in school, though I did make an 84 on my last test in my Operating System Concepts course….insert big sucking sound here… I also registered for classes next quarter and am only taking 12 hours. The classes I opted to take are Program Design and Introduction to C programming. I’m sort of excited about the intro to C because programming has always intrigued me – sort of like tigers, lions, elephants and the idea of an african safari has always intrigued me – it’s something I’ve always been interested in, but with a modicum of anxiety. Anyway, my schedule for next quarter is going to be from 8am – 12pm Monday through Friday. Yeah, I know, an 8am class sucks mightily, but that’s okay, I’ll deal.

The best news is that I finally found a job! That’s right, the immenently unemployable fat hippy has finally found a job that will fit around his school schedule. Monday – Friday 5pm until. Don’t ask what the ‘until’ is, because I don’t know. I’m one of the newest employees of Roadway corporation, doing Data Entry, part time for $13/hr. That’s right, this is the highest paying job I’ve had thusfar, and I’m kind of excited about it. I got to meet some of the people I’ll be working with a week or two ago, and I start my training tomorrow night. Basically a short rundown on what the job is – I’ll be typing Bills of Lading into Roadway’s computer system. Sounds boring, but I like typing, and data entry has always had a soothing effect on me before, so maybe I’ve found my momentary niche. Either way, it’ll be good to be able to pay some bills finally.

The one thing I’m dreading is the fact that I’ve done the work + school thing before, and it’s never fun, always exhausting, and leaves me feeling drained and emotionally abused, not to mention the fact that this is only going to give me about 3 hours a day for ‘me’ time and study time altogether. I guess that explains why I didn’t overload myself with classes next quarter. You know, if I were rich, I’d take 18+ hours of class and be done inside of 9 months, but I’m not rich, and we’re behind on the bills right now, so I’m going to suck it up and take it easy in school so I don’t completely burn out.

In other news, Thanksgiving was a blast – possibly one of the best holidays I’ve ever had with my family. I enjoyed most every minute of it and am looking forward to Christmas already for the time I’ll get to spend with my family. I used to pride myself on being fiercely independent, I didn’t need anyone. But as I get older I find the comforts of home and hearth to be more pleasant than being an independent asshat. Speaking of the holidays – #1 thing I’m thankful for is the fact that I’m not working in Retail Sales this year (UGH, thank God I’m done with that for a while!). The one thing I’m not looking forward to is the fact that I have a birthday comeing up on the 14th of December. I’ll be 28. Ugh, one step closer to middle age. That’s alright though, I’m only planing on going out to eat with mom, dad, and Angie, and having a quiet birthday – no cake, no candles, no presents, just some quality time with the people I love most.

Anyhow, I’ve gotta finish eating and get ready for class, so I’ll see you guys later.

S

Hello darkness, my old friend,
I’ve come to talk with you again,
Because a vision softly creeping,
Left its seeds while I was sleeping,
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence.

In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone,
‘Neath the halo of a street lamp,
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence.

And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more.
People talking without speaking,
People hearing without listening,
People writing songs that voices never share
And no one dare
Disturb the sound of silence.

‘Fools’ said I, ‘You do not know
Silence like a cancer grows.
Hear my words that I might teach you,
Take my arms that I might reach you.’
But my words like silent raindrops fell,
And echoed
In the wells of silence

And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made.
And the sign flashed out its warning,
In the words that it was forming.
And the sign said, ‘The words of the prophets
are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls.’
And whisper’d in the sounds of silence.

Paul Simon

More Later,

S

I remember sitting on the porch, sipping a coke in a glass bottle, looking out over the dooryard at grass the green of a technicolour dream – always perfectly trimmed and inviting under the shade of the old pecan trees. The hazy heat of summertime a droning buzz, a number on an ancient pepsi thermometer tacked to the wall on the side of the house. That thermometer was a curiosity to me, bright faded yellow, a blue and red bottlecap painted on the surface, the metal in the lower right hand corner flowered with delicate blossoms of rust. It seems to me I learned to tell time, temperature, and the meaning of the world staring into the red mercurial glass of that thermometer.

He was a tall man, a giant of a man, his face lined with years, craggy and hard, yet capable of every kindness. I remember his hands, the hardness of bone and muscle underneath paper-thin skin. Those hands had handled thousands of miles of iron, directing ‘the negroes’ as they laboured in the sun as he sat in the shad for a minute, old felt fedora cocked back on his head, a cold coca-cola in one hand and Louis Lamour in the other. I would lay my hand in that large paw, my fingers matched to his studying the faded lines as he talked about Sue and her hen parties, my hands tiny in his, the faint smell of papered cinnaomon and the aftershave, spread on after his daily shave. He was part of a passed era, no disposable razors for him, he used a wind-open razor with replaceable blades and his shaving foam was a powder mixed with water and brushed to thick consistancy. The minty smell of the brushed power lingered under the smell of his aftershave, invoking nostalgic memories af early mornings and hard work. I can close my eyes and still smell the smell of everything it meant to be a man, embodied in the old man sitting on that front porch.

I learned to drink coffee in his way, an early morning, the sun not yet up, sitting at the huge kitchen table listening to the ancient battered transistor radio as Bill Hoops droned on about unimportant happenings and nothing momentous. The coffee was poured out into the cup and then ‘dreened’ into a saucer. Always the cup, then the saucer, “Gowon boy, dreen that coffee out into the saucer” the strong burnt smell of black chickory emanating into the chilly air of the kitchen, mingling with the mindless monotonous smell of the gas heater, yet to force its drowse into the room. The coffee spread out into the saucer, a novel idea, something never performed at home – too messy for little fingers. I was 7 when I had my first saucer of coffee, carefully transferred from the cup to the plate to my mouth, blown then sipped, black, bitter, wonderful. He knew nothing of physics, nothing of surface area and thermodynamics. He simply knew the old wisdom, the coffee cools in the saucer. Looking up into his faded blue eyes, my eyes, daddy’s eyes, his eyes. The faded white button up workshirt, the same as always, the well worn chinos, the charcoal grey soft, a cut line washed and hung to dry and ironed by Sue. The old felt fedora sitting on the unused dining table in the main room.

The routines were always the same, tending the worm beds – two old metal coke freezers – wetting them and spreading chicken scratch on the surface, the weathered canvas covering them again. Taking care of whatever chore was needed that day – picking the sweetest grapes in the south off the vine, picking corn, watching the train roll by. Always the huge white house in the background and the rusted swingset of old lead pipes and chains in the dooryard. I remember the dogwood tree beside the drive and holding his hand to walk across the road to ‘the property’. Fixing a step, sweeping off a roof, the hammer held in anticipation of his call, the soft sound of his voice as he explained what and why. The shape of his shadow on the ground as he talked to the renters, brought them a basket of homegrown tomatos, the sound of his laughter in the sunlight.

Give me just a minute…

You will understand why, even though he’s been gone almost 15 years I still miss him.

Later, I was older, I didn’t understand why granddaddy had lost the flinty fire of being a man in his eye, why he sat and talked to people who weren’t there about things that weren’t happening. The words whispered around my growing ears sounded like ‘Old-timers’ disease, and I couldn’t understand what happened to the man who was supposed to live forever, who once took me for a ride on an old tractor that was the colour of the rust covering it and could only be started with a crank. The strong man, the head of our family. Why oh why is he sitting in that chair in the yard with weak tears streaming down his face begging my mom and dad not to let him go to the nursing home? Why does Nelda run over Sue and demand that he be put where he fears the most? Why does Daddy cry in the night when he doesn’t think I can hear him, the sound of his heart breaking in the darkness as his brother and sisters overrule him and Sue? These things I didn’t understand. He went to the home. It wasn’t long…always talk of him slipping down. Months later the man who smelled of faint cinnamon and mint was gone. I never went to the home, it scared me in my little boy’s eyes, a place he feared, so it must have been horrible in there. I never got to say goodbye to the man who shaped my mind into the way a man should walk, the way he should talk, the things he should do. The last I saw him was resting, peaceful, his skin yellow-waxy and his hands folded on his chest. The casket around him a beautiful pearl grey, unnoticed. I wanted my grandfather out of that box. He was supposed to live forever. He was the strongest bestest man in the world, why did an unseen evil have to steal his strength and cause him to lay down in the box? Why was he gone?

I never got to say goodbye to you granddaddy, I never got to tell you that I love you, I never got to share the joy of becoming a man you would have been proud of, of being married, of loving life and learning to love my mother and father as a man. I’m sorry granddaddy that they did that to you, and I’m sorry that a little boy didn’t understand enough of what was going on to give comfort to you. I miss you so much and as I sit here writing this with the tears running as they did that day, my heart cries out and wants you back. I love you granddaddy, and I miss you. If what they say in the book that you followed is true, then I pray that one day after I lay down that I will be able to take you in my arms, put my hand in yours and tell you that I love you and that I missed you so very much.

S