novembre ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- cross-eyed man yamaha peninsula music center is the heading of the advertisement on the three inch thick spine of the chinese yellow pages that are sitting underneath this computer's screen. i'm at the computer lab, monitoring until 3, so i have a little note-writing time. i work in the lab only for about three hours a week, always on mondays, and it is the quietest time i spend in the library even though the patrons are not exactly reading books. i just helped a severely cross-eyed man change his PIN number so he could sign onto the internet. a few minutes later, he flagged me down again, and when i came over he pointed to his computer screen. "how do i get on the internet?" i look at the screen. the man is on the library's homepage; he is already online. long few minutes spent explaining the internet. things like this happen here. scattered middle-aged people who have never used a computer before ask for help typing resumes. they show me old employers' addresses, usually written on scraps of dog-eared paper, and for some reason this endears me to them the most. it's a beautiful day outside. i'd like to be at the beach in santa cruz with a floppy-eared dog. he could even have a bandana tied around his neck in lieu of collar, and i wouldn't mind. sand in his paws, tongue lolling out, sand caked on my feet. i'm doing ok lately. trying to focus and slow down and finish projects that i've started; while this may seem an elementary concept to some, to me it is as foreign as fidel castro's brand of socialism. great idea but i've never put it to use before... we'll see how it goes. and this is what they call "your late twenties" -- a few friends in their late thirties/early forties looked at me with sympathy and said, "this is when you are learning to reject what you learned when you grew up. not all of it -- just what isn't helpful to your life." i'm sure other people may learn this lesson faster, some slower, but i'm slightly soothed to hear that it happened around the same time in others' lives. 2:19 pm - 04.30.07 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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