Friday, February 28, 2014

Workday in Abstraction

Crouched back on my heels, black dress folded over me and black jacket bunched and flaring behind me, I felt like a Corvid. Slipped from a roost, watchful. Bent almost to the ground beside the vending machine, the wide lunch atrium expands above me; the brilliant white ceiling makes me want to dig my stilettos into the ground and launch my body to the light.

Away from the dark recess from which I’m scavenging a water bottle.

Today, however, the universe has dropped a bag over my head and is working me with the jess. Empty spaces are only so big. The dress only sways because my ankles are restrained. A long, serviceable black that recreates me in a block of shadow. The old-fashioned sounding “serviceable” brings to mind children’s stories--long black dresses lead inevitably to witches. Waiting for a knock on the door.

Last weekend, my brother told me how he was now saying an uninterrupted “yes” to the Universe. Everything was lining up, working out. He stated this after we discovered the unexpected curbside parking space he’d just scored was right in front of the place were going. His myths begin to sound like they come from the front of an auditorium. The Universe offers you something, you take it. Managers fail upward. All of which makes me think of fat cartoon men in suits floating like balloons between a flat green grass ground and a flat blue line of sky. Tie a string around an ankle and run your manager balloon down the field.

Be open to the possibility of mediocrity, that you will never fail upward far enough.

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