I Pity The Fool

It was not until a couple of weeks into our experience that we began to realize how little value our efforts and accomplishments seemed to have: not so much to our boss, but to his boss.  I like to call this person GodzillaBoss- he actually lives in Hawaii, but comes here for a certain amount of time at regular intervals and essentially wreaks havoc, creating a path of (emotional) destruction left and right among everyone unfortunate enough to attract his attention.  If you’ve seen the LOTR movies, then I can explain to you that GodzillaBoss is sort of like the Great Eye on top of the tower: he can’t always act directly to destroy you, but the last thing you want is for that big nasty eyeball to swing your way and catch sight of you.  Not to harp on it, but he is really a horror of a person, and ironically thinks of himself as incredibly charming.  Picture a cross between a snake-oil salesman, and the bitter, paranoid head of an academic department, only more lazy and less tactful.  Seriously, he is a perfect specimen of someone’s external presentation truly matching their internal character.  Picture a cross between Diego Rivera and Jabba the Hut.  You think I’m exaggerating, but I’m really not.

There’s actually a lot more that I have to say about work, but it can be a bit much to post a whole long incoherent rant at one time.  So this, dear pals, was Part 1 of my new series, "Ooh, Work Can Be Funny But It Sucks Lots Of The Time: Issues" (Hey,"The Office" was already taken).

To Be Continued…

I thought what with all the sad (or complaining) stuff I’ve written about lately, I might lighten the mood a little with some examples of good surprises I’ve had.  These are like tiny little slices of good karma return or something, you know?  Like for every time I help a tourist with directions, or give up my seat on the train to an old person, perhaps the universe is sending a ray of cosmic sunshine my way.  This line of thinking is of course, absurd, but in truly stressful moments it can be a bit of delusional comfort, I suppose.  How else could you explain the popularity of organized religion, eh?  Anyway, on with the surprises:

1) Bus Anarchy

I don’t know what it is, but for some reason I’ve been encountering friendly busdrivers who have covered over the Metrocard slot on their ride.  It hasn’t been on every bus I’ve taken lately, but it’s happened at least twice in the past week or so.  I think both times may have been in Brooklyn.  Is there some sort of furtive bus mutiny against the tyranny of the MTA?  Or if they are not organized, is it just bus anarchy?  I didn’t actually save money on my fares, because I buy the unlimited monthly Metrocard.  However, there’s some kind of mischievous collusion that one feels a part of, upon boarding a bus toll-free…

2) It’s Nice

I was telling my co-worker, C., today about my philosophy of courtesy.  It’s by no means original, but I have definitely found it true in my own experience that you get what you give, in terms of courtesy.  I was not a particularly polite child, but over time by sort of conditioning myself to remember the pleases and thank-yous, I like to think that I’ve grown up to be a more or less amicable and courteous adult.  I take the time to thank the check-out girl at the supermarket, greet people when I arrive at the office, and ask the guy who cleans the bathrooms how he’s doing.  It’s not the psychologist in me, it’s the common sense and common decency part.  People stereotype New Yorkers as brusque, if not downright rude, but I have found that in most cases they respond so cheerfully when you make an extra moment’s effort to be nice.  It’s nice to be nice.  I’ll dispense with the platitudes, but I must say it’s one thing that can really change a bad (or bad-ish) day.  After a rather stupidly spent afternoon at work, a two-minute exchange with said bathroom cleaner put a smile back on my face.  And I kept smiling after I walked out and down the street.  And a baby and a dog smiled back at me.  Nice.

3) Cookie!

On break today I bought a cup of joe and two cookies: one for me and one for C.  I like doing that occasionally- sharing with workmates.  C. was appreciative, although she wished to save the cookie for later.  At the end of the day, I mentioned to her that she still hadn’t eaten it, and she brightened up (after the afore-mentioned stupidly spent afternoon).  Long story short though, she couldn’t find it.  Bafflement.  So we went our separate ways.  A few hours later after I finished my dinner, and after having wished I had something for dessert other than the fruit I’d just eaten.  After taking care of the dishes, it occurred to me that I should remember to clean out my lunchbag.  Lo and behold, the cookie was in there!  I called C. to tell her the funny news.  And then I got to eat the cookie.  You see- wishes do come true.

Now if only I could take care of a few other issues with wishes…

Hi all,

I am very conflicted about whether to write a post about this, but I’m hoping it will be cathartic.  I got some very upsetting news today from my friend F., who has returned to Italy.  His friend Luca was murdered on the street the other day; and I learned this from a 3-sentence e-mail in the middle of work.  I didn’t know Luca very well, but I met him 5 years ago when I met F. in Florence.  In fact, I orginally didn’t like F. much, but arranged to go hang out in Rome with him and my friend K. (his cousin) in the hopes of seeing Luca again.  Long story short, I actually never did see Luca again in person, and became close friends with F., hearing about Luca every once in awhile, or getting an odd mass e-mail from him.

Fast forward to the present.

I don’t know if this is just a silly coincidence or what, but this morning on the way to the train, the song "My Name is Luka" was stuck in my head.  Not that this fellow’s untimely demise had anything to do with child abuse or Suzanne Vega, but it just seemed strange in retrospect.  Luca was killed in a senseless act of violence on the street in Rome, a place we might normally view as essentially harmless and civilized, other than the occasional pickpocket, or throwing Christians to the lions (but hey, 2000 years ago, to be fair).

I don’t mean to make a joke out of this, but I think I’m just too overwhelmed with confusing feelings to censor the gallows humor.  I was very upset while reading the e-mail, so I may not have completely understood it properly, but as I read it, Luca somehow insulted someone’s girlfriend (I don’t know if he even realized it), and the guy pulled a knife on him and stabbed him.  I don’t know if he died right away, or suffered for a long time.  I don’t know who he was with, or whether the killer got away.  All I know is that somehow, this event has touched me profoundly.  I can rationalize that cruel and unnecessary deaths occur every day in this world, not just in Sudan and Iraq, but right here in New York.  Luca is certainly not the first person I know who has died, and sadly, he isn’t even the first person I know to have been murdered.  But even though we weren’t close, the symbolism of his death seems to have struck a chord in me.  To have been so young and full of hopes and dreams, and all of a sudden, you’re gone: again, I know it happens every day, and Luca’s place in the universe is no more or less than any other person’s.  But Luca had family and friends who loved him, just like most any other person, and he was/is important to them.

Again, we delude ourselves that we live in a civilized part of the world, but there is brutality and pettiness here just like every other place where human beings have found a reason to be ugly to one another.  It’s hard to know what to do, if anything.  I cried when I found out, both for Luca, and (without wanting to sound grandiose) for the world that we live in…I called F. on the phone, and he was rather strangely prosaic.  I am sure he’s in shock too, but just not processing yet…I have a feeling it will hit him after the funeral this Saturday.  I think he almost feels like it would be tacky to grieve, since life must go on, and also since he sees Luca’s parents as being the ones with the real loss.  While I agree that the loss of a child is devastating to any parent, and that life must go on, I think it would be a mistake to stow this grief away.

Perhaps it’s selfish of me to want it out in the open.  But out of the direst circumstances and most difficult of emotions can sometimes come beauty; from pain and suffering can come renewed appreciation for what (or who) is still there.

I guess people react more strongly to a death when it occurs suddenly, violently, or in someone very young.  It reminds us all of how ultimate and inescapable our mortality is, and that there is no such thing as fairness, or any perceivable rhyme or reason to the way things play out (at least, certainly not on the small scale).  I am not a religious person, and I take no comfort in the idea that some omnipotent being has an incomprehensible plan that includes all of us, from the microcosmic minutiae of our tiny little lives to the grandest aspects of the universe.  However, I do believe that a person’s life matters, through the lives of other people that they have touched.  There is nothing I can do to ease the pain of anyone involved in this tragedy, and I didn’t really know Luca well enough to even commemorate him in a meaningful way.  But I guess this posting is my attempt to sort out my own confusion and sadness, and by sharing his story, maybe to make him matter a little bit more, even to people who never knew him.

I don’t want to get all preachy, or cheesy with the platitudes, but sometimes it takes a horrible misfortune to get the rest of us back on track, so to speak.  I try to focus on what is really important, and forget the rest of the crap that’s not worth the anxiety.  To make my own life more meaningful.  I like to think that by going into a "helping profession" that I’ve already gotten a jump start on that, but then again it’s amazing how much time and energy I can focus on ridiculous nonsense.

So what’s the point of all this?  I don’t know, to be honest.  I guess I feel a little bit better.  I guess I’m okay with posting this.  It’s scattered, but not too incoherent.  It’s hard to write an elegy for a person who died so young, and honestly, a person who was not really all that familiar.  But in him is a little bit of me, and a little bit of everyone I know who is young and full of promise and possibility.  Death is too complicated.

I could ramble on and on about this, but it’s late and I’m losing my thread here.  I apologize for unloading, but I guess even "I Pity The Fool" can’t be all fun and games…still, next time I’ll try to write a funny story.  Remind me to tell you why I call the head of my program "GodzillaBoss" and also how ugly he is.

Love y’all…

Liz

[written at work on Monday]

Does anybody remember that old song by King Missile?  At the end of it, he yells, “I wrote this at work!  They’re paying me to write about stuff I steal from them!  Life is good!”

I love that song.

Actually, perhaps due to having grown up in a socialist-type, union-friendly family, I had a deep and abiding affection for this song long before I ever really knew what the experience of working at a demeaning or otherwise unsatisfactory job might be like.  Or alternately, maybe I

[written at work on Tuesday]

Hey- it’s not remotely that I all of a sudden had something important to do when I was interrupted yesterday.  The cute office manager had come in to hang out with me, because he also had nothing to do.

Anyway, let’s see, where was I going with this?

Oh yeah.  I had a deep and abiding affection, yada yada yada.  Or alternately, maybe I am just a furtive, devious person who enjoys every opportunity I can to bilk the Man and cheat the bureaucracy.  This doesn’t exactly apply to my line of work, but then again, when you work in a rather ill-defined program for a large, hierarchical department in a massive hospital, I suppose even a psychologist-to-be can start to feel something like a cog in a machine.

There isn’t much for me to actually take at my job…in fact, a substantial portion of the supplies in the closet-of-an-office that I share with three other people are things that I myself brought in.  However, there is one thing that I can take, and that’s my sweet time going about my business.

There’s a lot I could say about my new (-ish) job interning at Big Hospital: some of you already know about it to varying degrees, while others might now be inching closer to the screen, thinking, “Disgruntled worker?  Tell me more,” with the hint of a Schadenfreude grin scampering in the corner of your mouth.  Are you reading this at work?  Are you dissatisfied with your own job?  Are we together just a tiny aspect of a larger, 21^st century version of the cubicle slave, spending more and more time stealing TIME (mainly online) instead of old-skool tactics like swiping staplers and toilet paper, or making long-distance phone calls on the company’s dime?

But I digress.

I may not be taking a desk or a case of white-out, like King Missile encouraged.  I certainly can’t while away the hours online the way I used to (I don’t always have access to the computer I share with those three other people), for example, when I worked at the DA’s office in 1998 and no one could see anything I was doing in my supervisor’s office while she was on a 3-week vacation (for reference, I took a nap under the desk there at least once).  But what I can do is steal back a little of my own time.  I am paid substantially less than the hypothetical secretary or B.A.-level employee who should be doing the work that I do (when I have something to do). I am 6 weeks into what should be the culminating experience of my professional training, and yet I am doing tasks that are far more clerical than clinical.  I don’t know yet what I am going to do about it.  But for now, I guess I’m getting paid to post to this here blog…

And hey, maybe the cute office manager will stop by later.

              Friends                            Enemies

           Shutterbugs                       Litterbugs

                Mini                                Hummer

            Vegetables                         Vegans

       Army of Darkness                 The Darkness

         Cokie Roberts                     Katie Couric

             Pirates                            Bootleggers

            Schmear                              Beer

            Lychee                              Nietzche

         Golden Girls                     Golden showers

            Trees                                 Bushes

   Hungry Hungry Hippos           Angry Angry Elephants (lame Republican joke)

       Little Richard                          Li’l Kim

         Converse                            Converts

    Ocean Spray Cran                  Spray-On Tan

        Red Meat                            Red States

      Jack Daniels                           Jackass

          Funk                                  Crunk

       Skeeball                                Teeball

        Zombie                             Abercrombie

         Moms                                   Bombs

       Bedheads                            Deadheads

    Flower Power                         Sour Power

  The Running Man                     Burning Man

  Mountain gorillas                    Mountain guerrillas

    Chicken Run                             "Fun" Run

   Pop-and-lock                            Pop Rocks

                                                                 Okay, so not really my enemies (I have nothing against

                                                                 Teeball.  Or Burning Man) , but it sounded funny.

I never would have imagined it.  Last night I went out to dinner with a visitor to NY, who reads this blog and had specially requested to eat at the Chinese restaurant where they play all glockenspiel all the time.  I wasn’t entirely surprised that there was no music playing when we entered the restaurant, since they often don’t turn it on when the place is busy and noisy.  Our guest went so far as to ask two employees about the glockenspiel CD; they stared, bewildered, and gave non-comprehending smiles and nods (is there a Chinese word for glockenspiel?).  They actually did put some music on, but it was almost too soft to hear, especially if you are unfamiliar with the glockenspiel’s lilting, melodic tones.  Our guest strained but was unable to hear it.  Eventually, he expressed his contempt and I was mortified.

But wait.  There’s more.  Later in the evening, we did hear some music…but to my shock, for the first time in years, I heard music there that was NOT glockenspiel.  No!  Not Davy Crockett on the glockenspiel, not Lionel Richie on the glockenspiel, not even Richard Marx on said instrument (ha, you thought I was going to write "glockenspiel" again.  Ooh, I just did).

It was "La Isla Bonita," by Madonna, on the PAN PIPES, accompanied by a flute and a Casio of some sort.

Wait.  Did you think that was a punchline to a joke, or something I made up?  No, friends.  This is another case of truth being more surreal than fiction.

I can’t believe this is my 30th post, but F.ster says it’s so.  Amazing.

Another evening has slipped through my fingers without getting any work done, but in my defense, it’s hard to spend most of the workday sitting in front of a computer, then motivate myself to do more of the same at home, for projects in which I’m even less interested.  Also, I talked to my friend Allee on the phone for the first time in like 2 months, and in addition to that, I went to my neighbor’s house to water the plants.  That might sound tranquil, but it’s a huge pain in the ass and this is the last summer I’m doing it, I think.  Every year she gets more plants, and it takes longer and longer to water them, using the one watering can that takes forever to fill.  Between that task, checking her house for flooding and her piano for humidity (she is a pianist and has a special machine), and taking in the mail, it can take up to an entire, sweat-filled hour.  But I digress.

I wanted to say a little more about the subway.  It so happens that I was talking to my coworker, Cara (shout-out!) about this earlier today, and then my friend Beth had a whole posting about it on her blog (http://citycrab.blogspot.com/2005/08/moving-staircases.html).  I added the following comment:

i too have many issues with my fellow commuters. it’s like the old line that everyone driving slower than you is stupid and everyone driving faster than you is a maniac.
i think i walk at a good pace and am a considerate straphanger. it drives me crazy when non-elderly, able-bodied people shuffle along at a snail’s-pace as if to say, "i am the most important person in this train station and there is no reason i should move my big fat ass out of your way," especially on the stairs.
on the other hand, i can’t stand it when people insist on rushing, stepping on your heels or shoving you in the process, and giving you dirty looks as if to say, "i am the most important person in this train station, and everyone else should pick up the pace or get the hell out of my matter-of-life-and-death way."
where are these people going?