TimeFlies

If fruit flies like a rotting banana, what do time flies like?
-someone

Was it really only 30 days ago that I was in hospital ICU, hooked up to a mess of tubes and wires tangled and painful enough to please the Bondage Spiders of Chaos Prime? Those were some good times, all surgery, sedatives and the hourly blood-lettings. Whoo.hoo.

Today, I did something I've not done for years- since 2001, to be precise- I cashed a paper paycheck. Not direct deposit-paper. It felt pretty good, yes indeedy!
I like my new job. I sit in a room by myself and do something with computers- I'm not even really sure what I do, or why, but my boss said I'm really, really good at it.

Has it really been over a month since I suffered the lash in the galleys of Bank of Generica? My doctor told me I was the second patient he'd seen this year whose health went Titanic after just a few months of BoG employment. 32-year old guy w/ heart attack & minor stroke.
Jeez, I think I working at BoG for a month is worse than 3-a-day at McDonald's . No wonder I was drinking so much.

It's also been over a month since I put gas in my car. That's right. Since before Katrina, actually. It was $2.61 a gallon, which seems cheap. I've had that gas in my car so long that I've developed a sentimental attachment to it, like a good book that I really don't want to finish reading; that's the love I have for my current near- empty tank o' vintage gasoline. I always did tend to pin my heart to vapor, so there's a certain lame poetry in that last gallon or so.

Taking the bus to work is great. By the time I pay tolls, park and walk the 11 blocks from the parking lot to the office, taking the bus is actually faster than driving. This also allows me one uninterrupted hour of reading time every day, which I find inexplicably precious. I didn't realize how so until the other day ,when I reached the end of my book, still with twenty bus minutes remaining. People would board the bus, glance at me and my unopened book, then walk past,' sniffing' just audibly, as if signaling that they knew me for the unread lout that I truly am, the book a mere prop, for use in a vain attempt to appear smart and pick up college chicks.

One of the books, Beasts ,by Joyce Carol Oates, seems to be pretty much based on characters I know from childhood- my parents were friends with a couple who were both fairly well-known painters (her a writer as well). When Arty Couple broke up, it was revealed the Mr. Arty liked teen-age kids a little too much. (Mrs. Arty was OK.) For a while he did some teaching and had a new, older and eviler female partner/enabler, but he eventually dropped out of our lives after he sold my mother a signed Dali print that turned out to be a forgery.
Twenty years later, I wasted several hours trying to convince the sisters who lived next door ( 17 & 19 , i think) that group-eloping with Mr.Arty and joining an art commune where they could indulge in being Brides of Ralph ( Mr. Arty's name) or some other such borderline sociopathic cultist pastime. The last time I saw Ralph, he was harboring a houseful of runaway teenagers.They all had the strangest look ,eyes all bulgy ,skin sweaty, shiny-white and wet like a Dunwich horror or a peeled boiled egg with binocular vision. Anorexic druggie boiled eggs. Shell-free, weak and vulnerable-looking. Ralph food.
Ecstasy was cheap and legal back then, so that was probably part of it. Some really bad stuff happened at Ralph's commune, or so I heard. One day, Ralph had an accident and had to leave town very quickly (and leave the kids, who went to the State) behind. Most of his paintings were destroyed. Ooops! Poor Ralph. I'm sure he's dead now, which is good.
Anyway,it was odd reading this book, since I already knew the characters.
I hope the denouement has some basis in true events-in reality those poor,stupid kids didn't stand a chance against Ralph.

Funny, I hadn't thought about Ralph and his child-Brides for years. I swear he's Mr. Harrow. Different media and setting, but...I dunno. It's giving me a' creepy'.

Next bus-book: a long-over due re-reading of Foucault'sPendulum. It's been nagging me: I feel like that guy in Foucault's, you know, the one that has all the secret computer files, his password was "NO" - that guy- what the hell was his name? The one the first guy obsesses on?
Belbo!
That's it!
Re-type password.
NO
Belbo!
Yay!
The library's tattered (I used duct tape, it helped) copy is now in my grubby paws.
I like my bus ride.