11.28.00

Is this the witching hour? It's late; it's always late and the morning beckons sadistically. The bulk of the Thanksgiving holiday I spent nauseated and prostrate on a mattress in the basement of the childhood home of a friend of mine, far from the sounds of any city, just the sound of the clouds scraping on the blunt edges of the house. Time was measured in the images of the doorway and crafting attempts to get through it. Three days earlier three co-workers were laid off from that littler and littler Internet company. Two were my officemates and one my intern. I have this feeling of being narrowly missed, though I know that's just an error of proximity. They tell me it was economic, that's all. Nevertheless, for one night I didn't know if I would arrive to a job the following morning. That night I contemplated what I would do if I were suddenly jobless and I was surprised to discover that I didn't fear it. I've done this now, worked in high-tech, or whatever it's fashionable to call it these days. The industry is soulless and each morning the hours until my return are calculated and ways to cheat the clock implemented. But it allows me to live like I do, and it's worth it for that, for now. And living like I do includes this lovely lovely space I call by Home and, very soon, a flight to Asia. This morning on the bus (testing music reticently now, oh so tenderly letting it back into imagination) I remembered other buses and other music. The melody of the sea splashed up on to land, throbbing black and gently swaying with it, swept along on top of it and held there rocking until a great arm reaches round cradling me over, owning me desperately under its lusty weight. In the sparkling clean Seattle morning, I long for gelatinous Asian nights.

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