In and between transit I no longer move to take out the book I pack for the ride. Something about re and re and rereading particularly nice, or fucked up texts I’ve saved, or watching dirty rainwater passengers’ shoes deposit make its way down the ridged aisle, or glimpsing a mouse dart out from under a crack between the bus shelter and sidewalk to the nearby garbage can seems a lot better than actively trying to learn something in a ‘spare moment’.
The community center serves many refugees and is run by a combination of immigrants and well meaning post-grad white girls. In the waiting area before my appointment I sat amongst two women wearing hijabs and one young woman with an LL Bean backpack apparently there for an interview. Given the four times I distinctly heard ‘alhamdulillah’, I’m guessing they were speaking in Arabic. When the interviewer came to retrieve the be-backpacked blond, the woman greeted the other with a smiling ‘Nice to meet you!’. As soon as they’d disappeared behind a turn in the hallway, the woman on the right wearing a patterned hijab turned in towards her friend, pausing the conversation in Arabic to mimic the sound of ‘Nice to meet you!’ and rigidly held out her hand for a robotic handshake. Her friend took her turn in mimicking ‘Nice to meet you!’ which unfolded into the two grown women volleying the phrase between each other another four or so times until they were apparently satiated with the matter and returned to conversing in Arabic.
I always happen to be peeing when Arielle comes into the room. She probably thinks I have some sort bladder problem. Maybe I do. It’s almost six in the evening and I haven’t yet brushed my teeth once today. My one meal consisted of three butterknife shovels of icecream.
Comin up on the four week mark here in Drackett Tower. Thankfully Manuel is here to dance for us all. If not for all the dancing we do here I might find enough time to dwell on other things, like work. Nine dollars and fifty cents less to my name and net worth now after seeing Cyrus. That should suffice for my two cents [now nine dollars and fifty two cents less to my name].
Taking a weekly GRE is like being stuck in a game of never ending tag. From the safe base I’m announcing to the other players that I am done, I am leaving the play ground, I have to be home for dinner, and every time I start walking away GRE[g?] comes running up from behind, smacking my shoulder, ‘YOU’RE IT!’ unnnhhhhhh. No more I love you’s. Dooby dooby doop doop doop, oh. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MS1jAvCycCY
Read outside on the oval again, under the tree whose ground-grazing leaves make the walls of my personal library. I thought, being a reg, I’d established the my-ness of the tree, but in that thought’s same breath I was met with clear opposition to my lay of claim.
