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July 4th, 2003
Can you capitalize on being an idiot? This interests me.
July 2, 2003
I awoke in an extraordinarily good mood. The fatigue and wicked humour that are standard for my morning only lasted a mere half hour. I went to work for a short day and was quite productive in spite of the fact that I felt so physically well that I found it difficult to sit still in my seat. I left at 4.30 and took a nap and awoke looking forward to dinner with a friend. The recent successful campaign for an extra night off, oblivious of the frowns from the marathon restaurant workers, has left me delerious and aware of myself in a way I had forgotten. One member of staff is moving to Australia in an attempt to free himself of all this American work stuff. I find it amusing that Australia is where I was heading when I got lodged here due to lack of air fare seventeen years ago. An enthusiastic Irish chef dwelling in Australia visited us at the restaurant last week and regailed us with how little they had to work. But then he looked wistful and said in his sweet Belfast accent (accents get so lost the longer you are away, now Belfast rage sounds so mellifluous), "ahh, but there's not the energy, the buzz, you know." When involved in another restaurant located diagonally opposite to the one I currently work in, a friend commented as I complained (hah!) about how busy it was, "Well, what is more enjoyable, success or failure?" I took a respectable length of time to consider his question. He is a journalist. I answered that I suppose success is better, knowing that this was the correct answer for him. But you know, I'm not entirely sure. The contours of failure are so familiar to me, the downward curve of disappointment and one's ability to assimilate it into one's every cell and to persevere with that dying phrase are what I'm good at. I feel so much more at home with the business that daily contemplates the rituals of the dole queue. I can hear the clamour of the new agers, but I'm not impressed by their hysteria and I no longer feel I even have to attempt their daft optimism. Failure can be very interesting if conducted on one's own terms.
My husband sends me odd things in the mail,
Even though he is not my husband any more.
Every one should have a husband,
Just one.
Lovers galore.
June 22, 2003
On Sundays, the day off, when I wake up to take the first pee I also stagger to the kitchen and make a loaf of brown bread. I can do it fast and semi-somnambulent. I put it in the oven and set the alarm clock for 45 minutes hence. The alarm goes off and the smell of baking bread has permeated the apartment and for a second time I can lie there for a moment savoring the prospect of the day off and the satisfaction that I have managed to complete the baking of the bread. I take it out of the oven, tap its bottom— even though I know it’s cooked from its distinctive smell—and wrap it in a linen tea towel and then put it on a baking rack. And I go back to bed for a second delicious time. And I dream. We wake up late and we have both had the same dream. That we are living in the spare room of our friends in Los Angeles, that we have lost everything and are starting over again. It wasn’t a bad dream, not for me. I can’t imagine not being ready to start all over again, it’s the magic potion in my kit. We sit down to brown bread, butter, jam and excellent coffee. I hope we can always do this.
June 15, 2003
Now that smoking is as deliciously illicit as it was in boarding school I have taken it up again after fifteen years. One a day. It was always the only vice I could control. Besides, it makes for the best restaurant break. I’m in the bathroom stalls again, I’m behind the bicycle shed, I’ve found something I can join. I’m standing with the bar back on the street, his brother is getting out of the big house after 41/2 years, the same age as his son. The bar back says he’s never going back to the big house; he has five jobs. He is surprisingly small for his physical strength and volume of character. His arms and face are cut up but his skin color makes the scar tissue a cappuccino color, not the pink pig color of my own scars. When I am close to him I find myself examining his skin and his profile and thinking of Velazquez, one of the more handsome subjects, perhaps with a ruffled collar. A beautiful woman sits at the bar and he says to the bar tender, “I’d fuck her like she stole something.” I’m not quite sure what he means but I relish the idea.