Supposedly, I am at work right now. At least I should be. There’s nothing more surreal than showing up late to work only to find your boss wearing a red Christmas tree tie with a smile embodying festivity all over his face. Christmas tree ties - you just lose some element of dignity when you’re wearing decorated pine. Maybe it’s just me. Apparently I was supposed to know there wasn’t work tonight. I think he forgot to tell me. Which, of course, is entirely all right. I didn’t feel like working anyway. I feel like drinking tea and writing.

I have this long document on my computer. It’s a journalish type account from last year. It means a lot to me, both sentimentally, and for its literary worth. I was intending to fuse it with something else. Anyways, it won’t open because it’s corrupt. In fact, it hasn’t opened for the past eight months. My mom, in effort to ameliorate my overt distress, has convinced me that installing a program will restore it to it’s original accessible state. I hate to be such a skeptic, but who can resist the image of a little CD

rummaging around in a hard drive as he pounds on the gargantuan door of a medieval file screaming “OPEN UP! IT’S THE CORRECTIVE PROGRAM!” And then maybe after he’s exerted himself a little too much, he sits helplessly at the giant file door and mutters such pitiable phrases like “open sesame.” Dust flies of the file and into the air. It rains down like radiation. Or perhaps he goes Gandalf style and starts spouting off phrases in elvish. Either situation seems to present the same amount of hope, which is, pardon my avarice nature, not enough for me.

I’m almost irritated by something at the moment. Rather, this something has a name and a face, and just barely, a recognizable aspect of humanity. And the best thing I can do to sum this annoyance up is to say: Think of all the great thinkers you venerate. Think of your admiration for their passion. Now, think about finding out their complete jerks. It’s like some little kid climbing up into the lap of Santa Claus and watching his beard fall off as some sort of twisted answer to her recent gift request. There’s not really much more to be said about this. I’m torn between diction tonight.

This very sarcastic segment of me wants to talk about America in terse sentences. And then the other half wants to butt in with run on sentences about the inherent beauty of the universe. I just don’t think compromise is going is going to work. The only thing you can mix effectively is magnetic poetry, and even that has it’s limitations. Especially when you’ve lost half the set and all you’re left with are maudlin adjectives pertaining to love and summer. (And neither of these things are seemingly present in my life at the current moment. Which is not, a bad thing. But more of a stable mediocrity. That sort of reliable neutrality that can sway either way. If, of course, I had more magnetic poetry... this is the true tragedy of my life - the inability to express myself through magnetic dialect.)

So I’ve been really worried about Kyle lately. He sent me this vague poem about how “when you’re up you can’t fly and when you’re down you’re not earth.” It seems like ever since he went off to college he’s never happy. I just wish I could do something. But I don’t think he’s too big on talking to me. After we broke up all past evidence of any friendship we’d had dissipated. Ask the magnetic poetry . . . it heard about this. Yes it did. (Hm. An insight as to why the only pieces I have left spell out “summer love”) It hurts to see people hurt. And even more so when it’s preventable. When you’re thinking “OK, let me have you life for a while and fix a few things and get it into your head that you don’t need to be accepted by everyone, and it doesn’t have to be like the hell you’re making it into, and everyone can’t be a martyr because not all martyrs are saints.” Of course, practicality would destroy the conflict our lives seem to revolve around. It’s such a bizarre thought to me, to imagine a world without conflict. Certainly, I’m not a fan of chaos and disastrous confrontations. But it’s something I cling to in a way. I depend on conflict as a starting place. Like give me a problem and I’ll solve it. Give me the solution and I’ll make a problem. Perfection in nature and the incredible structure of life is something I am overwhelmed with everyday. Something I admire every minute. But perfection in my own life? I’d run away from it. I’d be inside the computer pounding on the file door in state of desperate thrashing. Trying to escape what seems beyond me. And next to the little CD man, I’d finally sit down and give up. The snow and the seasons would come. And I’d hide and speak in elvish.