As a great fish swims between the banks of a river as it likes, so does the shining Self move between the states of dreaming and waking.

-Brihadaranyaka Upanishad




I don't know about this one.

http://thehomelessguy.blogspot.com/

He says he's never fit into a normal society, and he struggles with it on a daily basis. Man, I can appreciate that. The last time I checked, which is pretty much every morning I've woken up since second grade, I didn't fit in either. In fact, a lot of people don't fit in. Some people pick up guns, some drop out, and then others drop out completely by still going to a job they hate, everyday, to a job that doesn't really exist. And so, yeah, I admit it -- I still go to work.

I'm trying to remember what the problem is again.

I'm trying to be objective. He also says that homeless people tend to gravitate toward the library. Again, I have misled myself, moving all my possessions to a town with an unfulfilling job, where if I were to be homeless in this town, I'd be in no way able to concentrate on a weblog but would in fact be completely screwed. I have to read on to find out where he is geographically located. Relocation would not be a problem for me (especially if I didn't have to move my couch) and actually sounds quite groovy, very reminiscent of "free thinking", if I can live in a library all day versus hanging out on a corner and starving literally to death here, one way or the other.

Okay, which reminds me: yes, food. I'd love to have some right now, but I didn't bring my plastic-money today. I think there is a donut in the kitchen, but it's old. And eating a donut when you are hungry is like drinking sea-water when you are thirsty. It just makes it worse after the sugar-buzz wears off 30 minutes later.

Oh wait, we were talking about my unfullfilling crap: You see, the problem is that I have too much crap to keep up with in my life. That's right. Too many physical, personal possessions to carry with me. If I could give them away to someone, then I would. These possessions I have were someone else's idea, not mine. Like bank cards, cell phones, day-planning books to plan a day that I don't even own and don't have enough time for in the end. Having less should mean that I could live a livestyle that was more free, only clinging to several possessions like Grasshopper. Unfortunately, I need too many of them to exist properly.

Maybe not, though. I guess some people might be afraid to be honest and say how remarkably healthy the Homeless Guy looks. His skin alone has more of a glow than mine, and I'm supposedly years younger, and not homeless yet.

But you can't say that about a homeless person, right? Don't mind me, I'm just jealous. I'll just be forced to pay more to have less in life. Because I don't fit into what's considered normal society either. So I know my limitations. I'll come back to work tomorrow so I can have a home to go home to at night, to be rested up for the job that takes more than it gives.

And I'll give him that one: not having a place to stay at night is a bad scene. I know this, it's happened to me, too, for one reason or the other. You just either keep driving or you keep walking until the sun comes back up and then you really don't feel homeless anymore. At least not for 12 or so hours until you have to go back to sleep somewhere.

If I was him, I'd hide in the library at night. I'd steal a toothbrush and some toothpaste, soap and shampoo -- unless someone donated some to me, the perceived less-fortunate -- and I'd hide in the library bookstacks until lights-out.

But for now, for me: I am very still, sitting here with a life-sucking job and a home where I left my plastic-money, yet still hungry in more ways than one. Reading about a guy who has no home, yet spends all his days at the library, reading and writing. He wishes for the simple things, like having a home of his own. So do I. What seems to be worse is to have a job and still not be able to afford a home. Financially or mentally. "Who knows if today might be my last day here? Where will I go tomorrow if I get downsized, again?" And at this particular moment, I am really hungry and wondering what else I can pilfer from the Freezer Graveyard here at work besides the ice-encrusted microwave dinner I ate for lunch.

No pension plans, no increase in pay, no job security. Just frozen food left by employees and interns past. Not knowing it was their last day or maybe, just not caring.

These were people who fit into society better than the other before them or after. Or maybe they just seemed to fit in.

I just realized that I am the Job-less Girl. Stuck in a job that I never wanted, but had to have to live in a world that's not quite right. But that doesn't sound as bad as being homeless, does it. But it is similar -- not knowing what's going to happen to you day after day. Not filling your head with any knowledge or eduction as the hours slip by. And having to expend whatever creative energy you might have left on a life or a job you may not have next week, and definitely a job you never really wanted but had to have so you could have too much to keep up with in the end, and a job that won't get you any further along in a career than where you are today.

That is weird. Why do I do it? To have less direction in life than a homeless guy.

I wonder of he'd trade places with me. It seems abnormal to me that he would.

Besides, I'd miss my couch. I just need to find another job.

ps: I found some ramen noodles and rehydrated them. jackpot!

"When eating a fruit, think of the person who planted the tree."
– Vietnamese proverb

holy crap.

The hilarity continues, thanks to my contributing friend, the fabulous Miss Jacquie "J-Snatch" (named after Jacqueline Bissett) as she recounts her experience in a mother-son-daughter conversation she overheard in a bathroom in Mississippi:

"SFX: *flush*

DAUGHTER: How does the water go down, mama?
SON: Jesus does that.
(pause)
MOTHER: Yes kids, Jesus makes the water go down. Jesus makes everything
work.

ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND? Do you think Jesus has the time to follow you
around and make sure your doody is sucked into the plumbing system??
This is how ignorance lives: it's passed down from generation to
degenerates."


What's even better, j-snatch, is that I misread "doody" as "daddy" the first go 'round.

*Boody-ism*

SCENE: Mall shop specializing in eastern religious items and the like. Teenage girl-to-girl conversation between two browsing the shop; volume high enough to impress the two teenage boys pretending to browse an aisle nearby.

Girl 01 (talking on cellphone but also talking to her friend shopping with her; she points to a carved mahoghany sculpture of a Chinese dragon):
"I would not touch that rat with my hannnds."

Girl 02
"Uhhhhhhhhh-huhnn. People brang that stuff into they house and wonder why thangs don't be workin' out for them."

Girl 01
"Mmmmmmm-hm. You cain't just brang all this stuff into your house. It's all, like, a different religion and stuff, like what, you know... boody-ism..."

Girl 02
"That's right, you cain't have all this stuff from all over like from different... different... different origins, you know what I mean!"

Girl 01
"That is right..."

:~: Today's Hindu Words of Wisdom + Bubbleview :~:

"Try to be reasonable in the way you grow, and don't ever think it is too late. It is never too late. Even if you are going to die tomorrow, keep yourself straight and clear and be a happy human being today. If you keep your situation happy day by day, you will eventually reach the greatest happiness of enlightenment."

-Lama Thubten Yeshe, The Bliss of Inner Fire

"oh yes, and and try not to work in advertising."

-bubbles

Boneyard

"Attentiveness is the path to true life;
Indifference is the path to death.
The attentive do not die;
The indifferent are as if they are dead already."
- Dhammapada

Somebody else got fired yesterday. And today, we got pizza. Hmm. I guess it's quicker than a cake order. Plus, bakeries don't usually deliver without an additional charge. One girl called it the "Pat on the Head" pizza. The patteroni pizza. With extra cheese. Somebody got fired, and we got pizza.

One guy thinks that we have enough work to create the appearance of actually working for the next few days or so, equating it to making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich when you are almost out of peanut butter. "You have to start kinda thin at the beginning," as he pretends to scrape peanut butter around his palm on his invisible slice of bread with his invisible knife. "You have to spread it to the edge and then see if you can kinda spread it out to the sides, like this... no jelly, though... we can't afford that."

"How is the company morale?" I'm not sure what exactly makes me feel so poisoned by this question. If it's not the completely useless and insulting point of anyone asking a question they already know the answer to, then what is it? Is it that I've been used in a handout here and there to sell a service that doesn't exist at this company? Or that I can't stand being around some people who are as shallow as pie pans, and as easy to read as a cheap comic book? Maybe I feel sick because it's payday, and we have yet to be paid today. Is this the day that the place went under? And shouldn't I care, instead of wondering how I'm going to move all of my shit out of this office and into my foyer for the second time in ten months?

When I was a little kid, I thought that you go to school and you work hard and you do well; then you go to college and you work harder still (plus you drink beer and probably have a decent set of boobs by then and hopefully a car, of which I had neither), and you do well; and when you get out of college, even if you don't set the world on fire being whatever it is you hoped to be, then you could at least have a job where you didn't have to worry every day if you were going to lose it. Especially if you didn't care.

If i would have known that then, if I would've known that life wasn't going to be like that, results produced by results, then I would've moved to another country and taken more chances.

People can always say the pedestrian, "It's better than digging a ditch. You should be lucky that you even have a job. Life is not fair." And to that I say, "I didn't go to all the trouble for such little incentive. And I didn't major in ditch digging. And if I believed you, then I'd stay here."

To the people who try to make us feel insecure about out present futures, who manipulate us into feeling somehow grateful to have a job that doesn't really exist, I hope the day comes soon. When everyone finds out that you were officially nobody all along, even though your business card seemed to spell out a different story in six words or less.

And I also hope one day that we all hear about it, wherever we all might be. That's beginning to sound very fair to me.

hello.