Early arrival to work.
Earlier than normal, at least.
It feels like I have all the time in the world.
The awareness of time probably works against me, but not in a way that I am initially aware. Continue reading
Raul Carvajal woke up earlier than he meant to. Instead of his phone playing alt-J at 6:45am like it normally does, his cat woke him up at 6:30am. This used to be an unwelcome wake-up call, but on the Monday morning Raul doesn’t have his phone, it’s his only wake-up call.
Without a phone to distract him as he’s waking up, Raul also lacks the weight he usually carries when attempting to get his day started. He gets up to feed his cat, with a full hour before he has to get ready for work in order to be on time – something he hasn’t managed to do more than a handful of times in four years. He feels ambivalent about the prospect: I might as well, since I’m up.
Raul continues to get ready the way he usually does. He makes the bed, puts yesterday’s clothes away, chooses new clothes for today and gets in the shower. The silence feels loud and the rhythm untethered. Out of the shower, Raul dries and heads to the bedroom to get dressed.
With a packed lunch and a few more i’s dotted, Raul is ready for work and leaves his house. When he arrives there, he makes an important phone call to the owner of the car where his phone is expected to reside – with the hopes that it does.
Raul also pulls out his laptop to see if anyone at work can help him figure out why the fuck he’s having trouble connecting to the internet.
The protagonist of this story is Raul Carvajal, but I’m the protagonist of the events.
Did Raul succeed in tracking down his phone? Was he able to understand why his laptop didn’t have internet and do what was necessary to effectively connect it?
The answers to these questions are “yes” and “yes (for a while), currently no.”
Struggling to come up with the exact word I need for this tweet — a word that I had in my automatic, immediate vocabulary when I was in college — makes me wonder…does our vocabulary go through natural selection as we get older? I would imagine so, as I am very much struggling to remember a word I used a million times on papers, a word that was fluff then and has since been eliminated as a direct result of this fact. I’m sure I impressed countless professors with this word — I’m sure I used it on that paper I got a B+ on without even reading the book (I think it was Tess of the D’Urbervilles). That might’ve been the paper I needed to completely rewrite because the night before it was due, my laptop was stolen from under my nose at the Penn Station metrocard machine. Possibly.
Either way I can’t check it because my laptop was stolen again a few years later and ahhh…I wish I could. Anyway, throughout remembering my probably shitty paper I remembered the word: quintessential.
Disassociating and desensitizing; slowly but surely, this is the truth. Doing me in spite of you.
Irony in the public publishing of a vulnerability in control. Slowly. Yet truly. And seemingly without remorse.
Cryptic, no apologies.
I turn to my right. A familiar face whose voice I faintly hear under the music appears. “Why is it that during the cold months, we are sleepier?” She asks.
I don’t have an answer for her. “I don’t know; I guess it’s just the weather.” She puts her coat on and asks if I want to get a coffee with her.
“No, thanks; I’m good. I have my tea.”
I grab the mug sitting in front of me, an empty gesture to communicate my contentment. Empty because it’s just lukewarm water and a single Splenda.
I’m here for something that’s never been enjoyable. As I arrive at the gyno’s office, I’ve managed to delude myself into looking forward to the experience. I tell the front nurse my name and the name of the doctor to examine my cervix, when the truth stiflingly takes ahold of me like the wood paneling does to the waiting room.
Eight days ago, I couldn’t properly breathe. Mountains of phlegm crept up my esophagus and remained, occasionally sneaking into the back of my throat and disturbing basic breathing functions.
Seven mornings ago, my eyes opened, but the rest of me was still asleep. Not exactly paralysis, but almost. It was crippling without being frightening, and somehow strangely comforting. I had no choice but to release the drapes that cover my eyes and fall back.
I spent five full minutes trying to figure out how I should sign a letter to my uncle. My first instinct was not to write anything, just my name—but maybe that seems cold. Then, I looked to see what he wrote – “Abrazos,” So I considered signing it “Hugs,” but then he’d probably notice that I copied him and I’d look lazy or worse—like I don’t care. Ugh. X? O? XO? Not really my personality style. Gossip Girl’s voice-over sign-off strongly reminds me of this fact. “Love,?” This signature reminds me of elementary school love letters before we really even know what love was. After all of the hubbub and indecision, I decided to go with my first instinct.
Red had a surprising presence in the former half of my day. Red the color, that is. I don’t usually notice colors in passing. I use them to figure shit out – my wardrobe, my apartment, you know, aesthetics. But I hardly notice accidental color patterns. Today was different. Red appeared consistently throughout mind-numbing endeavors.
A Page No Longer Blank 