I am heading to work again… a nondescript office setting, vaguely familiar from the real world gone by…there is a graduation ceremony of sorts…actually more like someone released from prison…he is in Sunday best and his hair is slicked and he carries himself like a sports star on parade…he has supporters around him…I watch, and wonder…does anyone but me know what a farce this all is?…almost as a stage act, the principal steps towards me seated beyond where the footlights would be…moving around the desk of the boss, who waits in attendance behind…the entourage of the prinicipal is abetting about…one says, “The piece…”…the little round boss, always nervous and obsequious, is most supportive…oh, yes, he says, and he opens his center drawer…reaches towards the back…brings out…a service revolver, a .357 probably, and hands it to the principal…
I am in frenetic and private opposition…I am saying to (it’s Jo Ann (just someone I knew in high school), playing the part of the front-office secretary) how it’s all wrong, this can’t be done…she is intent on doing work on paper and it doesn’t pertain to me nor my objections. I object, however, most emphatically, although not in the presence of the principal or his cohort, at least not intentionally, but a voice behind says, ‘Leave it!’ and I turn and a very tall one comes around to consult with Jo Ann, says to me, “I’m done,” meaning that’s all he has to say, or needs to say. I move out.
Here I am wandering the corridor of what looks like a dark mall…hordes of folks moving desultory and hopeless…lost…but I may be the only one who realizes it…they swarm in all directions but sluggish and phlegmatic…I am thinking, I am all alone in the world…I see not a face recognize me, or care if I’m there…I am not dressed…I have on a Russian babushka and a tunic which does not cover my undies…I must go back to the office and change…the office is a hangar, I see, and the sides are dropped like drapes so that the ribbing is exposed…the office is no more…I need to ask where my clothes are…I am wandering aimless with preset notions about what should be happening and trying not to think how in the world my moving in this huge labyrinth will make it be…I feel a tug on my tunic…I look around, then she comes up in front of me…I look way down and see a tiny little darkeyed beauty beseeching…I bend to the only face in the universe recognizing me, and it is imploring…”Please, sir, I want to be Wolfie!”…as I am in the act of bending down to the radiant dark little girl, I immediately understand her…Wolfie is a cartoon character who wears a large fur cap like mine…I am removing my headgear before I have even lowered my face to the level of hers…I place the babushka on her head and it carries over to her shoulders and she pushes it back to expose only a large smile…she moves away delighted and I continue my march in the cattle call, thinking, “I have to remember her…I must remember only her…”
The Day Before
NerdNosh, it has become apparent, is no more, and I’m not seeing replies to my calls to the Attic Meister for a restructuring of our archives. The Site Engineer LB left suddenly from Sasquatch, the Noshost, under undisclosed circumstances and then a server holding our goods apparently crashed and all I’m told by the Mom of Mom & Pop Store is she will restore the Attic if I send her the files…
Oh, boy. I have worked hard to convert the Nosh to a zine. I have stolen the format and was diligently plugging in segments from our stores when the lights went out. So now all depends on restoring the lost files, and there is pitifully little interest expressed and energy to continue the Nosh is limited as well, at least thus far.
I reflect also how I am totally alienated from all the citizens of my home town in the various online groups. I founded the first one, and then another when that failed, and now there are four groups, none of them including me, and at least two of them formed specifically to exclude me.
I have been harsh in my review of my old home town and its development. I have a sprinkling of notes from old hands, flotsam after the storm…
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