Signs of the Time

I was walking past the Museum of Modern Art on my way to an interview this afternoon and noticed how every news box I passed on the street was empty like there wasn’t any news. Not a single newspaper amongst them. Is everyone reading information online these days? That really can’t be the case because I see newspapers thrown on my neighbor’s porches and I, myself, recently subscribed to the weekend issue of the New York Times. So I know of at least a few hold-outs, but clearly we will be unable to keep the failing newspaper industry afloat. Further up the street there’s a Citibank poster promising $500 dollars for any one who can sign up five of their friends for a checking account, and even suggests how the reward money can be split five different ways. Is the person who already has an account left holding the completed application?

Beyond my curent excursion up Third Street, I recall how at the mall this weekend families with young children were being offered promotional items at the movie ticket window, posters, sodas with bright orange straws, which they greedily tucked into a baby stroller and kept moving. Even with the recession, I think these are good signs where businesses have to do more to woo customers rather than assuming a loyalty to pay through the nose. I had my first job interview and I think it went well, but you never know. Traveling back to the East Bay on BART, young adults gazed into their cell phones, reading into their futures, while none of the escalators at stations on either side of the bay seemed to be working. Perhaps this was part of a cost-savings measure as management and labor continue last minute negotiations to head off a strike.

For Michael Jackson

He's changed his style
to join the other boys and girls,
a sprinkling of pixie dust from a vial,
singing as he waved with a sequined hand
over the Tower of London to blue lagoons
filled with the undulating hair of mermaids
and dugout canoes, a true criminal
who stole the moon walk from the moon,
glitter from the sun
and placed himself in the sky as an icon,
a masked man in silver and black.
Now from Neverland he's not coming back.

Meaningless Acts

I had half decided not to go to work today it being Monday without anything to do except to mark time. But there were a number of administrative tasks like using the copier machine for my own purposes and plunking down a few heavy envelopes in the outgoing mail tray. Call them last minute acts of meaningless sabotage, but mostly, I had an eye to saving money, and being a warm summer day, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to do some laps at the gym. I took my usual route downtown, noticing fewer cars, wondering if it’s because people have left for vacation or just left, probably both, I said to myself as I passed Patrick standing in front of Colonial Donuts and selling Street Spirit. After several years of occupying this same spot, he’s developed a group of regulars, like myself, who buy the homeless paper from him in the morning on the way to coffee. I’ve already told him that I’ve been laid-off.

“Oh, no,” he said. “They’re taking away all my customers.”

Past the sentry of Patrick is the Blue Sky Pot Club, one of many cannabis outlets in downtown Oakland, which as a city of pot clubs, is trying to fashion itself as the Amsterdam of the United States. Already, a group is gathered outside its doors waiting for the club to open. Old people, young people, some in wheelchairs, all colors, men and women. I drive around the corner and use my pass to open the security gate of the parking lot. Swiping the badge becomes a recognizable gesture, not part of an endless routine that has composed my years at this place. I’m actually starting to like the idea of leaving. It makes me feel less encrusted.

Soon I’m upstairs and discover that JL, the man who hired me, has sent an Outlook invitation for lunch. I’m not really dressed today, just jeans and a polo, but why not, although it does mess up my plans to leave the office by noon. I need to stop at the vet’s and pick up medicine for my cat’s thyroid, plus my boyfriend’s coming home today from Memphis. But I recognize that closure makes its demands. I send JL a message and accept his invitation. I’m outside his office at the appointed time of 11:45am. He’s on the phone. He’s always on the phone, or in the middle of a conference call, or talking to someone else who’s in his office. I wave to him hopefully and he gives me the “one-minute” sign. At noon, I’m still waiting outside and do what’s I’ve ben wanting to do for these past seven years: I head for the elevator and let his administrative aide know that he can call me when he’s ready.

“I’m sorry,” she tells me. “Some things don’t change.”

Back at my desk, I make no small bones about my annoyance and let everyone around me in cubicle-land hear about it. For my outgoing luncheon, I had hoped that things would be different. But really, why should they be? I’m the underdog and my co-workers are rooting for me. In five minutes I receive the message that JL’s ready.

“I’m going to make him wait for me!” I announce. I know, it’s pitiful, these small, insignificant acts of retribution. But what the heck. They make me feel better.

To My Mother on Father's Day

For years I didn't realize that many
among the married had demagnetized their connection.
Not you. Whenever you walked,
you placed your hand inside his back pocket
and anchored yourself there, half-joking
and called him Lord and Master
while he shook his head, right, named you Toots,
made your eyes glow indoor lighting.
Being around you two was always easy.
Once I stepped up to the platform,
I wanted as much. A man who could be a deliverance.
You gave me a sign
with which I picketed my failed marriages.
You showed me love inside a vase for all time.

The Big Count-Down

After more than a year of waiting to hear the word from on high, I received the dreaded laid-off notice. Now I'm copying email addresses and phone numbers of people I want to stay in contact with post bootox. In the meantime, I’ve got one more week left on the payroll before filing for unemployment. In my newly laid-off status, I've become a member of the American mainstream. Oh joy. Having completed all outstanding work and with tons of sick leave on the books, I’m still able to use a fast Internet connection at my desk in case I want to register with agencies and look for work. I know people on my crowded floor have their eye on my cubicle space. The other day, someone wanted to know about my desk stand. I'm already being dismembered. The lesson here: none of us are indispensable.

Mostly, it’s a chore to come to work. I'm now a pariah. Employees look away from me in the elevator. They don’t know what to say. I’m an uncomfortable reminder that they, too, may, receive similar news, and pray that the Angel of Unemployment will pass over their cubicle wall. Of course, friends have taken me aside to let me know that whatever I may think, I am one of the lucky ones, released from the bondage of paying into a 401K plan and saving for retirement, which has been the adult, responsible thing to do, suddenly out there on my own and free to make new choices. I’m not ready to make choices. All I know is that my monthly balance sheet is not looking too good.

After years of being compressed into an 8 to 5 format, I just want to repot some root-bound plants on my patio ledge and catch up with doing the wash. I did toy with the idea of buying a franchise for a gourmet peanut and butter business on the West Coast where none are located, or applying for a $30,000 grant from something called the Metanexus Institute, which had a nice George Orwellian ring to it. But within minutes, I thought better of either prospect and decided that the smart thing to do was to get a haircut and a pedicure. I owed that much to myself, and to any upcoming job interviews. So I spent the afternoon sitting in a chair in front of a mirror while Richard trimmed my hair and then drove down the hill to the pedicure salon where my feet were soaked, sanded, and daintily painted with a new coral polish. My friend who is contemplating retirement came over my house where we saved money by cooking dinner together and drinking a bottle of wine.

The Countdown to Layoff

The countdown. Tomorrow is Friday before my last full week when I springboard to a some new place in my life, but probably doing the same thing I have been doing, which is working out problems on a blackboard the size of a laptop screen. Right now it is evening, past the time for any reality show to distract me with its nightly eliminations, and toward the end of June when days are the longest and plants on my patio are the greenest, especially the tomatoes. My cats have settled down for the evening on the Ikea POÄNG, a chair that curves in two directions and then rests on a strong center of gravity. Evening hum of the refrigerator and the flapping of the cat door. My shoulder muscles ache from the endless clicking of a mouse. I want to learn how to do something else with my hands.

I Tell My Mother How I Found Love

I fell for my husband
like a suicide from the Golden Gate Bridge.
It wasn't a great marriage.

When he held me,
pleasure ripped across the surface of my face.
Disturbing.

A convention of seagulls
told me to scavenge for a key.
From there, everything snowballed.

I discovered the mathematics of randomness.
Zeros and ones
like flowers, candles, and photographs

framed in red cinnamon hearts.
Amid fire, these ones
occupied a street corner. I drew three cards,

which is how I met him.
My eyes shone topaz. I tasted help
in his emergency numbers.

He showed me how to eat the moon
and came back in a few minutes
with a warm pair of gloves.