In A Sandbox
Monday. Forty days and forty nights until retirement. Forty. Indeed. Lots more people from overseas in the office today to learn the jobs they'll be taking back with them in forty days. We ambushed a couple of them in the building and kicked them down three flights of stairs this afternoon, but that's just nervous energy on our part. Gives the day an edge. No hard feelings, of course. We didn't realize you could break so many bones between just two people or how much it could disrupt an office - management appeared nervous - but it's a Monday and the stress is usually a bit higher coming back off a weekend. Isn't that your experience?
Bullshit.
Indeed, but there are many ways to release tension and writing is one of them.
I read Murakami's After Dark over the weekend. Another good sign or, at least, I view it as a good sign: being able to settle down and read a book straight through at one sitting. Haven't done that in a while. I have two or three other unread books by Murakami beside the bed. He's a flavor of the moment, you see his stuff in The New Yorker, but I find him well worth reading. I'm not sure why I've slipped into this Asian culture jag: Asian movies, Asian novels, Asian artists. Not much in the way of Asian music, I must admit.
Maybe it's just an attempt to see things in a different perspective, a way to break out of a rut, a reason many people travel: not for the sea, not for the snow, but for the perspective and the “you're not in Kansas anymore” rush. Then again maybe I'm unwinding in some mundane fashion familiar to people who study these things: a not so slow spiral that leads to throwing the I Ching before breakfast instead of reading your morning horoscope. Or is this a throwback to the sixties? I recall throwing the I Ching using Mexican coins for sticks and thinking even then this was a little retro for a fellow who was then in his twenties, kind of like pretending to be a kid again, playing with toys in a sandbox.
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