Dear Ms. Giaofrano

"IT Solutions Center, can I get your name and NKU ID?"


Dear Ms. Giaofrano,

When I picked up the phone today at work and heard your voice, I knew this would be a long call. You greeted me with a screeching "OH! Finally! A human voice!" and I knew your problem would not easily be resolved. I begrudgingly minimized the article I was reading before you called and listened to you mindlessly babble on about how computers are out to get you for the next 5 minutes.

Ms. Giaofrano, I want to help you with your problem once you stop talking.
Please, Ms. Giaofrano...
...
Ok...
...
Ok? Now what seems to be the problem?

Uh huh.
Ok.
Sure, I can help you with that once I just get the...
No Ms. Giaofrano, I do not have a "degree in computers".
Ms. Giaofrano, when you yell at your dogs, can you please take the receiver away from your mouth?

Joe, the guy at work with one arm,
What? I mean he openly talks about it, it's ok.
Ok, so Joe walks by pushing a cart with a huge load of printer paper, nearly touching the ceiling. He's trying to compensate for that arm. No, I'm not trying to be mean, I'm just stating the facts. I'm the omniscient narrator here, that's what he's thinking when he decides to push a cart with far too many boxes of paper.
Anyways, without thinking much about it, I notice out of the corner of my eye that the cart is wobbling quite a bit. Too much in fact. Because one of the 40 lb boxes falls off onto my head as he's passing.

After frantic apologies, Joe leaves with the cart, still wobbling along. I wince as I rub the back of my head. Ms. Giaofrano's high-pitched voice still ringing inside the walls of my brain.
No.
She's still on the line. And she's still talking about how when she was at NKU for undergrad, it was much easier to register for classes. "No computers necessary. Just cawl the numba. Then they set ya up with what you want."
Ms. Giaofrano, what you need is to open the internet. It's that little blue icon on your desktop. No Ms. Giaofrano, its the desktop on your computer. Then go to the NKU homepage and click the register for classes link.
You haven't actually applied to NKU yet?

Ms. Giaofrano, listen. You're obviously going back to school at the ripe age of what? 55? 60? because that 20/20 special on the Recession "scared some sense in to ya". You're scared that the new manager at the florist is going to get rid of the old faces to replace them with all of the bright energetic college students out job-hunting.

...
*sigh*
...

I know you're scared Ms. Giaofrano, I'm kind of scared myself. This new era is daunting. It's as scary for me as it is for you. We both worry about getting lost among the sea of faces, of not expanding to our full potential. You worry about understanding computers, I worry about understanding age.
Ms. Giaofrano, how much do things change? Do you lose your childhood dreams with each new year? I don't want to grow to be jaded Ms. Giaofrano.
I know Joe made it this far. And look at him, he still find some way to try to compensate for that arm he doesn't have. I always ask him if he needs help, but he always says, "Ah, yeah, well you know I can probably get this. Thanks though!"
The next 5 minutes he spends half squatting, half walking, bent back trying to hold all of the files at once, beads of sweat forming at his temples.
As unnecessary as it is, I kinda admire that about him. He's always pushing himself like that. Taking unnecessary risks.
Hm, I never realized that before...

Oh no, I'm still here Ms. Giaofrano.
Has the software finished downloading yet?
Not yet? ah gotcha. Ok, we'll wait.

You know, I also know that you're scared about finding that certain someone. That nice man who used to come in to get flowers for when he visited his ill mother used to come in all the time, and you used to have the nicest chats with him.
But now he never comes in anymore.
I know, I'm worried myself. I can never seem to set my sights on the one that ends up working out. And in a weird way, it's comforting to know that this stuff isn't always resolved in our younger years. I'll have that many more years to gain wisdom from the different women I encounter. A patchwork of different encounters, faces I know on that level.
No Ms. Giaofrano, I'm not advocating sleeping around!
I...
Ok well...
...
Yeah but...
You're right Ms. Giaofrano. I can't get too content in thinking that way or I'll never settle for just one.

It's done downloading?
Ah ok great, now click the "Finish" key.
No, that doesn't mean we're finished completely...
Well we...
I still have to have you...
...

Ms. Giaofrano, I think we'll be just fine.


I know you're scared Ms. Giaofrano, but computers aren't so hard once you get the hang of them.

Reverie #5

"I wanted so many times while driving to flip, to skid and flip and fall from the car and have something happen. I wanted to land on my head and lose half of it, or land on my legs and lose one or both. I wanted something to happen so my choices would be fewer, so my map would have a route straight through, in red. I wanted limitations, boundaries, to ease the burden; because the agony, Jack, when we were up there in the dark, was in the silence! All I ever wanted was to know what to do. In these last months I've had no clue, I've been paralyzed by the quiet, and for a moment something spoke to me, and we came here, or came to Africa, and intermittently there were answers, intermittently there was a chorus and they sang to us and pointing, and were watching and approving, but just as often there was silence, and we stood blinking under the sun, or under the black sky, and we had to think of what to do next."

-You Shall Know Our Velocity - Dave Eggers



I think this is perfect. It so perfectly captures the thoughts my mind have been thinking lately.

Lately, I've been standing against guardrails thinking of nothing. I've been reading books and not dwelling on them. I've been eating and not tasting.

Despite popular belief, running is a refuge. Running doesn't have to mean cowardice. Running into temporary comfort is a much-needed antidote every once in a while. Our society tells us it is wrong to run, wrong to flee from the scene. But it feel so nice to abandon it all and be a solitary individual walking home.

to let my mind fall flat
in the back of my head
underneath the unkempt mess
a deflated soccer ball
a remnant of my thoughts
outlines of the past
i want for nothing

This isn't meant to be an unhappy post. I'm content. Life goes on and I admire it as it passes. This thought pattern I'm in will soon break , as things tend to do.
I really do feel like it's impossible for me to have anything less than a sunny disposition at all times. I have my moments of sadness and grief but they never stay in tact. My mind always flips a reset button and I'm looking at tomorrow.

Reverie #4 - Mother

Hastily spoken words exude from her lips. A flow of speech infused with the passion and intensity of her voice. She is reminding me of something a mother would remind her son of. Some mundane reminder of something she knows I'll put off until the last minute. Reminders like this sometimes annoy me, I have a to do list, I have reminders set up in my phone, I'll leave it to the last minute but I'll take care of it. I just want to read this paper of far more exotic speech, of human struggle in far away places, of social change down the street, while I eat my soggy cereal and drink my orange juice.
But I stop myself.

I look up from the paper.
I see a beautiful creation. I see her beautiful laugh lines and the way she talks with her hands. She smells like hairspray and home. A smell that when in context, is one of the best smells in the world. She smiles and I know things will get better. I want to tell her everything, she can solve all of life's problems. She could broker a treaty of peace in the Middle East. She could fix global warming and send a man to Mars. She could listen to me complain about a rough day. She could buy me groceries for my barren college kitchen. I remember her embrace. This familiar warmth that stays with me long after we have parted. I see her passion for life in her weary eyes, used to working overtime. She's the most beautiful woman I've seen.

My mind is put at ease, that in such a world, she can exist.


"So you think you can have that done by Friday?" she says finally.
Thanks Mom, yeah I can.

Zeitoun

An excerpt from Dave Eggers, Zeitoun:

"He had been on a tanker once, maybe twenty years earlier, navigating through the Philippines. It was late, after midnight, and Zeitoun was keeping the captain company on the bridge.

To stay awake and alert, the captain, a Greek man of middle age, liked to take up provocative subjects. He knew that Zeitoun was a Muslim and a thoughtful man, so he sparked a debate about the existence of God. The captain began by expressing his utter conviction that there was no God, no deity in the sky watching over the human world.

Zeitoun had been on the bridge with the captain for an hour at that point, watching him pilot the ship through the many islands, avoiding high shelves and sandbars, other ships and countless unseen dangers. The Philippines, with over seven thousand islands but only five hundred lighthouses, was known for its frequency of maritime accidents.

"What would happen," Zeitoun asked the captain, "if you and I went below the deck, and just went to our bedrooms and went to sleep?"

The captain gave him a quizzical look and answered that the ship would most certainly hit something-would run aground or into a reef. In any event, disaster.

"So without a captain, the ship cannot navigate."
"Yes," the captain said, "Whats's your point?"

Zeitoun smiled. "Look above you, at the stars and the moon. How do the stars keep their place in the sky, how does the moon rotate around the earth, the earth around the sun? Who's navigating?"

The captain smiled at Zeitoun. He'd been led into a trap.
"Without someone guiding us," Zeitoun finished, "wouldn't the stars and moon fall to earth, wouldn't the oceans overrun the land? Any vessel, any carrier of humans, needs a captain, yes?"
The captain was taken with the beauty of the metaphor, and let his silence imply surrender."

Abandoned Summer

The clear plastic "G" sat in the passenger seat next to me. "Try Our 3 New Angus Choices" was now "Try Our 3 New Anus Choices". We sped away from the McDonalds like idiot teenagers on a midnight ride.
Something was in the air that night. Youth, if that's what you want to call it, was running in the gutters. The angst we thought we had all lost came rushing back like a shot in the night.

I struggled to hear the conversation Brian and Alex were having in the front of the car. The melodic music of someone I had never heard was absorbed by the back of my head. I gave up on trying to enter the conversation and instead sat back and looked out the window. We passed streets I had passed many times and old back-roads I seldom turned down. I saw flashes of memories that once controlled my mind. Incidents and people who now seemed foreign...something my mind tends to do with the past. The sounds of the car and the music and the voices seemed to twine together as one in a beautiful symphony of life. The dark marks on my shorts continued on to the top of the tan line on my knee. I was reminded of what took place earlier that night and smiled to myself...I let myself slip into the fresh memory...

Brian and I jumped out the car, me fumbling with my shoes on the way out. Alex sped the car up and we both darted towards the sudden red neon. Brian jumped on the front hood and I climbed on the back windshield, my hands finding their way through the open window to the interior handles in the roof of the car, locked in anxious excitement. I looked around nervously, the newly finished residential road spotted with a few homes under construction. Movement pushed my body against the car. Dirt from the back of the car left streaks on my leg and pants. Alex hastily turned up the soundtrack to the escapade and sped down the road.
I had the better end of the car, Brian slid around the hood laughing and screaming until Alex sprayed windshield wiper fluid in his face. Then there was mostly screaming. I leaned my stomach against the back, lifting my hands free into the wind. I shouted into the sky, closing my eyes and wishing the wind would lift me into the the stratosphere. The car lurched and I was pushed to the roof of the car. I questioned our childish actions for a moment but let myself fall back into youth. I rested my head on the roof and stared at the blur of houses and streetlights. Life is so simple in moments like this. It was all clear, set out before me. It happened again, it hadn't happened in a long time...In the rush of the wind and music and laughing I saw the face of God. Then the car stopped and it was my turn to ride the front.

...I managed to hear talk of some girl Brian was interested in through the symphony of sounds. He needed a good girl. If anyone deserved one it was Brian. I wanted one too.
I finished off the rest of the Mexican Coca-Cola we bought and watched my shadow dance against the opposing car door fabric. I noticed my silhouette and saw myself in a way no mirror had ever reflected. I saw my wants, I saw my desires, I saw my friends, I saw my faith, I saw my family, I saw love. Gratitude trickled down my spine, collecting at my fingertips, numbing my mind. I closed my eyes.

Reverie #3

The moment you let go of the handle bars life is set in slow motion.

String-instruments swoon and slowly falling leaves float past my face. The sunset peers through the foliage. The clicking of the wheels synchronizes with the sound of the life around me. A car passes on the opposite side of the road and I see a mid age woman with long stringy hair, a smile hostage to her face. Our eyes met in the crossfire of speed and the glare of the sun. I figured her name was Joan, and she was a dental assistant with a hidden passion for salsa dancing. She sees disheartening reports of the economy on the news and wonders why she isn't more worried about things. I shifted my focus back on the road and a billowing wave of cold damp air pushed past my face. A shiver climbed up my spine just as the range of vocals reached their climax. Time was then forced back to reality and I was flying down a hill, I must have been going 127 miles per hour at the rate of pavement I was covering. I looked to the side and saw nothing but green blur. The sun's rays flickered like a strobe through the branches. I clenched my teeth and moved my body to the right at the anticipation of the bend in the road. A car broke through the corner and honked just as I was passing. My heart attempted to jump through my ribcage and the strobe light was making me dizzy, my breathing a forced heaving whisper. I peddled faster down the next stretch and let go of the handle bars.

The moment you let go of the handle bars life is set in slow motion.

Wrapped Up

At times, I find myself getting so wrapped up in life's fabricated complications.
I dwindle down far into a hole of anxiety and melancholy I continue to dig over weeks and weeks.

Then it only takes one beautiful image or sentence to pull me right out of it.

There really is a communal spirit among human beings. Seeing someone happy or insightful can reverse a way of thinking.

The following contributed to this:

• http://www.wimp.com/slowmotion/

• My friend Kirsten's recent blog entry (Feb. 24)
  http://kirstenftc.blogspot.com/