someday I'll stop talking about work

8/27/99

More silliness and long lunch hours today. I made a funny! See, we got this new phone system, and our office, instead of being quiet, was full of bustling, change-hating women trying to figure out how to answer the phone. So many flashing lights, so many extensions; it seems that every time someone in the building is using their phone, something on the switchboard is blinking! Gee!

At one point, three of them were standing around staring at the phone and chattering. I half-listened from my cubicle on the other side of the room, and then I picked up my phone and dialed their extension, and hung up after it rang once.

Confusion. They answered, they marveled. "It's just a dial tone! Lorda Mercy!" Giggle giggle.

I dialed again. And again. They started laughing like crazy. They thought it was the phone playing tricks. The fourth time, they finally noticed that one of the lights flashed just before the phone rang. "What's that light? Who has extension 2337? Where is that?" The fifth time I let it ring until they picked up. "I'll bet you thought you were going crazy.?" I said, loudly enough so that they could hear me talking across the room. "It's Betsy!!!" the woman howled, and everybody laughed, because I'm the quiet one, and everybody thought I was just so funny. Personally, I thought the comment could have been better. I've been spending too much time with genteel women.

I dashed off a snip of insta-poetry in the Boring Moments Before Leaving. This is, once again, not representative of my serious work. Not that I have lots of representatives from that category.

how's about a little poetry for a change?

write write write in long straight lines don't stop

so sick
so tired
of life without poetry

work work work in long straight lines
don't stop

My poetry seems to be developing into three types: insta-poetry, like that above, written in under a minute; magnetic poetry, written on my refrigerator, and to which I give little thought—that's one of the rules; and for reals poetry. I don't write that much. Every now and then these poems just fall out of my head, three or four at a time. They're good. They're grrrr-eat. But I can't channel it, I so wish I could force myself to write.

Strangely enough, I can write when I'm pressured to do so. Some of my best stuff was written for classes. I'm considering taking a course, an evening something-or-other just for fun. I might get into the poetry thing again, or I might do something completely different. Take Russian or yoga or something that's not music and not work.

I came home tonight with energy, so I went to the base and worked out for a while, discovering in the process that I didn't have as much energy as I thought. It's hard to work out after getting up at 5:30 and filing shit for 10 hours. Then I went shopping and watched film noir on Turner Classic Movies. Now I'm going to take a bath! And read as long as I want to, because I don't have to be up in the morning.