::marble::

Rene dear, be strong.

::white chocolate::

Found hard to stay awake during the credentials presentation at Premium Automobiles today - the thin Italian coffee that Sharon found time to make for me before the meeting (bless her heart!) did absolutely nothing for me. As the ad-types droned on, their voices posh and polished, their demeanor shinining with the corporate glaze of buttery sincerity, I wonder if we are all destined to be gyps eventually, to degrade into plastic trash and bionic bits, robotic in our manner and cold in our nature. It's a necessary evil, I suppose. Perhaps I am reeking of it already, this corporate corruption - my only salvation being my ignorance. Perhaps others see me and label me a gyp as well. I've become so quick to judge, so intolerant of things I once had the faith and time to care - What's happening to me? Oh well. So much to do, and so little time - self-doubt and unceasing reflection must come later, and perhaps only after the shock of a whiskey-burn.

***

From Rene: Just thought I'll let you know, whenever I think of you or miss you terribly, I will break my pencil lead. Then sharpen them again. No, its a manual pencil sharpener, but it'll do the job just fine. :) I have just sharpen two pencils.

She makes me feel I'm doing something right, even as I stand on the pinnacle of oblivion and delusion, ready to fuck up my life with one wrong move. I think of our history, our sudden and implausible friendship, and how our two worlds collide and merged and rocked and stayed. I think of her and am moved by her strength and her sensibility, her honesty and humour, and I feel the stoic comfort of having made a friend for life. Thank you dear.

***

Now. Off I go to embrace more corporate gyps - another meeting coming up, and I find the invisible pilot in my consciouness navigating me into the Land of Plastic Smiles. And hello to you too.

::pralines::

Scribbled this on my notebook yesterday in the midst of a particularly insipid lecture:

Luke-warm coffee.
Mingled mangled taste of half-chewed lemon sweet.
Exhaustion, creeping;
Stale stiff air and rustling paper;
Time, speeding-stopping,
Brain weighed down by rubber-burnt acrid heat.
Stifled giggles.
Slim red line of broken skin,
Rhythm, keeping;
Blurry vision and humour suffer,
Understanding, waning;
Smudgy shadowy sentence of a mild, wild thought -
Poetry.

The lecturer's boisterious voice became a hum in the background. I felt my eyes closing, the sphinx-like touch of sleep feather-light against my consciousness. I slept; I must have. Winston, slight and pale and shy, woke me up in time for the break; I rushed for my coffee with the crazed desperation of a mad man, downing three cups at one sitting. I fought the temptation to smoke; small-talking and inane conversation shuffled the thirty-minute break into a little pocket of torture, caught between exhaustion, hunger, and the intense dislike for the choiceless certainty of life.

***

Woke today to a crying sky. The cold clung to my skin, my hair. I looked like death in the mirror today - vivacity missing, eyes swollen with the want of sleep, the faint lines of tiredness breaking, jagged. I wore the first set of clothes I picked up - unironed, crinkled, unbecoming. I didn't bother. I don't know what I truly bother with now, and I have not the time, the sense, nor the strength, to care.

***

From him: Just in case I haven't told you this as much as I'd like to...I love you. For him: I do too. Don't slip away.

::ginger snaps::

Ambled into the office at 9.24 in the morning, clutching my half-spilled coffee and my burnt bagel, my beer-washed brain wondering how the fuck did I manage to spill my coffee even though it's been taped!? The weather was completely shitty the whole morning, and it added to my lethargy (I know what you're thinking and it's not true - I wasn't hung over). I sat in my disorganised desk - war torn signs including stacks of paper, broken pencils, coffee stains and bits of crumbs from yesterday's oatmeal cookie - and did absolutely nothing productive until lunch time. I barely talked to anyone - except the general automated sentences. Time was an inchworm's crawl - even my favourite bagel tasted a little blander than usual. Had no strength to carry out my usual Mary Sunshine routine, and after losing count of the 'are you okay' questions thrown at me, I have to wonder if it's becoming my responsibility to waffle in every morning throwing punch lines and doing my little stand-up comedy routines for the greater good of the world. As Julian loved to say, 'Oh, poo.'

***

Julian. I'm keeping an odd - odd but refreshing - correspondence with one of his ex girlfriends. It doesn't seem like the thing to do is it - to be writing to your former boss's mistress - but I like Sue immensely. We've been bouncing emails back and forth for a while now, and she seems every bit as sassy, sexy and sensible as Julian had made her out to be. She was one of those that had fell prey to Julian's golden charms, and they stayed lovers for four years. I've seen her photo - she's tall and leggy, with blond hair the colour of washed-wheat; very striking features. "Thank god I didn't allow Cupid to pierce my heart for good," she writes, wryly, referring to her torrid affair with Julian. I think she's still got a soft spot for him.

And so while he's busy screwing up his life by screwing around, his forgotten friends are this fucking close to setting up a Julian Fan Club. Men. Did I actually think I had even a single ounce of understanding of their nature and their ways?