Layin' a little truth on ya, or Why You Should Hire Me

What's he up to now, you ask? Well, I'm basking in my Brooklyn backyard and... swatting mosquitos off my neck. Ick. I'm also sitting with a glass of wine and a sheet of paper with scribblings all over it, trying to decipher my scrawled on-the-go lettering and use these notes to update the ol' curriculum vitae.

If you know me, you know how I detest the rhetorical constraints of these things. It's all cookie-cutter equivocation, and it gives no sense of the person behind the formal words.

There's a fantastic book called Overqualified by Joey Comeau (of A Softer World fame) that is basically a series of cover letters written by an increasingly desperate person. It does exactly what I wish I could do - says 'screw you' to all that formality and offers something hilariously candid.

Unfortunately, I haven't quite the balls to write a cover letter that says how I really feel because sadly that is not how one gets hired. Instead, I'm going to vent a little frustration by comparing what the 'Summary' section of my resumé actually says to what it should say, sentence by sentence. God, I hope no future employers read this. Here goes:

What it says: 
"BA graduate with experience in Chinese Studies, office administration and research."
What it means: 
A college graduate with research experience. Sweet Jesus, who'd-a thunk it? I did exactly what was required me in college, and if I'm going to be honest it was kind of a special occasion if I did any more than that. I have exactly as much office administration experience as you'd expect from two 3-month internships; that is to say, heavy on the 'office' and light on the 'administration'. Oh, and the Chinese Studies bit? I took an equal amount of classes in Chinese and Japanese culture, and managed to get the diploma because my advisor basically said 'screw it, it's all Asia'. But hey, I can tell jiaozi from baozi, so I'm praying that gives me a much-needed edge.

What it says:
"A flexible worker with high attention to detail and the ability to work well under deadline constraints."
What it means:
Listen, guys. I want to prove myself. Frankly, I have some procrastination issues, and my long-term attention span could use some work. But at the same time, I'm not a fuck-up and I get the job done. My productivity curve might be a little steep, but if I need to I'll pull weekend hours and have nobody but myself to blame, and in the end the job'll be done on time. I work well under deadline constraints because that's often the only time I can shift my ass. I also have a high attention to detail because I'm kind of scatterbrained: I know this about myself, and I'm incredibly fastidious when it comes to never letting that be a problem with the important stuff. I had a few slipups back in secondary school that almost proved disastrous, and you'd better believe I learned from them.

What it says:
"Excellent interpersonal skills in both customer service and official liaison roles."
What it means:
I used to work in an office where I had to call the parents of child actors and tell them that their precious little bundle of sunshine and thespian prowess didn't make the cut. I firmly believe that this alone qualifies me for any customer service job on (in?) the market. If you - an eighteen-year-old intern whose sole job is to pass along the goddamned information - can handle an incensed adult demanding to know how such a thing could have happened, their little Timothy is such a wonderful actor, he was lead in his third grade play and everything, I demand and apology and your resignation! ... well, let's just say that schmoozing with provincial politicians from Pakistan is child's play in comparison.

What it says:
"A strong writer who is well-suited to editorial and proofreading tasks."
What it means:
Well, now I'm just bragging aren't I. Put it this way: I like writing, and I love reading. I've been reading anything I can get my hands on since I first learned how to tell 'cat' from 'mat'. I've read good books and I've read bad books. I've read masterpieces of literature and I've read Twilight. (Well, no, that's a lie. I couldn't get past the first five pages of Twilight). My point is, I know good from bad, and I like to think that I have enough of a self-critical eye to be able to tell the same when I'm the one doing the writing. I may not have a perfect grasp of MLA styles, but if you give me a block of text to read I can tell you what sounds awkward and I can spruce it up to make it sound purdy.

Phew. Okay. Well, now that's out of my system, maybe I can knuckle down and actually make these edits. Me and the mosquitos bid you goodnight, sweet blog.

I really fucked it up this time, didn't I my dear? 

The Lady

It's a shitty disorder that doesn't let you leave the home, but she makes the most of it. Not that there'd be much waiting for her outside; a urine-stained corridor on the top floor of a severely dilapidated housing tower, all soulless concrete and claustrophobic staircases and marauding bands of knife-wielding 9-year-olds. It's a blessing, really, an excuse to stay wrapped up in her nice cozy cocoon, safe from the horrors of the Times We Live In. 

So she draws shut her windows, duct-tapes them, makes herself a lovely chamber hermetically sealed from the hateful sunlight, and turns on the telly. It's a bloody good one: as big as the wall and as thin as glass. It's amazing, the money you save when you never go out. She sits, safe in the neon glow, and drinks in the 24-hour news cycles, the hyperbolic documentaries, even those awful reality shows, because everybody needs a guilty pleasure. They say that television holds a mirror to the world; it's a pretty tarnished mirror, but it's the best she's got and she doesn't complain.

And then, of course, there's the web. That ever-present distraction-turned-social medium-turned-augmented and alternative reality (virtual is considered a dirty word in her circles - it implies something that's less real). She can be an actual person here, or as close as you can get, which these days is pretty damn close. In here she can be anywhere and everywhere. She dances and twirls among the threads; snooping and probing, hopping around firewalls like they were garden fences, always reading and always learning. With several lifetimes of information at her fingertips she takes the world's temperature and weaves herself a picture of the state of things. She doesn't always like what she sees. 

It's not a bad existence for a crippled introvert. But sometimes, lit only by cathode rays and plasma screens, she feels half-sick of shadows. 

I know a thing about contrition, 'cause I've got a lot to spare

Duck

This one time, I caught a duck. I’ve no idea why I wanted to catch this duck – I’d certainly never had the urge before. Never in my life had I looked at a duck and thought, ‘yes. This is something that I would like to possess. I must have it.’

And to be honest, that’s not what I was thinking back then, either. It wasn’t a question of have and have-not, of my taking a duck for my own. That wasn’t the point. The point was to catch it, to get the better of it, to lure it from a state of happy idle freedom to a state of being caught. By me. All me. I’d never had such thoughts before, and I never have since, but on that one particular day – the instant I saw that smug little mallard waddling about and waving his arse at me as he ducked under the filthy water of the allotment pond – I was possessed by this all-encompassing, fierce, burning need to catch that fucking duck. It was almost scary it was so intense, let me tell you!

Looking at it objectively, there was nothing special about this duck. No special markings, no outrageous behavior, nothing to distinguish it from any other duck. It could have been any old duck, really; this just happened to be the duck I decided upon. The instant I saw it I just knew that it had to be caught, there was no question about that. Why I fixated on that specific duck is still a mystery to me.

I thought long and hard about how to catch this duck. I immediately discounted the notion of just chasing it. Sure, I was pretty confident that I was faster than a duck, but such an activity would be terribly undignified. Plus, what if it retreated to the water? What if it flew away? I may run faster than a duck waddles, but I don’t have wings. I can’t flap and soar away at a moment’s notice, unlike some creatures. So chasing was out.

Perhaps I could set a trap? I pondered this for a while. I thought about different types of cages and bait and lures. But I have to confess, despite this sudden obsession with this particular duck, I was pretty ignorant about ducks in general. For one thing, I had no real concrete notion of what ducks eat. Fish? Plants? They’re always bobbing under the water to fetch something, but I’ve never even thought about what that something was. I suppose bread was always a popular choice, but I didn’t have any bread on me. Ditto for cages and duck lures. This passion had come over me so suddenly, I’d had no time to prepare. So, for lack of preparation, traps were out.

It was really a conundrum, let me tell you. I sat on the old bench for a good hour, fuming and staring at this fucking duck, trying to figure out how I was going to catch the thing. I sat there so focused, so intent, that everything else ceased to exist. My world narrowed and honed in on that duck. It was just me and that duck alone in our own little universe. I’ve no idea how long I sat there, alone with the duck, but it felt like years.

When you’re alone in the universe with a single other creature for years at a time, you develop a kind of sympathy. A kind of understanding. After a while I felt like I understood that little duck better than I could ever understand anything or anyone else. I could know no lover, no child, no human being as completely and thoroughly as I knew that duck. And I could tell, the reverse was true. I felt that duck examine my very soul. It knew my every secret, my every hope and fear and shame. It terrified and elated me, to be known so utterly.

Centuries later, the world started to come back to me. There was the allotment and the flats and the housing projects. Sky, clouds, sun. Plants and people. And all the other little ducks.

I looked at the duck. It looked back at me, and slowly waddled over. Its fat little body rocked back and forth as it padded over and stopped at my feet. My breath caught in my throat, and tears welled in my eyes. I reached down, taking its feathered form gently in my hands, and picked it up. I cradled it to my chest, tears streaming down my cheeks. It gave a quiet honk and ruffled its tail. I smiled.

“Gotcha.”

***

I’ve never caught a duck since. Never really felt the need. That’s the thing – I don’t even particularly like ducks. I’ll pass them by at the pond and glance over, but to me they’re nothing special. For whatever reason I just had this burning obsession with one duck, but only one! Maybe it wasn’t even about the duck.

Since then my life has been… ordinary. Utterly ordinary. I do the same things I always did, see the same people, eat the same food. My feelings about ducks certainly haven’t changed in any way. My outlook on life is no different. If there’s a lesson to be learned from my experience, I haven’t the foggiest idea what it’s supposed to be. One of these days I’d like to know, and I’ve been keeping my eyes and ears open, trying just a little harder to notice the everyday things. It’d be nice to understand, but I’m not sure that I ever will.

Maybe that’s the point. 

It was crime at the time, but the laws, we changed 'em

Still Alive!

Well now... it's been another long while! The past two weeks have been absolutely insane. Three cities in one week, 12-hour workdays, and 159 PRC graduate students. I've met a ton of people, seen a ton of sights, and done a great many things. It's been a lot to fit into fourteen days, and today's been the first day in a very long time in which I've had the chance to take a breath, lie back, and let myself relax. Feels good.

So, not much today I'm afraid. Just a quick note to remind myself that, yes, I do have one of those bloggy things, don't I, and shouldn't I really think about putting something into it every now and then? Don't worry, dear bloggy thing, I've no intention of abandoning you. I just need to gather my wits a little.

I've been thinking in the meantime though, even if I haven't been writing! I have a few little outlines jotted down on my phone of all places... I really ought to get a nice little notebook and carry it around with me. I've also got a nice list of books that I would very much like to get a hold of. I'm currently reading The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle for the... fourth time, I think? One of my most beloved books, it blows me away each time I read it. I may have to write about it here sometime.

(Oh, side note: I think I mentioned Subway Love last time? Well the other day I was reading TWUBC on the F line, and the girl sitting next to me asked about it. Which was particularly great, since the pages I had open at the time were somewhat... *discrete cough*... steamy. So I told her that it was a magnificent novel by one of my favourite authors, and that she should definitely check it out if she got the chance. She smiled and thanked me, and then the train rolled up to Bergen Street and she stepped out of the train and out of my life with a little toss of her hair and another mouthed 'thank-you'. Leaving me sitting there thinking "Huh. So long then. Iloveyou.")

(Oh, double-sidenote, that actually gave me an idea for a story! Or a least a part of a story. I'll try and flesh it out here sometime!)

So anyhow, as fantastic as this book is, I'm looking for something new. Hence my list! I was in the City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco (namedropper) and for some reason was really drawn to books about Film Noir. I think I still have The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler somewhere, but I'm buggered if I can remember where. So anyhow, I'll probably wind up on Amazon buying some of these books, because they actually struck me as great inspiration for a screenplay that I've been semi-working-on for a while now. I'd also love to start watching some of these classic old films, and those'd probably be a good place to get suggestions.

Enough disjointed rambling for now, time to send out some resumés. WILLPOWER!

I picture your face at the back of my eyes

Nothing to see here

I'm tapping this out while sitting on a crowded F-line train. Crowded! At 11 at night! Well, it is a Saturday, so I suppose that makes sense. 

Everyone around here is clearly on their way to or on their way back from a night out. Must be nice. I, on the other hand, am just returning from work. And I'll probably be pulling similar hours tomorrow. This whole week has been utterly insane because the big event in D.C. that we've been planning is next week, which explains my absence but doesn't excuse it. I swear to god, if I have to write another formal-ass, trite little email my head is going to explode. And the one thing worse than having to write trite little emails all day is your perfectionist boss demanding to proof-read each one to make sure they're conforming to Chicago MLA (?) style. 

So now I'm headed home and I have nothing really to say because I'm wiped and I'm edgy about this event and I'm annoyed that I have the strongest urge to go back through this and double-space after every full stop. Remember what I was saying earlier about an editorial eye? Yeah, this is one of those times when I'm perfectly happy to just pound something out, tappa-tappa-tappa, done. I've had quite enough of editing for one day, and I need to save my strength for tomorrow's epic 12-hour round.

So instead of introspection, have some people-watching! It's extrospection! 

-Everyone on this train has such a lovely tan. It must have been really nice out today.

-The girl in front of me is wearing a denim jacket that's only-just-too-small for her. and an oak-covered scarf with gold trim. She has shoulder-length chestnut brown hair, a huge navy Balenciga bag, and her ear lobes are chock-full of piercings! Oh… and then she turns her head and I see a close-cropped patch of hair above her ear, and under the downy stubble trails a flowery tattoo, and I instantly fall in stupid love. Subway love - it has to be the most powerful and most frustrating kind of love there is.

-Maybe all these people are heading to Coney Island. Wouldn't that be swell? Ferris Wheels and candy floss and the salt-and-oil scent of the boardwalk. Hot dogs and carnival curiosities all around! …okay, I'll admit, I have only the vaguest idea of what Coney Island is actually like.

-The man across the way has a very long, very thin head. It's balding on top: a perfect strip of bareness with a fertile patch of hair on either side, fencing it in, perched on his ears and clinging to the side of his head like a pair of fuzzy mountain goats. Actually, now that he turns his head, I see that the patches connect at the back. So imagine a tennis ball! It's kind of like that. He's wearing a pair of perfectly circular, perfectly twee glasses that are perched on his long nose - everything about him perches in some way, and his thin build makes him seem like he's going to topple apart at any moment - and he's reading some kind of pamphlet or booklet.  I can't see what it's about, but I'm imagining some delightfully, esoterically niche domestic subject like woodworking or lawnmower repair. 

-The woman sitting next to him looks incredibly edgy. She's staring at the list of upcoming stops like it'll determine her future, which I guess is right in a way. She looks to be in about her 50s, and she's clutching a plain black gym bag to her lap as though she's nervous of someone taking it. Her hair curls and explodes out from her head, which is probably making her look far more frazzled than she really feels. Her mouth is perpetually slightly open, like she's about to voice some protest against the world at large.

-Somewhere a toddler is howling. Howling! This kid is not best pleased with his situation! I can't hear too well from here because I've got my lovely headphones in and I'm listening to… well… ok. It's Evanescence right now. Don't judge me. You can't judge me, I quit! In any case, I can see him now - hid dad's calmed him down with something that looks crispy and sweet, so maybe that kid knows what he's doing. 

-Alright, Evanescence ended, now it's some so-no-koto traditional instrumental Japanese music. More classy, if no less nerdy. 

-Speaking of Asian music, I was listening to the Kung Fu Panda 2 soundtrack today. Now this is legit, because it was put together by Han Zimmer, and that man knows how to write great soundtracks. If him and John Williams get together and have a baby, that child will grow up to be some sort of compositional ubermensch. Like… the Kwisatz HaderBach. And now it's my stop, so good night and good luck!

The black will be grey and the white will be grey but the blues are still blue