A letter to M.

I would like to dedicate this entry to Margie, my West Coast correspondent reporting the fair pulls and beautiful travesties of San Francisco Bay...

M. the weather is something to admire. We're all watching it with our hands around shovel handles, gloved and hooded and booted. All natural color has vanished but the coniferous green (is white a color?... and black, the absence of color?) wandering up the hillsides, and the occasional gap from gray overcast to incandescent blue, shortwithstanding.

All this water around us in the form of ice and snow, and yet it's bone dry. And you're right M., dry snow is slippery... i found that out this morning with a mug of coffee walking my bike down the hill. One slip on a right step and i was sliding textbook baseball style with one knee bent, foot below the other knee (i would've been safe). It was gallant and sacrificial the way i protected the coffee and surrendered to the snow. Not a drop spilled and my bike still by my side after taking ten feet on my bum. I managed a wobbly ride all the way to work without another fall... you would've been proud, i know.

Maybe i'm looking for reasons, but it's more than definite now... this temporary state of working for Pepsi-Cola. Something magnetic about me and absurd situations; spontaneity and the least-likely have become dear companions of mine. I've always figured that the more ridiculous my current placement (vocation, location, situation...), the more simply i'll become indifferent and objective, hence more apt and adept to deal. But this is a new one, new limits are being set.

It began yesterday, the realization that absurdity may have an accumulative effect on the relatively sensitive individual. I was hauling some storage carts through a frozen parking lot, puffing clouds of breath and trying not to slip on my face. A man shouted to me and approached, asked me if i was the Pepsi Guy. Well, you know, shit... a celebrity. He wanted to request the return of 12-pack Diet Mountain Dew to his chosen grocer. I've heard this request everyday for weeks now, unbelievable firstly that people imbibe of this ungodly shit. And secondly, it's outrageous the response, and in a few cases~ fury, people have managed to this given situation. Consumers have banded together and complained on a daily basis at every grocery, multiply, since the obscure product disappeared from the shelf. Imagine if we could get this societal response in a real situation, you know... one that mattered. Like perhaps an unnecessary war, education, or global climate change.

So i stopped in my tracks as the wind kicked up rooftop snow and blew it across the lot. As the man carried on a one-person conversation about sodapop, and the lack of his favorite flavor, i tried to make some sense of my coat zipper. The damn thing was broken and i was beginning to freeze. I looked up into this man's overly-attentive eyes and explained to him that, yes, i know. And, yes, i'll take care of it when i can. Fifty cases are due in on the barge from Seattle, i said. And for now, could he go drink something else... He smiled, a deeply discomfiting thing for me, and leaned closer to touch my jacket. "You know," he said, "i can fix zippers." Jesus, a real celebrity.

So that was the first thing M.. Remember Bob Packwood? Well, i felt like his secretary. The second thing was listening to my co-worker, who normally only converses about his exercise routine or getting his sales up, talk about the Duh Vinci Code, which he rented last night. I asked him if he ever read the book and he replied, "I haven't read a book in years." I thought, huh, that's great. Then later on today, without even prodding, another person told me the same thing. We were at the office talking about getting the hell home and away from work. I audibly imagined myself in the bath with a book and mused, wouldn't that be nice? She answered, "Oh, i don't read." What? What do you people do?

M. i'm a sheep among lambs. Someone spiked the grass, it doesn't chew right. The shepherd's not here; sometimes i wonder if there even is one.
Sincerely, your devout facsimile friend,
J