Tuesday, June 22, 2010

tell me

Coincidentally I always end up with jobs that provide a strangely deep perspective on people's lives and I'm still not sure if I am the audience or the show.
This job is all about death. I show up with oxygen and suction and pain medication and the family is there and it's as if I represent something. The patient is too far gone, they hardly know anyone is at the door but the family smiles and says come in would you like a glass of water. Thank you, there is some paperwork for you to sign, Here and here. Initial here. And over here. Thank you. Well, if you have any other questions call the company at this number, it's all in the paperwork.
Sometimes they're mad at me as if I don't care about them. What took him so long? What kind of cruel world is this that we must sign paperwork at a time like this? How can this man know what we're going through?
The days when there is no equipment involved are easier. Driving and dropping meds here and there like Johnny Appleseed. 
Ricky Morphine. 

Sunday, June 20, 2010

motive

If I could figure out what went wrong and when and why. I dunno, maybe it would help me feel better. Maybe I could fix what's wrong and maybe there's nothing wrong.
I was a little kid and all around was talk of a new age. There was a real feeling that we, the people, had finally figured it out. And though I was only a kid it felt like my generation. There was even a great song called that. Music was so important, no doubt it still is, but it was different. It saddens me that as time goes by there are fewer people to talk with about that music and those times. The history of pop music only goes back to somewhere around 1985 because anything before that is scary or worse, irrelevant.
I must say that it disturbs me that so very many seemingly otherwise intelligent people just sort of 'woke up' in 1983 watching Full House and Who's the Boss and listening to sanitized music as if it was real and that has set the tone for their lives. It works for them so why chase after that water, by now so far under the bridge. Some history has surely been erased. Do people know how close we came to kicking them in the ass? Indeed how delectably close we came to utopia. But greed took over and we lost it all and I digress as people often do.
So anyway I kept on getting up before dawn because there were newspapers to be delivered. Probably that's why I always like to sleep late now although dawn is a particularly beautiful time of day if one must be up and out and about.
They told me all I needed was love and I believed them. (later on they said hugs not drugs on bumper stickers which I found infuriating because it's so much easier to find drugs, but that's a rant for another day)
So now here we are and I go to work every weekday plus 2 Saturdays a month and it seems like I'll have to work for the rest of my life.