It was nearing the end of lunch break. I took a half slice of bread from a bag, smeared peanut butter on it with a knife. As an afterthough, I took a little piece of lemon cake from a sample bowl and put it on top, for the sweetness. I turned away from the counter to sit back down. “AHHH!” screamed the 19-year old café manager “what are you doing, that’s yuck!” The others stood up to get a look, make faces, and generally be horrified. I shrugged. “That’s so weird” said a co-worker. “It’s no worse than fairy bread” I said. “Must be an American thing. Fairy bread is normal” the 19-year old mocked, looking to the others for a laugh. My face failed to hide distain, “Butter and sprinkles on white bread is normal?”
The topic was cars. My fellow bakers lamented the jobs lost in factories due to outsourcing in other countries and that there was no choice but to buy foreign. “What kind of car are you looking at, Wren?” asked our boss. “I’m not sure” she paused “but not American. I’d never buy American.” I didn’t look up from my task, since she was baiting me. “I’d NEVER buy American” she said again. No response. “Never American!” she shouted triumphantly.
As it was the end of the day, we each were cleaning up, ready to go home. I was busy scraping the floor while simultaneously chatting with Tina, a fellow baker. “That’s a strange way to scrape the floor” she commented “must be an American thing”. I looked up and saw her grin. She was joking but so what. “The next person that comments about
Remember when we were trying to choose between the lesser of two evils?
This one says “people count up the faults of those who keep them waiting”
“What does that one mean?” I asked. “If you show people one fault, and let it linger then they’ll start noticing your other faults.” He answered.
Hmmmm, ok. “What about this one: ‘Honesty is the best policy, but while there is truth in humour there is no humour in truth.” I frowned “that isn’t true…” He agreed “Yeah, what about that saying ‘fact is stranger than fiction.’”
Some of them weren’t fortunes in the slightest. She read aloud “One should feel freedom of the mind.” Someone pushed a filled wineglass to her, which she cheerfully accepted.
I held up the one I’d gotten last night “A fall in a ditch will make you wiser.”
Well. Surely they could have used a better metaphor. Something like, if you play with fire you’re likely to get burned. “A game of sticks can end with one eye out.” I suggested.
Someone down the far end held up theirs “Mine isn’t so true, I’m too far at the end of the table.” “What’s it say?” his neighbour turned quickly to look, knocking over a wine glass which splashed all over the fortune holders front. There was a moment of silence as happens in unexpected accidents. Then they laughed with a surprising ferocity, unable to speak they handed the fortune to the clumsy neighbour who read aloud “You are the centre of every groups attention.”
“Now, I just have to see this tattoo of yours, what does it say?” he paused to take it in and then, aloud read “Can’t believe how strange it is to be anything at all” and smiled thoughtfully. I hadn’t come up with a good sound bite for why I had it and what it meant but for the most part it hadn’t mattered. Most people didn’t attempt a meaning. “So…is that like that feeling you get every now and then, when you can’t believe that you’re a being alive on this little spinning rock in a massive universe and you’re heart feels so big yet you realize that you’re so small and it’s all so amazing and overwhelming?” he asked.
I blinked, totally bewildered at his description. “Yes. Yes it is. I…can’t believe how accurate you just were.” He grinned “Life really puts the blinders on, doesn’t it? Thank god for that feeling”
Hopes and dreams
Rivers and streams
Boats slowly sailing
Come in between the real world and me
Got to forget to remember to play it naturally
Come out of your shell, what’s that you’re protecting underneath
Consider please, a little less dignity
If playing it safe means keeping it boring
Hopes and dreams
Rivers and streams
Boats, are always sailing through coming
In between the real world and me
I never was as good at jumping right in
Making all new strangers into ten new friends
But that doesn’t mean I don’t want ‘em
again and again
It’s like “I notice you don’t have too many friends”
I’m just deep that’s all, just deep into myself,
Reading all the books on the library shelf (so deep)
Working on the newest project that nobody can see but me
Hopes and dreams
Still, deep rivers and streams
Boats sailing, just passing through
Coming in between the real world and me (and I let ‘em)
We sat by the windows, reading the newspaper. The radio blared in the background. “Last night Christina Aguilara cancelled her
”I can’t bloody believe this! We’ve been drinking all day to prepare!”
"I'll never buy another of her albums, that's for sure"
"If she's a genie in a bottle then that starlet is not doing her job very well"
"She can make it up to everyone by saying sorry to New Zealand at the next Grammy Awards ... Otherwise she can get stuffed and no one should ever buy another one of her albums."
“Look at this, it’s all over the newspaper as well” he pointed to a large article with the head line “Christina @#!!#*@ Aguilera!”. It was placed directly to the left of a photo of an enraged middle aged woman in leopard print lycra.
“People weren’t this upset when Mob Deep cancelled!”
Now in the West the slender moon lies low,
And now Orion glimmers through the trees,
Clearing the earth with even pace and slow,
And now the stately-moving Pleiades,
In that soft infinite darkness overhead
Hang jewel-wise upon a silver thread.
And all the lonelier stars that have their place,
Calm lamps within the distant southern sky,
And planet-dust upon the edge of space,
Look down upon the fretful world, and I
Look up to outer vastness unafraid
And see the stars which sang when earth was made.
Marjorie Pickthall
I was in the ladies room of a music venue, waiting for a stall to open. A dark haired woman of about 22 was washing her hands. I was very tired from staying out late the night before and then walking all over the city and it’s suburbs for most of the day. Before we came to the show it’d seemed like every bar and pub was standing room only. It made sense though, the All Blacks had just finished winning against the Aussies and after the game the people poured out of the pub and into the street, crowding into the bars to induce a celebratory hang over for the next morning. When we arrived at
“Do you remember The Exponents?” she said strongly.
“Er, yep.” I flustered, confused by the unexpected twist the trip to the toilet had taken.
“Name some of their songs then” She demanded, crossing her arms.
Was this a test? What was going on? What are some Exponents songs?!
“Victoriaaa, what do you want from him, waaant from him” I sang.
“Yeah ok, and what else?” she said, her intensity bizarrely out of place. I trucked on, not wanted to fail, not when it came to music quizzes.
“What Ever Happened to
“Yeah, yeah” Unimpressed, she moved her hands in the international “move it along” rotation.
“Fly awayyy into the blue skies.” I sang again, privately thanking my father for a singing voice.
“And?”
“Um, yeah I can’t think of anything else.”
“Ok.” She nodded, as if committing my answers to memory. Then she left.
I stood there for a moment. I still couldn’t think of any other Exponents songs.
A stall opened and I looked at the eyes of the girl who came out, to see if she’d over heard. She looked back impassively, then washed her hands. She hadn’t.
“huh” I Thought as I went into the stall “I’m definitely telling the guys about this.”
A Visitor by Mary Oliver
My father, for example,
who was young once
and blue-eyed,
returns
on the darkest of nights
to the porch and knocks
wildly at the door,
and if I answer
I must be prepared
for his waxy face,
for his lower lip
swollen with bitterness.
And so, for a long time,
I did not answer,
but slept fitfully
between his hours of rapping.
But finally there came the night
when I rose out of my sheets
and stumbled down the hall.
The door fell open
and I knew I was saved
and could bear him,
pathetic and hollow,
with even the least of his dreams
frozen inside him,
and the meanness gone.
And I greeted him and asked him
into the house,
and lit the lamp,
and looked into his blank eyes
in which at last
I saw what a child must love,
I saw what love might have done
had we loved in time.
“God, I hate work. I just want to leave.” Sighed the dishwasher.
“Do you think if I shat my pants I would be able to go home?”
I looked up at him skeptically.
“I wonder if you shat your pants, would you be allowed back? Or” I said laughing,
“if you did come back, would anyone be able to look you in the eye?”
It was shortly after
“Oi, girly what’s your star sign?” Shouted a drunk scottishman behind me. I didn’t bother to turn around, just a few more flights to go.
“Baby, don’t ignore meeee” he whined.
I considered throwing my water bottle at him, or perhaps telling him to piss off, but nothing you do to a drunk person ever has good results.
“White shirt! Oi, white shirt don’t walk away! Come here!”
And then, when nothing came of that:
“Stupid whore!”
I laughed loudly, surprised and yet quite unsurprised. What a sweetheart.
I was in the kitchen reading a magazine and drinking a coffee when Dan walked in. “Hey Mads, did you just go to the bathroom?”
I looked up “Yeah, like 10 minutes ago.”
“I knew it was you” he said chuckling.
“What? Why?” I asked, feeling like my bathroom secrets might be about to revealed.
“You have the floaty-est poo I’ve ever seen. I guess it didn’t flush when you went so it was still there when I went. Then I took a crap, put toilet paper on it and flushed and it still didn’t go down. Floaty poo.”
Feeling perplexed I asked him what I could do about it. I’d never had this problem before and hadn’t realized it could even be a problem.
“You’re holding it in too much Mads, you gotta let it loose more often.” He kissed me on the cheek and sat down.
“Let what loose?” I said, laying my head on his shoulder.
“Your farts. You hold them in too much and it riddles your poo with air.” He explained confidently, patting me on the bum
“How do you know this?” I laughed, knocking his hand away.
“It’s just common sense.” He took a sip of coffee into his mouth and winked at me.
Damn Elijah Kelly, you are good looking. 
