Today is my last day at the factory. I'll bet that you are glad, tired of hearing about it. Have I told you I'm very weepy? Really? Huh. I felt as though I had been fairly stoic.
Did I mention Ili? Really? Did I tell you she cancelled me? I couldn't have since she only did it yesterday. She made a final text and then blocked me. Sure, you can wonder what I did to deserve it. That's what people do.
Today is onerous, though. I will wait until everyone has gone before I write my final emails. Then I will take the large framed prints off the walls (two 36" prints from my Lonesomeville days) and leave for the last time. People will think about me when I am gone, at first, then less often, then one day they will realize that they haven't thought of me for a very long time.
And so will I. But today. . . .
Saturday, actually, I am going to a party at my replacement's house, and Sunday, I am invited to a Super Bowl party to which I won't go because I always have dinner with my mother. Super Bowl Monday, I will not be returning to work, and my new life will begin.
At least I can avoid people and their viruses. Wait! I'm supposed to go to a barbecue on Saturday with some Chinese guests who arrived just two days ago. How do I get out of that?
My house is a mess and has been since Ili left and I began bringing stuff home from my office. I will have to deal with that this weekend. I am not so very good anymore, though, at doing things alone. I am going to have to develop some of my old habits from the years of not having a girlfriend.
Wait! No. Those were the years when I let things get dilapidated and fall apart.
Soon, I think, all the sadness will fall away, and I'll realize I don't have to work. I know that people at work are envious. I haven't met anyone at the factory who didn't wish to quit working. Maybe I will buy a fishing pole this weekend. And CC has invited me to go out and throw rocks at cars.
Yea, this could be the start of something big.
I photographed these images from the t.v screen when Nixon resigned. Like Nixon, Trump knows he will never go to jail for his crimes. He, too, has a pardoner.
ReplyDeleteA kind friend took me out to dinner last night - to try to cheer me some - I drank tequila and had pork carnitas. Delicious.
Upon arriving home I apparently donated $1,000 to some Democratic Fundraising Apparatus. I meant - $1.00. As I was spreading my wealth around to Amy McGrath - running against McConnell - and others at $1 and $2 dollars. However my receipt this morning said $1,000 to the DNC. Ooopsers. I have to fix that. Hope I can fix that.
I believe I also posed as AOC and sent texts all around to friends in different states asking for them to send money and make phone calls.
Weed is so much safer for me than alcohol. Tho it appears excesses in both arenas pose some social problems. Ah well. I'm getting old and can perhaps blame dementia.
Poor you. Everyone at the factory loves you and you love everyone and now you have to lose your identity because you have reached a certain age.
Sure tell us the story of why you've been cancelled. You won't so I'll fill in the blanks with someone familiar to all.
I made a mistake
I reached up into the top of the closet
and took out a pair of blue panties
and showed them to her and
asked “are these yours?”
and she looked and said,
“no, those belong to a dog.”
she left after that and I haven’t seen
her since. she’s not at her place.
I keep going there, leaving notes stuck
into the door. I go back and the notes
are still there. I take the Maltese cross
cut it down from my car mirror, tie it
to her doorknob with a shoelace, leave
a book of poems.
when I go back the next night everything
is still there.
I keep searching the streets for that
last blood-wine battleship she drives
with a weak battery, and the doors
hanging from broken hinges.
I drive around the streets
an inch away from weeping,
ashamed of my sentimentality and
possible love.
a confused old man driving in the rain
wondering where the good luck
went.
love ya man.
Not quite. I'll write it here because people probably don't come to the comment section regularly. She was a young attorney who can make as much money as she wants. She drives a car worth more than all the cars I have ever owned put together x3. And when she moved, she gave me no forwarding address. I have no idea where she lives. Finally, there were no blue panties nor anything else. I had even given up photographing women. But I can't write the reason she left here except to say that. . . no. . . nope. It would be a betrayal.
DeleteIf you know any crazy, beautiful women with lots of money, please send them my way. As you have read, I have never asked a woman out, so I am like one of those stray dogs looking to be taken in.
And eventually abused, I guess.
Here is a heads up for what it is worth.
ReplyDeleteThe last day at the factory will more than likely be decidedly anti-climactic. It was for me anyway.
Because I am mentally ill, on my very first day at the factory as I was leaving out the back door by the loading dock, I thought to myself I wonder what it will be like on the very last day when I walk through this door?
Back then I imagined there would be an epiphany, a sense of accomplishment, a feeling of sorrow, a relief of joy, or a mixture of the two.
Not much had changed in the over three decades, the cinder blocks of the wall were still grey and smudged with graffiti, the door was still the industrial brown they paint exits with, hell, even the sand hill cranes picking in the grass beside the loading dock looked exactly the same as that first day.
When I walked out the door, I felt nothing. Nothing at all. The place was empty and no one wanted to see me, I suppose, because they too were expecting something. I felt nothing as I got in the car. I felt nothing as I drove away. Despite the fairy tales of epiphanies and death bed conversions, I imagine that is how the end will come as well. Nothing.
That is not to say that things did not happen in the days and months that followed – some nightmarish, some lovely, but I have no idea what will follow for you. I can only tell you I am ready to come along for part of the ride if you wish. Or as Mr. Frost put it, “You come, too.”
Selah.
200 days x 44 years. THAT is approximately how many times I drove up and down that same stretch of highway from my house to the factory. Easy math. Actually, it is probably a little more than that. Round up.
DeleteI'll cry a lot today, probably, if two Xanax don't do the trick. Lisa got one part right:
a confused old man driving in the rain
wondering where the good luck
went.