Chapter 2: He works Hard For The Money (doo-doo. doo-doo.)

Countdown until departure: 1 week and 3 days

Well, it's getting close. I can almost taste the Parisian air as we speak...never mind, I'm just standing downwind from a smoker. Nevertheless, the preparation for the journey is an essential part of the journey itself so I thought it would be good to fill you in on my doings and thoughts while I wait for the jetplane to take me across the pond.

There are two main things that have happened since I decided to create this blog. My commitment to Morning Pages and my new job.  There are other things I could talk about (like visa drama for starters, a story for next week perhaps, once it's all sorted out. oy) but these two are basically the biggest things going on
for me at this moment.


Morning Pages


As I was sitting in my room one night, I discovered an old book I had gotten during my days at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts (known at the time as North Carolina School of the Arts, the U came later)The book is called The Artist's Way and it seems to be a textbook, or a course of things you can do to fire up your creative impulses. Well, I really only got the book because one of our teachers at NCSA was super jazzed about it, but it sounded interesting enough and it incorporated some spiritual elements that I was experimenting with at the time. The main exercise is one called Morning Pages. This is where every single morning, when you wake up, you get a note book and write three pages in it. It is totally stream of conscious and free form and you literally just write what ever pops into your head, whether it be "man...I'm super tired this morning" or "I hate this, I don't know what to write"  or even "my mind has been on genitalia a lot recently, I wonder what that's about?" all of those things are kosher so the point is just to do a brain dump, I guess. It seems to be working. I started last Thursday morning and since then I've already begun to feel a slight creative tinge beginning to re-enter my life. I started a new jazz piece the other day, and while I was at work I kept having poetic moments (more on those to come. ) So, I intend to keep up this practice, see what happens. There are stories in the book that talk about people getting so in touch with their morning pages that they can sort of ask it questions and receive answers in the writing of that day. it's pretty cool. But mainly it's just something that I can do and say "I'm going to do this, damn it, because it's probably good for me and it can't hurt" I'll keep you all posted as to what happens with these morning writings.



Oaks Nursing Home


After flitting around from odd job to VERY odd job all summer, I finally landed a steady paying gig for this past month working as an aide in the Dietary department of a local nursing home. Despite the menial nature of the job, I've really enjoyed it. First of all the people are all really nice and interesting. I work with a population consisting of about 50% African-American, 49.5% Filipino, and .5% white people (aka: me) so decided to take this as cultural learning opportunity.  What happened today for instance is an example of one of my favorite parts of the day.

Today on the cooking line I worked with this old Filipino woman named Rosie. She's basically a beast. She's 74 years old, and she still gets to work at 5:30 in the morning, dealing with the early hour 10 times better shape than my sleepy ass ( I kept having to explain that I wasn't farting, it was my ass snoring...ok enough with lame jokes) She does everything that I do, except superior, and she's also manages to keep a sunny disposition through the entire day (we worked from 5:30 in the morning until 2:00pm).  After we finished the first part of lunch service, we got our own lunch break. We got to get out own plates and go through the line and take what ever we wanted out of the leftovers. We generally lean towards the more solid foods rather than the specially-prepared-for-old-people food (fried chicken puree anyone? thought not). After we had grabbed out lunch, she encourage me in halting English to come into the break room and eat lunch with her. As we enter the room, I see several of my Filipino co-workers and several of the Filipino nurses  sitting around a big table. They greeted her and me when we walked in and then began talking in, I suppose either Tagalog or Filipino, but I'm not quite sure. It's really fascinating to listen to. Imagine a mixture between Chinese and Spanish and you've got the general sound of it.  They were all talking and laughing very hard. Me, however, had no clue what any of them were saying. And I loved it. I don't know why, but I just was thrilled to be sitting surrounded by people speaking a language that I had no concept of how to translate or communicate in. It was kind of surreal. I wonder if that's what it's like to be a baby that can't talk yet.

Maybe it's the morning pages, or perhaps a bored mind, but I've also been having some spurts on inspiration while working on the premises. I've basically have a blues song in my head based off of Whole milk and Coffee, a favorite combo of the residents at the nursing home. Also, I've thought about doing a funkifized version of "I throw My hands up in the Air Sometimes" because while we work in the kitchen, often times our local top 40s station is on and I literally want to shoot the radio repeatedly with a 50 caliber bullet.

But besides getting ideas for more creative projects, I also noticed just moments of poetry in everyday life at this place sometimes. there is one particular moment that I love, and will probably never forget that I'll try to share with you.

It was morning, about 8:30 or 9 and I was walking down the hall of the nursing home to pick up a food cart that we put the trays in to be delivered to the resident's rooms. As I walks down the hall I can see, smell, and hear the various stages of de-evolution in the lives of these people. Almost all of the residents are in wheel chairs and the wheelchairs have alarms that go off when the resident stands up. Almost daily you'll hear one of these alarms ringing down the white hallway as another resident attempts to regain some dignity. However, they are always forced back into their seats, because they are simply too weak to walk. My favorite residents are the ones who are either too old, or stubborn enough not to care and continue to try to walk again. The smells of urine, pureed food, and medicated ointment waft through the halls as you walk by each room.  As I walked up to the cart I passed by this one room where possibly the sweetest looking old lady was sitting in her bed. She seemed bedridden, and her hair was wild, as if she hadn't had anything done to it in a while. I highly doubt that she has moved from the in quite some time, knowing only the green walls and dim lighting of her nursing home room. She had these large blue eyes, and they were looking towards the window of her room. As she gazed out the window she said,
"Oh, Hazel, look at the sun coming in through that window! Isn't it pretty"
It was really beautiful that someone in such a dark place could still focus on the light.

Well I think that will do it for this week. Don't worry, we'll leave the old folks home in good time. Tune in next week for packing and shopping stories (don't worry, k-stone, I won't leave you out) as I prepare to leave and the tales of the evil French Bureaucracy!

Monsieur Wells