Vivid

I'm only a quarter in and there are no frights as yet, except for the exact recreations of chain bookstore employment horrors: inept, judgmental management; frustrating customers; cantankerous and worrisome elevators; bratty children at story-time; ridiculous rules based on lawsuits at other stores; strange employees who explain their vague jokes after no one gets them; public restrooms; bleary-eyed 3am trips to the store for false alarms; pornography stashed in the children's section, etc.

The Overnight is bringing it all back, down to the paging system, the punchclock error sheets, the dank breakroom with the sinkful of days-old dirty mugs, and the inventory procedures! I can't wait to get to the reason for the title, which frightens me in and of itself. There's nothing more awful than a retail overnight.

I love Campbell's prose (here describing an employee getting lunch on break):

The walls and ceiling of the supermarket are as colourless as the befogged spotlights. Unspecific muffled music hangs in the air while silent personnel unload cartons in the white aisles. Wilf takes a moss-green plastic basket to the rudimentary delicatessen section and bears a pack of sushi to the nearest till. The checkout girl, who wears an overall like a dentist's and has eyes weighed down by mascara, hardly glances at him even when she passes him the sushi in a bag so flimsy it's sibilant...

Protect Yourself

The latest in French AIDS awareness ads.

Quarterly Dividends

I managed to earn $225 in Amazon GCs this quarter (some from sales through here, some from credit card reward programs), and I bought a bunch of shit I don't need but really wanted, like the six-volume Trask translation of Casanova's History of My Life (a book impossible not to enjoy), the latest Ian McEwan, and the newest by my favorite horror writer Ramsey Campbell. Here's a snippet from his Acknowledgements page:

In March 2000 I went to work full-time at the Cheshire Oaks branch of Borders. Most of my friends were shocked that I needed to take a job other than writing, though Poppy Z. Brite sent several enthusiastic emails...In the months I worked at the shop I made quite a few friends and conceived this book out of my experience. What more could I ask?

I just saw Ramsey as a commentator on The 100 Scariest Movie Moments a few weeks back. His last couple of novels have been superior, after a four- or five-book downturn. His novel Incarnate is perhaps the best-written supernatural story I've read outside of M.R. James.

Where's Paul Maud'dib?

Arrakis or Iraq?

Librarians

I just spent an hour watching librarians eat cookies, cakes, and drink tea, all the while fete-ing 3 retiring compatriots with something like 110 years service between them. They were so cute in their tea party outfits, using the "archive china." What better way to rinse such a quaint scene out of my skull than to pop in Black Sabbath's mighty first album, which I've not listened to for years. Best rhythm section ever!

Will I ever have a job for more than 5 years? Two of the women retiring today have worked here longer than I've been alive.

More Gore

...for some reason I am relieved not to see most people, even those I like--or once liked. I understand now why the old enjoy the obituaries of contemporaries. I used to put this down to play-acting in the face of momento mori; now I think it is a sense of relief in letting go for good of people one no longer needs. I recall something Santayana said as he led me into his cell at the convent. "As you see, I live as if I were already dead."

from Palimpsest

All I need

All of my favorite flowering trees around Towson are about at full throttle now. Soon the lavender azaleas around Cook Liberry will open, adding to the spectacle; at this time of year I don't mind walking to work--actually, I love walking to work, but I mean I don't mind it in the sense that I don't care that my destination is work as I'm walking at this time of year, whereas during the winter for example I'll only think about going to work as I walk and how much I hate being at work. Now I walk under two of my favorite flowering trees on the way here each day, and on the way back at dinner, and on the way back here after dinner, and then again on the way home, though that's typically after dark. The entire time I look at those trees and think not of work at all. As I do my standard 3.5 mile runs around Towson I can visit my trees that happen to live in other people's yards and note their progress. This makes me happy.

But still, shit intrudes when all seems well. I got home to grab some chow and there's a phone message from Mommie Dearest, using her concerned Mommie Dearest voice, so I think perhaps something happened to Dad or to Grandpa and I call. The news: A good friend's brother committed suicide last Friday, but was only found today. Not one of those "cry for help" cases, he first took an overdose of pills, then used a knife to cut himself badly, then shot himself in the head. At 46. Just a few months ago their mother had died. And my student assistant is out today because somebody died.

But I still don't feel maudlin. I feel very content and centered today, and I can see the flowering trees far away outside the tiny slit of a window available across the Liberry floor from the Service Desk, and that's about all I need.

Dream

This morning I was dreaming of a woman wrapped in a yellow blanket, pleading and crying in the corner of her bedroom as a threatening man yelled at her. Then, I woke to realize I'd been hearing my neighbors screaming at each other through the shared wall of our townhomes. She was in the corner, crying loudly, saying something like "everything I do I do to try and please you, to be who you want me to be." He shouted "look at you! You disgust me!" and then I heard their back door slam and her sobbing continued.

These neighbors are not nearly as bad as the previous neighbors, who fought like this every week, but I've heard them fight numerous times the past year. Each time I'm instantly back in childhood, listening to my parents scream at one another, dreading the moment when one or the other of them would come in and use me as a weapon against the other.

I need to live where there are no people.