Reading harold_maude's journal

Another day, exausted peices of something. Me, I think. Payday. Money already earmarked for this and that
and the search for a new place to live is underway.

I being the traveler that I am, looks forward to something different. Something away from the madness and the feel
of a mortuary that this place has become.
Am I bitter about seeing something that had life enter a phase of death? No. Death comes to all things living.
When it settles and becomes the thread of days, then I have to say that the person exuding the throws of death
needs a good swift kick in the butt.
Either that or they need to get into a job suited to their energy. Embalming corpses. Because at that point they
have everything in common with a dead body and nothing in common with the bodies that are still up and walking around.

But soon we will leave this scene of deathism and go on. And I will finally be able to put this all to rest. It's hard
when you have to come back to it to sleep at night.

We went to a diner tonight. A fulfillment of wanting to completely feel the words of Tom Waits in some kind way,
being as we have at this time no way to go to where he could be doing a live concert.
It would be nice, to sit in a semi-darkened room listening to a story teller who I could listen to all day, and never say a word.
Except a few drifting sweet mumbles here and there.
He is one of my all time favorite artists.
The more I listen the more he becomes one of the parts of my decompression at the end of the day.

The diner. A small counter only place with stools set at the counter and one table for any over flow that might happen.
The cook was a big guy. The kind you would expect to see in a place like this. The food, like all diner food was good.
It was served on a plate, the white kind with some kind of pattern common to places like this.
The other cook, or cooks were round the corner in the fry kitchen.
And the waitress was a young girl about 22, I'd guess, maybe a bit younger with something in her eyes that said this
was a place she liked to hang out at and that's why she was working there.

Phone calls came in and she answered on from a guy named Larry. From the sounds of it, Larry was a regular.
The kind that orders over the phone and spends a half hour after he gets there bulshitting with who ever is on at the time.
Tonight Larry couldn't make up his mind what he wanted.
He kept changing his mind.
He called back to change his order. Onion rings instead of slaw. The 4 peice dinner with onion rings on the side was his
final word on the subject.

She and I carried on a disconnected conversation while Larry was trying to make up his mind. A couple of times she said "Larry...
Larry are you there? She could hear him talking to someone on the other end through a hand covering the reciever. And I commented
that it appeared that Larry was having trouble making his mind up. She said he does this all the time.

I must admit that I wanted to see the starched white aprons covered in food stains on the cook. It would have completed the ideal
immage of the diner for me.
I wanted to see the waitress in the familar white uniform that defines diner waitresses of the past.
But this is now, and everyone behind the counter dressed casually.

So much for the notion that diners have this thing that makes them diners. Out side of that the food was what I expected to get,
and yes my stomach was in need of help once we left.
It was a good night, stomach and all.

I'm off to bed now. I have to go sling pizza tomorrow. Working in a hot kitchen running my ass off and wishing that I was doing art.
Loving the crazy moods that place gets, and the insanity that invades the kitchen with the lunch crowd.
And after that, dishes that will take the rest of the time I'm there to clean.
Another day another dollar, and when I get my next paycheck, I'll do the same thing I've done for a while.
Just sit there and look at it and wish it was fun money just for once instead of watching it vanish into other people's pockets.

It only looks that way because your standing on your head.