Peering inside the closet of a network computer rack

I parse out just enough cat nip for one of the cats to get off, but not both, and let them duke it out like Siamese fighting fish, all hisses and rear leg strokes fanning the guts, fangs, stoned-out faces, sudden urges to flee.

It’s a bad time to stop earning with one kid just out of braces and the other, just starting. And the CEO from the company I just left is on the cover of Time magazine in black and white profile, looking presidential. If you wonder if you’re depressed, you’re probably not.

We fall into new routines, and time passes faster than you think. There is the nap but also the half-nap, which resembles a nap but isn’t. It mimics the nap and comes after eating or reading and then leads to blogging, followed by a nap. The artist on his side slumped, drained of his art, giving all of himself with nothing to ask in return but to be Liked, Favorited, Mentioned. It’s the giving that gives me life.

There is no urgency to the day, but great order in the refrigerator for once, and today a microcosm of order now established in the vegetable bin, the well-wrapped half-onions and spinach leaves, Brussels sprouts, peppers. They’re settled in there nicely, preserved, tucked-in.

I listen to a record by Joanna Newsom many times, start to finish. It is an impending disorder, some pixie music I’m afraid only I can understand. I let the beard go and tasks that require multiple steps get put on hold after the first step, so I can save the rest for later.

Today I attend a virtual web meeting, orientation for the job-seeker firm helping me transition.

The Time article triggers strange dreams. There are references in the story I picture being pitched and I reread them for accuracy, for projects cited I worked on, or my boss did.

In the dream, I’m driving my boss’s car and there’s water on the roadway. I think it’s going to be okay but realize once I’m in it it’s not, the car is filling with water, the car is ruined. I owe some kind of apology at the end.

I realize the scene my wife will remember me in as she leaves for work, embryonic on the sofa with Joanna Newsom playing, and I have to get up and do something. We’re wired this way.

Categories: humor

Tags: American identity, blogging, cat nip, cats, humor, Joanna Newsom, job transition, Memoir, Portland, Rumble Fish, Starbucks, time, unemployment