Mummies, and Death, and Slow Afternoons
I am very glad for being back to my old job. It’s like putting your old shoes on–you like your new shoes, even though they hurt your feet a lot (shiny and new is cool, but in the end how you feel is what’s more important). But the old shoes elicit a feeling of comfort, but also of stasis. It truly is like I never left–just took an extended leave. Which has its plus sides, and also its minuses.
Today was a slow day–I have enough work to do, but no meetings to break it up, no real email distractions, as I’m not really integrated yet into what’s going on. I think it will increase as the weeks go on. So today was slow. Achingly slow at times. I put my headphones on, and listened to the entire original Broadway recording of the musical Rent, which has been one of my favorite pieces of music for a long time. The down side is it always affects me in some emotional way.
My good friend Laurie Ann worked in the theater district at the time it came out on Broadway, and she sent me the soundtrack during my first year of graduate school. It was the first time I lived alone in my life, truly alone, in a small studio apartment. I had cinderblock bookshelves (what else is a hallmark of graduate school?), a murphy bed (I still miss that), and a mini stereo. I listened to that soundtrack over and over–listened to it while I wrote scary emails to a guy in Antarctica, while I wrote poems, while I graded freshman composition papers. I knew it by heart. When I went home for Christmas that first year, I convinced my friend Artie, another theatrical person, to go to the show in Boston with me. We got orchestra seats, and sat in the last row in the orchestra. I knew the whole show by heart. I sang it to myself. When the show was over, I was crying as if I had seen the end of the world and a glorious resurrection. Artie did what all good guy friends do–he hugged me and suggested we go get a drink. We went across the street to the Brew Moon, and as I sat at the bar and Artie went to the bathroom, the bartender asked me, “Just got out of the show?” I nodded in between sobs and dabs of Kleenex. Clearly he had seen this behavior before. I got it together before Artie got back (another thing good guy friends do), and we had a glass of wine before heading home. I saw the show one more time, two summers later, in New York, on Broadway. Fourth row, right aisle. I saw the sweat on Mark’s brow as he sang. I was with my own Marc, and it was amazing, but not like that first time. But the soundtrack continues to remind me of the frailty of our lives, and the importance of Rule #32: Enjoy the little things. I have a lot of dead people in my life, and sometimes, they are louder than the live ones.
So I closed my eyes a number of times, and worked the poem I’ve got going, but really, I was thinking about Rex, and was glad my back was to my two office mates. The end result, I’m afraid, is this poem (posted for a day).
The Ancestor
*poof*
The best humor to the day, though, came when Claire asked me to come into the bathroom for her, because she thought there was a mummy in my room. I told her, “There is a mummy. I’m the mummy.” She said, “No, mom. Not the kind of mummy–mommy that takes care of kids, the kind of mommy covered with dirt and toilet paper.”