Eccentric Behavior

Not me, of course, I'm nearly normal, but the people around me. Subject to fits and starts, reminded of Lewis Carroll's "The Hunting Of The Snark, An Agony In Eight Fits." Low key day, everyone wasted. They all know Thursday is janitor day and no one bothers me. Today I was singing Zappa songs, under my breath; all that traffic, the floor was a mess. Dust-mop into piles, then sweep the corners, mop wet stripes in my overlapping chevron pattern. We learned, at janitor college, to fall into a zen state, when attention was necessary, paying attention by not paying attention. You might think that most janitors are on drugs, but actually, they're meditating. Those red eyes and dripping noses are from crying, they know who they are: The Great Unwashed, they can smell themselves, they don't need a kick in the ass, they need a bath, and deodorant. I know several people whose hair is not a natural color, we don't talk about it but I wonder what they mean. Tats, extra holes in your body, scarification, I'm not sure about the meaning. I try to blend in, fade into the background, I wear black jeans, denim shirts, and several different hats. I don't know my eye color. I'm reading Lewis Carroll because we're doing a show, someplace down the pike, and I want to be up to speed. Weird dude. Reading them, his work, as an adult is a whole different thing than reading them, being read to, as a child. Dodgson, I think, was a loonie, or whatever the politically correct term. He sure knew his Euclid. And that damned Brit told me today that he wasn't dillying the Liddell girls, as much as he was dallying the Liddell mom. Heaven forbid. Christ Church College in upheaval. History, as I said, so often incorrect. A construct to support a point. I can barely talk about today, much less yesterday or tomorrow. I was inspired recently, by unexpected comments from unexplained locations. The beat goes on. I used to get home, do something that advanced the cause, fix dinner, then get a drink and write you, now, what I do is get home, log on, and write you. A difference of degree. I try and have some available calories, something simple, so I won't waste away, but eating is so much work, all that chewing. I'd rather have one word, or a single mark of punctuation. I'm shameless, I bought a cheap chopped steak, because I knew I had these mushrooms, and I know what I could do with them. Chicken Fried Steak with morels; at my diner, you could order that, a certain time of the year, I won't speak for the rest of the menu. What I learn from Skip is that anything is fair game, what I learn from Steven is it's all in the beat. If I have to place myself in that pantheon, I would only say, pay attention to detail. The smallest things mean the most to me now. What that crow was saying, a certain alignment of sticks at the spillway, there's an equivalence. I'm not that kind of guy, but I have to admit, it appears to mean something. Maybe meaning is nothing more than appearance, what you think you see is merely what you need to see, a closed loop, maybe you fabricate meaning as a product of situation, maybe there is no meaning, things just happen and you're left gasping for air. I love my job. I mediate between worlds. The janitor's lot is always thus. My friends argued that I should be a lawyer or a doctor, but I knew my calling, I could mop with the best of them, there was nothing I could do quite so well.