Frustration

I'm an easy going guy. Hard to rile, quick to settle disputes. At work today, I couldn't find the vacuum. I always put it back in the same place, but other people tend to leave it a couple of other places. Checked all the places, no vacuum. Went and asked everyone if they knew where it was. No. Not everyone is there, which means one of the missing might have left it somewhere. I go to the basement, search everywhere, then work my way up through the first, second and third floors, nothing, work my way back down three floors and the basement, looking in interesting and extremely unlikely corners and closets. Trisa, finally remembers she used it (!) before the Chopin Thing Sunday night and it's behind the hall door. It's not. Lunch time. I've been looking for the vacuum over two hours. Go to lunch, flirt with the bar-maid, back to the museum. D's busy with an Arts Council guy, selecting pieces from our permanent collection to hang in the Governor's mansion. At this point I've made dowsing rods from a couple of coat hangers and I'm walking slowly through the building, people are looking at strangely, and I'm muttering. I could be hired out as an eccentric. Kotzwinkle wrote a great story about an eccentric rented by a British Lord, who proceeded to undermine the mansion and blow up the grounds. Great story. Pegi and Trisa have taken a late lunch, working on a grant proposal, and I finally sink into a chair at the other end of the table. Pegi asks what's wrong, and I say that I still can't find the fucking vacuum cleaner. Trisa turns beet red and spits out a mouthful of chips, not a pretty sight, sputters that the damned thing is behind the curtain. I know immediately what she means, where the Orick is hidden. I had even thought about it, but disregarded the thought, why would you hide a vacuum there? The drape, a lovely velour D got at a High School going of business sale is right against the back wall of the theater, makes the acoustics barely acceptable and kills light. Black velour is a wonderful thing, it deceives the eye. I could tell stories, but I'm trying to report, here, on a sequence of actions. It lays against the wall, but there is enormous fullness, you could hide anything there, the Orick is not even a bleep, my wands never wavered. But, of course, it is there, and I'm grateful I found it, not upset, but Pegi thinks I should probably tie Trisa up and tickle her with a turkey feather until she pees her pants. I'm not a vindictive guy, sometimes I wish I could be, track down that mother-fucker that stole 1500 pages of my work, and shoot him in the foot, so he'd limp forever. A great moon, just coming into sight-lines, all these new leaves do is obscure things, I start almost seeing clearing, then the pixels blur and the image disappears. The story of my life. I think I have things in focus, but they're not, it's a false positive or something. What I thought I was talking about was quite simple, then it turns out we're speaking different languages and we actually thought we were communicating. I'm sure of this, though, in the original. You'd have to laugh. Translation is such an artificial art. I read them because language is not a gift for me, I struggle with meaning, the nuance, really, I'm a simple guy.